Syria, Palestine, Colonialism, and the American Way
The account at the bottom of this was forwarded to me via e-mail, and unfortunately the links did not adjust.I will try to post them separately antoher time.
The post is all about the situation in Palestine, with the Arabic followed with an English version.The translation is remarkably accurate.Our media has been so busy talking about John Kerry and Nitwityahoo that the real situation has been obfuscated.Part of this is the bias of the Corporate and popular press and part of it has to do with the shallow-mindedness of the American public.It is personal stories that attract it, not issues concerning the oppression of large masses of people.The public just can’t absorb it, or will tune away from anything that causes cognitive dissonance, as thinking is work, and reassessing ones position is often painful.When there are so many real problems in our world, caused and forwarded by our own leaders, serving their corporate masters, is there any wonder that Mia Farrow and Woody Allen are being treated with more intensity than the Israeli theft of Palestinian land or our onslaught on other countries?
Syria is a recent case in point.Assad has managed to resist our “crusade” in favor of “regime change,” (another word for colonization) to a degree that he has become a frustrating as Castro who survived over a half-century of assassination and coup attempts by us.He further angered us by allowing Gaddafi to speak over Syrian media before we invaded his country, leaving Libya in a total mess.The right-wing wants to talk about Benghazzi so much because Hillary Clinton was Secretary of state at the time.It is about time that these forces attacked the very decision of get us into that country in the first place.Without that, there would be no problem with that city.And furthermore, during the revolt, Gaddafi kept mentioning that Al-Quaeda was involved, but of course he was lying.We much preferred to depict these people as “freedom fighters.”
Well, now we have the same thing in Syria.The people most opposed to Assad and his government are Sunni maniacs shouting “Allu Akbar” at every turn and beheading every male they can get their hands on and playing football (or soccer) with their heads.The only countries with enough integrity to support Assad are Iran and Russia and, therefore, they are bad, naughty people.We prop up John McCain once again and have him should “everytime I see Putin, I see KGB”.Well, maybe so.How do you thing the Russian government reacted when they saw Bush I, Herbert Walker, who was previously head of the CIA?Well, they should be happy because CIA is good, KGB, bad.Bad, bad, KGB.So we continue to support what we used to call terrorists because of 911 (and because it made a nice cause and excuse to institute a police state) because the terrorists anre now “freedom fighters” because Assad will not “step down,” as Hillary kept saying.Also, Putin supports Assad.
Of course, these “freedom fighters” massacred a bunch of Christians in a place where they actually spoke Aramaic, apparently the language that Jesus also spoke.But that doesn’t matter!These Christians probably had it coming, no?After all, they thought, and many of those who survived still think, that Assad was a good guy.Well, they can think whatever they want.We are simply not going to allow this commie, pinko, Assad to protect Christians who won’t speak English like good people do.
Of course, Putin is a bad guy, but our press is having trouble with this one.He is carrying out a purge of people in the nearby Moslem area, and they are in the same place where the Boston Bombers grew up and learned all about us.So how do you attack Putin about that?Simple, look at the coverage.You can see that the hotel rooms are not ready yet.That ought to convince you!And, one of the circles in the Olympic insignia did not light up the way it was suppose to.How many damn times have you seen a photo of that one snowflake shaped insignia on our media?That out to convince you that Putin is wrong and evil.
It is overwhelming the lack of objective coverage, not in Palestine although our contributor seems to be surprised at seeing some seeping though, but on the subject of Syria.I have yet to see any press, independent or corporate, cover the subject with any degree of accuracy.Even Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, a person I have never before shrink before an unjustice, will touch this, and remains content to repeat United Nations reports.So Syria is a bit behind on sending some chemical to be destroyed.How far behind is Israel in abiding by International Law concerning nuclear weapons?Of course, Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle-East” (as our rulers keep telling us, but how does one have a democracy when it is restricted to one religion only, a “Jewish State”?
So, we are content to maintain that Iran is evil because it is Shia?Or because it doesn’t like us anymore?After all, it was a nice country after our CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mossadegha and put the Puppet Shah in, but after that, they became evil.
The best history of how this whole mess started remains a book titled Orientalismby Edward Said (Sigh Eed).A great deal of money and effort was spent trying to attack Edward, but he died awhile back.They guy who took his place at Columbia used to be one of Obama’s best friends, and supporters, but as soon as Obama was elected, he was ostracized, not even invited to the inaugeration.Hell, even Jimmie Carter invited Arlo Guthrie to his inaugeration, but Obama didn’t want any misunderstandings.Israel über Alles!He even named a Chief of staff whose middle name was Israel.Of course, nobody believes this, but it remains a fact.The same guy is now dismantling the school system in Chicago.
Of course, the most exciting new of the past week is the fact that Mia Farrow’s first son is really the biological son of Frank Sinatra, not Woody Allen.At least he looks more like him.
I was surprised that this was being reported so accurately, just got this hot
off the internet email server.
English Follows
الاحتلال يداهم قرية عين حجلة ويخلي القرية من التواجد الفلسطيني
بيان للصحافة
الجمعة 7 شباط 2014
قام المئات من جنود الاحتلال بمهاجمة واخلاء وتشريد أهالي قرية عين حجلة في الأغوار الفلسطينية بشكل همجي وعنيف بعد منتصف الليل من مساء أمس حيث تم اعلان القرية منطقة عسكرية مغلقة. هذا ويذكر بأن قرابة 35 فلسطيني تم نقلهم إلى مستشفى أريحا لتلقى العلاج بعض تهجم جيش الاحتلال عليهم وانهيالة عليهم بالضرب والدفع خلال عملية اخلاء القرية.
كما وقام جيش الاحتلال بمداهمة القرية من الجهة الجنوبية والشمالية مستعملين القنابل الصوتية وقنابل الضوء، وتخلل المداهمة العنيفة اعتداءات عدة على ساكني القرية بالضرب والدفع بشكل غوغائي عنيف دون اكتراث لأطفال ونساء وكبار في السن كانوا متواجدين في القرية.
ونقل سكان القرية والنشطاء بحافلات لجيش الاحتلال تحت وابل من الشتائم والاستهزاء بالقرية وأهلها وتم ايصال السكان إلى استراحة أريحا.
ومن الجدير ذكره بأن جيش الاحتلال قام بالإعتداء على الصحفيين والطواقم الطبية المتواجدين في القرية أثناء عملية الإخلاء بما فيهم مصور صحفي لتلفزيون فلسطين والذي تم دفعه من على احدى بيوت القرية ومسعف من الإغاثة الطبية والذي ضرب ببندقية على صدره. كما وتم اعتقال عدد من السكان أثناء الاخلاء واطلق سراحهم لاحقاً.
هذا ويقدر بأن عدد الفلسطينيين الذين كانوا متواجدين في القرية عند الاخلاء يتراوح بين 200 و250 فلسطيني وفلسطينية.
وأكد النشطاء وسكان القرية على استمرارية نضالهم رغم نكبة القرية وتهجيرهم وأفاد الناشط في المقاومة الشعبية من قرية المعصرة محمود زواهرة بأن سكان القرية تمكنوا من اعادة الحياة إلى القرية وقال "بأن السكان تم تشريدهم وإخلائهم من القرية إلا أن الاحتلال لم ولن يتمكن من اخلاء القرية من قلوبنا وضمائرنا".
كما وقال الناشط في المقاومة الشعبية من مخيم عايدة منذر عميرة بأن عملية الإخلاء لا تعني انتهاء العمل في الأغوار الفلسطينية، وأكد بأن النشطاء مستمرين في عملهم وسيستمرون بتحقيق اهداف حملة ملح الأرض فإحياء وإعمار قرية عين حجلة كان خطوة أولية من الحملة. كما وقال عميرة "بأننا سنواصل عملنا وسنكون ملحا لهذه الأرض مستمرين في مواجهة الاحتلال وتهويد وضم الأغوار".
قائمة بأسماء المصابين الذين نقلوا إلى مستشفى أريحا:
1.بديع دويك 41 عام
2.محمد موسى محمد دعاجنة 25 عام
3.محمد عبد الكريم الخطيب 25 عام
4.عبد المجيد عمر 22 عام
5.محمد نعيم حسن 29 عام
6.ماهر طاهر سمارة 29 عام
7.محمد سعيد أبو غربية 19 عام
8.بهاء جلال التميمي 26 عام
9.زياد أبو عين 54 عام
10.رمزي محمد أبو سعدة 30 عام
11.عبد المجيد بسام عمر 22
12.ماهر نايف صالح 47 عام
13.مراد محمد عمر 25 عام
14.سامي أحمد دعيس 25 عام
15.محمود احمد اسماعيل 29 عام
16.مروى جهاد سمحان 23 عام
17.وعد باسم التميمي 17 عام
18. اشيرة علي رمضان 29 عام
19.محمود ناصر 21 عام
20.نبال محمد عبد ربه 24 عام
21.فادي مثقال الجيوسي 34 (مصور تلفزيون فلسطين)
22. صهيب رافع صوافطة 22 عام
23.معن جمال ضراغمة 25 عام
24.احمد ضراغمة 21عام
25.مهند عبد الفتاح 23 عام
26.انس محمود ازغير 18عام
27.كرم اكرم ازغير 23 عام
28.علاء ازغير 25 عام
29.حسن عثمان فرج 33 عام
30.حمزة حسن جوابرة 20 عام
31.أسامة حسن نعامرة 20 عام
32.اسلام صالح تميمي 18 عام
يا بنات وأبناء فلسطين كونوا ملحا لهذه الأرض مصلحين لها وثابتين عليها.
Israeli occupation raid and evict Palestinians from Ein Hijleh
Press Release
Friday 7, February 2014
Hundreds of Israeli forces have raided Ein Hijleh village in the Jordan Valley and evicted all its residents violently around 1:30 am and declared the village a closed military zone. And it is estimated that between 200-250 Palestinians were in the village at the time of eviction.
35 Palestinians were injured and taken to Jericho hospital after the eviction. At the time of the raid Israeli forces fired large amounts of sound bombs to scatter the crowd that gather at the center of the village while many women and children were automatically evicted from homes and tents where they were asleep.
Israeli forces have attacked the residents of Ein Hijleh by beating them up, kicking them and pushing them to the ground and into the fire.
The residents of the village were transferred after the eviction with Israeli occupation military buses while being humiliated and mocked by the soldiers on the bus. The residents of Ein Hijleh where transferred to the entrance of Jericho and were received by Palestinian security forces and taken to the center of Jericho city.
Israeli forces have also attacked journalists and medical teams in the village at the time of eviction including a cameraman from Palestine TV who was pushed from one of the rooftops to the ground and one of the medics from the medical relief team was hit with a riffle on his chest.
Several Palestinians were arrested at the time of eviction and were later released at the entrance of Jericho.
The activist from the popular struggle committee in AlMasara Mahmoud Zawahreh said that the activists have managed to revive the village and although they were evicted from Ein Hijleh but the Israeli occupation failed to evict the village and the great work achieved from the hearts and minds of Ein Hijleh residents.
Activist from the popular struggle from Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem Monther Amira said that the eviction will not end the work of the activists in the Jordan Valley, he added “we will continue with our campaign Melh AlArd (Salt of the Earth), and the revival of the village was only the start to our work in the Jordan Valley, we will continue our work and we will remain to be the salt to this earth working against Israeli policies in all of Palestinian lands especially against the Judaization and annexation of the Jordan Valley.
List of the injuries taken from Jericho hospital:
1.Bade’ Dwaik 41 years
2.Mohammad Musa Da’ajneh 25 years
3.Mohammad AbdelKarim AlKhatib 25 years
4.Abdel Majeed Omar 22 years
5. Mohammad Nae’m Hasan 29
6.Maher Taher Samara 29 years
7.Mohammad Saeed Abu Gharbieh 19 years
8.Baha Jalal Tamimi 26 years
9.Ziad Abu Ein 54 years
10.Ramzi Mohammad Abu Sa’da 30 years
11.Abdel Majeed Bassam Omar 22 years
12.Maher Nayef Saleh 47 years
13.Murad Mohammad Omar 25 years
14.Sami Ahmad Di’es 25 years
15.Mahmoud Ahmad Ismail 29 years
16.Marwa Jihad Samhan 23 years
17.Waed Basem Tamimi 17 years
18.Ashira Ali Ramadan 29 years
19.Mahmoud Naser 21 years
20.Nibal Mohamad Abd Rabu 24 years
21.Fadi Methqal AlJayousi 34 years (Palestine TV cameraman)
22.Suhaib Rafe’ Sawafta 22 years
23.Ma’en Jamal Daraghmeh 25 years
24.Ahmad Daraghmeh 21 years
25.Mohannad Abdel Fatah 23 years
26.Anas Mahmoud Zghaiar 18 years
27.Karam Akram Zghaiar 23 years
28.Ala’ Zghaiar 25 years
29.Hasan Othman Faraj 33 years
30.Hamza Hasan Jawabreh 20 years
31.Osama Hasan Na’amreh 20 years
32.Islam Saleh Tamimi 18 years
Daughters and sons of Palestine, be the salt of this earth and stay steadfast on it.
This is really worth checking out.I haven’t yet been able to get a response from the site, but it is up and running.
You have to realize that every time you forward a message, that entire message is Metadata.Every Re-Tweet, for those of you on Twitter, is Metadata.Every “like”, anywhere, on anything, is Metadata.Your phone number is Metadata.In fact, the definition is so broad, even the term “Metadata” is Metadata.
If you use a cell phone, the signal is Metadata.Right now, drones fly overhead, fake being a cell-phone tower, and are able to use your signal to launch some sort of missile or bomb on you.If it explodes, and you can be reasonably certain that it will, you will be dead and splattered all over the ground. SPLAT!
A more frightening part of this is one of the last sentences where Obama indicated that he really didn’t think he would be so good at killing.Well, it only shows what you can do if you really set your mind to it.Power of Positive Thinking, that is.
Of course, the Constitution ensures that we can not be executed by our own government without “due process,” but as Eric Holder has pointed out, “due process” does not necessarily mean “adjudication”.In other words, you don’t have to be tried, just “due”.The trouble is, none of us know when we are “due”.
Now this sound like an Orwellian paranoid nightmare, but as you read the interview below, you can see that this day has come.
Somewhere in there, Glenn Greenwald mentions visiting the United States because he has the right as an American Citizen.The Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who looks to us as if he could not install Itunes on his own computer, and who has said that Snowden must have had Russian help in order to copy all the stuff that he did, believes that everyone is a Traitor, especially Glenn Greenwald.I doubt if Eric Holder is going to bother arguing with him.
Anyway, here is a transcript of the entire interview.Try not to get too freaked out because Obama is only targeting cell-phones, not people.Any people that die, well, that’s collateral damage.Obama said so, and Obama is an honorable man.
And he would never target an American citizen INSIDE the United States.Obama said so, and Obama is an honorable man.
And he would only target evil cell phones overseas.Obama said so, and Obama is an honorable man:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2014
Death By Metadata: Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald RevealNSARole in Assassinations Overseas
In the first exposé for their new venture, First Look Media’s digital journal The Intercept, investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald reveal the National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes. TheNSAidentifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cellphone tracking technologies, an unreliable tactic that has resulted in the deaths of innocent and unidentified people. The United States has reportedly carried out drone strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cellphone orSIMcard is in fact the intended target of the strike. Scahill and Greenwald join us in this exclusive interview to discuss their report and the launch of their media project.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We turn now to a breaking news story about the National Security Agency and its secret role helping the military andCIAcarry out assassinations overseas. According to journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, theNSAis using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
A former drone operator forJSOC, the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, said theNSAidentifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cellphone tracking technologies, but it’s proven to be an unreliable tactic that’s resulted in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. The U.S. has reportedly carried out strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cellphone orSIMcard is in fact the intended target of the strike. The former drone operator, who was a source in the story, said, quote, "It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people—we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy," the quote says.
Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald have also revealed theNSAhas equipped drones and other aircraft with devices known as "virtual base-tower transceivers." These devices create, in effect, a fake cellphone tower that can force a targeted person’s device to lock onto the NSA’s receiver without their knowledge.
Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald’sarticleappears in the new online publication,TheIntercept.org, published by First Look Media, the newly formed media venture started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Glenn and Jeremy co-foundedThe Interceptwith filmmaker Laura Poitras.
Glenn Greenwald Greenwald is the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden. He was previously a columnist atThe Guardiannewspaper. He’s joining us viaDemocracy Now!video stream from his home in Brazil.
Jeremy Scahill is producer and writer of the documentary filmDirty Wars, which has just been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. He’s also author of the book by the same name. Jeremy joins us from Los Angeles.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!Jeremy, let’s begin with you. Lay out the significance of this explosive story.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Well, Amy, we’re living in the era of pre-crime, where President Obama is continuing many of the same policies of his predecessor George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. And there’s this incredible reliance on technology to kill people who the United States thinks—doesn’t necessarily know, but thinks—may one day pose some sort of a threat of committing an act of terrorism or of impacting U.S. interests. And the U.S. wants to shy away from having its own personnel on the ground in countries like Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, eventually Afghanistan, and so what’s happened is that there’s this incredible reliance on the use of remotely piloted aircraft, i.e. drones.
What we discovered in the course of talking to sources, including this new source that we have who worked with both the Joint Special Operations Command and the National Security Agency, is that theNSAis providing satellite technology and communications intercept technology to the U.S. military special operations forces and theCIAthat essentially mimics the activities of a cellphone tower and forces individualSIMcards or handsets of phones—there’s two separate devices. When you have your telephone, your mobile phone, you have aSIMcard in it, and that can be tracked, but also the device itself can be tracked. And what they do is they force theSIMcard or the handset of individuals that they’re tracking onto these cellphone networks, and the people don’t know that their phones are being forced onto this cellphone tower that is literally put on the bottom of a drone and acts as a virtual transceiver. And so, when they are able to triangulate where this individual is, they can locate or track them to within about 30 feet or so of their location.
And what we understand is that under the current guidelines issued by the White House, President Obama gives a 60-day authorization to theCIAor the U.S. military to hunt down and kill these individuals who they’ve tracked with theseSIM-card-tracking technologies or handset-tracking technologies, and that they only have to have two sources of intelligence to indicate that this is the individual that they’re looking for. Those two sources cannot—can be signals intelligence, which is what I’ve just been describing, and they can also be what’s calledIMINT, or imagery intelligence, meaning just a satellite image of an individual that they think to be this suspected terrorist. They do not require an actual human confirmation that the individualSIMcard or phone handset that they’re tracking is in fact possessed by the person that they believe is a potential terrorist. And so, what we understand is that this is essentially death by metadata, where they think, or they hope, that the phone that they’re blowing up is in the possession of a person that they’ve identified as a potential terrorist. But in the end, they don’t actually really know. And that’s where the real danger with this program lies.
And the reason that our source came forward to talk about it is because he was a part of this program and was a participant in operations where he knew the identity of one individual that was being targeted, but other people were killed alongside of that person. And he also said that he just felt incredibly uncomfortable with the idea that they’re killing people’s phones in the effort to kill them and that they don’t actually know who the people are that are holding those phones.
AMYGOODMAN:And the source then is in addition to the documents that Edward Snowden released.
JEREMYSCAHILL:That’s correct. In fact, when we first started talking with this source, he was describing the architecture of this program, where theNSAis working closely with theCIAand with the Joint Special Operations Command, and then we were able to validate what he was saying through the documents that were previously provided by theNSAwhistleblower, Edward Snowden.
Amy, the platform that theCIAis using in Yemen and other countries is known as "SHENANIGANS." It’s interesting because theNSAuses a lot of sort of Irish terminology,BLARNEYSTONEand other—LIMERICK, other operations. This one is calledSHENANIGANS. And the platform that’s used by the U.S. military is calledGILGAMESH, orGMESH, for short. And that’s this technology where they’re able to not only triangulate the position ofSIMcards and cellphones, but theNSAalso puts a device on the drones, that are flying in various countries around the world, known as Air Handler, and the Air Handler device is literally just sucking up all of the data around the world. So it’s sort of a secondary mission. In other words, in plain terms what I’m saying is that every time a drone goes out in an effort to track someone or to kill someone, theNSAhas put a device on that that is not actually under the control of theCIAor the military, it is just sucking up data for theNSA. And as several formerNSApeople have told us, you know, theNSAjust wants all the data. They want to suck it up on an industrial scale. So they’re also piggybacking onto these targeted killing operations in an effort to just suck up data throughout the world.
AMYGOODMAN:Yet, I want to turn to President Obama, who was talking about drone strikes during that first major counterterrorism address of his second term. It was May 23rd, 2013.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:And before any strike is taken, there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured—the highest standard we can set. Yes, the conflict with al-Qaeda, like all armed conflict, invites tragedy. But by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.
AMYGOODMAN:Jeremy Scahill, respond.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Well, Amy, first of all, we saw very recently that the U.S. carried out a drone strike that killed many members of a wedding party in Yemen. The question should be asked: How is it that those individuals were selected on that day for that strike? And, you know, what the president is saying is very misleading, according to people who actually work on this program. And in fact, when we asked the White House for comment, we went to the National Security Council spokesperson, Caitlin Hayden, and asked directly, "Is it true that you’re ordering strikes where you don’t actually have any human intelligence?" And the White House refused to directly answer that. They just said, "Well, we don’t select targets based on only one source of intelligence." Well, we knew that already, and we told them that we knew that. The point here is that they don’t actually have a requirement to confirm the identity of the individuals that they’re targeting, and that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing so many innocent people being killed in these strikes. It effectively amounts to pre-crime, where an acceptable level of civilian deaths is any civilians who die in the pursuit of a limited number of so-called bad guys.
AMYGOODMAN:Didn’t the spokesperson also say, though, confirming that human intelligence was used—
JEREMYSCAHILL:Yeah.
AMYGOODMAN:—tried afterwards, but not before—after attack?
JEREMYSCAHILL:Right. I mean, I’m not sure that they’re aware of the kind of twisted irony of the statement that they issued to us, because on the one hand they’re refusing to acknowledge that they don’t actually need to confirm the identity of people who they’re trying to target for death; on the other hand they say, "Oh, well, when we kill someone, we do actually confirm whether or not civilians were killed by using human intelligence." So, it basically is—the standard is: We can kill you if we don’t know your identity, but once we kill you, we want to figure out who we killed.
AMYGOODMAN:In Yemen, any human intelligence on the ground?
JEREMYSCAHILL:Well, yes. I mean, the U.S. does have a very limited presence. In fact, my understanding is that there are small teams of U.S. special operations forces, Navy SEALs and others, that are scattered in various remote locations around Yemen. Of course, the U.S. has long had a counterterrorism presence inside of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. TheCIAalso has its own personnel.
But I want to underscore something that’s a little bit of a nuanced point, and that is that inside of Yemen, the U.S. has largely outsourced its human intelligence to the Saudi government. And the Saudis have been playing their own dirty games, that have their own dirty wars inside of Yemen. And many times the Saudis will feed intelligence to the U.S. that is intended to benefit the regime in Saudi Arabia and not necessarily the stated aims of the U.S. counterterrorism program. They also rely on notoriously corrupt units within the Yemeni military and security forces that receive a tremendous amount of U.S. military and intelligence support and oftentimes will use that U.S. aid to target Yemeni dissidents or to be used in defense of various factions within the Yemeni state.
So, the short answer, Amy, is, yes, there is a very limited U.S. military human intelligence presence on the ground, but most of it, the overwhelming majority, is outsourced to the notoriously sort of corrupt Saudi regime and its operations and operatives and informants inside of Yemen.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break, and when we come back after a minute, we’ll continue with Jeremy Scahill, as well as Glenn Greenwald. They have just co-authored their firstpiecefor their new online publication calledThe Intercept. We will link to it at democracynow.org. This isDemocracy Now!Back in a minute.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. We are broadcasting our exclusive first interview with Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald upon the publication just hours ago of their newpiece, "The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program." The article appears atTheIntercept.org, a new digital magazine launched today by First Look Media. Glenn and Jeremy co-foundedThe Interceptwith filmmaker Laura Poitras. Glenn is with us from his home in Brazil, and we’re going to talk about whether he plans to come into the United States. And Jeremy Scahill joins us from Los Angeles. Jeremy’s film,Dirty Wars, has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Glenn, can you talk about the legality of publishing this information, the way it’s been challenged by the administration? In your piece, you have Caitlin Hayden, spokesperson for the National Security Agency, saying, "the type of operational detail that, in our view, should not be published," she said, referring to the questions that you both were asking her. You are a former constitutional lawyer, Glenn.
GLENNGREENWALD:Right. The position of the U.S. government is that it’s illegal to publish any kind of classified information that you are not authorized to receive. It’s of course illegal, in their view, for a government employee or contractor to leak it without authorization. But their view, as well, is that it’s actually illegal, even if you’re a journalist, to publish it. And they believe that’s especially the case if the information pertains to what they call signals intelligence. And if you look at the Espionage Act of 1917 and other relevant statutes, it does seem to say that it is illegal in the United States to publish that kind of information.
The problem for that view is that there’s a superseding law called the Constitution, the First Amendment to which guarantees that there shall be a free press and that Congress and no other part of the government has the right to interfere with it. And one of the reasons why the government has been so reluctant about prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information, at least up until now, is because they’re afraid that courts will say that application of this statute, or the statutes that I’ve described, to journalists is unconstitutional in violation of the First Amendment, and they want to keep that weapon to be able to threaten or bully or intimidate journalists out of doing the kind of reporting that they’re doing.
So, every media lawyer will tell you that before you publish top-secret information, it’s a good practice, for legal protection, to ask the government if they want to tell you anything they think you should know about the implications of publishing this material. They always say, "If you publish it, it will harm national security." But if you’re a minimally decent journalist, that isn’t good enough. You need specific information about what innocent people will really be harmed if you publish. They virtually never provide any such information. They didn’t in this case. And so, it was very—it was an easy call to make, as journalists, to tell the American people about the methods that their government are using that result in the death of innocent people in ways that are easily preventable.
AMYGOODMAN:Glenn, you have been publishing many pieces all over the world since you first broke the story of Edward Snowden with the documents that he has released, downloading 1.7 million documents. What makes this story, "The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program," different?
GLENNGREENWALD:Most of the stories that we published thus far have been about the way in which theNSAcollects signals intelligence, tries to intercept the electronic communications of hundreds of millions, probably billions, of people around the world, hundreds of millions inside the United States. And that’s what the U.S. government has told the American people is the role of theNSA, is to listen in on the communications of people who are threatening the United States in some manner.
This story has very little to do with those prior stories, in the case—in the sense that this is not a case of theNSAtrying to collect people’s communications to find who is plotting with whom or what kinds of plots they’re engaged in. This is theNSAusing a form of signals intelligence to, first, determine who should be targeted for assassination based on an analysis of their metadata—has this person called what we think are bad people enough times for us to decide that they should die—and then, secondly, trying to help theCIAandJSOCfind those individuals who have been put on a list of, basically, assassination, but not by finding where they are, but by finding where their telephone is—a very obviously unreliable way of trying to kill people that is certain to result in the death of innocent people. And obviously, the source who came forward has said that that’s exactly what has happened. So it’s really an incredibly expanded role that we’re revealing that theNSAengages in, far beyond what traditionally the American people are told about why this agency exists.
AMYGOODMAN:In addition, Jeremy, to theJSOCoperator’s account, you quote, in this first piece for TheIntercept.org, Brandon Bryant. Talk about the significance of his experience and who he is.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Right. First, just something to follow up on what Glenn says. You know, the teams from theNSAthat are involved with this program are called geo cell, geolocation cells, and their motto is: "We track ’em, you whack ’em," meaning that theNSAwill find these individuals, and then the military or theCIAwill actually conduct or carry out these hits.
And as to the other question that we were talking about, about the relevance for people in the United States, you know, what we’ve seen, particularly since 9/11, but really throughout U.S. history, is that the kind of technology and the kind of operations, the sorts of tactics that the U.S. uses on citizens of other nations around the world in its military operations or intelligence operations, end up coming home to the United States, as well. And we believe that what we’re doing here is public service journalism and that the American people have a right to know what kind of technology their government is developing that could potentially be used on them. But also, when innocent people are killed in these operations, it impacts American national security, as well, and ultimately undermines our safety, because we’re creating more new enemies than we are killing terrorists at this point in what’s been called, you know, the so-called "war on terror."
Brandon Bryant is a very important figure right now in this discussion. He spent years as what he called a "stick monkey" for the U.S. Air Force. He was a drone sensor operator and was part of the—of over a thousand—his unit was part of over 1,500 kill operations around the world when he worked on the drone program. He also was working with the Joint Special Operations Command in the operation to target an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who of course—we’ve talked about many times on this show—was an imam in Washington, D.C., who ended up becoming famous for his sermons denouncing U.S. around the world and calling for jihad against the United States, armed jihad against the United States. He was killed in September of 2011. And Brandon Bryant had worked on that operation until the spring of 2011, when theCIAtook over and took the lead in that.
In fact, one of the documents that Glenn and I cite in our piece—and you can see an excerpt of it embedded in our story—reveals that theNSAactually played a role in the killing of Anwar Awlaki, and also it is revealed in this document that it was a joint operation by the U.S. military and theCIA. That is a new revelation on this case and could have an impact on the legal case that the family of Anwar Awlaki and another American citizen, Samir Khan, have filed against the Obama administration, because this actually shows the U.S. government acknowledging that theNSA, theCIAand the U.S. military were all involved in that operation.
And for Brandon Bryant, this former drone sensor operator, it was the killing of Anwar Awlaki, and then, two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who was also an American citizen, that spurred him to speak out. And he, in fact, says, and we quote this in our piece, that he feels that he became an enemy of the American people by participating in those operations, because he denied due process to an American that should have had a right to a trial before being sentenced to death by drone.
AMYGOODMAN:You’re saying Brandon Bryant said that, that he himself became an—
JEREMYSCAHILL:Yes, Brandon Bryant said that. In fact, I mean, I don’t have it in front of me, but you can read his own words in that piece, where he essentially says, you know, "I swore an oath to the Constitution, to uphold it and its values, and then I violated that by participating in the effort to kill this American citizen, who, albeit a very bad guy, deserved his day in court, rather than to just be sentenced to death by fiat from a president assuming emperor-like powers."
AMYGOODMAN:We interviewedBrandon BryantonDemocracy Now!in October. He described his first strike, which took place in Afghanistan in 2007 while he was sitting in a trailer at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
BRANDONBRYANT:We got confirmation to fire on these guys. And the way that they reacted really made me doubt their involvement, because the guys over there, the locals over there, have to protect themselves from the Taliban just as much as armed—us—we do, as U.S. military personnel. And so, I think that they were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the way that—I’ve been accused of using poetic imagery to describe it, but I watched this guy bleed out, the guy in the back, and his right leg above the knee was severed in the strike. And his—he bled out through his femoral artery. And it—
AMYGOODMAN:You saw that on your computer screen?
BRANDONBRYANT:Right.
AMYGOODMAN:It’s that detailed?
BRANDONBRYANT:Yeah, it’s pixelated, but, I mean, you could—you could see that it was a human being, and you could see that—what he was doing, and you could see the crater from the drone—from the Hellfire missile, and you could see probably the body pieces that were around this guy.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And the other two that were in this strike?
BRANDONBRYANT:They were completely destroyed.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Blown apart.
BRANDONBRYANT:Blown apart.
AMYGOODMAN:So, you watched this guy bleed out for how long?
BRANDONBRYANT:You know, it’s the femoral artery, so he could have bled out really fast. It was cold outside, you know, wintertime. It seemed like forever to me, but we—as the Predator drone can stay in the air for like 18 to 32 hours, and so they just had us watch and do battle damage assessment to make sure that—to see if anyone would come and pick up the body parts or anyone really cared who these people were. And we watched long enough that the body cooled on the ground, and they called us off target.
AMYGOODMAN:That was Brandon Bryant, the former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force who is quoted in this first article by Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald for their new publication,TheIntercept.org. And, Jeremy, just to follow up, that’s the description of what happened in Afghanistan. And the quote you’re referring to, on the killing of Awlaki, this quite remarkable quote of Brandon Bryant, saying, "I was a drone operator for six years, active duty for six years in the U.S. Air Force, [and I was] party to the violations of constitutional rights of an American citizen who should have been tried under a jury. And because I violated that constitutional right, I became an enemy of the American people."
JEREMYSCAHILL:Yeah. And, you know, I mean, one thing that I know Glenn has experienced and I certainly have experienced in recent months is that since Edward Snowden made this decision that he was going to forever alter his life by going to Hong Kong and meeting with Glenn and Laura and taking the position that he’s taken, he’s inspiring other people within these apparatuses to speak out. And I think, you know, courage is indeed contagious. And I think we’re going to hear more and more people from within the national security apparatus saying, you know, "I believe I’m a part of something that is violating our own Constitution and is violating my own morals and ethics." And I think we’re going to see more and more people speaking out. And that’s why on our site, atTheIntercept.org, we’ve created a secure drop center where people can give us tips anonymously, and we will protect their identities, and we encourage people to come forward and to speak about their experiences within the—what’s called the national security apparatus.
AMYGOODMAN:The formerJSOCdrone—
GLENNGREENWALD:Amy, let me add just one thing?
AMYGOODMAN:Yes, Glenn.
GLENNGREENWALD:Yeah, sure, just as far as that incredibly moving clip that we just listened to, I just wanted to make two quick points about the significance of what we published this morning. You know, there’s a lot of debates about journalism and how it should best be practiced, but I think everybody ought to agree that journalism is supposed to be about informing the public of the truth, and especially debunking official lies. And a big part of our story and why we wrote it and published it was because you have President Obama running around saying that we only kill or target people when there’s a near certainty there won’t be civilian deaths, and, of course, we know that to be completely false, because the methods that we reported on have almost a—I wouldn’t say a near certainty, but a very high likelihood of killing the wrong people, killing innocent people.
But the other thing about it is, back in July, theNSA, in order to propagandize the public, went toThe Washington Postto boast about the role they play in the killing program and talked about some of these methods. AndThe Washington Postjust uncritically published what it was they were told. It was just a propaganda piece talking about all the great things theNSAdoes in helping theCIAandJSOCtarget people, not a word of the unreliability of these methods or the NSA’s role in targeting and killing innocent people. And so, part of what we did was to come forward as an antidote to that false propaganda from the president and fromThe Washington Postand correct the record and make it complete. And that is a big part of what we see as the purpose of our new media outlet, not just to protect and encourage sources, as Jeremy said, to know that they can come forward and have their material reported on aggressively—that’s a huge part of what we’re doing—but it’s also to provide a corrective to the type of, quote-unquote, "journalism" thatThe Washington Postpracticed here, where they just mindlessly repeated what government officials told them, with no investigation, no critical analyses, and therefore just misleading the public about what it is that is taking place.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break, and when we come back, I want to ask you aboutThe Interceptand First Look Media, what your plans are—you’ve both, together with Laura Poitras, just launchedThe Intercept—and also talk about the secondpiecethat has been launched onThe Intercept, this series of photographs, the new photos of theNSAand other top intelligence agencies revealed for the first time. We’re speaking with Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald in their first broadcast TV interview together upon the launch ofTheIntercept.orgat First Look Media. Theirpieceis "The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program," and we’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Stay with us.
Defying Threats to Journalism, Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Launch New Venture, The Intercept
Investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald join us for their first interview upon launching The Intercept, their new digital magazine published by First Look Media, the newly formed media venture started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald is the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden’s disclosures on the National Security Agency. He was previously a columnist at The Guardian newspaper. Scahill is producer and writer of the documentary film "Dirty Wars," which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. "We are really about a journalistic ethos — which is not doing things like helping the U.S. continue its targeting of U.S. citizens for death, but by being adversarial to the government," Greenwald says. "Telling the public what it ought to know, and targeting the most powerful corporate factions with accountability journalism." Greenwald and Scahill founded TheIntercept.org with filmmaker Laura Poitras.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s talk aboutThe Intercept. Glenn, talk about the launching of this newwebsitetoday, together with Jeremy and Laura, what you’re doing withThe Intercept, what your plans are.
GLENNGREENWALD:Sure. So, you know, it was only, I think, four months ago or so that we first had conversations with Pierrre Omidyar, who is the publisher of the site through First Look Media, about working together. Jeremy, Laura and I were off in one corner planning our own media site, and he was off in another planning his, and we realized that we could work together effectively. And we ended up getting launched in a very short period of time, relatively speaking, when you’re talking about launching a new media outlet, in part because we feel a serious obligation to get up and running so that we can report on the stories like the one that we reported on today and all of the rest of the stories that come out of the archive of documents that our source Edward Snowden provided to us, as well as other sources that we’re now developing.
And so, we intended to start with a fairly limited function, although one that’s profoundly important, which is to give us a place where we can aggressively report on theseNSAdocuments. There are many, many, many more big stories left to report. And we’re thrilled that we get to work with each other and an amazing team of journalists that we recruited. And then we’re going to start slowly and inexorably expanding the range of topics that we cover. We’re really about a journalistic ethos, which is not doing things like helping the United states government continue its targeting of U.S. citizens for death, like AP just did by withholding information allowing it to continue, but by being adversarial to the government and telling the public what it ought to know, and targeting the most powerful corporate and political factions with accountability journalism. And we’re thrilled that we get to work together, that we have a new media outlet that is devoted to these principles, that we have the resources to protect our sources and enable the journalists that work with us to do the kind of journalism that we think is so sorely lacking.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Amy, can I add to that?
AMYGOODMAN:Yes, Jeremy.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Right. You know, what we’ve seen also in—over the past month is a very serious escalation in the threats coming from the Obama administration and coming from Capitol Hill against journalists. There is this attempt on the part of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to imply that the journalists who are reporting on the Snowden documents are accomplices to a crime. My understanding, from a confidential source in the intelligence community, is that Clapper, two weeks before he publicly used that term of accomplice, that he also said that in a top-secret classified briefing within the intelligence community, sort of floating it. You know, Mike Rogers also has just been on a rampage against journalists, also against Snowden, making totally unfounded allegations about Snowden being somehow a Russian agent or cooperating with Russian agents. And so, the timing of this site and why we felt it was so urgent to start reporting on these stories right now is to push back against this climate of fear and to say that we, as independent journalists, are not going to back down in the face of government threats, that in fact this is when it is most important to stand up for a truly free and independent press, is when those in power start to try to, you know, push their fists down upon you.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, Jeremy, I want to play a recent exchange between House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers andFBIDirector James Comey. This is Congressman Rogers.
REP.MIKEROGERS:There have been discussions about selling of access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places. Mr. Comey, to the best of your knowledge, is fencing stolen material—is that a crime?
JAMESCOMEY:Yes, it is.
REP.MIKEROGERS:And would be selling the access of classified material that is stolen from the United States government—would that be a crime?
JAMESCOMEY:It would be. It’s an issue that can be complicated if it involves a newsgathering, a news promulgation function, but in general, fencing or selling stolen property is a crime.
REP.MIKEROGERS:So if I’m a newspaper reporter for fill-in-the-blank and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?
JAMESCOMEY:Right, if you’re a newspaper reporter and you’re hocking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime.
REP.MIKEROGERS:And if I’m hocking stolen classified material that I’m not legally in the possession of for personal gain and profit, is that not a crime?
JAMESCOMEY:I think that’s a harder question, because it involves a newsgathering function, could have First Amendment implications. That’s something that probably would be better answered by the Department of Justice.
AMYGOODMAN:House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers questioningFBIDirector James Comey. Glenn Greenwald, you were not named specifically during the hearing, butPoliticoreports Rogers called you a thief after the hearing ended. He reportedly said, quote, "For personal gain, he’s now selling his access to information, that’s how they’re terming it. ... A thief selling stolen material is a thief," said the head of the House Intelligence Committee. Your response?
GLENNGREENWALD:Well, first of all, Mike Rogers is a liar. He is outright lying when he says that I or any other journalist working on this case have sold documents or fenced documents. The one thing that’s missing from his accusations is any evidence, because none exists. And I defy him to present any. But that’s what Mike Rogers does. It’s who he is. He just lies and smears people, with no evidence.
But I think the more important point than the fact that Mike Rogers is a pathological liar is the fact that this is part of a broader campaign on the part of the Obama administration, as Jeremy said, to try and either threaten journalists that they will be criminalized or outright criminalize them by prosecuting us for the journalism that we’re doing. It comes in the context of this coordinated campaign to call us accomplices by President Obama’s top national security official. Keith Alexander, two months ago in a speech, raised this idea of selling documents. When we did our first report in Canada with theCBC, the right-wing Harper government attacked us as having sold documents to theCBC. And so, what you’re really seeing is the Obama administration has been worse on press freedoms than any president since President Nixon, as James Goodale, the formerNew York Timesgeneral counsel, has said, and is actually approaching Nixon and getting worse, he said.
And I think this most recent escalation is showing that they’re not content to just go after the newsgathering process and also their source—our sources, but also to start threatening us with criminality, with prosecution. And if they think it’s going to deter us in any way, they’re sorely mistaken. But it is a very serious thing when the top level of the U.S. government starts accusing you of criminality for the journalism that you’re engaged in.
AMYGOODMAN:Glenn Greenwald, you’re speaking to us from your home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You’re an American citizen. You haven’t come back to the United States since the release of the documents by—information, articles based on the documents of Edward Snowden. Do you plan to come here? Are you concerned about being arrested?
GLENNGREENWALD:I do. I do plan to come there. Neither Laura Poitras nor I have returned. She’s in Berlin. And we’ve been advised by numerous people that it wouldn’t be a good idea to, that the risk of something happening is certainly more than trivial. And so, the U.S. government is also refusing to give us any indication about their intentions, despite being asked many times by our lawyers. They obviously want to keep us in a state of uncertainty. And this recent escalation of rhetoric and accusations obviously makes that concern more acute. At the same time, just on principle, as an American citizen, I refuse to be kept out of my own country for the crime of doing journalism. And so I absolutely will come back. I’m going to pick the time to do it when I feel I understand the risks and am as protected as I can be. But under no circumstances will I allow this intimidation campaign to succeed either in deterring me from doing the journalism I do or returning to the country of which I’m a citizen.
AMYGOODMAN:And, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, if you can comment quickly on the otherpiecethat has launched atTheIntercept.orgtoday, the new photos of theNSAand other top intelligence agencies revealed for the first time, by Trevor Paglen, who did the photography.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Yeah, I mean, Trevor Paglen is an amazing journalist in his own right, who has documented a sort of secret world using images for a long time. He has had another project where he was looking at patches of all sorts of covert signals intelligence units. And these photos really are provided as a stunning public service, and they are the freshest images that we have of this architecture of secret organizations, and, in some cases, the only images really available to the public. And so, we’re really excited that Trevor worked with us on that and that we can publish them onTheIntercept.org.
AMYGOODMAN:The final quote—and we are showing those images, but you can go to democracynow.org, as well—of your piece, that has just launched today, of President Obama, Jeremy?
JEREMYSCAHILL:Right. You know, President Obama is sort of—he’s become the drone president.
AMYGOODMAN:We have 20 seconds.
JEREMYSCAHILL:And he told his aides at one point that he had become remarkably effective at killing people, and said, you know, he didn’t—he didn’t see that one coming. Well, it’s true. He has become good at killing people. It’s just, who are the people that they’re actually killing?
AMYGOODMAN:The exact quote, President Obama quoted by _The Huffington Post, saying, "Turns out I’m really good at killing people." The president added, "Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine." Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, congratulations on the launch ofTheIntercept.orgat First Look, co-authors of the newpiece, "The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program." We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
The United States experienced a major decline in press freedom over the past year according to the new annual study announced Feb. 11 by Reporters Without Borders. The world's largest press freedomgroupannounced also sharp declines in the Central African Republican and Guatemala, and "marked improvements" in Ecuador, Bolivia and South Africa.
"2013 will go down in history as the worst year for press freedom in the modern history of the United States," said New York Times investigative reporter James Risen as he moderated a panel at the National Press Club announcing the results in Washington, DC.
Risen said government obstruction and prosecution of whistleblowers has chilled reporting on public affairs in Washington, hurting the public and democratic values. The report cited a number of Obama administration prosecutions of leakers as a major reason for the decline in the ranking of the United States from 32th to 46th.
Risen, a Pulitzer-winner and noted author who has fought the threat of jailing for years to protect a reputed CIA source, was flanked by Reporters Without Borders United States Director Delphine Halgand and panelist Huong Nguyen in the photo at right by Noel St. John.
Nguyen said journalists are suffering a severe crackdown in her native Vietnam as she amplified a report finding that Vietnam is currently jailing 34 bloggers. Vietnam's government has ordered in "Decree 72" that political news and comment are forbidden on social media and other unapproved electronic communications.
Tolga Tanis, Washington correspondent of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, spoke also at the panel. He agreed with the report's findings that his native Turkey has become one of the world's leading jailers of journalists.
The report found that Syria ranks near the bottom of its rankings of 180 countries according to the seven criteria used. Thereportsaid 130 journalists and citizen "news providers" have been killed during Syria's three-year civil war.
The story of Nathaniel Hawthorne always intrigued me.
I enjoyed his writing immensely, but somehow found the strangest fascination with his use of the semi-colon. I know it sounds strange, but at the time I was really trying to find some use of it that conformed to style sheets and he was the only writer that did use it profusely, and never incorrectly.
Of course, the novels and stories were brilliant and are classics -- this just added something to them, that's all.
But even more fascinating about him were stories of his not only living with his mother, but sometimes never leaving the house for weeks at a time. I kept trying to do this, but never got past even a single day, even when the absolute temperature was more that fifteen degrees below zero. I still had to get out. I considered his accomplishment superhuman, in fact.
Well, recently, I was snow bound, actually, ice-bound as well. Even if I did navigate out of our driveway, I knew that I'd never be able to get the car back up. No salt available. I was not going to be out in this frigid cold with a shovel and a hammer trying to move snow and break up ice. So, stuck for over a week. Indoors. Eventually, escape was possible.
It was amazing how vivid everything seemed. I realized what a friend, a poet, told me years ago: a poet needed experience, but not too much. We do not pay attention to our daily lives if we can not look at them with fresh eyes; and when we are bombarded with our lives every day, we tend to get numb to it.
That being said, I escaped to a Supermarket nearby. Hardly a place where interesting things happen. I went there is search of only one particular item, and I could not locate it. I tried to get one of those people who wear the store uniform to point it out to me, but they seemed to see me coming and moved to escape. I wanted to shout "It's a simple question! No math involved!"
Finally, he was cornered as I lay in wait for him. "Are you an idiot?" I asked.
He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. I realized that he did not know what an idiot was! I gave up on him.
As I was walking around, still looking, I passed the area labeled "BOOKS." What a marvelous idea, books in a grocery store! Who says people don't read books anymore. Surely there are copies of works by Sartre, Adorno, Camus, and I did not expect them to take a chance with Nietzsche. I took a snapshot of the books. For awhile, I should tell you, I was irritated by the term "Selfie" until a thoughtful person on Twitter came up with the notion of a "Shelfie," and posted a photo of her book shelves with aobut 19 to 21 volumes of Adorno's complete works and various other works of that level. I decided to do a "Shelfie" of the books the American public is reading. Here it is:
Well, a bit disappointing, I admit. Who is this Glenn Beck character? Up From the Grave? What is this stuff?
And we worry that Newsprint is declining? No, you just have to look to see where the mind of American is:
See? No wonder.
Well, I found what I came for, and much more. I also decided to get out every day in order to re-establish a state of numbness.
We are using the Guy Fawkes Mask as our illustration and will continue to do so when this is the topic.It is one long repetition.Any program can find someone stupid and opinionated enough to argue that the NSA is a good thing, that nothing wrong is going on, and life is just a bowl of, well pick your fruit.
Perhaps the most meaningful part of this is Daniel Ellsberg’s last statement “This is ridiculous.”
It was back in 1998 that Enemy of the State came out.Back then, it was labeled as “Science Fiction” by those who wanted to protect the NSA.Well, Snowden and many others before have since debunked that myth.The movie should be up for an Emmy this year.
In the movie, Gene Hackman talks about all the things that the government can and does do, and ends with “and that was 20 years ago,” putting all this back in 1978, during Carter.Well, think about it.I remember photos coming to the earth in the early 80s from a computer ranted as a 16k type.Well, imagine how much we have developed when we are regularly taking about terabytes, not kilobytes.
Anybody remember AM radios with tubes in them?Ok, how about transistors?Semi-conductors so advanced that it no longer made sense to try to repair a radio?Chips?It makes no sense to try to keep up with it.You are not going to fix it.Right now, everything is stored.The 4th Amendment is so 18th Century, don’t you think?
Well, the mask adopted by Anonymous is 17th Century.Best of luck to them.Me?I’m going back to the 16th.
Later now.Comcast, I thought, was the absolute worst.Then I heard that time Warner was.Now Comcast has bought time-Warner, meaning 2/3 of the market.Time for net-neutrality, anyone?
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014
Debate: Was Snowden Justified? FormerNSACounsel Stewart Baker vs. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
Former National Security Agency lawyer Stewart Baker and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg join us for a debate on Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA’s massive spying apparatus in the United States and across the globe. Snowden’s leaks to The Guardian and other media outlets have generated a series of exposés onNSAsurveillance activities — from its collection of American’s phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. Partly as a consequence of the government’s response to Snowden’s leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annual survey of press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces possible espionage charges if he returns to the United States. Baker, a formerNSAgeneral counsel and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, is a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson and author of "Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism." Ellsberg is a former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him "the most dangerous man in America."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Today, we host a debate on former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and his disclosure of the massive spying apparatus theNSAoperates in the United States and across the globe. Snowden’s leaks toThe Guardianand other media outlets have generated a series of exposés onNSAsurveillance activities, from its collection of Americans’ phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. The latest revelations based on the leaks were reported by journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald with First Look Media. They show how theNSAhas secretly assisted in U.S. military andCIAassassinations overseas by using metadata analysis and cellphone-tracking technologies—the unreliable tactic that has resulted in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, theNSAhas defended its activities as essential in the fight against terrorism. In January, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper attacked Snowden while speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and called for him to return all stolen documents to theNSAafter causing what he called major harm to U.S. security. Clapper also suggested the journalists who have published Snowden’s leaks are his accomplices.
JAMESCLAPPER:Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed, to prevent even more damage to U.S. security. But what I do want to speak to, as the nation’s senior intelligence officer, is the profound damage that his disclosures have caused and continue to cause. As a consequence, the nation is less safe, and its people less secure. What Snowden has stolen and exposed has gone way, way beyond his professed concerns with so-called domestic surveillance programs.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Meanwhile, Snowden has repeatedly maintained he’s no longer in possession of any of the documents he took from the NSA—
AMYGOODMAN:—having passed them on to journalists to report at their discretion. TheeditorsofThe New York Timesrecently urged clemency for Snowden, writing, quote, "Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," theTimeswrote.
Partly as a consequence of the government’s response to Snowden’s leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annualsurveyof press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces espionage charges if he returns to the United States. In his first television interview with German channelARDlate last month, Snowden talked about how perceptions of the leaks among U.S. government officials have changed.
EDWARDSNOWDEN:What we saw initially in response to the revelations was sort of a circling of the wagons of government around the National Security Agency. Instead of circling around the public and protecting their rights, the political class circled around the security state and protected their rights. What’s interesting is, though that was the initial response, since then, we’ve seen a softening. We’ve seen the president acknowledge that when he first said, "We’ve drawn the right balance. There are no abuses," we’ve seen him and his officials admit that there have been abuses. There have been thousands of violations of the National Security Agency and other agencies’ authorities every single year.
AMYGOODMAN:Edward Snowden, speaking to German television last month.
Well, to discuss the significance and implications of Snowden’s leaks, we’re hosting a debate. In Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Baker is the author ofSkating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism.
And here in New York, Daniel Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him "the most dangerous man in America." The papers were published in several newspapers, includingThe New York TimesandThe Washington Post, and later published as a book. They were only officially declassified and released in 2011.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!Stewart Baker, I’m sorry you’re snowed in at home, but why don’t we begin with you. Can you talk about what Edward Snowden did and if you think he is a traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:What Edward Snowden did was quite deliberately change jobs to gather as much, perhaps millions of documents, from as many places as he could around the National Security Agency, but involving other agencies, as well. He stored them on a computer and handed them out to—who exactly, we don’t know, but certainly to journalists, and with controls that probably make it likely that sophisticated intelligence agencies have been able to get access to them, and allowed them to be disclosed at the journalists’ discretion, more or less with some guidance from Snowden.
The result of that has been a massive disclosure of classified intelligence gathering that has hurt our ability to catch terrorists, to keep an eye on Iranian and North Korean and Chinese and Russian operations, and has done great diplomatic damage, as well. I think that, frankly, the way that those disclosures have occurred, it’s hard to view that as anything other than the intended result of his gathering that information and disclosing as he—disclosing it as he did. He certainly disclosed some information that sparked a debate in the United States. He did that in June, but he has continued to disclose documents for months thereafter, which have no obvious policy value in terms of a debate or a concern that the United States public should have, but which have done enormous damage. And so, at a minimum, I think he is someone who has violated U.S. law, done great damage, and should go to jail for it.
AMYGOODMAN:Traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:It remains to be seen. There have been people who have made the case, and in some cases fairly persuasively, that his leaks, and especially the most recent leaks, serve the interests of the country where he is located, and that either wittingly or because he was sort of tricked into it, he may have been serving Russia’s interest. That would make him a traitor, but I think that’s an unproven case.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:But what about his argument that given the extensive nature of the surveillance that was being conducted without the knowledge of the American people, that he had a moral responsibility to speak out and to at least spark this debate?
STEWARTBAKER:Well, you can’t—obviously, you cannot do intelligence gathering in the sunlight. You can’t tell the American people everything you’re doing in their name, because the process of telling them also tells your targets, and it tells Hezbollah, it tells al-Qaeda, it tells the North Koreans and the Iranians and the Russians and the Chinese exactly what you’re doing. And you can’t do that and continue to gather the intelligence. So there has to be a limit on what the public debates here.
There also has to be a limit on what the several million people who have clearances feel they’re free to disclose because they’ve decided that there’s a problem with the program. At the end of the day, all that Snowden says he did is he kind of made some oblique remarks to his superiors, saying, "Gee, do you think this would really look good inThe Washington Postif it were known?" And then he decided to release a million or two million or three million documents. There are whistleblower protections in U.S. law more than in any other countries’ law, but they provide a procedure: You need to go to the authorities, you need to go to Congress, you need to go to an inspector general, and raise your concerns there. He did none of that. And his view that this was illegal has turned out to be highly questionable.
All that said, yes, he has spurred a debate on that one program, and he could have spurred that debate on that one program with one document, the document that he released first. Everything he has done since then has simply caused damage. And the number of debates that have been spurred, and certainly the number of serious proposals for changing the current intelligence law, is close to zero.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency. Dan Ellsberg, your assessment of Edward Snowden’s actions, and do you think he is a traitor or a patriot?
DANIELELLSBERG:I feel confident, as you in the clip showed earlier, that he’s no more a traitor than I am, and I’m not. The notion that he joinedNSAwith the intention to, earlier on, or theCIA, when he took the oath of service to the country earlier, that he did that with the intent to either harm the interests of the United States or to release any information or to harmNSAor to deprive it of secrecy, I think there’s no evidence for that whatever, and I believe it’s entirely false. He came to believe, as I did, having made those oaths initially and the promises of nondisclosure, which were not oaths, but they are contractual agreements not to do that, which he later violated, as I did—he made those in good faith, by everything known to me, and came to realize, I think, eventually, as he said, that a nondisclosure agreement in this case and the secrecy conflicted with his oath, so help me God, to defend and support the Constitution of the United States, and it was a supervening—a superseding authority there that it was his responsibility really to inform the public, because, as he said, he could see that no one else would do it.
He saw the head of theNSA, but also the director of the national intelligence, you quoted here, Clapper, lie to Congress. And actually, I think what he’s mostly revealed, in particular, is not that Mr. Clapper was violating his oath in the sense of trying to deceive Congress; Clapper knew that the false statements he was making, that they were not collecting data on millions—any data on millions of Americans, were false, but he knew that Congress knew they were false, the people he was talking to, the dozen, even the man who had asked the question, Senator Wyden. What we saw, what Snowden saw and what we all saw, was that we couldn’t rely on the so-called Oversight Committee of Congress to reveal, even when they knew that they were being lied to, and that’s because they were bound by secrecy,NSAsecrecy and their own rule. The secrecy system here, in other words, has totally corrupted the checks and balances on which our democracy depends.
And I think the—I am grateful to Snowden for having given us a constitutional crisis, a crisis instead of a silent coup, as after 9/11 an executive coup, or a creeping usurpation of authority. He has confronted us. He has revealed documents now that prove that the oversight process, both in the judiciary, in theFISC, the secret court, and the secret committees in Congress who keep their secrets from them, even when two of them, Wyden and Udall, felt that these were outrageous, were shocking, were probably unconstitutional, and yet did not feel that they could inform even their fellow colleagues or their staff of this. What Snowden has revealed, in other words, is a broken system of our Constitution, and he’s given us the opportunity to get it back, to retrieve our civil liberties, but more than that, to retrieve the separation of powers here on which our democracy depends.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:But, Daniel Ellsberg, what about Mr. Stewart’s—Mr. Baker’s remarks that he could have just released one document or two documents, that would have been sufficient to spur the kind of debate that we have now?
DANIELELLSBERG:He talked about revealing on one program. But I like the way you put it, because what I was confronted with, with the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, when I put out 4,000 pages to the newspapers and 3,000 other pages, top secret, to the Senate Foreign Intelligence—Foreign Relations Committee—there was no Intelligence Committee at that time—which I didn’t give to the newspapers at that time, when I saw the effects of that, it gave me a moral that I’ve been saying for 40 years. And I’ve been asking people: First, don’t do what I did. Don’t wait 'til the bombs are falling, if you know that we're being lied into a war. Don’t wait ’til thousands more have died, before you tell your truth to Congress and to the public.
But I would also say, by now, don’t tell it only to Congress. I gave it to Congress a year and a half before it came out. Senator Fulbright failed to bring the hearings that he promised me, on the grounds that he himself would be deprived of secret information from the Defense Department thereafter. So he waited for me to do it. If I didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to happen.
But the other thing I’ve been saying for years is, I want someone to put out enough documentation to make the case irrefutable. If you bring out one memo, 10 memos, you will hear, as we have heard when the first memos came out, "Oh, that was rescinded the next day. Oh, that just reflected one agency, one opinion." No, the Pentagon Papers showed—but, unfortunately, they were only history. I didn’t have current documents. If I had, I would have put those out instead of the history. But what they did show was that this was a pattern of decision making that went over four different presidents and was being repeated today. That took hundreds and thousands—thousands—of pages to reveal, and many of those pages didn’t reveal anything of great significance. I wanted it to be very clear I hadn’t censored them, I hadn’t taken out the one good reason for that war. Said, "Here’s the whole history. See if you could find a good reason for it."
What Snowden did, which I admire very much, is to put out enough material to show an entire pattern of behavior, and not just on one program, on a number of programs, with the implication there are many more and that Congress needs to look into this, but not in the way the intelligence committees have done. They’ve been thoroughly co-opted and corrupted by this process. There has to be a new congressional investigation, with new people on it, and that has to be pressed by the public. It will not happen by Congress alone.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re talking to Dan Ellsberg and Stewart Baker. Dan Ellsberg, perhaps most famous whistleblower in the United States, released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Stewart Baker is former general counsel for the National Security Agency. We’ll continue this debate in a moment.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:"The Paper Soldier" by the famous Russian poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, Bulat Okudzhava. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re hosting a debate on Edward Snowden, spying and the national security state.
In Washington, D.C., snowed in at home, we’re joined by Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His tenure spanned from Clinton to Bush. He’s a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Baker is the author ofSkating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism.
Here in New York, Dan Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst, who became the country’s most famous whistleblower by leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. This was thousands and thousands of pages that exposed the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, helping to end the Vietnam War.
Stewart Baker, do you think that Dan Ellsberg was a traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:No, but I think he is shockingly misrepresenting the facts and stating a proposition that has no place in a democracy. Mr. Ellsberg said—I had pointed out that Snowden changed jobs specifically to steal more documents. Dan Ellsberg says that’s false. I don’t know where he gets this. Snowden himself says he changed jobs from a contractor for Dell to a contractor at Booz Allen so that he could get more documents. And for Ellsberg to come on this program and simply look into the camera and say that’s false, calling me a liar, when the record is clear, suggests that he is either not paying attention or he doesn’t really care what the facts are.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, let him respond to that point, and then you can make your next one.
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, listen, I’ve—let me give the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Baker that he really isn’t listening to what I’m saying, when it comes to misrepresenting facts here. Of course, it’s the case that Snowden has said openly that he went to Booz Allen in order to get documents, that he—
STEWARTBAKER:Well, then why did you call that false? I heard you say that’s a false—
DANIELELLSBERG:Pardon me. Oh—
STEWARTBAKER:You accused me of lying to this program, when—
DANIELELLSBERG:Listen, stop talking so much, and listen for a minute.
STEWARTBAKER:—when you now admit that the facts are as I said.
DANIELELLSBERG:As I said, when he first worked as a consultant for years toNSA, and when he went—and when he joined theCIAearlier, it was with no intention of disclosing documents, and that the turning point came for him much later, after deciding that he had to sacrifice or risk—
STEWARTBAKER:But wait, just a second. Just a second.
DANIELELLSBERG:Listen, will you—
STEWARTBAKER:I heard you say that, and I accept that that’s a storyline that is not implausible. It may be true, or it may be something that he’s made up to—
DANIELELLSBERG:I’m agreeing with you that he joined Booz Allen—
STEWARTBAKER:But I want to go back to—you started that discussion by saying what Mr. Baker says is false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Look—
STEWARTBAKER:And then you told this different story. But why are you accusing me of lying, when in fact what I said was true, not false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Actually, I haven’t yet accused you of lying, Mr. Baker.
STEWARTBAKER:You—what? Well, you said my statement was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:No, I said that he did not joinCIAorNSAor be a consultant forNSAwith the intention of putting out documents. He later—
STEWARTBAKER:I heard you say "false." You said it was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Will you—will you lay off for a minute here and let me finish my sentence?
STEWARTBAKER:I’m sorry, you’re making up facts now. You know—
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah.
STEWARTBAKER:I ask, can you play back what he said? I heard him say that the statement was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Let me say right away the statement is correct, as I’ve known and have never meant to deny, that he joined NS—that he joined Booz Allen in order to get documents he couldn’t have gotten otherwise, with the intent of putting them out. It was something, by the way, that I didn’t do. In a way, I regret it, but I didn’t go back to Washington to get more documents with the intention of putting them out. I went with the documents that I had authorized to have at the moment. Anyway, I agree with your point. I have not accused you of lying. But now let’s move to the question of just how much you know about the damage that you’ve asserted several times that he caused. I don’t—
STEWARTBAKER:Before we do that, I’d like to address your other point.
DANIELELLSBERG:Are you going to allow me to finish a sentence or not?
STEWARTBAKER:You’ve had plenty of time to explain that you didn’t mean to say that the statement was false, even though you said it, that you meant something else. But your broader theory, if I understand it right, is this doc—all these documents should have been released because they allow for a broader story, and that you can’t give it to Congress because they feel that there are certain programs they have to protect—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, let’s address that point. Let me address that point.
STEWARTBAKER:—in order to maintain the confidentiality of our intelligence methods.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, let me—will you—
STEWARTBAKER:You can’t give it to—
DANIELELLSBERG:Oh, well.
STEWARTBAKER:You can’t go higher in the chain, because they might decide to protect national security rather than blow the whistle. And so, every single person who works in the government or who has the ability to break into the government’s system gets to make the decision for themselves how many confidential, classified and various important programs should be disclosed to the people that we are targeting.
DANIELELLSBERG:Let me go right to the point you’re raising.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s a—
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s let—let’s let Dan Ellsberg—
STEWARTBAKER:That is basically saying, "I don’t have any faith in our democracy"—
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s let Dan Ellsberg respond to that, Stewart Baker.
STEWARTBAKER:—which, I suppose, is consistent with your statement—would you let me finish?
AMYGOODMAN:No, let’s let Dan Ellsberg respond.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s consistent with your statement—no, [inaudible].
DANIELELLSBERG:Let you finish? Let you finish your filibuster? I’m sorry.
AMYGOODMAN:We have a good amount of time here to have an extended discussion, so you will have time.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, yeah. OK, let me address the very important point of what else he could have done or should have done to reveal this. He learned, as I understand it, as he said—and I’ve been in touch with him—he learned from the example not only from me, and from Chelsea Manning, by the way, but from the experience of four or fiveNSAsenior officials—Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, Tom Drake and Bill Binney—who, between them, have 30 years’ average—30 years, some of them have 28, and some have 32—experience withNSAat the highest levels.
Each of them, separately and together, did exactly what you and, I think, the president has suggested they should have done: They went to their superiors in great detail when they thought the program, after 9/11—after you were out ofNSA, by the way, after—so, I’m giving you credit there—after 9/11, was unconstitutional and was dangerous, was unnecessary, and should be—should be modified or changed or dropped. They got no response from that, and their recommendations were simply ignored. They went to the IG, the inspector general. I believe some of them went to the inspector general, as well, of the Defense Department. They went to staff of the congressional offices, on a classified basis, to Diane Roark specifically, to complain about these, and offered to testify, by the way.
The result of their doing that was not only no change to programs that they knew were more protective of civil liberties and more effective at catching terrorists and could well have prevented 9/11, rather than the programs that were in effect. The effect of their doing that was to be suspected, wrongly, of having leaked all this information toThe New York Timesfor the revelations for which it got the Pulitzer Prize. They hadn’t. I would say they should have considered that. Anyway, what—they had not done that. Instead, they followed all these channels. The result of that was early morning raids by theFBIon each of them, in this suspicion that they might have been the leakers of this important information. And, in fact, one of them, Bill Binney, a diabetic with an amputated leg, first learned of the suspicion here when there was a knock on his shower door, where he was seated taking a shower, and opened the door to find anFBIagent pointing a gun at his head, and followed by eight hours of interrogation, and the removal, in all four cases, of all their computers, all their thumb drives, some of which they’ve never gotten back—no charges ever pressed against them. Tom Drake, one of the four here, as a result, was subject to a spurious, punitive prosecution with no valid basis, which led essentially to an apology from the judge in the end after he had been bankrupted.
Looking at that experience very specifically, Snowden knew that it would be foolish and hopeless for him to try to call attention to this within the channels. He did, I think, exactly right, and others should follow the same, not just when they disagree with policy or object to it, as the president has suggested, but when they feel that it’s unconstitutional, criminal—as, by the way, the years ofNSAwarrantless spying from 2001 to 2006 with no legal basis were criminal and unconstitutional—and leaked essentially by no one with documents. What Snowden has done is to provide the documents that prove, at last, what was done in the past was clearly illegal, and that that put in question the whole oversight procedure and the good faith ofNSAin binding itself to the Constitution. So, I think that he did what he should have done, as all four of thoseNSApeople, who did not do it, have said now, "He did it right. Our approach was hopeless."
STEWARTBAKER:So, I have served in government off and on a long time and at pretty senior levels, and the number of times that I have not persuaded the rest of the government to do things that I think it should do, even things I think it’s morally or legally compelled to do, are pretty substantial. This is the way government works. This is the way democracies work. Individual government employees do not get to say, "I think this is wrong, and therefore it must stop." You can raise it, and there are plenty of circumstances and plenty of stories of people who have raised issues that have been investigated and have led to changes.
I don’t know the specifics of the cases that you’re talking about. Maybe they were mistreated as a result of the suspicions aroused by what they did internally. But the fact that not every one of their complaints was validated is not surprising. No one in government gets what they want, not even the president. And to say, "Well, I didn’t get what I want, so I’m going to wreck this operation by disclosing it," is a remarkable and fundamentally anti-democratic view. It’s—the president has called it "narcissistic," and I think that’s not wrong.
There comes a point at which you say, "I have done what I can to raise this, and I have been assured that in fact this is not illegal." And the things that he was complaining about had been through court, had been through Congress. We can argue about whether they are legal or not now, or whether they should be legal. I think it’s fair to say that they were blessed by the courts at the time. The things that he disclosed, that were news as opposed to the things that were history—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:—were not unlawful at the time. It’s pretty clear the Congress and the courts had approved those things. They may become changed, they may, as a result of this debate, but that’s very different from saying, "I am doing something illegal, and my conscience requires me to disclose it."
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, let me—you’ve raised—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me just ask Mr. Baker—
DANIELELLSBERG:You’ve raised important questions, sir. Let me address both of them. First of all, when it comes to being named—called names—narcissistic, megalomaniac and traitor, which is a much more serious name—I’ve had that experience, from the president and the vice president. They were mistaken. But those names are what every whistleblower gets, essentially, whatever the conditions. And if you’re not willing to be called names, I think you can’t carry out your responsibilities to the Constitution.
Now, getting to that, if you’re telling me that there have been times when you dutifully, with your agreement on secrecy, accepted, without exposing to anyone else, policies that, as I heard you, were immoral—and I think you may have said illegal, but let’s just say illegal—I respectfully say you were mistaken, you were, in your judgment. You were acting as nearly all bureaucrats and officials do in that face: They protect their jobs, their careers, their clearances, and indeed their promise, and they don’t think—to keep secrets, and they don’t think twice about what their responsibility might be beyond their responsibility to their agency or to the president.
If you say you’re not familiar with those fourNSAnames I had, my first thought would be you haven’t followed this very closely. The second thought would be that they haven’t testified before Congress, because despite their extreme expertise in this field, no Congress committee has wanted to hear from them under oath, which they’re urging—which I urge the public to urge committees to bring these people and tell them under oath. If they are mistaken, let them be—let that be exposed. But the fact is that they found that this was unconstitutional. And I think they now feel they didn’t do all that they should have. And if you were in a similar position, then I have to say to you that, like most people in that position, you didn’t do everything you could, just as I didn’t, just as I didn’t when I first had the documents in my hands.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s right. I didn’t do everything I could, because some of the things I could do would be profoundly damaging to the United States. And I said I have done what I can—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK.
STEWARTBAKER:—inside the system to raise this issue, and it is going to be resolved. It’s been resolved by people who have made calls that are different from mine, who are closer to the facts, who have more facts. Sometimes you have to make that decision because the alternative is to say no secret is safe as long as one person in government does not [inaudible]—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me—let me step in.
DANIELELLSBERG:I would never single you out—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Dan, one second.
DANIELELLSBERG:Go ahead. Go ahead.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me step in. Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:—they are going to disclose it because it makes them feel better. That’s what happened here.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:And, in fact, what he disclosed is far more than just one secret. He disclosed massive amounts of stuff that have sparked no debates at all here, but nonetheless continue to do great damage to the United States. How can that possibly have been the right outcome?
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, one question for you. As a formerNSAgeneral counsel, I mean, you say that you did raise some concerns during your tenure.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, what were they?
JUANGONZÁLEZ:What you have seen since—
STEWARTBAKER:Well, or, look, I’m not—I’m not—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Wait, wait, let me finish my question, please.
DANIELELLSBERG:Fat chance.
STEWARTBAKER:I’m not suggesting I—I realize that—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Yeah, let me ask you this: What you have seen revealed since then—
STEWARTBAKER:Hang on, hang on. I keep hearing—you’re misinterpreting my—excuse me, you’re misinterpreting what I said. I was not saying that back when I wasNSAgeneral counsel, I saw things that I thought were illegal and raised them and—inside, but did not go outside. There are many calls—and I’ve been in government many times—many calls that are made by people above you in government where you wonder if they’re doing the right thing, and you have to recognize that you don’t always have all the facts that they have. And I’ve done it since I’ve been out of government, where I’ve learned of things that I thought were wrong.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:OK, but, Mr. Baker—Mr. Baker, my question—
STEWARTBAKER:But I did not—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me ask my question to you.
STEWARTBAKER:Once I had raised them, I could not stop—I could not just—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, let me ask my question to you.
STEWARTBAKER:Yeah.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:From what you have seen since the Snowden disclosures, and what you know of of the operations of theNSAwhen you were there, is there anything that has been disclosed that raises questions to you about whether your government was—our government was properly conducting surveillance, its surveillance responsibilities?
STEWARTBAKER:At bottom, no. I think that the agency has an incredible commitment to following the law, a commitment they’ve had since the ’70s, the last set of reforms that were adopted. And they may have done things that, in retrospect, some courts would say were not proper, but they have almost always done those things with careful legal analysis and with the approval, where appropriate, of the courts. And so, you know, people can disagree about whether the courts got it right or wrong, but I thinkNSAhas acted in a fundamentally law-abiding way. And the institution that I knew, and that I still see, is committed to that, because they recognize that the powers they have are extraordinary and need to be used in democratically legitimate ways. They have worked very hard to do that. And Snowden just has blown those things without any regard for their efforts to stay within the law and their commitment to the law.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break and come back to this discussion. Our guests are Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel, and Dan Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He leaked those papers to, first,The New York Times. This isDemocracy Now!We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Before we continue our debate on what Edward Snowden did and what should happen to him, I just have some breaking news on a person we’ve been covering over the last week. Karim Khan, a Pakistani drone activist and journalist, who had been missing since being abducted from his home February 5th, has been released. Khan had been set to travel to Europe to speak against the U.S. drone wars. His brother and son were killed by a drone in 2009. The legal charity Reprieve says he was released earlier today, two days after the Lahore High Court ordered Pakistani forces to produce him from custody by next week. You can go to our website at democracynow.org to see ourcoverageof Mr. Khan from this week’s broadcast.
But now we continue our debate between Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel—he was appointed to theNSAby President George H.W. Bush, and then served, appointed by President George W. Bush, to the Department of Homeland Security. We’re also joined by Daniel Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Dan Ellsberg, Stewart Baker says he was not, in response to Juan’s question, surprised by what was exposed by Edward Snowden, and I also want to make just one point on the issue of Snowden continuing to release information. According to Edward Snowden, he gave the documents—we believe it’s about 1.7 million documents—to the journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. He says when he went to Russia, he didn’t have the documents, and he is not the one who is continuing to release them. But the journalists who have access to them are, one by one, writing stories in various papers, delving into what is in these documents. Dan Ellsberg?
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, a couple of things here, Amy. First of all, the 1.7 million figure, which obviously is far more than he could possibly have looked at, let alone read, is a government statement. They don’t know what he released to the journalists. Neither Mr. Baker nor I actually know. But I am informed—well, first, Snowden has said that it’s wrong by at least an order of magnitude tenfold, which is another—
AMYGOODMAN:Which way?
DANIELELLSBERG:Which way, yes, very good. That he released less than 10 percent of what they’re talking about, and that everything he did release to the journalists was something that he had looked at and formed a judgment that they ought to have it. But he didn’t want them to rely on his judgment alone. He could have put them all on the web by himself, very much, or sequentially. On the contrary, he said over and over, "I am not releasing a single document," which he has not. He said every document should have the judgment of a staff of trained journalists, to use their judgment on that.
Second, in every case of every story that has appeared so far—and apparently Mr. Baker believes that there has been great damage from those already, for which the journalists would be also responsible—every story has been checked withNSAby bothThe Guardianand byThe Washington Post. In every case, they have made objections. Not all of the objections have been followed by the newspapers. But in almost every case that they’ve printed, they have followed objections as to sources and methods that would actually damage the United States or our interests. As Snowden has said, he had access—he had knowledge of the clandestine whereabouts ofNSAlistening posts all over the world, had neither copied those nor given them to journalists, which he could have, because that would harm our intelligence apparatus, which he believes in and which I believe in. Of course there must be intelligence, and of course there must be secrecy about it. So he has made that judgment. I understand that Glenn Greenwald, for example, has demanded an agreement from every newspaper source to which he’s given documents that they check their stories withNSAfor sensitive material. Now, when Mr. Clapper—oh, I’m sorry, when Mr.—
AMYGOODMAN:Baker, Stewart Baker.
DANIELELLSBERG:Baker, thank you. When Mr. Baker says that there—over and over, that there has been great damage here, I ask him: How does he know that? Based on what? Now, possibly he still is reading classified material as a consultant or someone, and maybe not. If not, he has—I wonder what his basis is. My guess is, he’s accepting at face value the statements of Mr. Clapper or of others. Why would you do that? There’s no basis for that.
I have two questions. I have two questions for Mr. Baker, actually, which are both susceptible of yes-or-no questions. They’re very short, and I hope he will not filibuster. One—let me say one thing about background to give him credit, if I may. He was general counsel atNSAin the ’90s, before 9/11, when, according to Kirk Wiebe and others, theNSAwas observing what they called the First Commandment—thou shall not spy on Americans, thou shall not listen to Americans or collect their material without an individualized court order with probable cause—and that they observed that. Wiebe has said that for some 20 years of their 70 years in existence, they were within the law and the Constitution—not earlier, under Johnson or Nixon, and not later. So the two questions are—but he may have—Mr. Baker may have an idealized picture of how this system works from having experienced it before 9/11.
Here’s the two questions. One, if he had been general counsel to Mr. Clapper, when he faced Congress and told them—was asked—was asked, "Are we collecting any data at all on millions of Americans?" would he have encouraged Mr. Clapper to give, as a counsel, the answer that he did give, "No," which Clapper later explained, after Snowden’s disclosure, was, quote, "the least untruthful" answer he could have given, or would he have advised him otherwise, perhaps to go into closed session or something?
And the second is, if he had been general counsel of theNSAin 2001 to 2006, during which there was no legal basis for criminal, unconstitutional, warrantless [inaudible], what would his judgment have been? And if it had been not to do that, and had been overridden, would he have simply accepted that, like his colleagues, or might he have considered telling someone other than the intelligence committees?
AMYGOODMAN:Stewart Baker, those are two questions for you. Why don’t you begin with the first?
STEWARTBAKER:So, I don’t want to be accused of filibustering, but some of these answers do require a little bit more context. I think everyone would agree that Clapper’s answer to that question was not the right thing to say. That said, it was a question designed quite specifically to result in the compromise of the 215 program. That is to say, there was nobody asking the question, nobody answering the question, who didn’t already know the answer to that question. What they could not do is tell al-Qaeda or the American people about it without telling al-Qaeda. What he should have said is something that dodged the question. But it was cleverly designed by Senator Wyden so that, having asked the question, "Are you collecting information on millions of Americans?" to say, "I can only answer that in classified session," answers the question, as well. So, it was—
DANIELELLSBERG:So what would he have advised—what would you have advised?
STEWARTBAKER:—designed to put him in a position where he could neither answer or refuse to answer without exposing the program. So he came up with a compromise that was trying to, I think, interpret the notion of collection as, "Are you spying on Americans?" which he felt he could comfortably say we are not, except where we have court orders or where we’ve inadvertently collected the information. That was—I think when you read the transcript, it’s hard to see that as a responsive answer, and he didn’t even gracefully do that. But I think it’s fair to point out that this was not some campaign of lying. This was a campaign of exposure by Senator Wyden and a maladroit effort to avoid that question. So that’s point one.
Point two, the question of the 2006 warrantless wiretapping, I certainly agree with Mr. Ellsberg that it’s very hard to square that with the statute, withFISA. The direction was given and the legal conclusion was reached that the president had the authority to order that, notwithstandingFISA, and there have been—there’s a long-standing view that the president does have authority to do this without the involvement of the courts. In fact, it was the majority view at least until 1978. But I think the passage of theFISAAct made that much harder to do.
That said, theFISAcourt at that point had utterly disgraced itself. It had forced a bunch of what it turns out are illegal requirements in the name of civil liberties on theFBIand the intelligence community that helped in a very significant way to make it difficult to respond to the news that there were hijackers or there were terrorists in the United States before 9/11. Had it not been for theFISAcourt’s wrong and extralegal policies, it’s quite possible that the hijackers would have been caught.
And after 9/11, after it became clear that this was part of the problem, theFISAcourt insisted on those illegal policies and forced the government to take its first appeal ever to theFISAreview court. That suggested that theFISAcourt was not actually interested in protecting Americans, but had a goal that no one else in government shared, which was to maintain this wall between intelligence and law enforcement.
DANIELELLSBERG:That’s absolutely mistaken.
STEWARTBAKER:But I kind of understand why they did it, but I have to say that as a lawyer, it’s hard to justify.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, we just have about a minute left. You had the first word; we’ll have Dan Ellsberg respond.
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, I haven’t called Mr. Baker a liar. I certainly don’t regard him as anything other than patriotic. And I don’t think it’s his intent to deceive, but what he’s just said has given example that actually demonstrates the opposite of what he just said. He’s referring to the case of Khalid al-Mihdhar. I would assume—I would like to assume that he knew, but on the other hand, perhaps—
AMYGOODMAN:You have 30 seconds.
DANIELELLSBERG:—he was just ignorant of the fact that the fact that al-Mihdhar was known in this country—the hijacker who went into the Pentagon—was known by pre-NSA, pre-9/11 intelligence methods to theCIA. Their choice, deliberate not to give it to theFBI, had nothing to do with firewalls. I can’t believe you don’t know that, I’m sorry, Mr. Baker. And the fact is, it was not a fault ofFISA. You’re joining me here in criticizing theFISAcourt. That’s ridiculous.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to have to leave it there, because we are out of time. Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel, as well as worked at the Department of Homeland Security, and Dan Ellsberg, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, leaked the Pentagon Papers toThe New York Timesin 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Capitalism has learned from Marx who said that an idea, once adopted by the masses, becomes a force. The survival of Capitalism was not all that certain during a few periods in our history, including the period leading up to and including the Great Depression, and the aftermath of the House on Un-American Activities Committee led in its vile witch hunt by McCarthy. After that, life expanded; eventually cane Kennedy and a sense of idealism that led to protest against the War in Vietnam and the indentured servitude called either the draft or public service. Many leading figures were killed until the draft was eliminated by Nixon, not from a sense of freedom, but rather to eliminate one of the chief motivators behind the idealism, the “make love, not war” mantra, communal living (there is that “communism again,” and an general anti-authoritarian movement. Capitalism realized the importance of Marx’s message and embarked on a massive Public Relations campaign. It groomed a mediocre actor named Ronal Reagan to eventually become President, adopt an unassuming “guy-next-door” personage, a nice guy, to systematically dismantle any sort of program that helped less fortunate people, the masses, and do it with their support. When R. D. Laing, for example, had campaigned against mental institutions, Ronnie seized the opportunity and tossed the mentally disabled on the streets and diverted the money into weapons. His administration decided nicotine was as addictive as heroin, but immediately eliminated addiction as a “disability.” Every since then, the steady erosion of the “New Deal” has continued. When it seemed that the country wanted a change, the billionaires invented the “tea-party,” morons who gleefully accepted attacks on any government program. Now, after Bradley Manning released the videos of what we were actually doing in Iraq, the helicopter shot, and the events at Abu Garab, and the truth about “WMDs’ were released, immediately the focus turned not on the misdeeds themselves, but on those who exposed them. Ellsberg stated quite rightly that the “political situation was much different back then,” or he would have spent his life in prison. Well, that is what is going on new with all the attacks on Assange, Snowden, Greenwald, and the rest. The focus of the media is on THEM, but what they revealed and whether it is acceptable behavior from a “democratic government.” Here is another example:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2014 Julian Assange on Being Placed on NSA "Manhunting" List & Secret Targeting of WikiLeaks Supporters Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. According to a new article by The Intercept, Britain’s top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks website by collecting their IP addresses in real time, as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda. We speak to Assange live from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has sought political asylum since 2012. Also joining us is his lawyer Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article co-written by Glenn Greenwald published this morning by The Intercept, Britain’s top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a, quote, "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda. AMY GOODMAN: Another document reveals the NSA considered designating WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor." According to The Intercept, "Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance—without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches." In addition, the leaked documents reveal the United States urged its foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan War Logs. Joining us now from London is Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange, talking to us by the phone from the Ecuadorean embassy where he has political asylum since August 2012. Here in New York, we’re joined by Michael Ratner, the attorney for Julian Assange, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. When you read this, Julian — welcome back to Democracy Now! — what were your thoughts on being put on this "manhunting"—their words—"manhunting" list together with al-Qaeda? JULIAN ASSANGE: Good morning, Amy. Well, my first thought was, well, finally, we have some proof that we can present to the public for what we have long suspected for a variety of reasons. And it is strange to see your name in that context with people who are suspected of serious criminal acts of terrorism. Clearly, that is a massive overstep. We’ve heard a lot in the propaganda pushed on this issue by Clapper and others in the U.S. national security complex that, of course, this pervasive surveillance is justified by the need to stop U.S.—stop terrorist attacks being conducted on the United States and its allies. But we’ve seen example after example come out over the last few months showing the National Security Agency and its partners, GCHQ, engaged in economic espionage. And here we have an example where the type of espionage being engaged in is spying on a publisher—WikiLeaks, the publishing organization, and a publisher—me, personally. And the other material that came out in relation to GCHQ was from 2012, and that shows that GCHQ was spying on our service and our readers, so not just the publisher as an organization, not just the publisher as a person, but also the readers of a publisher. And that’s clearly, I believe, not something that the United States population agrees with, let alone other people. AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by anything that came out in these latest documents? JULIAN ASSANGE: I was surprised about how someone is added to the foreign malicious actor list. So, the National Security Agency went through a process to try and—at quite a high level, at the office of the legal director, to designate us as a foreign—foreign malicious actor, which means that our U.S. personnel can be spied on, or our U.S. supporters or associates. The, quote, "human network" that supports WikiLeaks in the United States can be targeted without going through any of the checks that the National Security Agency might normally engage in. And if you read the detail of that writing, you can see that it’s quite a lackadaisical, cavalier approach to going into that very serious step of deciding to spy on a publisher and all its U.S. personnel. And we must assume that news agencies like Reuters or the Deutsche Presse Agency that have foreign correspondents in the United States, who are American citizens or American citizens working overseas, could be similarly affected. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, the Intercept article quotes from thedocument you’re referencing. It was from July 2011 and showed how two NSA officers considered designating WikiLeaks a, quote, "malicious foreign actor." I want to read from the exchange between the NSA agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center. Quote, "Can we treat a foreign server who stores, or potentially disseminates leaked or stolen US data on it’s [sic] server as a 'malicious foreign actor' for the purpose of targeting with no defeats? Examples: WikiLeaks, thepiratebay.org, etc." The response was, quote, "Let us get back to you." Julian Assange, your response, and what the documents reveal about the process that the NSA or GCHQgo through to designate someone a malicious foreign actor? JULIAN ASSANGE: What they mean here by "no defeats," it’s sort of no protections for any form of interception of content of U.S. citizens communicating with that organization or through that foreign server. And the particular document that this came out in was actually not a document that was formally looking at this issue in relation to us; rather, it was a extraction from that consideration that happened sometime in the past and then was put into one of their, if you like, sort of frequently asked questions internally in the National Security Agency. So we’re quite lucky to have found this reference. We were used as an example of how could you in fact target these servers, even when they were used by people in the United States. And the answer is, yes, that can be done. And we don’t know what the answer was in our particular case, but given that the general example is yes, then we must assume that it was. And I think, really, now General Alexander needs to come clean and say, in fact, was that permitted in the case of WikiLeaks, and did the National Security Agency proceed in spying on our U.S. personnel or our lawyers, for example, like Michael Ratner, who’s based in New York. AMY GOODMAN: Julian, we have Michael here, but I did want to ask—you’ve been in the embassy, haven’t had natural daylight, sunlight, for 608 days. How are you? And does the information that has come out of this change in any way what your thoughts are about your future? AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just find it helpful that—in preparing the asylum application, of course, we looked into many details like this that were quite technical, a big puzzle of many pieces, which some organization, like a foreign office or the Ecuadorean Department of Foreign Affairs, has the time to assess, but of course it’s harder for the public to understand, that documents like this show very readily sort of the scale of the U.S. response to our publications and why it’s, unfortunately, necessary for me to apply and receive asylum and for some of our other personnel, like Sarah Harrison, who’s a British citizen, to be in legally advised exile in Germany. AMY GOODMAN: And will the information about whether there is a sealed indictment, which this seems to indicate there isn’t—do you have any further information about that, an indictment against you in the United States? AMY GOODMAN: The district attorney of Virginia gave the last information on that issue and formally stated publicly that the investigation continues. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Julian Assange, we want to thank you for being with us, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Will this change anything you do inside the embassy, when you see how—further information about your being monitored and people even going to the website—what is it—GCHQ, the equivalent of the NSA in Britain, collecting the IP addresses in real time of people who even access the WikiLeaks site? JULIAN ASSANGE: The WikiLeaks security model has always been predicated under the basis that we are dealing with very powerful organizations that do not obey the rule of law, whether those are powerful criminal organizations, whether those are corrupt governments in Africa, or whether they’re spy agencies allied with the West or Russia or China. And so, it doesn’t—we’ve always been prepared to defend against that sort of scrutiny. The U.K. government has publicly admitted that they’ve spent six million pounds in the last year surveilling the embassy through police forces alone. We see from these documents that we must assume that GCHQ is also monitoring the situation. That’s part of—I suppose, part of the sad state of the rule of law in the West, where these organizations behave that way. I think the days are clearly numbered that they can get away with it without being exposed. But I’ll leave you to Michael Ratner now. AMY GOODMAN: Thanks so much, Julian. Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. When we come back, we are joined by Michael Ratner, legal adviser to Julian Assange. We’ll also be joined from London, not in exile in the Ecuadorean embassy, but in a studio in London, by Jesselyn Radack, the legal adviser to Edward Snowden who was stopped at Heathrow Airport on Sunday, asked, "Who is Edward Snowden? Where is Bradley Manning?" and other such questions. Stay with us. [break] AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article written by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher published this morning by The Intercept, Britain’s top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site. AMY GOODMAN: One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden details a "manhunting timeline" that shows how the U.S. tried to pressure other nations to prosecute Julian Assange. One read, quote, "The United States on 10 August urged other nations with forces in Afghanistan, including Australia, United Kingdom, and Germany, to consider filing criminal charges against Julian Assange." Joining us now is Michael Ratner. He is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is the legal adviser to Julian Assange. So, talk about this last point, Michael, first what you’re most surprised by in this piece that just came out at The Intercept, and particularly the U.S. pushing other countries to prosecute Julian. MICHAEL RATNER: Well, what I was really shocked by was the extent the U.S. and U.K. have gone through to try and get and destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and their network of supporters. I mean, it’s astounding. And it’s been going on for years. And it also, as Julian pointed out, tells us why he is in the Ecuadorean embassy and why Ecuador has given him asylum. He has every reason to heavily fear what would happen to him in this country, in the United States, if he were to be ever taken here. So I think, for me, that’s a very, very critical point, justifies every reason why Ecuador gave him asylum. And the document you’re addressing, Amy, what they call the manhunt timeline, which is extraordinary because it groups him among, you know, a whole bunch of people who the U.S. considers terrorists, it also, interestingly, groups them—groups them among Palestinians, which is pretty interesting in itself. But to have Julian on that list as a manhunt timeline, and it says prosecute him wherever you can get him, is pretty extraordinary. It doesn’t say you necessarily need a good reason to prosecute him; it just says, basically, prosecute him. And what it’s reminiscent, to me, is of the program that took place in this country in the '60s and the ’70s, COINTELPRO, counterintelligence procedures, when the FBI said, "We have to basically destroy the black civil rights movement, the New Left and others, and prosecute them, get them however you can, get rid of them." And so, the manhunt timeline, even its name is chilling. But that's what it is. It’s an effort to try and get WikiLeaks and their personnel, wherever they are in the world. And, of course, we’ve seen some of that. You’ve had people on this show. When people cross borders who are associates with WikiLeaks, they get stopped. They get surveilled all the time. We’ve seen—we’ve seen efforts to take—to basically destroy WikiLeaks by stealing their laptops on a trip that went from Sweden to Germany. We’ve seen efforts across the board, in country after country. Germany, they surveil conferences when WikiLeaks people speak there, everywhere. So, actually, this program is not just an abstraction. This program has been implemented. And the manhunt timeline, I think, is incredibly significant, considering that the manhunt is an effort to locate, find and destroy—in some cases, kill—kill people. NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael Ratner, what do you think the appropriate response should be to something like that? Is there any legal action that Assange’s legal team can take in response to this? MICHAEL RATNER: Julian Assange, in his statement to the article, said that he felt that the U.S. ought to appoint a special prosecutor, not just to investigate what’s happening to WikiLeaks and a publisher and journalist, but across the board what’s happening to publishers and journalists in this entire country right now and around the world, where the U.S. is trying to basically say publishing is a crime. And that’s what they’re saying. That’s what the Obama administration is saying. And Julian is strongly suggesting, and I support, the idea of a special prosecutor to look into this. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is that aspect of it unprecedented, though? I mean, you drew comparisons between COINTELPRO and manhunt timeline, but the fact that publishing, people who work in journalism, are being monitored in this way by intelligence agencies here, has that occurred before? MICHAEL RATNER: On this level, I don’t think it’s occurred, on this extreme level. You had the manhunt program. You also had what they call—what do they call it? The ANTICRISIS GIRL program. And that’s the dragnet—I don’t know how it got that name. AMY GOODMAN: Explain, ANTICRISIS GIRL program. MICHAEL RATNER: What does—what is that about? I mean, I don’t know. Except what it is, is whenever I search for WikiLeaks on my computer, or when I go visit the WikiLeaks site, in real time, the GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, can take in my IP address, take in what I’m searching for in real time. Now, they gave an—they did a number of slides showing how they could do this. We don’t know how extensively they’ve implemented that program, but that means that every one of us who have ever gone to a WikiLeaks site to look for a document could technically be surveilled and our IP address taken in. AMY GOODMAN: And also the hacktivist group Anonymous and Pirate Bay. Explain. MICHAEL RATNER: Well, Anonymous, they actually did designate as what they call a malicious foreign actor. And a malicious foreign actor, which is what they were deciding whether to designate WikiLeaks as or not—and we don’t know what the final decision was, whether WikiLeaks was designated as a malicious foreign actor, but Anonymous apparently was. And what it means is any restrictions on government surveillance of anything—my conversations, my email—are completely lifted, whether you’re an American or whatever. Any of my communications to anywhere in the world to that website, to Anonymous, going on chat rooms with Anonymous, going on tweets with Anonymous, those can be taken in and surveilled. It’s an incredibly broad power. We don’t know, as I said, if it was used against WikiLeaks. It was certainly discussed, and they asked to use it against WikiLeaks. We will know, I hope, soon, if and when a lawsuit is ever filed around these issues. NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do the documents reveal about what the U.S. officials said they were doing and what in fact they were doing? Because not only was their surveillance of U.S. citizens problematic, but also of foreign citizens. MICHAEL RATNER: Well, I’m sorry, I’m not following the question exactly, Nermeen. NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, in other words, Michael Ratner, the U.S. officials have claimed that they only surveil foreign—foreign citizens who are, in some sense, either potentially guilty of or likely to be involved in terrorist activities. But if you’re monitoring every visitor to a website, whether it’s WikiLeaks or Pirate Bay or—I mean, that’s obviously not the case. MICHAEL RATNER: You know, this is just obfuscation and lies by our officials, which has been consistent. Obviously, if there’s a WikiLeaks website overseas, what they’re really saying is everybody who visits that website, American or otherwise, we can surveil. So it’s complete—it’s complete B.S. This is just untrue. We are all being surveilled. AMY GOODMAN: Michael, we want you to stay with us as we bring in another guest from London. Nermeen?
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2014 Attorney for Edward Snowden Interrogated at U.K. Airport, Placed on "Inhibited Persons List" Four journalists who revealed the National Security Agency’s vast web of spying have been awarded the 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post were among the winners announced on Sunday. Even as the journalists who broke the stories based on Edward Snowden’s leaks were awarded one of journalism’s highest honors, a lawyer who represents Snowden was recently detained while going through customs at London’s Heathrow Airport. Jesselyn Radack joins us today to tell her story. Radack says she was subjected to "very hostile questioning" about Snowden and her trips to Russia. Radack also learned she might be on an "inhibited persons list," a designation reportedly used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to require further vetting of certain passengers. Radack is just one of a growing number of people who are being stopped, harassed and interrogated for their work around Snowden, WikiLeaks and National Security Agency documents. Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower support organization. TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Four journalists who revealed the National Security Agency’s vast web of spying have been awarded the 2013 George Polk Awards in Journalism. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post were among the winners announced on Sunday. Even as the journalists who broke the stories based on Snowden’s leaks were awarded one of journalism’s highest honors, a lawyer who represents Snowden was detained while going through customs at London’s Heathrow Airport. Jesselyn Radack toldFiredoglake she was subjected to, quote, "very hostile questioning" about Snowden and her trips to Russia. Radack also learned she might be on an inhibited persons list, a designation reportedly used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to require further vetting of certain passengers. After the Polk Awards were announced, Glenn Greenwald tweeted, quote, "In the UK government, this is known as the George Polk Award for Excellence in Terrorism." Jesselyn Radack is just one of a growing number of people who are being stopped, harassed and interrogated for their work around Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and National Security Agency documents. In this clip, we hear from journalist Laura Poitras, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, and then journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, who have all been stopped and interrogated in airports. LAURA POITRAS: I’ve actually lost count of how many times I’ve been detained at the border, but it’s, I think, around 40 times. And on this particular trip, lately they’ve been actually sending someone from the Department of Homeland Security to question me in the departing city, so I was questioned in London about what I was doing. I told them I was a journalist and that, you know, my work is protected, and I wasn’t going to discuss it. JACOB APPELBAUM: I was targeted by the U.S. government and essentially, until the last four times that I’ve flown, I was detained basically every time. Sometimes men would meet me at the jetway, similarly, with guns. DAVID MIRANDA: [translated] I stayed in a room with three different agents that were entering and exiting. They spoke to me, asking me questions about my whole life. They took my computer, my video game, cellphone, everything. AMY GOODMAN: That was journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda; before him, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and journalist Laura Poitras. You can go to our website to see our interview with Jacob Appelbaum andLaura Poitras at democracynow.org. But all of them have been interrogated at airports, as has most recently Jesselyn Radack, the attorney representing Edward Snowden, joining us from London. She is a former ethics adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice under George W. Bush, currently director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization. Jesselyn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Describe what happened at Heathrow on Sunday. JESSELYN RADACK: I was trying to enter through customs, which at Heathrow is called the Border Force, and I was directed to a very specific station rather than the regular line. And after the first question, which is, "Why are you here?" which is a normal question, things just got more bizarre as we went along. I said that I was here to see friends. They wanted me to be more specific. I said, "In the Sam Adams Association," the group that awarded Edward Snowden the award last year—I didn’t add that part. And then they asked for the names of the people in the group. And so I gave names of people who are publicly known to be members. And then they asked where we were meeting, and I said at the Ecuadorean embassy. And they asked, "With Julian Assange?" And I said, "Yes." But then, at that point, I was asked why I had been to Russia twice in the past three months. And I said, "Because I have a client there." And they asked, "Who?" And I said, "Edward Snowden." And then, this was the most bizarre thing: They said, "Who is Edward Snowden?" And I just said matter-of-factly, "He is a whistleblower and an asylee." They next asked, "Who is Bradley Manning?" And I said, "A whistleblower. And then they asked, "Where is Bradley Manning?" And I said, "In jail." And he said, "So, he’s a criminal." And I said that he’s a political prisoner. And then they said, "But you represent Snowden." And I said, "Yes, I’m a human rights attorney, and I’m one of his legal advisers." But I found that entire line of questioning very jarring and very unnerving. I didn’t know what kind of answer I was supposed to give. I mean, obviously, it’s like asking, "Who is President Obama?" They’re asking about some of the most famous people on the planet. Obviously, I have an attorney-client relationship to protect. I’m not going to get into meetings that I’ve had with clients. And only some of my clients are public, Edward Snowden being one of them, so that’s why I could answer that question. But I walked away from the interview just shaking. During the interview, I was fine. I maintained my composure. But I walked away just shaking and just upset. I just cried. It was very intimidating and very, very, again, unnerving to be asked that line of questions as an attorney. And I don’t think journalists or attorneys should be harassed or intimidated at the border, and it’s very disturbing to me that this has occurred in the U.S. and the U.K., and I’ve heard that this happened to someone recently in Germany, though I don’t know the details of that. But certainly, as an attorney, having gone to 14 different countries in the past year, I have never endured a line of questioning like that. You get the usual, "Hi. Why are you here? Who are you seeing? Where are you staying?" But not, "Who do you—who is Edward Snowden? Where is Edward Snowden? Where is Bradley Manning? Do you represent Bradley Manning?" which I wouldn’t even be allowed to answer, obviously, because that would be attorney-client privileged information. I, in fact, do not represent him, but it would have put me in a really difficult situation of actually making a false statement if I did represent him and had to answer a question like that. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Jesselyn, could you talk about the significance of the inhibited persons list? How did you first learn about it, and are you in fact on it? JESSELYN RADACK: As hard—as a graduate or an alumnus of the no-fly list, you’re never officially told, "You are on this list." It’s implied, and you hear it. This apparently is some list maintained in Great Britain, but originating from the Department of Homeland Security. And I wish I could tell you more about it, but that’s just what I was able to learn from speaking with other people who have had difficulty getting out of the U.K. My difficulty was getting in. I’m hoping I don’t have any difficulty getting out. But an inhibited persons list, to me, is another kind of watch list, just like how ridiculous it was that I spent a number of years on the no-fly list, when I obviously posed no direct threat. To Snowden, I’m an attorney doing my job, and being a human rights lawyer does not pose any kind of immigration violation or safety threat to entering the United Kingdom, so I’m not sure why I was subjected to that interrogation other than to try to intimidate me from doing my job.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
Nowhere on Corporate media is there anything approaching the truth about the situation in Ukraine, but we have the chance to rectify that here.The way the media presents it, the mob is an oppressed minority searching for freedom.The opposition leaders are noble and pure.
Actually, the original leaders were fairly sane compared to the crowd that has control now.After the interview reprinted below, for a few days it seemed as if some semblance of sanity was going to be restored.The Russian sent an emissary both the Ukraine and the EU to work out some sort of accommodation and it seemed as if things would settle down.
But they will not.First of all, that blonde bimbo with the long braid circled aounr the tope of her head like some queen of modern Ukraine is now loose on the streets.Even worse, a Neo-Fascist, nationalistic, very right-wing bunch of lunatics are now in charge of the streets.The normal, by western standards, opposition is in charge of the parliament now and the President has more or less been ousted in a coup, but this will not satisfy the street people.A week or so ago we explained a great deal of this here so we see no need to repeat ourselves other than to say that the mob is more virulently neo-fascist than even we expected.We did think they were insane, about half the population is insane, but had little insight into the neo-nazi aspects of this uprising.
At any rate, reprinted here are the words of one of the few honest scholars on the subject of Russia and the old Soviet Union:
A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup
A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. Last night the country’s embattled president and the opposition leaders demanding his resignation called for a truce and negotiations to try to resolve Ukraine’s political crisis. But hours later, armed protesters attempted to retake Independence Square, sparking another day of deadly violence. At least 50 people have died since Tuesday in the bloodiest period of Ukraine’s 22-year post-Soviet history. While President Obama has vowed to "continue to engage all sides," a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition. We speak to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War," is out in paperback. His latest Nation article is "Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. Last night, the country’s embattled president and the opposition leaders demanding his resignation called for a truce and negotiations to try to resolve Ukraine’s political crisis. But the truce only lasted a few hours. The last three days have been the bloodiest period of Ukraine’s 22-year post-Soviet history. Over 50 people have died, including at least 21 today. The truce ended today when armed protesters attempted to retake Independence Square. Both sides have accused the other of using live ammunition. A Ukrainian paramedic described the chaotic scene.
UKRAINIANPARAMEDIC:[translated] Some bodies are at the concert hall. Some are at the barricades. Now there are maybe around 15 or 20 dead. It is hard to count, as some are carried away, others are resuscitated. Now, as far as I know, three dead people are at the city hall, and two more dead are at the main post office. There are so many at the concert hall that we didn’t even take them.
AMYGOODMAN:The Ukrainian parliament, Rada, and Cabinet buildings have reportedly been evacuated because of fears they could be stormed by protesters. The street clashes are occurring while the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is meeting with the foreign ministers from Germany, Poland and France. The Obama administration stepped up pressure on the Ukrainian government Wednesday by announcing a visa ban on 20 members of the Ukrainian government. The U.S. is also threatening to place sanctions on the Ukrainian government. The protests began in late November after President Yanukovych reversed his decision to sign a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union, or EU, to forge stronger ties with Russia instead.
To talk more about the latest in Ukraine, we’re joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, is now out in paperback. His latest piece in The Nation is called "Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine."
So, talk about the latest, Professor Cohen.
STEPHENCOHEN: Where do you want me to begin? I mean, we are watching history being made, but history of the worst kind. That’s what I’m telling my grandchildren: Watch this. What’s happening there, let’s take the big picture, then we can go to the small picture. The big picture is, people are dying in the streets every day. The number 50 is certainly too few. They’re still finding bodies. Ukraine is splitting apart down the middle, because Ukraine is not one country, contrary to what the American media, which speaks about the Ukraine and theUkrainian people. Historically, ethnically, religiously, culturally, politically, economically, it’s two countries. One half wants to stay close to Russia; the other wants to go West. We now have reliable reports that the anti-government forces in the streets—and there are some very nasty people among them—are seizing weapons in western Ukrainian military bases. So we have clearly the possibility of a civil war.
And the longer-term outcome may be—and I want to emphasize this, because nobody in the United States seems to want to pay attention to it—the outcome may be the construction, the emergence of a new Cold War divide between West and East, not this time, as it was for our generation, in faraway Berlin, but right on the borders of Russia, right through the heart of Slavic civilization. And if that happens, if that’s the new Cold War divide, it’s permanent instability and permanent potential for real war for decades to come. That’s what’s at stake.
One last point, also something that nobody in this country wants to talk about: The Western authorities, who bear some responsibility for what’s happened, and who therefore also have blood on their hands, are taking no responsibility. They’re uttering utterly banal statements, which, because of their vacuous nature, are encouraging and rationalizing the people in Ukraine who are throwing Molotov cocktails, now have weapons, are shooting at police. We wouldn’t permit that in any Western capital, no matter how righteous the cause, but it’s being condoned by the European Union and Washington as events unfold.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:And when you say the Western countries who bear some responsibility, in what sense do they bear responsibility? I mean, clearly, there’s been an effort by the United States and Europe ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union to pull the former Soviet states into their economic sphere, but is that what you’re talking about?
STEPHENCOHEN: I mean that. I mean that Moscow—look at it through Moscow’s eyes. Since the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the U.S.-led West has been on a steady march toward post-Soviet Russia, began with the expansion of NATO in the 1990s under Clinton. Bush then further expanded NATO all the way to Russia’s borders. Then came the funding of what are euphemistically called NGOs, but they are political action groups, funded by the West, operating inside Russia. Then came the decision to build missile defense installations along Russia’s borders, allegedly against Iran, a country which has neither nuclear weapons nor any missiles to deliver them with. Then comes American military outpost in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which led to the war of 2008, and now the West is at the gates of Ukraine. So, that’s the picture as Moscow sees it. And it’s rational. It’s reasonable. It’s hard to deny.
But as for the immediate crisis, let’s ask ourselves this: Who precipitated this crisis? The American media says it was Putin and the very bad, though democratically elected, president of Ukraine, Yanukovych. But it was the European Union, backed by Washington, that said in November to the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country, Ukraine, "You must choose between Europe and Russia." That was an ultimatum to Yanukovych. Remember—wasn’t reported here—at that moment, what did the much-despised Putin say? He said, "Why? Why does Ukraine have to choose? We are prepared to help Ukraine avoid economic collapse, along with you, the West. Let’s make it a tripartite package to Ukraine." And it was rejected in Washington and in Brussels. That precipitated the protests in the streets.
And since then, the dynamic that any of us who have ever witnessed these kinds of struggles in the streets unfolded, as extremists have taken control of the movement from the so-called moderate Ukrainian leaders. I mean, the moderate Ukrainian leaders, with whom the Western foreign ministers are traveling to Kiev to talk, they’ve lost control of the situation. By the way, people ask—excuse me—is it a revolution? Is it a revolution? A much abused word, but one sign of a revolution is the first victims of revolution are the moderates. And then it becomes a struggle between the extreme forces on either side. And that’s what we’re witnessing.
AMYGOODMAN: Let’s go to the Ukrainian opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who admitted earlier today the opposition does not have full control of protesters in Independence Square.
ARSENIYYATSENYUK: The only chance to do it is to stop the riot police, to stop the protesters, to impose a DMZ, like demilitarized zone, and to move this conflict from the streets to the Parliament.
REPORTER1: Parts of the protesters are out of control?
ARSENIYYATSENYUK: No one—I would be very frank, that the government doesn’t control the riot police, and it’s very difficult for the opposition to control Maidan. And there are a number of forces who are uncontrolled. This is the truth.
REPORTER2: So, Ukraine is in chaos now.
ARSENIYYATSENYUK: Ukraine is in a big mess.
AMYGOODMAN: That’s Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Professor Cohen?
STEPHENCOHEN: A moderate.
AMYGOODMAN: Let’s go—
STEPHENCOHEN: Who wants to be president.
AMYGOODMAN: Let’s go to President Obama. He’s in Mexico for the big Mexico-Canada-U.S. summit talking about Ukraine.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: With regard to Ukraine, along with our European partners, we will continue to engage all sides. And we continue to stress to President Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government that they have the primary responsibility to prevent the kind of terrible violence that we’ve seen, to withdraw riot police, to work with the opposition to restore security and human dignity, and move the country forward. And this includes progress towards a multi-party, technical government that can work with the international community on a support package and adopt reforms necessary for free and fair elections next year. Ukrainians are a proud and resilient people who have overcome extraordinary challenges in their history, and that’s a pride and strength that I hope they draw on now.
AMYGOODMAN: That’s President Obama in Mexico, Professor Cohen.
STEPHENCOHEN: What are you asking me to comment on?
AMYGOODMAN: Your response to his response.
STEPHENCOHEN: To what he just said? Shame. Shame. He is saying that the responsibility for restoring peace is on the Ukrainian government, and it should withdraw its security forces from the streets. But let me ask you, if in Washington people throwing Molotov cocktails are marching on Congress—and these people are headed for the Ukrainian Congress—if these people have barricaded entrance to the White House and are throwing rocks at the White House security guard, would President Obama withdraw his security forces? This is—this is—and do you know what this does? And let’s escape partisanship here. I mean, lives are at stake. This incites, these kinds of statement that Obama made. It rationalizes what the killers in the streets are doing. It gives them Western license, because he’s not saying to the people in the streets, "Stop this, stop shooting policemen, stop attacking government buildings, sit down and talk." And the guy you had on just before, a so-called moderate leader, what did he just tell you? "We have lost control of the situation." That’s what I just told you. He just confirmed that.
So what Obama needs to say is, "We deplore what the people in the streets are doing when they attack the police, the law enforcement official. And we also don’t like the people who are writing on buildings 'Jews live here,'" because these forces, these quasi-fascist forces—let’s address this issue, because the last time I was on your broadcast, you found some guy somewhere who said there was none of this there. All right. What percent are the quasi-fascists of the opposition? Let’s say they’re 5 percent. I think they’re more, but let’s give them the break, 5 percent. But we know from history that when the moderates lose control of the situation, they don’t know what to do. The country descends in chaos. Five percent of a population that’s tough, resolute, ruthless, armed, well funded, and knows what it wants, can make history. We’ve seen it through Europe. We’ve seen it through Asia. This is reality. And where Washington and Brussels are on this issue, they won’t step up and take the responsibility.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:Well, even in most recent history, whether you look at Libya or whether you look at the situation in Syria, where those presidents warned that there were extremist elements inside a broader popular movement that were eventually going to gain control, this seems like a replay in terms of what’s going on here in the Ukraine of a popular movement, but yet a very, very, as you say, right-wing movement—not only a right-wing movement, but a fascist movement with a history. Ukraine has had a history of a fascist movement going back to the days of Nazi Germany.
STEPHENCOHEN: Let’s go to real heresy. Let’s ask a question: Who has been right about interpreting recent events? Let’s go to the Arab Spring. Obama and Washington said this was about democracy now, this is great. Russia said, "Wait a minute. If you destabilize, even if they’re authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, you’re not going to get Thomas Jefferson in power. You’re going to get jihadists. You’re going to get very radical people in power all through the Middle East." Looking back, who was right or wrong about that narrative? Have a look at Egypt. Have a look at Libya. Who was right? Can Russians ever be right about anything?
Now what are the Russians saying about Ukraine? They’re saying what you just said, that the peaceful protesters, as we keep calling them—I think a lot of them have gone home. There were many. By the way, at the beginning, there were hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, of very decent, liberal, progressive, honorable people in the streets. But they’ve lost control of the situation. That’s the point now. And so, the Russians are saying, "Look, you’re trying to depose Yanukovych, who’s the elected government." Think. If you overthrow—and, by the way, there’s a presidential election in a year. The Russians are saying wait 'til the next election. If you overthrow him—and that's what Washington and Brussels are saying, that he must go—what are you doing to the possibility of democracy not only in Ukraine, but throughout this part of the world? And secondly, who do you think is going to come to power? Please tell us. And we’re silent.
AMYGOODMAN: I want to go to the famous leaked tape right now. The top State Department official has apologized to her European counterparts after she was caught cursing the European Union, the EU, in a leaked audio recording that was posted to YouTube. The recording captured an intercepted phone conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Victoria Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe. Nuland expresses frustration over Europe’s response to the political crisis in Ukraine, using frank terms.
VICTORIANULAND: So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it. And, you know, [bleep] the EU.
AMYGOODMAN: While Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s comment about the EU dominated the news headlines because she used a curse, there were several other very interesting parts of her conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
GEOFFREYPYATT: Let me work on Klitschko, and if you can just keep—I think we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. Then the other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych, but we can probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.
VICTORIANULAND: So, on that piece, Geoff, when I wrote the note, Sullivan’s come back to me VFR saying, "You need Biden?" And I said, "Probably tomorrow for an attaboy and to get the deets to stick." So Biden’s willing.
AMYGOODMAN: That’s the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Pyatt, speaking with Victoria Nuland. The significance of what she is saying? She also had gone to Ukraine and was feeding protesters on the front line.
STEPHENCOHEN: Cookies, cookies. Well, here again, the American political media establishment, including the right and the left and the center—because they’re all complicit in this nonsense—focused on the too sensational, they thought, aspect of that leaked conversation. She said, "F— the European Union," and everybody said, "Oh, my god! She said the word." The other thing was, who leaked it? "Oh, it was the Russians. Those dirty Russians leaked this conversation." But the significance is what you just played. What are they doing? The highest-ranking State Department official, who presumably represents the Obama administration, and the American ambassador in Kiev are, to put it in blunt terms, plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.
Now, that said, Amy, Juan, you may say to me—neither of you would, but hypothetically—"That’s a good thing. We don’t like—we don’t care if he was elected democratically. He’s a rat. He’s corrupt." And he is all those things. He is. "Let’s depose him. That’s what the United States should do. Then the United States should stand up and say, ’That’s what we do: We get rid of bad guys. We assassinate them, and we overthrow them.’" But in Washington and in Brussels, they lie: They’re talking about democracy now. They’re not talking about democracy now; they’re talking about a coup now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:Well, this is more from—
STEPHENCOHEN: And we—excuse me—and we should—we, American citizens, should be allowed to choose which policy we want. But they conceal it from us. And I’m extremely angry that the people in this country who say they deplore this sort of thing have fallen silent.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:Let’s listen to little bit more of the leaked conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Victoria Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe.
VICTORIANULAND: Good. So, I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
GEOFFREYPYATT: Yeah. I mean, I guess, you think—in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking, in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys. And, you know, I’m sure that’s part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all of this. I kind of—
VICTORIANULAND: I think—I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy—you know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, I just think Klitsch going in, he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenyuk. It’s just not going to work.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:That was Victoria Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, speaking with Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine. Stephen Cohen, this—this chess game—
STEPHENCOHEN: You don’t need me here. What do you need me for?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:—this chess game that they’re conducting here?
STEPHENCOHEN: There it is. There it is.
AMYGOODMAN: But explain the names. Who is Klitsch, Yats?
STEPHENCOHEN: All right. And notice the intimacy with which the Americans deal with the two leading so-called "moderate"—and these are big shots, they both want to be president—Ukrainian opposition. Klitschko is Vitali Klitschko, a six-foot-eight former—he resigned his title two months ago to enter politics—heavyweight champion of the world. His residence has been Ukraine—I mean, Germany. He plays—he pays taxes in Germany. He’s a project of Merkel. He represents German interests. I’m sure he’s also faithful to Ukraine, but he’s got a problem. Yatsenyuk, however—not Yatsenyuk, but the other guy she calls "Yats" is a representative of the Fatherland Party. It’s a big party in Parliament. But Washington likes him a lot. They think he’ll be our man. So you could see what they’re saying. We don’t quite trust Klitschko. Now, if you want to get esoteric, that’s the tug between Washington and Berlin. They’re not happy with Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. They don’t like the role Merkel is playing, generally. They think Germany has gotten too big for its britches. They want to cut Merkel down. So you noticed Klitschko, the boxer, is Merkel’s proxy, or at least she’s backing him. You notice that they say, "He’s not ready for prime time. Let him do his homework."
Now, this guy—I’m bad on Ukrainian names. Tyagnybok, that they say has got to play a role, he’s the leader of the Freedom Party, the Svoboda Party, but a large element of that party, to put it candidly, is quasi-fascist. And they’re prepared to embrace this guy. This is the guy, by the way, that Senator John McCain in November or December went to Kiev and embraced. Either McCain didn’t know who he was, or he didn’t care. The United States is prepared to embrace that guy, too—anything to get rid of Yanukovych, because they think this is about Putin. That’s all they really got on their mind.
AMYGOODMAN: And yet, here you have President Obama, again, speaking yesterday in Mexico.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: Our approach as the United States is not to see these as some Cold War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia. Our goal is to make sure that the people of Ukraine are able to make decisions for themselves about their future, that the people of Syria are able to make decisions without having bombs going off and killing women and children, or chemical weapons, or towns being starved, because a despot wants to cling to power.
AMYGOODMAN: Who benefits from the instability, Professor Cohen, in Ukraine? And what does it mean for Putin? Is he concerned about this?
STEPHENCOHEN: Of course he’s concerned. It’s right on his borders, and it’s all tainting him. I mean, The Washington Post wrote an editorial yesterday. Putin is happy that the violence has broken out in the streets. Everybody understands, even The Washington Postunderstands, which understands almost nothing about Russia, but they got this, that during the Sochi Olympics, the last thing Putin wants is violence in Ukraine. So why is he happy about it? He deplores it. He’s unhappy. He’s furious at the president of Ukraine. He read him the Riot Act on the phone last night, that why doesn’t he get control of the situation? What is he doing? So Putin is not responsible for this. Can we speak about Obama?
AMYGOODMAN: Very quickly.
STEPHENCOHEN: Very quickly. I grew up in the segregated South. I voted for him twice, as historical justice. That’s not leadership. That’s a falsification of what’s happening in Ukraine, and it’s making the situation worse, what he says, is that we deplore the violence and call upon Ukrainian government to withdraw its forces and stop the violence. He needs to talk about what’s happening in the streets.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:And is it conceivable, if Ukraine descends into a further civil war, that Russia might intervene?
STEPHENCOHEN: It’s conceivable. It’s conceivable. Here—I mean, Yanukovych—you might say, as an adviser to Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, "Impose martial law now, because you’ve got bad PR in the West anyway, and you’re not in control of the situation." The problem is, Yanukovych isn’t sure he controls the army.
AMYGOODMAN: He just fired the head of the army yesterday.
STEPHENCOHEN: Yeah, we don’t know what it means, but it indicates he’s not too sure about the army. But, by the way, you asked, would Russia intervene? Would NATO intervene? NATO is all over the place. NATO was in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Ask yourself that: Would NATO send troops in? Is that, yes, you think they would?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:I—
STEPHENCOHEN: We don’t know.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:We don’t know, yeah.
STEPHENCOHEN: And we’re not going to be told, just like we’re not being told what’s going on in these private conversations about deposing the president of Ukraine. If they depose—
AMYGOODMAN: Unless they’re leaked again.
STEPHENCOHEN: Yeah, and if the Russians leak them, it doesn’t count. Is that right?
AMYGOODMAN: The U.S. can hardly protest, given the whole scandal with the NSA recording conversations.
STEPHENCOHEN: Yeah, well, you know what they said. They said—they said, when this got leaked, that this is a low point in statecraft. After Snowden? After Snowden? I mean, what did Tennessee Williams used to say? Mendacity? Mendacity? The mendacity of it all? Don’t they trust us, our government, to tell us a little bit of the truth at last?
AMYGOODMAN: Stephen Cohen, I want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to move onto Venezuela. Stephen Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, it’s just out in paperback. His latest piece in The Nation is "Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent [Putin], Sochi and Ukraine." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
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AMYGOODMAN: Edwin Starr singing "War." This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We have just hit 18. We have just come of age. Yes, Democracy Now! is 18 years old this week, and people are sending in from all over the world pictures of themselves holding up signs, "We need Democracy Now! because..." And we urge you to do the same thing. You can just go to democracynow.org/because, and you can send us your image. Also people also sending in videos. We’ll play some of them in a bit. Yes, this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:Now that we’re 18, we are of legal age.
I must say that Luke Harding is able to look at this and laugh a bit, although he also seems to see absurdity as something amusing, not threatening.
Now imagine your own reaction.You have a computer, brand new, never been hooked up to the Internet.You are writing a manuscript about the Snowden papers.You are sitting there, pausing for a second, and by itself, the cursor starts to backspace, deleting characters as it goes.You are unable to even act to stop it before an entire paragraph or two has been deleted.Isn’t that a bit freaky?
I mean, it’s enough to speed up the auto save function on your word processor.I’m going to change that right now and then upload this interview:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014
"The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete": DidNSAHack Computer of Snowden Biographer & Edit Book Draft?
Is the National Security Agency breaking into computers and tampering with unpublished manuscripts? Award-winning Guardian journalist Luke Harding says paragraphs of his writing mysteriously disappeared when he was working on his latest book, "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man.""I wrote that Snowden’s revelations had damaged U.S. tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened," wrote Harding in The Guardian. "The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish." Harding joins us to talk about the computer monitoring and other times he believes he was being tracked.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We turn now to the latest on the growing surveillance state.
EDWARDSNOWDEN:[Recently, we learned that our governments], working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book—microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us—are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.
AMYGOODMAN:Those are the words ofNSAwhistleblower Edward Snowden, speaking in December.
We turn now to the remarkable story of British journalist Luke Harding, who says he became the target of surveillance himself while reporting on Edward Snowden. Harding recently publishedThe Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man. On Friday, he revealed that while he was writing the book on his computer, paragraphs of the book would begin to self-delete. He repeatedly saw the cursor move rapidly from the left, gobbling text. And that wasn’t the only time he felt he was being monitored. Luke Harding joins us now viaDemocracy Now!video stream fromThe Guardiannewsroom in London.
Welcome back toDemocracy Now!, Luke. Tell us what happened.
LUKEHARDING:Well, before I do that, I think you have to understand the context, which is that the first few months of last year after Snowden’s leaks, both the U.S. and the British governments were scrambling to find out what he’d taken, how much he’d taken, why he’d taken it, and were really kind of clueless. And so, I think in that context it’s hardly surprising that the small number of journalists who were working on this material, including me, would have been targeted.
What happened was that I was writing my book. I was about halfway through. I had been to see Glenn Greenwald in Rio, in Brazil, to interview him, which was a kind of curious experience because Gleen is clearly very heavily surveilled by, I think, all sorts of people. Back at my home in the English countryside, I was writing kind of rather disparagingly, rather critically, about theNSAand its—the damage these revelations had done to Silicon Valley. And I was sitting back, working offline, I have to say, and, as you say, the text began rapidly deleting. And I thought, "Oh, my goodness! What is going on here?" This happened four or five times over a period of a month, to the point where I was actually, almost kind of jokingly, leaving little notes every morning to this kind of mysterious reader. And then, at one point, one of my colleagues mentioned this in a newspaper interview in Germany, and it suddenly stopped. So, I wrote this piece not because this was an especially sinister experience, but merely to kind of lay out the facts in what was another curious episode in an already quite surreal tale.
AMYGOODMAN:Luke, you describe in your most recentpieceabout an American who approached you when you were in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.
LUKEHARDING:Well, that’s right. I mean, again, I said this—you know, I mean, it was quite funny, in a way. Essentially, what happened was that I met Glenn at a hotel by the seafront, and we had to shift locations several times because it was clear that there were various people who were trying to eavesdrop on our conversation, and we ended up in the business suite where we could actually physically lock the door behind ourselves. Subsequently, at my hotel, the Marriott, the next day, I was kind of accosted in the lobby by someone who looked as if they were straight out ofCIAcentral casting, with a kind of military haircut and neatly ironed khaki shorts. And basically, he wanted to become my friend. He wanted to take me sightseeing. And it was a curious incident. I mean, you know, I say in my piece that he may have been a tourist, because of course there’s an innocent explanation for all of these things. But having talked to Glenn, one of the things he taught me was that theCIAin Rio especially was very aggressive. Glenn’s own computer had been stolen from the home where he shared with David Miranda just a few weeks previously. And it’s clear that there was a lot of U.S. intelligence activity going on there.
AMYGOODMAN:Remind us, Luke Harding, about the day theGCHQcame to call onThe Guardian.
LUKEHARDING:Yeah, it was really, I think, one of the bizarrest episodes in the history of journalism. Essentially, the British government was extremely unhappy about our ongoing publication, from June the 5th onwards, of Snowden’s files, of the prison revelations, of Verizon and so on. And we came under increasing pressure, private pressure, backdoor pressure, from David Cameron, the British prime minister, who sent his most senior official, a guy called Sir Jeremy Heywood, to come and see us and basically say, "We can do this nicely, or we can go to law." In other words, he wanted this material back, and if we didn’t give it back, we were going to be injuncted. In other words, police would seize our computers and kind of shut down our reporting operation. And we explained that this was pointless, because Glenn had this stuff in Brazil; Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, had Snowden material in Berlin;The Washington Postsimilarly.
But the British government wasn’t listening, and this culminated in a hot Saturday morning last summer with three of my colleagues being forced to smash up our computers in the underground car park, four floors down from where I’m talking to you, watched by two spies from the British spy agency,GCHQ, who took photos on their iPhones to record the event, brought along a special machine called a degausser, which looks like a microwave oven. So we had to post the pieces of our bashed-up MacBooks into this degausser, which demagnetized them. And then these spies, who are based in the English countryside in a small provincial town called Cheltenham, they don’t get to London very often, the big city, and they left carrying bags of shopping, presents for their families. It really was a bizarre thing and, I think, for anyone who cares about press freedom, a pretty chilling thing, too.
AMYGOODMAN:While you were doing the work, whileThe Guardianwas, and Glenn Greenwald was working forThe Guardian, putting out the original pieces based on what Edward Snowden released from the National Security Agency, you write about how you were a part of this small team holed up in a room atThe Guardian. Describe the security you had, and even your computers not being linked to the Internet.
LUKEHARDING:Yeah, it’s actually one floor up from here, so the computer smashing happened three floors down. The secret bunker is upstairs. And we knew that this was a serious—you know, the material that Snowden had entrusted to us, that this was a very serious undertaking. And we had a clear mission from him, which was to not publish anything which would damage legitimate intelligence operations, but to reveal mass surveillance, which we now all know about. And so, there were seven or eight of us, never any more than that, working in the room. We had security guards, around the clock, 24 hours, making sure that nobody who shouldn’t have been there was there. We left all electronics out. And we had four laptops and a PC, which had never been connected to the Internet, which were brand new, air-gapped at all times. We papered over the windows so nobody could see in from outside. And we—actually, to be honest, we were also kind of working against the clock. There was a sense that we needed to get as many stories out as we could, and in a responsible way, because we didn’t know when the British government would fall on us. And one other quite nice detail, cleaners were banned. Nobody was inside that room. So, very quickly, you know, I write in my book, it sort of resembled a kind of student dormitory with pizza wrappers, dirty coffee cups. So it was a pretty insalubrious working environment.
AMYGOODMAN:Has theGCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, the equivalent of theNSA, and theNSAchanged their practices in any way in this eight months since all of this information has begun to come out?
LUKEHARDING:Well, you would think the answer to that question, Amy, would be yes, but in reality the answer is no. And I find it very depressing. I mean, it’s been fascinating. You know, I’ve been to the U.S. several times researching the book, and there’s clearly a very lively debate, a polarized debate, going on. But what’s happening politically is very interesting. In Britain, for certainly the first four or five months, the entire political establishment was asleep, and it’s only really woken up, I’d say, in the last few months. And the message from David Cameron, the prime minister, has been, really, "Move along, nothing to see here." But I think, inevitably, one of the things you know when you look at these documents is thatGCHQand theNSAwork so closely together. This becomes very clear. They’re practically one entity. So I think the reforms or "reforms" that Obama announced in January, on January 17th, will inevitably affect the work ofGCHQ, as well.
AMYGOODMAN:And what do you think of President Obama’s so-called "reforms"?
LUKEHARDING:Well, I mean, I think reform is rather a grand word. It seems to me they’re more face-saving tweaks, actually. I mean, the big takeaway is that theNSAwill no longer listen to Angela Merkel’s cellphone or that of other "friendly" leaders. But I’ve just been in Europe doing various literary events there, and people are scratching their heads wondering whether their prime ministers, you know, are sufficiently friendly to—whether that means they will be bugged or not. They simply don’t know. And on the big thing, which is of course the collection of American metadata, telephony data, you know, tell me if I’m wrong, but that’s carrying on. OK, it may be administered by some new entity, but those programs, which Ed Snowden very bravely exposed, are still continuing.
AMYGOODMAN:And we just have 30 seconds. Google, Microsoft, have they changed their ways of operating at all as a result of all that has come out, and the other big companies?
LUKEHARDING:Well, I mean, I haven’t—I haven’t noticed major changes. I have noticed absolute panic and a really massive kind of PR campaign to try and assure everybody, from us—senior Google executives recently visitedThe Guardian—to the whole world, that they are not kind of complicit in this spying, and have been coerced into collaborating. But I still think there are some kind of big questions about how deep their involvement in all of this is.
AMYGOODMAN:Luke Harding, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning foreign correspondent withThe Guardian. His new book, just out,The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man. He also recently wrote apieceinThe Guardiancalled "Writing The Snowden Files: 'The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete.'"
Illustration: Carlos Latuff and his take on Ukraine.Carlos was rated on of the top three forces in the world by AIPAC (well, he was one of the top three they didn’t like and that amounts to about the same thing) recently.He suddenly seemed to disappear and work in Portuguese, as is his obvious right, and it seems that a wave of idiocy on Twitter in favor of deposing Morsi was related.I may be wrong.However, he remains dead on right on issues and here illustrates quite vividly what we have been saying all along.
Fascism has a long history and we are not concerned here with taking it back to its early origins.However, it is clear that a strong percentage of the Ukrainians fighting for power in Kiev were classical Fascists with roots in German Fascism, which used Hegel’s notions on the state and built on the fatherland idea as well as racial purity that was so evident in Nazi Germany.We should also note here that John Maynard Keynes predicted World War II as a result of the treaty of Versailles that imposed “austerity” on Germany.The EU will impose austerity on Ukraine if it drifts in that direction.However, now that the Olympics are over and Russia gain more medals than any other country, Putin has turned his attention to more pressing matters.The army is now “on alert” on the western border of Russia.
One of the speakers below, when he uses the term “Fascism” is referring to that sort of classical political agenda.However, if one extends the concept to include central governmental administration of racial purity and the notion of the fatherland, we will see that the number is not a mere 5%, but more like 40 to 50%.
At any rate, here is the dialogue:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014
A Coup or a Revolution? Ukraine Seeks Arrest of Ousted President Following Deadly Street Protests
Ukraine is in a state of crisis two days after the country’s democratically elected president was ousted following months of street protests that left at least 82 people dead. On Saturday, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych, a move Yanukovych described as a coup. Earlier today, Ukraine’s new leaders announced the ousted president was wanted for mass murder of peaceful protesters. Russia condemned the move to oust Yanukovych and recalled its ambassador to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Europe has embraced the new government. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is traveling to Ukraine today to discuss measures to shore up Ukraine’s ailing economy. One of Yanukovych’s main rivals, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was released from custody. We speak to Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University. His latest article for The New York Review of Books is "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." We also speak to University of Rhode Island professor Nicolai Petro, who is in Odessa, Ukraine.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Ukraine is in a state of crisis two days after the country’s democratically elected president was ousted following months of street protests that left at least 82 people dead. On Saturday, Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych, a move Yanukovych described as a coup.
VIKTORYANUKOVYCH:[translated] I am absolutely confident that this is an example, which our country and the whole world has seen, an example of a coup. I’m not going to leave Ukraine or go anywhere. I’m not going to resign. I’m a legitimately elected president. I was given guarantees by all international mediators who I worked with that they are giving me security guarantees. I will see how they will fulfill that role.
AMYGOODMAN:Viktor Yanukovych speaking Saturday. He has not been seen publicly since then. Earlier today, Ukraine’s new leaders announced the ousted president was wanted for mass murder of peaceful protesters. Meanwhile, one of Yanukovych’s main rivals, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was released from custody on Saturday. Russia condemned the move to oust Yanukovych and recalled its ambassador to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Europe has embraced the new government. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is traveling to Ukraine today to discuss measures to shore up Ukraine’s ailing economy. On Sunday, Ukraine’s interim president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said he would focus on closer integration with the European Union.
OLEKSANDRTURCHYNOV:[translated] Another priority is returning to the European integration course, the fight for which Maidan started with. We must return to the family of European countries. We also understand the importance of our relations with Russia, to build relations with this country on a new, just, equal and goodwill basis which recognizes and takes into account the European choice of the country. I hope that it is this choice that will be confirmed in the presidential elections on the 25th of May of this year. We guarantee that they will fully subscribe to the highest European standards. They will be liberal and fair.
AMYGOODMAN:To talk more about the crisis in Ukraine, we’re joined by two guests. Timothy Snyder is professor of history at Yale University, author ofBloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. His latestpieceforThe New York Review of Booksis headlined "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." He joins us from Vienna, Austria. And with us in the Ukrainian city of Odessa is Nicolai Petro, professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island. He has been in Odessa since July 2013 as a Fulbright research scholar.
Nicolai Petro, let’s begin with you in Ukraine. Do you agree with what the president, or now the former president, Yanukovych, said, that this is a coup?
NICOLAIPETRO:Yes, it’s pretty much a classical coup, because under the current constitution the president may be—may resign or be impeached, but only after the case is reviewed by the Constitutional Court and then voted by a three-fourth majority of the Parliament. And then, either case, either the prime minister or the speaker of the Parliament must become the president. Instead, that’s not what happened at all. There was an extraordinary session of Parliament, after—it was held after most members were told there would be no session and many had left town. And then, under the chairmanship of the radical party, Svoboda, this rump Parliament declared that the president had self-removed himself from the presidency.
AMYGOODMAN:And what are the forces that brought this about? And what’s happening right now in Ukraine? You’re not in Kiev; you’re in Odessa. What is even happening there?
NICOLAIPETRO:The situation here in Odessa is pretty quiet. I would say that what led up to this is a coalition of three distinct forces. One is the group that started at the end of November of last year, genuine civic frustration with the government’s decision to delay the signing of the EU Association Agreement. This was then seized upon by the parliamentary opposition, who joined belatedly and pressed the government for further concessions. And finally, the actual coup was accomplished thanks to the armed intervention of extreme nationalists, led by the Right Sector. And the fact that they were so instrumental in accomplishing this change of power has put them in the driver’s seat. From now on, whatever political decisions are arrived at will really be at the sufferance of the Right Sector.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Timothy Snyder, would you agree with this assessment of what’s taking place in Ukraine right now?
TIMOTHYSNYDER:I think parts of it are exactly right. I think I would disagree with certain parts of it. For one thing, when it comes to the question of how these changes came about, it’s a little bit reductionist just to mention opposition politicians, the right wing in Europe. The movement—the protest movement at the Maidan included millions of people in Kiev and all around the country. It included people from all walks of life, both genders. It included people from—included Muslims. It included Jews. It included professionals. It included working-class people. And the main demand of the movement the entire time was something like normality, the rule of law. And the reason why this demand could bring together such people of different political orientations, such different regional backgrounds, is that they were faced up against someone, the previous president, Yanukovych, whose game was to monopolize both financial and political as well as violent power in one place. The constitution, the legitimacy of which is now contested, was violated by him multiple times, and most of the protesters agree to that.
The second thing that I would modify a bit would be this idea that what happened is a coup, where now somehow everything is determined by the right. The Parliament does not—is not represented. Nobody from the Right Sector is in Parliament. The people who are making the decisions in Parliament come from the conventional political parties. If you look at the people who are on top, who are they? The acting president is from the southeast. He’s a Russian speaker. He’s a Baptist pastor, by the way. The two candidates for president—Klitschko and Tymoshenko—are both Russian speakers. Klitschko studied in Kiev. Tymoshenko is from the southeast. Let’s look at the power ministries. If you were a right-wing revolutionary, this is the first thing you go for. Who now occupies the power ministries? The defense minister is a Russian speaker who is actually of Roma origin, of Gypsy origin. The interior minister is half-Russian, half-Armenian. And the minister of internal affairs is a Russian speaker from the far southeast, from Zaporizhia. So, it seems extremely unlikely to me that this government is something which could possibly have been dictated by nationalists from western Ukraine. This government, if anything, is tilted towards the south and towards the east.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you think this could lead to a split between East and West Ukraine, Professor Snyder?
TIMOTHYSNYDER:No, on the contrary. The one thing which could lead to a split—sorry, the one thing that could lead to a split between East and West Ukraine would be some kind of intervention from the outside. We have—we have good polling data, taken over the course of the last 20 years, from all regions of Ukraine. In no region of Ukraine do more than 4 percent of the population express a wish to leave the country. I’m pretty sure in most states of the United States the percentage would be much higher than that. The normal response is about 1 percent.
Ukraine is a diverse country, but diversity is supposed to be a good thing. It’s a multinational state in which both this revolution and the people who oppose this revolution have various kinds of ethnic identifications, various kinds of political commitments. The person who started the demonstrations in November was a Muslim. The first people who came were university students from Kiev. The next people who came were Red Army veterans. When the regime started to kill people, the first person who was killed was an Armenian. The second person who was killed was a Bielorussian. In the sniper massacre of last week, which is what led to the change of power, which is what directly led to the change of power, one of the people who was killed was a left-wing ecologist Russian speaker from Kharkiv, Yevhen Kotlyar. Another was a Pole. The people who took part in this protest represent the variety of the country. The people who oppose these protests also come from various parts of the country. This is an essentially political dispute.
And I think the good news is that once Yanukovych was removed, violence ceased, and now we are on a political track in which power is no longer in the hands of an interior minister who is killing people and instead is within the chambers of Parliament. Parliament has renewed the 2004 constitution, which makes the system a parliamentary system, and has called for elections in May. And in those elections, people from all over the country will be able to express themselves in a normal post-revolutionary way. And then we’ll see where things stand.
AMYGOODMAN:Last week,Democracy Now!spoke to Russia scholarStephen Cohen, who said Ukraine is essentially two different countries.
STEPHENCOHEN:Ukraine is splitting apart down the middle, because Ukraine is not one country, contrary to what the American media, which speaks abouttheUkraine andtheUkrainian people. Historically, ethnically, religiously, culturally, politically, economically, it’s two countries. One half wants to stay close to Russia; the other wants to go West. We now have reliable reports that the anti-government forces in the streets—and there are some very nasty people among them—are seizing weapons in western Ukrainian military bases. So we have clearly the possibility of a civil war.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Stephen Cohen. Nicolai Petro, would you agree?
NICOLAIPETRO:Professor Cohen is right that there are very serious differences between the regions, and they go deep to the historical memory of not just what World War II was about, but what the end of the Russian Empire was about, what the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland, the parts of Ukraine that were under it, were about. Professor Snyder is, however, also correct on the fact that much of the country does not want to dissolve. There is a commitment to being Ukrainian. And it would be indeed to everyone’s advantage here if the country—if the Parliament really did reach out to the segments of the population that are not—that have been, effectively, disenfranchised by the last coup. And, however, I would tend to disagree, because the first steps, within 24 hours, that they’ve taken are exactly the opposite.
Let me give you an example. The repeal of the law allowing Russian to be used locally, that’s the main irritant in east-west relations within the Ukraine; the introduction of a resolution to outlaw the Communist Party of the Ukraine, which effectively is the only remaining opposition party in Parliament; the consolidation of the powers of the speaker of the Parliament and the acting president in a single individual, giving him greater powers than allowed under any Ukrainian constitution; of course, the call for the arrest of the president. Now we have, effectively, a Parliament that rules without any representation from the majority party, since most of the deputies of the east and the south of the country are afraid to set foot in Parliament. Meanwhile, all across the country, headquarters of parties are being sacked by their opponents. This is the stage which we have for the elections for May 25th. Will they be fair? There’s no money, according to the prime—the acting president and speaker. Vigilante militias routinely attack and disperse public gatherings they disapprove of. News broadcasts—yesterday Inter was interrupted by forces claiming to speak for the people. What do you think?
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going break and then come back to this discussion and talk about the significance of the release of the former prime minister, who was imprisoned and brought back in a wheelchair to Independence Square, where she made her re-emergence, this as the current president—the past president was fleeing Kiev. We’re talking to Nicolai Petro, professor of politics, University of Rhode Island, speaking to us from Odessa in Ukraine. We’re also speaking with Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University. He’s today in Vienna, Austria. Stay with us.
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Well, I’m Amy Goodman. This isDemocracy Now!And we’re talking about the crisis in the Ukraine. We’re still with Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. He is in Vienna, Austria. His latestpieceforThe New York Review of Booksis titled "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." And with us from Odessa, Ukraine, is Nicolai Petro, professor of politics at University of Rhode Island.
I want to turn to comments made by the former prime minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, following her release from jail on Saturday. She was addressing Maidan protesters in Kiev.
YULIATYMOSHENKO:[translated] I know that all together we will be able to do it, and I personally will never allow anyone to let you down. I will never allow not a single politician, not a single official, to even touch nor even lay one of their fingers on your honor, on your life. Know that nothing in my life will be more important. May God give you good health. May you be happy in your country, and then all these sacrifices will not be in vain. Glory to Ukraine!
AMYGOODMAN:That’s the former Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Timothy Snyder, the significance of her release, how long she was held in prison, what she represents?
TIMOTHYSNYDER:Well, she was a political prisoner. She was the head of the major opposition party to Yanukovych’s party. She lost the last presidential elections to Yanukovych by a relatively narrow margin. For many years, she and Yanukovych were the two dominant figures in Ukrainian political life. So, obviously, most human rights observers, most governments in the West have been calling for her release for quite a long time. It’s a good thing that she was released. It’s a step towards the return of the rule of law in Ukraine.
What it means in political terms, I think, is rather more complicated. She has not been a part of these revolutionary events. She came to them at the very end. And what she said to the protesters in the passage you played is rather curious and, in a way, pre-revolutionary and anachronistic. I think the sense of the Maidan is that there is this—there is a civil society. They’re self-organizing people who can stay and occupy a place in the middle of the winter for weeks upon end, which means soup kitchens. It means people cleaning up. It means people in hospitals. It means doctors. It means journalists. It means a movement in which millions of people took part. They’re not asking for someone to take care of them. In a way, that’s the old-style politics. And I think many people rightly associate Tymoshenko with Yanukovych and with politics of an old style. So it’s not clear to me that her return will be as significant politically as it might seem at the very beginning. This, of course, remains to be seen. I would stress, of course, that Tymoshenko, like everyone—virtually everyone else we’re talking about, is a Russian speaker from the southeast of the country, so, again there, it’s not a matter of west versus east.
AMYGOODMAN:Speaking on Sunday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned Russia against sending in troops to Ukraine.
SUSANRICE:That would be a grave mistake. It’s not in the interest of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see the country split. It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence return and the situation escalate. There is not an inherent contradiction, David, between a Ukraine that has long-standing historic and cultural ties to Russia and a modern Ukraine that wants to integrate more closely with Europe. These need not be mutually exclusive.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Nicolai Petro, your response?
NICOLAIPETRO:Well, she’s right, but I don’t see what—the discussion of the armed forces seems cavalier. I mean, no one’s even thinking or talking about that. I’d like to chime in, if I may, on the Tymoshenko question that you asked, and agree with Professor Snyder’s assessment. At least in this area of Ukraine, the south, she seems to not have any resonance. And the perspective is that this is very much—her appearance is very much a blast from the past, if you will, sort of things that have—we’ve all gone through that before. And the hope is that there can be more dramatic changes. A little bit of a disconcerting element to this is her usage of the familiar Svoboda refrain now from World War II, "Hail to Ukraine," which is becoming sort of the routine greeting for the revolutionaries now.
AMYGOODMAN:What is—right now the Olympics are ending. How does Putin see the situation? They’ve pulled the ambassador back from Ukraine, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine back. Professor Petro, what would you say Putin sees in what has taken place? Is he concerned this will happen next in Russia?
NICOLAIPETRO:Oh, no, no, I don’t think that at all. What I think is, when people watch what’s happening here in Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union, they’re saying, "There but for the grace of God, you know, go we." This is a very—a cautionary tale, if you will, against chaos and corruption, as well, leading to these sorts of extremes. Whether—President Putin has already declared the government’s willingness to support Ukraine, to see the country prosper, and so far the only monetary—and it’s worth pointing out, the only monetary contribution on the table right now is the $15 billion that have been offered in bonds and, in addition, even more significantly, the reduction in the price of natural gas that Ukraine is buying from Russia right now. Whether or not Europe or the United States or the International Monetary Fund will come up with anything comparable is much to be hoped for, but right now there’s a lot of dithering on the part of the West.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Timothy Snyder, your assessment of what this means for Putin right now?
TIMOTHYSNYDER:Yeah, I would agree completely that he has no immediate reason to worry that this will repeat itself in Russia. Russia is not Ukraine. But in a way, the fact that Russia is not Ukraine has been the problem for Russian foreign policy. The Russian money which was offered to Ukraine was offered as an alternative to the trade deal with the European Union, but it seems very likely that there was a price. The major package of $15 billion, which was referred to, preceded—and I think it’s no coincidence—the laws on the Russian model, for example, forcing non-governmental civil society organizations to register themselves as foreign agents, laws which ban freedom of expression, laws which turn people who manifested on the streets into extremists, which of course paves the way for martial law and such things. The whole package of laws on the 16th of January was the result. That failed. That made the protests much more aggressive and much larger. Then, when the Russians finally did release $2 billion of that, it was just a matter of days before the sniper attacks last week, which led to the political change that we’re talking about. So, the Russians did put money on the table, but there was a price. The price was to try to make Ukraine more like Russia. That has now failed, it seems, so the Russians have something to contemplate.
With the European Union, it has to be much more complicated. The European Union is not a petrol state which can just offer money here and there where it wants, the way that—the way that Russian is. The European Union has to have guarantees that the money that’s spent will be in exchange for constitutional reform, in exchange for free elections—I completely agree about the significance of that, including the importance of the participation of electoral observers—and in exchange for thoroughgoing local reform which would make corruption—and I also agree about the significance of corruption in Ukraine—that will make corruption much less likely. Those discussions, however, are already underway. The European Union is about to announce its package. TheIMFhas already expressed its willingness. I completely agree that those things are essential.
Ukraine has been brought to a—by its president, to a state of near bankruptcy. Yanukovych literally sat on gold toilets in his ridiculously extravagant residence. This is a country which needs to have not only political change, but financial backing for that political exchange—for that political change. Otherwise, it’s not going to be able to happen. I would also stress that only financial backing of parliamentary democracy is the thing which can keep the extremes from making their way towards the center, but I think people in the West understand that now.
AMYGOODMAN:Nicolai Petro, there is an interesting picture inThe New York Timestoday, theheadline, "Fresh From Prison, a Former Prime Minister Returns to the Political Stage," and it is a picture of Tymoshenko, and she is flanked by both the American ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the European Union’s Jan Tombinski. Talk about the United States in all of this. We have played the clips of Victoria Nuland talking about who she wants in government and not, top diplomatic official in charge of this area that includes Ukraine, that these—this taped conversation that somehow made it to YouTube. What about U.S.’s role? Of course, she was giving out cookies to the protesters on the front lines a while ago.
NICOLAIPETRO:Well, I must say that the United States, in my—from my perspective, tried to play a role in the reconciliation process but was not terribly effective, because it does not have the necessary leverage. That is in—the only country that has the leverage and the resources and knows the situation well is Russia. So, if there is a country with deep knowledge of this area, I would say it would be Russia, and I would hope that we would listen to the advice of our Russian partners in this.
But I do also believe there was an error in the assessment of one of the more significant, I think, and ultimately determinant groups in accomplishing the revolution. I clearly have to disagree with Professor Snyder. I ascribe a much greater role to the Right Sector, as they call themselves, the spearhead of the revolution. And given the hope of many in the West regarding this revolution, I think it’s especially important to note that this group is critical of party politics in principle. It is skeptical of what it calls imperial ambitions of both Moscow and the West to the Ukraine. The former are easier to understand. The latter try to sap the Ukrainian national spirit with all this talk of dialogue and compromise. So what they hope to see emerge out of this turmoil is a new Ukraine, as they put it, quote, "burnished by the flames of national revolution," able to stand up in opposition to the democratizers and their local lackeys. And I think there has been a strong underestimation of the influence of this right nationalist movement, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of street cred, in terms of the vision that they can offer which can inspire young people, really, especially in the West, but throughout the country, in terms of, you know, maybe we don’t even need a parliamentary system; let’s just do something that is more decisive and dramatic and can actually maybe move the country forward in a way, because it’s been stagnating for 20 years now.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Petro, when you talk about the right, who exactly do you mean, for an American audience who knows very little about Ukraine?
NICOLAIPETRO:There is a parliamentary party now, which could be called a right-wing party, and that is the Svoboda party. They’re the ones who, as I mentioned, convened the extraordinary session of Parliament that led to the ouster of the president. Now, how to exactly describe them, I will leave that to Professor Snyder. But I would simply note that there was an EU Parliament resolution of December 13, 2012, that drew attention specifically to the Svoboda party and called it racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic. Now, compared to Svoboda, the Right Sector, which has been active in all of the violence in the streets, is more radical, more militarily organized and more willing to use violence.
AMYGOODMAN:Final words, Professor Timothy Snyder, in understanding this, and who the right is and—both opposed to Russia and opposed to the West?
TIMOTHYSNYDER:Thanks. Yeah, I mean, as Professor Petro probably knows, that’s the subject of my specialization. And, of course, I share his concern. Svoboda takes its example from the history of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, an interwar, extreme-right party which I would not hesitate to call fascist. The Pravi sector also refers to the same historical symbolism. Both of them speak of the necessity for a national revolution, especially Pravi sector. They are significant. They are less significant than the far right in Austria, where I am now. They’re less significant than the far right in France. They’re less significant than the far right in the Netherlands. But they matter.
And I think the crucial thing is to understand that they become more important when the system becomes a dictatorship. When the leader of the center-right—that’s Tymoshenko—is put in prison, then the far right of course is going to benefit as a protest party. When the situation is revolutionary, and these are the people who are willing to risk their lives, of course they’re going to become more important, which means that for all of us who are concerned about the return of normality, stability, the rule of law, it’s very important that this—that the revolutionary character of this situation pass now into a normal political process, where we can agree or disagree about who should rule and who shouldn’t rule, but where decisions are made in Parliament, where decisions are made in the ballot box, and where decisions are not made in the streets.
In Kiev today, the metros are running. In Kiev today, there is no looting. The place is remarkably peaceful. The presidential residences are being visited peacefully, rather than looter-sacked as in other revolutions, or even the United States when we have a weather problem. The country is in an orderly position. If we want to keep both extremes at bay—the extreme from the right, which I am indeed worried about, as well as extremists on the other side, with their support from Russia—the most important thing to do is to back parliamentary democracy, back early elections, do the small things that we in the West can do to make sure that that’s the outcome—a restoration of the rule of law, restoration of a parliamentary constitution, restoration of democracy. These are things that we can help achieve, and the Ukrainians themselves have already done the hard part. That’s where I would end.
AMYGOODMAN:Timothy Snyder, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of history at Yale University, speaking to us from Vienna, Austria. His book,Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin; his latestpieceinThe New York Review of Books, "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." And Nicolai Petro, thanks for joining us from the Ukrainian city of Odessa. He’s a professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island.
This isDemocracy Now!When we come back, we go to Britain to speak with Luke Harding. He says he has been surveilled as he wrote the book about Edward Snowden,The Snowden Files. We’ll find out what happened. Stay with us.
The Ukraine's new deputy national security director urged March 1 that Russia's most feared terrorist take action against their mutual opponent.
In a shocking statement largely ignored by the Western media, Dmitry Yarosh asked the fugitive Chechen Doku Umarov to take advantage of the "unique chance to win" arising from disturbances in the Ukraine. Yarosh was appointed to the Ukraine's new government after leading the Right Sector group of ultra-rightists, perhaps the best organized and otherwise most effective of the street fighters who topped the Ukraine's government last week.
Umarow, described as Russia's equivalent to Osama bin Laden, has not been reported seen or heard since last summer, when he urged terror attacks to prevent the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He is shown in a file photo courtesy of Creative Commons and Wikipedia.
In an interview on RT March 1, I described Yarosh's request to the terrorist as dangerous because it is so inflammatory and comes from an official of the new government. But the Yarosh statement serves also as a valuable illustration to Western audiences of the violent tendencies of the street demonstrators who took power after they were encouraged by the West.
Meanwhile, Russian troops deployed through pro-Russian Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine hosting a vital naval base of the Russians.
Russian troops also massed near the Ukraine border at a reported strength of 150,000. Crimea is the tan section in the Black Sea on the adjoining map courtesy of Wikimedia.
United States and allied Western officials threatened reprisals against Russia but appeared to have few military or other meaningful options without risking world war. A war-weary American public is hardly likely to support a new one that could escalate to a tragedy beyond anyone's understanding or control. Also, any action by the United Nations Security council would be subject to a Russian veto, and "a coalition of the willing" is unlikely for similar reasons. Even a down-sized Russia is not Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
President Obama and allied powers denounced the Russians Saturday following a mid-day meeting at the White House of such top administration officials as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
However, the actions so far of the Obama team show them as seeming unprepared for what appears to have been the most logical outcome of the West-orchestrated overthrow of the Ukraine's elected government. Republican leaders had little more to add aside from recriminations against Democrats for not acting more aggressively and spending more money on war-preparations and offers of aid.
More generally, the vast suffering created in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria all began with optimistic rhetoric from Western leaders about the benefits of collective action to support such attractive-sounding goals as national security, peace, democracy, and human rights.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was among those who followed that pattern March 1 as she warned Russia against interference in the Ukraine.
Curiously lost in most U.S. coverage, however, has been the clear trail of United States and other Western interference in the Ukraine leading to coup last week overthrowing elected President .
AS long as corporate media continues to give a one-sided view of the Ukraine, we are running Russian Television. There are some facts you need to know.
We are using the Guy Fawkes Mask as our illustration and will continue to do so when this is the topic.It is one long repetition.Any program can find someone stupid and opinionated enough to argue that the NSA is a good thing, that nothing wrong is going on, and life is just a bowl of, well pick your fruit.
Perhaps the most meaningful part of this is Daniel Ellsberg’s last statement “This is ridiculous.”
It was back in 1998 that Enemy of the State came out.Back then, it was labeled as “Science Fiction” by those who wanted to protect the NSA.Well, Snowden and many others before have since debunked that myth.The movie should be up for an Emmy this year.
In the movie, Gene Hackman talks about all the things that the government can and does do, and ends with “and that was 20 years ago,” putting all this back in 1978, during Carter.Well, think about it.I remember photos coming to the earth in the early 80s from a computer ranted as a 16k type.Well, imagine how much we have developed when we are regularly taking about terabytes, not kilobytes.
Anybody remember AM radios with tubes in them?Ok, how about transistors?Semi-conductors so advanced that it no longer made sense to try to repair a radio?Chips?It makes no sense to try to keep up with it.You are not going to fix it.Right now, everything is stored.The 4th Amendment is so 18th Century, don’t you think?
Well, the mask adopted by Anonymous is 17th Century.Best of luck to them.Me?I’m going back to the 16th.
Later now.Comcast, I thought, was the absolute worst.Then I heard that time Warner was.Now Comcast has bought time-Warner, meaning 2/3 of the market.Time for net-neutrality, anyone?
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014
Debate: Was Snowden Justified? FormerNSACounsel Stewart Baker vs. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
Former National Security Agency lawyer Stewart Baker and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg join us for a debate on Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA’s massive spying apparatus in the United States and across the globe. Snowden’s leaks to The Guardian and other media outlets have generated a series of exposés onNSAsurveillance activities — from its collection of American’s phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. Partly as a consequence of the government’s response to Snowden’s leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annual survey of press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces possible espionage charges if he returns to the United States. Baker, a formerNSAgeneral counsel and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, is a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson and author of "Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism." Ellsberg is a former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him "the most dangerous man in America."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Today, we host a debate on former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and his disclosure of the massive spying apparatus theNSAoperates in the United States and across the globe. Snowden’s leaks toThe Guardianand other media outlets have generated a series of exposés onNSAsurveillance activities, from its collection of Americans’ phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. The latest revelations based on the leaks were reported by journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald with First Look Media. They show how theNSAhas secretly assisted in U.S. military andCIAassassinations overseas by using metadata analysis and cellphone-tracking technologies—the unreliable tactic that has resulted in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, theNSAhas defended its activities as essential in the fight against terrorism. In January, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper attacked Snowden while speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and called for him to return all stolen documents to theNSAafter causing what he called major harm to U.S. security. Clapper also suggested the journalists who have published Snowden’s leaks are his accomplices.
JAMESCLAPPER:Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed, to prevent even more damage to U.S. security. But what I do want to speak to, as the nation’s senior intelligence officer, is the profound damage that his disclosures have caused and continue to cause. As a consequence, the nation is less safe, and its people less secure. What Snowden has stolen and exposed has gone way, way beyond his professed concerns with so-called domestic surveillance programs.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Meanwhile, Snowden has repeatedly maintained he’s no longer in possession of any of the documents he took from the NSA—
AMYGOODMAN:—having passed them on to journalists to report at their discretion. TheeditorsofThe New York Timesrecently urged clemency for Snowden, writing, quote, "Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," theTimeswrote.
Partly as a consequence of the government’s response to Snowden’s leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annualsurveyof press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces espionage charges if he returns to the United States. In his first television interview with German channelARDlate last month, Snowden talked about how perceptions of the leaks among U.S. government officials have changed.
EDWARDSNOWDEN:What we saw initially in response to the revelations was sort of a circling of the wagons of government around the National Security Agency. Instead of circling around the public and protecting their rights, the political class circled around the security state and protected their rights. What’s interesting is, though that was the initial response, since then, we’ve seen a softening. We’ve seen the president acknowledge that when he first said, "We’ve drawn the right balance. There are no abuses," we’ve seen him and his officials admit that there have been abuses. There have been thousands of violations of the National Security Agency and other agencies’ authorities every single year.
AMYGOODMAN:Edward Snowden, speaking to German television last month.
Well, to discuss the significance and implications of Snowden’s leaks, we’re hosting a debate. In Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Baker is the author ofSkating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism.
And here in New York, Daniel Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him "the most dangerous man in America." The papers were published in several newspapers, includingThe New York TimesandThe Washington Post, and later published as a book. They were only officially declassified and released in 2011.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!Stewart Baker, I’m sorry you’re snowed in at home, but why don’t we begin with you. Can you talk about what Edward Snowden did and if you think he is a traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:What Edward Snowden did was quite deliberately change jobs to gather as much, perhaps millions of documents, from as many places as he could around the National Security Agency, but involving other agencies, as well. He stored them on a computer and handed them out to—who exactly, we don’t know, but certainly to journalists, and with controls that probably make it likely that sophisticated intelligence agencies have been able to get access to them, and allowed them to be disclosed at the journalists’ discretion, more or less with some guidance from Snowden.
The result of that has been a massive disclosure of classified intelligence gathering that has hurt our ability to catch terrorists, to keep an eye on Iranian and North Korean and Chinese and Russian operations, and has done great diplomatic damage, as well. I think that, frankly, the way that those disclosures have occurred, it’s hard to view that as anything other than the intended result of his gathering that information and disclosing as he—disclosing it as he did. He certainly disclosed some information that sparked a debate in the United States. He did that in June, but he has continued to disclose documents for months thereafter, which have no obvious policy value in terms of a debate or a concern that the United States public should have, but which have done enormous damage. And so, at a minimum, I think he is someone who has violated U.S. law, done great damage, and should go to jail for it.
AMYGOODMAN:Traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:It remains to be seen. There have been people who have made the case, and in some cases fairly persuasively, that his leaks, and especially the most recent leaks, serve the interests of the country where he is located, and that either wittingly or because he was sort of tricked into it, he may have been serving Russia’s interest. That would make him a traitor, but I think that’s an unproven case.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:But what about his argument that given the extensive nature of the surveillance that was being conducted without the knowledge of the American people, that he had a moral responsibility to speak out and to at least spark this debate?
STEWARTBAKER:Well, you can’t—obviously, you cannot do intelligence gathering in the sunlight. You can’t tell the American people everything you’re doing in their name, because the process of telling them also tells your targets, and it tells Hezbollah, it tells al-Qaeda, it tells the North Koreans and the Iranians and the Russians and the Chinese exactly what you’re doing. And you can’t do that and continue to gather the intelligence. So there has to be a limit on what the public debates here.
There also has to be a limit on what the several million people who have clearances feel they’re free to disclose because they’ve decided that there’s a problem with the program. At the end of the day, all that Snowden says he did is he kind of made some oblique remarks to his superiors, saying, "Gee, do you think this would really look good inThe Washington Postif it were known?" And then he decided to release a million or two million or three million documents. There are whistleblower protections in U.S. law more than in any other countries’ law, but they provide a procedure: You need to go to the authorities, you need to go to Congress, you need to go to an inspector general, and raise your concerns there. He did none of that. And his view that this was illegal has turned out to be highly questionable.
All that said, yes, he has spurred a debate on that one program, and he could have spurred that debate on that one program with one document, the document that he released first. Everything he has done since then has simply caused damage. And the number of debates that have been spurred, and certainly the number of serious proposals for changing the current intelligence law, is close to zero.
AMYGOODMAN:That’s Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency. Dan Ellsberg, your assessment of Edward Snowden’s actions, and do you think he is a traitor or a patriot?
DANIELELLSBERG:I feel confident, as you in the clip showed earlier, that he’s no more a traitor than I am, and I’m not. The notion that he joinedNSAwith the intention to, earlier on, or theCIA, when he took the oath of service to the country earlier, that he did that with the intent to either harm the interests of the United States or to release any information or to harmNSAor to deprive it of secrecy, I think there’s no evidence for that whatever, and I believe it’s entirely false. He came to believe, as I did, having made those oaths initially and the promises of nondisclosure, which were not oaths, but they are contractual agreements not to do that, which he later violated, as I did—he made those in good faith, by everything known to me, and came to realize, I think, eventually, as he said, that a nondisclosure agreement in this case and the secrecy conflicted with his oath, so help me God, to defend and support the Constitution of the United States, and it was a supervening—a superseding authority there that it was his responsibility really to inform the public, because, as he said, he could see that no one else would do it.
He saw the head of theNSA, but also the director of the national intelligence, you quoted here, Clapper, lie to Congress. And actually, I think what he’s mostly revealed, in particular, is not that Mr. Clapper was violating his oath in the sense of trying to deceive Congress; Clapper knew that the false statements he was making, that they were not collecting data on millions—any data on millions of Americans, were false, but he knew that Congress knew they were false, the people he was talking to, the dozen, even the man who had asked the question, Senator Wyden. What we saw, what Snowden saw and what we all saw, was that we couldn’t rely on the so-called Oversight Committee of Congress to reveal, even when they knew that they were being lied to, and that’s because they were bound by secrecy,NSAsecrecy and their own rule. The secrecy system here, in other words, has totally corrupted the checks and balances on which our democracy depends.
And I think the—I am grateful to Snowden for having given us a constitutional crisis, a crisis instead of a silent coup, as after 9/11 an executive coup, or a creeping usurpation of authority. He has confronted us. He has revealed documents now that prove that the oversight process, both in the judiciary, in theFISC, the secret court, and the secret committees in Congress who keep their secrets from them, even when two of them, Wyden and Udall, felt that these were outrageous, were shocking, were probably unconstitutional, and yet did not feel that they could inform even their fellow colleagues or their staff of this. What Snowden has revealed, in other words, is a broken system of our Constitution, and he’s given us the opportunity to get it back, to retrieve our civil liberties, but more than that, to retrieve the separation of powers here on which our democracy depends.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:But, Daniel Ellsberg, what about Mr. Stewart’s—Mr. Baker’s remarks that he could have just released one document or two documents, that would have been sufficient to spur the kind of debate that we have now?
DANIELELLSBERG:He talked about revealing on one program. But I like the way you put it, because what I was confronted with, with the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, when I put out 4,000 pages to the newspapers and 3,000 other pages, top secret, to the Senate Foreign Intelligence—Foreign Relations Committee—there was no Intelligence Committee at that time—which I didn’t give to the newspapers at that time, when I saw the effects of that, it gave me a moral that I’ve been saying for 40 years. And I’ve been asking people: First, don’t do what I did. Don’t wait 'til the bombs are falling, if you know that we're being lied into a war. Don’t wait ’til thousands more have died, before you tell your truth to Congress and to the public.
But I would also say, by now, don’t tell it only to Congress. I gave it to Congress a year and a half before it came out. Senator Fulbright failed to bring the hearings that he promised me, on the grounds that he himself would be deprived of secret information from the Defense Department thereafter. So he waited for me to do it. If I didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to happen.
But the other thing I’ve been saying for years is, I want someone to put out enough documentation to make the case irrefutable. If you bring out one memo, 10 memos, you will hear, as we have heard when the first memos came out, "Oh, that was rescinded the next day. Oh, that just reflected one agency, one opinion." No, the Pentagon Papers showed—but, unfortunately, they were only history. I didn’t have current documents. If I had, I would have put those out instead of the history. But what they did show was that this was a pattern of decision making that went over four different presidents and was being repeated today. That took hundreds and thousands—thousands—of pages to reveal, and many of those pages didn’t reveal anything of great significance. I wanted it to be very clear I hadn’t censored them, I hadn’t taken out the one good reason for that war. Said, "Here’s the whole history. See if you could find a good reason for it."
What Snowden did, which I admire very much, is to put out enough material to show an entire pattern of behavior, and not just on one program, on a number of programs, with the implication there are many more and that Congress needs to look into this, but not in the way the intelligence committees have done. They’ve been thoroughly co-opted and corrupted by this process. There has to be a new congressional investigation, with new people on it, and that has to be pressed by the public. It will not happen by Congress alone.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re talking to Dan Ellsberg and Stewart Baker. Dan Ellsberg, perhaps most famous whistleblower in the United States, released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Stewart Baker is former general counsel for the National Security Agency. We’ll continue this debate in a moment.
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AMYGOODMAN:"The Paper Soldier" by the famous Russian poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, Bulat Okudzhava. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re hosting a debate on Edward Snowden, spying and the national security state.
In Washington, D.C., snowed in at home, we’re joined by Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. His tenure spanned from Clinton to Bush. He’s a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Baker is the author ofSkating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism.
Here in New York, Dan Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst, who became the country’s most famous whistleblower by leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971. This was thousands and thousands of pages that exposed the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, helping to end the Vietnam War.
Stewart Baker, do you think that Dan Ellsberg was a traitor?
STEWARTBAKER:No, but I think he is shockingly misrepresenting the facts and stating a proposition that has no place in a democracy. Mr. Ellsberg said—I had pointed out that Snowden changed jobs specifically to steal more documents. Dan Ellsberg says that’s false. I don’t know where he gets this. Snowden himself says he changed jobs from a contractor for Dell to a contractor at Booz Allen so that he could get more documents. And for Ellsberg to come on this program and simply look into the camera and say that’s false, calling me a liar, when the record is clear, suggests that he is either not paying attention or he doesn’t really care what the facts are.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, let him respond to that point, and then you can make your next one.
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, listen, I’ve—let me give the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Baker that he really isn’t listening to what I’m saying, when it comes to misrepresenting facts here. Of course, it’s the case that Snowden has said openly that he went to Booz Allen in order to get documents, that he—
STEWARTBAKER:Well, then why did you call that false? I heard you say that’s a false—
DANIELELLSBERG:Pardon me. Oh—
STEWARTBAKER:You accused me of lying to this program, when—
DANIELELLSBERG:Listen, stop talking so much, and listen for a minute.
STEWARTBAKER:—when you now admit that the facts are as I said.
DANIELELLSBERG:As I said, when he first worked as a consultant for years toNSA, and when he went—and when he joined theCIAearlier, it was with no intention of disclosing documents, and that the turning point came for him much later, after deciding that he had to sacrifice or risk—
STEWARTBAKER:But wait, just a second. Just a second.
DANIELELLSBERG:Listen, will you—
STEWARTBAKER:I heard you say that, and I accept that that’s a storyline that is not implausible. It may be true, or it may be something that he’s made up to—
DANIELELLSBERG:I’m agreeing with you that he joined Booz Allen—
STEWARTBAKER:But I want to go back to—you started that discussion by saying what Mr. Baker says is false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Look—
STEWARTBAKER:And then you told this different story. But why are you accusing me of lying, when in fact what I said was true, not false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Actually, I haven’t yet accused you of lying, Mr. Baker.
STEWARTBAKER:You—what? Well, you said my statement was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:No, I said that he did not joinCIAorNSAor be a consultant forNSAwith the intention of putting out documents. He later—
STEWARTBAKER:I heard you say "false." You said it was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Will you—will you lay off for a minute here and let me finish my sentence?
STEWARTBAKER:I’m sorry, you’re making up facts now. You know—
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah.
STEWARTBAKER:I ask, can you play back what he said? I heard him say that the statement was false.
DANIELELLSBERG:Let me say right away the statement is correct, as I’ve known and have never meant to deny, that he joined NS—that he joined Booz Allen in order to get documents he couldn’t have gotten otherwise, with the intent of putting them out. It was something, by the way, that I didn’t do. In a way, I regret it, but I didn’t go back to Washington to get more documents with the intention of putting them out. I went with the documents that I had authorized to have at the moment. Anyway, I agree with your point. I have not accused you of lying. But now let’s move to the question of just how much you know about the damage that you’ve asserted several times that he caused. I don’t—
STEWARTBAKER:Before we do that, I’d like to address your other point.
DANIELELLSBERG:Are you going to allow me to finish a sentence or not?
STEWARTBAKER:You’ve had plenty of time to explain that you didn’t mean to say that the statement was false, even though you said it, that you meant something else. But your broader theory, if I understand it right, is this doc—all these documents should have been released because they allow for a broader story, and that you can’t give it to Congress because they feel that there are certain programs they have to protect—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, let’s address that point. Let me address that point.
STEWARTBAKER:—in order to maintain the confidentiality of our intelligence methods.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, let me—will you—
STEWARTBAKER:You can’t give it to—
DANIELELLSBERG:Oh, well.
STEWARTBAKER:You can’t go higher in the chain, because they might decide to protect national security rather than blow the whistle. And so, every single person who works in the government or who has the ability to break into the government’s system gets to make the decision for themselves how many confidential, classified and various important programs should be disclosed to the people that we are targeting.
DANIELELLSBERG:Let me go right to the point you’re raising.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s a—
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s let—let’s let Dan Ellsberg—
STEWARTBAKER:That is basically saying, "I don’t have any faith in our democracy"—
AMYGOODMAN:Let’s let Dan Ellsberg respond to that, Stewart Baker.
STEWARTBAKER:—which, I suppose, is consistent with your statement—would you let me finish?
AMYGOODMAN:No, let’s let Dan Ellsberg respond.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s consistent with your statement—no, [inaudible].
DANIELELLSBERG:Let you finish? Let you finish your filibuster? I’m sorry.
AMYGOODMAN:We have a good amount of time here to have an extended discussion, so you will have time.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, yeah. OK, let me address the very important point of what else he could have done or should have done to reveal this. He learned, as I understand it, as he said—and I’ve been in touch with him—he learned from the example not only from me, and from Chelsea Manning, by the way, but from the experience of four or fiveNSAsenior officials—Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, Tom Drake and Bill Binney—who, between them, have 30 years’ average—30 years, some of them have 28, and some have 32—experience withNSAat the highest levels.
Each of them, separately and together, did exactly what you and, I think, the president has suggested they should have done: They went to their superiors in great detail when they thought the program, after 9/11—after you were out ofNSA, by the way, after—so, I’m giving you credit there—after 9/11, was unconstitutional and was dangerous, was unnecessary, and should be—should be modified or changed or dropped. They got no response from that, and their recommendations were simply ignored. They went to the IG, the inspector general. I believe some of them went to the inspector general, as well, of the Defense Department. They went to staff of the congressional offices, on a classified basis, to Diane Roark specifically, to complain about these, and offered to testify, by the way.
The result of their doing that was not only no change to programs that they knew were more protective of civil liberties and more effective at catching terrorists and could well have prevented 9/11, rather than the programs that were in effect. The effect of their doing that was to be suspected, wrongly, of having leaked all this information toThe New York Timesfor the revelations for which it got the Pulitzer Prize. They hadn’t. I would say they should have considered that. Anyway, what—they had not done that. Instead, they followed all these channels. The result of that was early morning raids by theFBIon each of them, in this suspicion that they might have been the leakers of this important information. And, in fact, one of them, Bill Binney, a diabetic with an amputated leg, first learned of the suspicion here when there was a knock on his shower door, where he was seated taking a shower, and opened the door to find anFBIagent pointing a gun at his head, and followed by eight hours of interrogation, and the removal, in all four cases, of all their computers, all their thumb drives, some of which they’ve never gotten back—no charges ever pressed against them. Tom Drake, one of the four here, as a result, was subject to a spurious, punitive prosecution with no valid basis, which led essentially to an apology from the judge in the end after he had been bankrupted.
Looking at that experience very specifically, Snowden knew that it would be foolish and hopeless for him to try to call attention to this within the channels. He did, I think, exactly right, and others should follow the same, not just when they disagree with policy or object to it, as the president has suggested, but when they feel that it’s unconstitutional, criminal—as, by the way, the years ofNSAwarrantless spying from 2001 to 2006 with no legal basis were criminal and unconstitutional—and leaked essentially by no one with documents. What Snowden has done is to provide the documents that prove, at last, what was done in the past was clearly illegal, and that that put in question the whole oversight procedure and the good faith ofNSAin binding itself to the Constitution. So, I think that he did what he should have done, as all four of thoseNSApeople, who did not do it, have said now, "He did it right. Our approach was hopeless."
STEWARTBAKER:So, I have served in government off and on a long time and at pretty senior levels, and the number of times that I have not persuaded the rest of the government to do things that I think it should do, even things I think it’s morally or legally compelled to do, are pretty substantial. This is the way government works. This is the way democracies work. Individual government employees do not get to say, "I think this is wrong, and therefore it must stop." You can raise it, and there are plenty of circumstances and plenty of stories of people who have raised issues that have been investigated and have led to changes.
I don’t know the specifics of the cases that you’re talking about. Maybe they were mistreated as a result of the suspicions aroused by what they did internally. But the fact that not every one of their complaints was validated is not surprising. No one in government gets what they want, not even the president. And to say, "Well, I didn’t get what I want, so I’m going to wreck this operation by disclosing it," is a remarkable and fundamentally anti-democratic view. It’s—the president has called it "narcissistic," and I think that’s not wrong.
There comes a point at which you say, "I have done what I can to raise this, and I have been assured that in fact this is not illegal." And the things that he was complaining about had been through court, had been through Congress. We can argue about whether they are legal or not now, or whether they should be legal. I think it’s fair to say that they were blessed by the courts at the time. The things that he disclosed, that were news as opposed to the things that were history—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:—were not unlawful at the time. It’s pretty clear the Congress and the courts had approved those things. They may become changed, they may, as a result of this debate, but that’s very different from saying, "I am doing something illegal, and my conscience requires me to disclose it."
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, let me—you’ve raised—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me just ask Mr. Baker—
DANIELELLSBERG:You’ve raised important questions, sir. Let me address both of them. First of all, when it comes to being named—called names—narcissistic, megalomaniac and traitor, which is a much more serious name—I’ve had that experience, from the president and the vice president. They were mistaken. But those names are what every whistleblower gets, essentially, whatever the conditions. And if you’re not willing to be called names, I think you can’t carry out your responsibilities to the Constitution.
Now, getting to that, if you’re telling me that there have been times when you dutifully, with your agreement on secrecy, accepted, without exposing to anyone else, policies that, as I heard you, were immoral—and I think you may have said illegal, but let’s just say illegal—I respectfully say you were mistaken, you were, in your judgment. You were acting as nearly all bureaucrats and officials do in that face: They protect their jobs, their careers, their clearances, and indeed their promise, and they don’t think—to keep secrets, and they don’t think twice about what their responsibility might be beyond their responsibility to their agency or to the president.
If you say you’re not familiar with those fourNSAnames I had, my first thought would be you haven’t followed this very closely. The second thought would be that they haven’t testified before Congress, because despite their extreme expertise in this field, no Congress committee has wanted to hear from them under oath, which they’re urging—which I urge the public to urge committees to bring these people and tell them under oath. If they are mistaken, let them be—let that be exposed. But the fact is that they found that this was unconstitutional. And I think they now feel they didn’t do all that they should have. And if you were in a similar position, then I have to say to you that, like most people in that position, you didn’t do everything you could, just as I didn’t, just as I didn’t when I first had the documents in my hands.
STEWARTBAKER:That’s right. I didn’t do everything I could, because some of the things I could do would be profoundly damaging to the United States. And I said I have done what I can—
DANIELELLSBERG:OK.
STEWARTBAKER:—inside the system to raise this issue, and it is going to be resolved. It’s been resolved by people who have made calls that are different from mine, who are closer to the facts, who have more facts. Sometimes you have to make that decision because the alternative is to say no secret is safe as long as one person in government does not [inaudible]—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me—let me step in.
DANIELELLSBERG:I would never single you out—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Dan, one second.
DANIELELLSBERG:Go ahead. Go ahead.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me step in. Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:—they are going to disclose it because it makes them feel better. That’s what happened here.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker—
STEWARTBAKER:And, in fact, what he disclosed is far more than just one secret. He disclosed massive amounts of stuff that have sparked no debates at all here, but nonetheless continue to do great damage to the United States. How can that possibly have been the right outcome?
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, one question for you. As a formerNSAgeneral counsel, I mean, you say that you did raise some concerns during your tenure.
DANIELELLSBERG:Yeah, what were they?
JUANGONZÁLEZ:What you have seen since—
STEWARTBAKER:Well, or, look, I’m not—I’m not—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Wait, wait, let me finish my question, please.
DANIELELLSBERG:Fat chance.
STEWARTBAKER:I’m not suggesting I—I realize that—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Yeah, let me ask you this: What you have seen revealed since then—
STEWARTBAKER:Hang on, hang on. I keep hearing—you’re misinterpreting my—excuse me, you’re misinterpreting what I said. I was not saying that back when I wasNSAgeneral counsel, I saw things that I thought were illegal and raised them and—inside, but did not go outside. There are many calls—and I’ve been in government many times—many calls that are made by people above you in government where you wonder if they’re doing the right thing, and you have to recognize that you don’t always have all the facts that they have. And I’ve done it since I’ve been out of government, where I’ve learned of things that I thought were wrong.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:OK, but, Mr. Baker—Mr. Baker, my question—
STEWARTBAKER:But I did not—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Let me ask my question to you.
STEWARTBAKER:Once I had raised them, I could not stop—I could not just—
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, let me ask my question to you.
STEWARTBAKER:Yeah.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:From what you have seen since the Snowden disclosures, and what you know of of the operations of theNSAwhen you were there, is there anything that has been disclosed that raises questions to you about whether your government was—our government was properly conducting surveillance, its surveillance responsibilities?
STEWARTBAKER:At bottom, no. I think that the agency has an incredible commitment to following the law, a commitment they’ve had since the ’70s, the last set of reforms that were adopted. And they may have done things that, in retrospect, some courts would say were not proper, but they have almost always done those things with careful legal analysis and with the approval, where appropriate, of the courts. And so, you know, people can disagree about whether the courts got it right or wrong, but I thinkNSAhas acted in a fundamentally law-abiding way. And the institution that I knew, and that I still see, is committed to that, because they recognize that the powers they have are extraordinary and need to be used in democratically legitimate ways. They have worked very hard to do that. And Snowden just has blown those things without any regard for their efforts to stay within the law and their commitment to the law.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to break and come back to this discussion. Our guests are Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel, and Dan Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He leaked those papers to, first,The New York Times. This isDemocracy Now!We’ll be back in a minute.
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AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Before we continue our debate on what Edward Snowden did and what should happen to him, I just have some breaking news on a person we’ve been covering over the last week. Karim Khan, a Pakistani drone activist and journalist, who had been missing since being abducted from his home February 5th, has been released. Khan had been set to travel to Europe to speak against the U.S. drone wars. His brother and son were killed by a drone in 2009. The legal charity Reprieve says he was released earlier today, two days after the Lahore High Court ordered Pakistani forces to produce him from custody by next week. You can go to our website at democracynow.org to see ourcoverageof Mr. Khan from this week’s broadcast.
But now we continue our debate between Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel—he was appointed to theNSAby President George H.W. Bush, and then served, appointed by President George W. Bush, to the Department of Homeland Security. We’re also joined by Daniel Ellsberg, former Pentagon andRANDCorporation analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Dan Ellsberg, Stewart Baker says he was not, in response to Juan’s question, surprised by what was exposed by Edward Snowden, and I also want to make just one point on the issue of Snowden continuing to release information. According to Edward Snowden, he gave the documents—we believe it’s about 1.7 million documents—to the journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. He says when he went to Russia, he didn’t have the documents, and he is not the one who is continuing to release them. But the journalists who have access to them are, one by one, writing stories in various papers, delving into what is in these documents. Dan Ellsberg?
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, a couple of things here, Amy. First of all, the 1.7 million figure, which obviously is far more than he could possibly have looked at, let alone read, is a government statement. They don’t know what he released to the journalists. Neither Mr. Baker nor I actually know. But I am informed—well, first, Snowden has said that it’s wrong by at least an order of magnitude tenfold, which is another—
AMYGOODMAN:Which way?
DANIELELLSBERG:Which way, yes, very good. That he released less than 10 percent of what they’re talking about, and that everything he did release to the journalists was something that he had looked at and formed a judgment that they ought to have it. But he didn’t want them to rely on his judgment alone. He could have put them all on the web by himself, very much, or sequentially. On the contrary, he said over and over, "I am not releasing a single document," which he has not. He said every document should have the judgment of a staff of trained journalists, to use their judgment on that.
Second, in every case of every story that has appeared so far—and apparently Mr. Baker believes that there has been great damage from those already, for which the journalists would be also responsible—every story has been checked withNSAby bothThe Guardianand byThe Washington Post. In every case, they have made objections. Not all of the objections have been followed by the newspapers. But in almost every case that they’ve printed, they have followed objections as to sources and methods that would actually damage the United States or our interests. As Snowden has said, he had access—he had knowledge of the clandestine whereabouts ofNSAlistening posts all over the world, had neither copied those nor given them to journalists, which he could have, because that would harm our intelligence apparatus, which he believes in and which I believe in. Of course there must be intelligence, and of course there must be secrecy about it. So he has made that judgment. I understand that Glenn Greenwald, for example, has demanded an agreement from every newspaper source to which he’s given documents that they check their stories withNSAfor sensitive material. Now, when Mr. Clapper—oh, I’m sorry, when Mr.—
AMYGOODMAN:Baker, Stewart Baker.
DANIELELLSBERG:Baker, thank you. When Mr. Baker says that there—over and over, that there has been great damage here, I ask him: How does he know that? Based on what? Now, possibly he still is reading classified material as a consultant or someone, and maybe not. If not, he has—I wonder what his basis is. My guess is, he’s accepting at face value the statements of Mr. Clapper or of others. Why would you do that? There’s no basis for that.
I have two questions. I have two questions for Mr. Baker, actually, which are both susceptible of yes-or-no questions. They’re very short, and I hope he will not filibuster. One—let me say one thing about background to give him credit, if I may. He was general counsel atNSAin the ’90s, before 9/11, when, according to Kirk Wiebe and others, theNSAwas observing what they called the First Commandment—thou shall not spy on Americans, thou shall not listen to Americans or collect their material without an individualized court order with probable cause—and that they observed that. Wiebe has said that for some 20 years of their 70 years in existence, they were within the law and the Constitution—not earlier, under Johnson or Nixon, and not later. So the two questions are—but he may have—Mr. Baker may have an idealized picture of how this system works from having experienced it before 9/11.
Here’s the two questions. One, if he had been general counsel to Mr. Clapper, when he faced Congress and told them—was asked—was asked, "Are we collecting any data at all on millions of Americans?" would he have encouraged Mr. Clapper to give, as a counsel, the answer that he did give, "No," which Clapper later explained, after Snowden’s disclosure, was, quote, "the least untruthful" answer he could have given, or would he have advised him otherwise, perhaps to go into closed session or something?
And the second is, if he had been general counsel of theNSAin 2001 to 2006, during which there was no legal basis for criminal, unconstitutional, warrantless [inaudible], what would his judgment have been? And if it had been not to do that, and had been overridden, would he have simply accepted that, like his colleagues, or might he have considered telling someone other than the intelligence committees?
AMYGOODMAN:Stewart Baker, those are two questions for you. Why don’t you begin with the first?
STEWARTBAKER:So, I don’t want to be accused of filibustering, but some of these answers do require a little bit more context. I think everyone would agree that Clapper’s answer to that question was not the right thing to say. That said, it was a question designed quite specifically to result in the compromise of the 215 program. That is to say, there was nobody asking the question, nobody answering the question, who didn’t already know the answer to that question. What they could not do is tell al-Qaeda or the American people about it without telling al-Qaeda. What he should have said is something that dodged the question. But it was cleverly designed by Senator Wyden so that, having asked the question, "Are you collecting information on millions of Americans?" to say, "I can only answer that in classified session," answers the question, as well. So, it was—
DANIELELLSBERG:So what would he have advised—what would you have advised?
STEWARTBAKER:—designed to put him in a position where he could neither answer or refuse to answer without exposing the program. So he came up with a compromise that was trying to, I think, interpret the notion of collection as, "Are you spying on Americans?" which he felt he could comfortably say we are not, except where we have court orders or where we’ve inadvertently collected the information. That was—I think when you read the transcript, it’s hard to see that as a responsive answer, and he didn’t even gracefully do that. But I think it’s fair to point out that this was not some campaign of lying. This was a campaign of exposure by Senator Wyden and a maladroit effort to avoid that question. So that’s point one.
Point two, the question of the 2006 warrantless wiretapping, I certainly agree with Mr. Ellsberg that it’s very hard to square that with the statute, withFISA. The direction was given and the legal conclusion was reached that the president had the authority to order that, notwithstandingFISA, and there have been—there’s a long-standing view that the president does have authority to do this without the involvement of the courts. In fact, it was the majority view at least until 1978. But I think the passage of theFISAAct made that much harder to do.
That said, theFISAcourt at that point had utterly disgraced itself. It had forced a bunch of what it turns out are illegal requirements in the name of civil liberties on theFBIand the intelligence community that helped in a very significant way to make it difficult to respond to the news that there were hijackers or there were terrorists in the United States before 9/11. Had it not been for theFISAcourt’s wrong and extralegal policies, it’s quite possible that the hijackers would have been caught.
And after 9/11, after it became clear that this was part of the problem, theFISAcourt insisted on those illegal policies and forced the government to take its first appeal ever to theFISAreview court. That suggested that theFISAcourt was not actually interested in protecting Americans, but had a goal that no one else in government shared, which was to maintain this wall between intelligence and law enforcement.
DANIELELLSBERG:That’s absolutely mistaken.
STEWARTBAKER:But I kind of understand why they did it, but I have to say that as a lawyer, it’s hard to justify.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Mr. Baker, we just have about a minute left. You had the first word; we’ll have Dan Ellsberg respond.
DANIELELLSBERG:OK, I haven’t called Mr. Baker a liar. I certainly don’t regard him as anything other than patriotic. And I don’t think it’s his intent to deceive, but what he’s just said has given example that actually demonstrates the opposite of what he just said. He’s referring to the case of Khalid al-Mihdhar. I would assume—I would like to assume that he knew, but on the other hand, perhaps—
AMYGOODMAN:You have 30 seconds.
DANIELELLSBERG:—he was just ignorant of the fact that the fact that al-Mihdhar was known in this country—the hijacker who went into the Pentagon—was known by pre-NSA, pre-9/11 intelligence methods to theCIA. Their choice, deliberate not to give it to theFBI, had nothing to do with firewalls. I can’t believe you don’t know that, I’m sorry, Mr. Baker. And the fact is, it was not a fault ofFISA. You’re joining me here in criticizing theFISAcourt. That’s ridiculous.
AMYGOODMAN:We’re going to have to leave it there, because we are out of time. Stewart Baker, formerNSAgeneral counsel, as well as worked at the Department of Homeland Security, and Dan Ellsberg, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, leaked the Pentagon Papers toThe New York Timesin 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Just recently, Lindsay Graham proclaimed proudly on Fox that Russia’s reaction to Ukraine was a result of Benghazi.I heard this in disbelief.Preposterous!How could he get away with it?
Shortly thereafter, someone posted this survey of right-wing types, Fox news advocates, that shows where these people thought Benghazi was located.As you can see, only 2% of them could even locate the correct continent!There is no wonder these people would swallow that nonsense.They know nothing else.Still, I feel obliged to say I am not making any of this up, because what is to come is even more surrealistic.
The question was asked whether or not the U.S. has any military agreement with Ukraine, asked of course by someone who wanted a nice little war.The answer was that we did, of sorts.There was mentioned an agreement between the California National Guard and Ukraine.So, we might ask, what happens as a result?
The answer is obvious.Because of Benghazi, we send the California National Guard to Kiev (two syllables, idiots) in Ukraine and then to Crimea to rescue it from Putin who is oppressing the Tartars.That makes perfect sense.
We will get back to this issue shortly, but meanwhile, Nitwityahoo was here visiting with Obama, the most hated U.S. President of all time in Israel and who has facilitated the most for it.His, Nitwityahoo’s, speech to AIPAC was about BDS, boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.If you are interested in boycotting goods that profit Israel directly, here is a product code strip, they thing they scan to ring up your purchases:
So, look at the first three digits.This is solely done here for the purpose of giving Israel the attention it deserves during these busy times.
OK, back to Ukraine.There seems to be a contention that Crimea, a Russian speaking and Russian Ethnic section of Ukraine, can not vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia as it wishes.This is according to its constitution.However, the constitutional president of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup engineered by the “West,” as conversations involving a U.S. Ambassador show.Also, those gunmen or snipers you saw, allegedly Pro-Russian have now been forensically identified as members of the “Ultra-Nationalist” opposition.Actually, Russia has every right to grant the request of the democratically elected President of Ukraine, who is currently in Russia, and take military action.
Putin has already gotten permission to do just this, to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine from his own Parliament.That sounds legal enough to me.All we have to do is identify which parts are ethnically Russian and which not.Fortunately, we have this map:
So, it seems quite clear.Russia should get the red places and Poland the yellow or green (whatever that other color is).Or to make it easier, everything east of Kiev should be part of Russia or the Russian Federation and west should be part of NATO.
Now, we have not mentioned NATO.Article 5 of the agreement allows any member of NATO to have all of NATO act as if it has been attacked.Russia has been surrounded by enemies for a couple thousand years, at least, while the U.S. is safely surrounded by two oceans.
Another fact is that Europe relies on Russia for a great deal.The energy supplies are only one factor here, but they are critical.
There is one more idiocy I would like to clear up.Our press, 90% owned by 6 corporations, tells us that Russia forbade American adoption of its orphans because of Georgia (the one over there, stupid, not Atlanta).Actually, that ban went into force after a woman here, in one of our southern states, sent back an orphan she had adopted.She just put him on a plane to Moscow, put a note on him saying something like “he’s a pain in my ass,” and then forgot about him.Russia decided that Americans are not very reliable so far as adoption is concerned and it would rather take care of its own orphans.
Some people say that Ukraine first saw humans as far back as 32,000 B.C.The people who think this is important are the same people that think the world is only 6,000 years old.
For some time now, we have been waiting for an inkling, yes, an inkling, of sense on this entire situation. Other than a couple scholars who have immediately been called “Putin apologists,” as if Putin felt any need for apologies, and give very short times on our Corporate Media. For awhile, we put the RT site up for more general access to an opposing viewpoint, and it at least allows for opposition on its own airspace. One newscaster resigned, on air, and she was not cut off. She knew she would get great exposure and this was her opportunity to perhaps find employment at a larger network.
The point is, some good information, and accurate information, is starting to appear. You can find it at ZNET online, from where this article appeared. It is a clear and concise overview of the situation. We might add, before leave to it, that the naval ports in Crimea were started by Katherine the Great in the 18th Century, and I assume that this means in the 1700s.
There has also been a great deal about the poor Tartars who were expelled by Stalin. Well, if Stalin did it, it must be wrong, the reasoning goes. But how did the Tartars get there in the first place? Genghis Kahn, that’s who. Now it comes down to who is “badder,” Stalin or Genghis. The absurdity is overwhelming. Also, if you want to talk about Pussy Riot, the girls who jump around a lot, the ones that hit them with their whips or sticks were Tartars. So, maybe Pussy Riot caused all this?
Before launching into my analysis of events in Ukraine, there are a few points which should be made for an American audience.
Putin: Commentators are engaged in a campaign to discredit Vladimir Putin, dismissing him as nothing more than the former head of the KGB. I hold no brief for Putin, whom I consider the head of a state dominated by oligarchs. But it is worth remembering Putin is the head of a state with which the US needs to deal. Poisoning the water with personal attacks does not move us toward a dialogue on Ukraine or on other matters where the US needs to work with Russia.
It is also worth remembering that Gorbachev, widely praised in the West (and in my view a major “good guy”) was actually the KGB candidate when he took office. It is in US interests to have a working relationship with Russia on matters such as Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan. And, beyond that, on issues of true nuclear and conventional disarmament.
How legitimate is the new Ukrainian government? There is general agreement that the ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was corrupt. The problem is he was elected by a clear margin. Dramatic as events on the Maidan were, it remains unclear what forces were involved, who “won”, and what they represent. I’ve read several eye witness accounts of the dramatic actions in February – the problem is no two agree. The US insists the new government represents the people of Ukraine – but who makes that decision? (Younger readers need to remember that while Britain recognized the new Soviet government, which came to power in 1917, in 1924, the US did not recognize it until 1933. In the case of China, where the present Chinese government took power in 1949, the US did not recognize it until Richard Nixon’s term. The US is very selective as to when it recognizes new governments that come to power via a revolution).
How nonviolent were the events at the Maidan? I was more than a little surprised to find that the facebook page of the Nonviolent Action Research Network (widely wide by American pacifists) termed the events in Kiev “nonviolent”. That is nonsense. One can support or oppose the shifts that occurred in Kiev but one cannot call them nonviolent. Not only were a number of protestors killed, but so were a number of Ukrainian police. If people check the storming of the Winter Palace in Czarist Russia,in October of 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power and the Russian Revolution became a reality, there were only a handful of people killed – far fewer than died in Kiev. I support the right of people to resist oppression by the methods they choose, but as a pacifist I will urge that resistance be nonviolent. For better or worse, Kiev was not nonviolent.
What happened at the Maidan?
The events in Kiev were turbulent. There have been reports – again, from eye witnesses – that far right wing elements dominated the protesters, while other equally fervent eye witnesses insist far right wing elements were marginal. Steve Erlanger, in a “memo from Kiev” in the New York Times of Sunday, March 2, noted that the new government has few representatives of “what was the country’s largest and most popular party, the Party of Regions, led by the ousted President, Viktor f. Yanukovych. Instead, the government is currently dominated by those associated with a former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who is widely blamed for the failure of the 2004 Orange Revolution to change Ukraine’s corrupt political system”. Erlanger’s analysis suggests that Russian fears of the new government are valid – and, more important, that the fears of many Ukrainians, particularly in the Eastern Ukraine, are valid.
Andrew Wilson, a Ukraine expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that an early “mistake” by the new government was the overturning of the 2012 law that allowed regions of Ukraine to make Russian a second official language, “needlessly offending Russian-dominated regions like the Donbass and Crimea”.
Commentators on events in Ukraine seem to break down into a kind of “left vs. right” pattern. William Blum, whose writing often makes good sense, argued in a recent piece that developments in Ukraine are part of the conscious pattern of the US to dominate the world, which has governed US actions for the last century. Much of what Blum has written has value, but this is nonsense – in 1914 it was Great Britain which ruled the world, WW I had just begun, and the US did not become conscious of its “new destiny” until after World War II. Other figures – Secretary of State Kerry, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton – are so off base it would be funny if it were not serious. What is one to say of Obama, speaking at a press briefing in the White House, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sitting beside him, when he spoke of international law, ignoring the fact that Israel has occupied the West Bank in violation of international law, with considerable brutality and violence, for more than forty years.
And of course what can one say about any Russian actions in Crimea (on which I’ll comment in a moment) when they come from the leader of a nation which invaded Iraq, destroying it in the process, and has a bloody record of military interventions, some of which have never made rational sense (as in the case of Vietnam, where an estimated three million Vietnamese were killed).
There has been an almost complete lack of balance in media coverage. CNN has been happy to give extended time to interviews with John McCain, one of those rare veterans who seems to long for war, but little time to calmer voices.
To sum up what happened at Maidan, I’m fed up with some of the left telling me it was an anti-Semitic event, and everyone on the right saying it was entirely a democratic event. Clearly – if one can work through the reports – it was not just a “left vs right” event, but one in which many young Ukrainians, fed up with the corruption of the government, burst into a largely spontaneous and very exciting moment of revolt. However there is no question that the political right was there, and no question at all that it has been given key posts in the new government.
A note on Crimea: Crimea is historically Russian. It does not have the independent history of Ukraine. It also has Russia’s only warm water port. It was inevitable, once the events in Kiev took the turn they did, that Russia would move into Crimea, and it is not going to leave. Think back to our own actions – when Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1960 he posed no threat to the US – only to US control in Central and South America. Yet the US was so disturbed it launched a military attack (the Bay of Pigs), and has spent much of the the past half century trying to assassinate Fidel, and imposing severe sanctions. And we are surprised that Russia took steps to protect what had historically been part of Russia?
The trigger for Russian actions: Early in February, as events at the Maidan has created a crisis, with the death toll rising, Polish and German diplomats met with both the Ukrainian government and with the rebels, working out a series of compromises which would have left Yanukovych in power but would also have met many of the demands of those in the Maidan. It is probable that Putin would have lived with that, but we will never know, since the rioters continued the uprising, which had by then become a revolution, and Yanukovych was forced to flee.
The context of the Ukrainian Crisis: Here I want to step back away from the immediate crisis of Ukraine, for a look at the history which dictates much Russian policy – under Putin as it did under Stalin.
Russia has no natural barrier – no river, no mountain range – to guard it on its Western border. It has suffered invasion from the West three times in recent memory – under Napoleon and then twice under the Germans. In the last invasion, under Hitler, between 25 and 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives. All the factories, dams, railroads. towns and cities West of a line from Leningrad in the North to Moscow to Stalingrad in the South were destroyed. Americans make much of 9.11 (and I don’t make light of it) but for Russia it was not just a handful of buildings in one city which were destroyed – it was entire cities, leveled. And then with the wounded to care for, the orphans, the widows.
Americans have never understood what the war meant to Russia and why, after the war, the Soviets sought to build a “protective band” of territory between itself and Germany. This was Eastern Europe, which under the iron boot of Stalin became “people’s democracies” or “presently existing socialism”.
Something Americans (perhaps including our President and the Secretary of State) have forgotten was that Russia wanted to make a deal with the West. It had made peace with Finland, which (again, memories are short and we have forgotten this) fought on the side of the Nazis. The Soviets withdrew from Austria after the West agreed that Austria, like Finland, would be neutral.The Soviets very much wanted a Germany united, disarmed, and neutral. Stalin did not integrate the East Germany into the Eastern European economic plans for some time, hoping he could strike that deal. But the West wanted West Germany as part of NATO, and so the division of Germany lasted until Gorbachev came to power.
I would have urged radical actions by the West in 1956 when the Hungarian Revolution broke out – it was obvious that if the Soviets could not rule Eastern Europe without sending in tanks (as they had already had to do in East Germany in 1953), they posed no real threat of a military strike at the West.
What if we had said to Moscow, withdraw your tanks from Hungary, and we will dissolve NATO, while you dissolve the Warsaw Pact.
But of course the West didn’t do that. The US in particular (but I would not exempt the Europeans from a share of the blame) wanted to edge their military bases to the East. When the USSR gave up control of Eastern Europe, the US pressed for pushing NATO farther East, into Poland and up to the borders of Ukraine.
Pause for a moment and assume that revolutionary events in Canada had meant Canada was about to withdraw from NATO and invite in Russian military advisers.
What do you think US response would be?
Why are we surprised that Putin has said, very clearly, “no closer – back off”.
In this case Moscow holds the high cards. Europe is not going to war over Crimea. And it needs Russian gas. Sanctions will cut both ways – Europe is very cautious and, irony of ironies, it is Germany which is behaving with the greatest diplomacy.
If, out of all this, US planners accept the fact that there are real limits to how far East NATO can push, then the crisis will have helped us come to terms with reality. It may even lead us to consider dissolving NATO!
The importance of civil society. All states act in their own interests. States do not have moral values. What we need to count on is the civil society – and Russia has one – which will modify state behavior, just as civil society here can sometimes modify state behavior. We – folks in the American civil society – need to reach out to the folks in Ukrainian and Russian civil society. There have been anti-war actions in Russia at this time – great, let’s try to link with them. We need to worry when, as in Nazi Germany, civil society is silenced. To a great extent that has happened here, in the US. Of course we should hope for a fair referendum in Crimea – but I think the fairest possible referendum will still see Crimea returned to Russia.
Meanwhile, we need to tamp down the talk of military action, of sanctions, and of efforts to humiliate Putin. He isn’t my hero, but most Russians are happy with him. He has restored to Russia some of the pride it lost with the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. Americans, of all people, should understand this, with our endless (and tiresome) insistence we are the great nation in the world.
David McReynolds was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000, past Chair of War Resisters International, and for nearly forty years on the staff of War Resisters League. He is retired and lives with his two cats on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He may be reached at: davidmcreynolds7@gmail.com
Ukraine, Einige Fakten Seit einiger Zeit haben wir uns für eine Ahnung gewartet , ja, eine Ahnung von Sinn auf dieser gesamten Situation . Andere als ein paar Wissenschaftler, die unmittelbar worden "Putin Apologeten " genannt haben , als ob Putin fühlte keine Notwendigkeit für die Entschuldigung, und geben sehr kurzen Zeiten auf unserem Corporate Media . Für eine Weile , haben wir die RT- Website für allgemeine Zugang zu einem entgegengesetzten Standpunkt , und es zumindest ermöglicht Opposition auf eigenen Luftraum. Ein Nachrichtensprecher zurückgetreten , auf Luft, und sie war nicht abgeschnitten. Sie wusste, sie würde große Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen und das war ihre Gelegenheit zur Beschäftigung in einem größeren Netzwerk vielleicht finden.
Der Punkt ist , einige gute Informationen , und genaue Informationen , beginnt zu erscheinen. Sie können ihn unter ZNET online zu finden , von wo dieser Artikel erschienen ist. Es ist eine klare und prägnante Übersicht über die Situation . Wir könnten hinzufügen , bevor verlassen, um es , dass die Kriegshäfen auf der Krim wurden von Katharina der Großen im 18. Jahrhundert begonnen , und ich nehme an , dass dies bedeutet in den 1700er Jahren .
Es hat auch sehr viel über die schlechten Tataren , die von Stalin vertrieben wurden . Nun, wenn Stalin tat es , muss es falsch sein , geht die Argumentation . Aber wie hat es die Tataren bekommen in erster Linie? Dschingis Kahn, ist, wer. Jetzt auf die " böser ", Stalin oder Dschingis ist, kommt es . Die Absurdität ist überwältigend. Auch, wenn Sie über Pussy Riot , die Mädchen, die viel herum springen sprechen wollen , diejenigen, die sie mit ihren Peitschen oder Stöcken waren Tataren . Also, vielleicht Pussy Riot verursacht das alles?
Dumme Saison wieder . Hier ist ein großer Essay :
Ukraine : Eine Analyse Von David McReynolds
9. März 2014
Veröffentlicht in: Osteuropa , Europa, Internationale Beziehungen, Russland, SourceZ , Ukraine, USA | 1 Kommentar Vor dem Start in meine Analyse der Ereignisse in der Ukraine , es gibt ein paar Punkte, die für ein amerikanisches Publikum zugänglich gemacht werden soll. Putin :Kommentatoren sind in einer Kampagne, um Wladimir Putin zu diskreditieren beschäftigt, ihn zu entlassen als nichts anderes als der ehemalige Leiter des KGB . Ich halte keine Kurz für Putin , den ich für das Oberhaupt eines Staates von Oligarchen beherrscht . Aber es sei daran erinnert, Putin ist der Kopf von einem Staat , mit dem die USA müssen umzugehen. Vergiftung des Wassers mit persönlichen Angriffen uns nicht bewegen, zu einem Dialog über die Ukraine oder zu anderen Fragen, wo die USA braucht, um mit Russland zu arbeiten. Es ist auch daran zu erinnern , dass Gorbatschow , weit im Westen gelobt ( und aus meiner Sicht ein wichtiger "good guy" ) war eigentlich der KGB Kandidat bei seinem Amtsantritt . Es ist in der US-Interessen , um ein Arbeitsverhältnismit Russland in Fragen wie Iran , Syrien und Afghanistan . Und , darüber hinaus, über Fragen der nuklearen und konventionellen wahren Abrüstung.
Wie legitim ist die neue ukrainische Regierung?Es besteht allgemeine Übereinstimmung , dass die gestürzten Präsidenten , Viktor Janukowitsch F. , war beschädigt. Das Problem ist, wurde er mit deutlichem Vorsprung gewählt. Dramatische Ereignisse wie auf dem Maidan wurden , bleibt unklar, welche Kräfte beteiligt waren , der "gewonnen" , und was sie darstellen . Ich habe mehrere Augenzeugenberichtevon den dramatischen Aktionen im Februar zu lesen - das Problem ist, keine zwei zustimmen. Die USA besteht darauf, die neue Regierung steht für die Menschen in der Ukraine - aber wer macht diese Entscheidung ? ( Jüngere Leser müssen sich daran erinnern , dass während Großbritannien erkannte die neue sowjetische Regierung, die 1917 an die Macht kam , im Jahre 1924 , die USA nicht zu erkennen , bis 1933. Im Fall von China, wo die gegenwärtige chinesische Regierung die Macht übernahm im Jahr 1949 , die USA nicht anerkennen , bis Richard Nixon Begriff . die USA sind sehr selektiv , wann es neue Regierungen, die die Macht über eine Revolution kommen ) erkennt . Wie gewaltfreien waren die Ereignisse auf dem Maidan ?Ich war mehr als nur ein wenig überrascht, dass die Facebook-Seite der Nonviolent Action Research Network ( weit breit amerikanischen Pazifisten ) bezeichnet die Ereignisse in Kiew " gewaltfreien " . Das ist Unsinn . Man kann für oder gegen die Verschiebungen, die in Kiew stattgefunden , aber man sie gewaltfrei nicht nennen . Nicht nur, dass eine Reihe von Demonstranten getötet, aber so waren eine Reihe von ukrainischen Polizei. Wenn die Menschen überprüfen die Erstürmung des Winterpalais im zaristischen Russland, im Oktober 1917, als die Bolschewiki die Macht übernahm und die Russische Revolution Wirklichkeit wurde , gab es nur eine Handvoll Menschen getötet - weit weniger als in Kiew gestorben. Ich unterstütze das Recht der Menschen auf Unterdrückung durch die Methoden, die sie wählen, widerstehen, aber als Pazifist Ich fordere , dass der Widerstand gewaltfrei sein . Für besser oder schlechter , war Kiew nicht gewaltfrei.
Was geschah am Maidan ? Die Ereignisse in Kiew waren turbulent. Es gibt Berichte - wieder von Augenzeugen - das ganz rechts Flügelelemente dominiert die Demonstranten , während andere ebenso glühender Augenzeugen bestehen äußersten rechten Flügel Elemente waren marginal. Steve Erlanger, in einem " Memo von Kiew" in der New York Times vom Sonntag, 2. März darauf hingewiesen, dass die neue Regierung hat nur wenige Vertreter von " was war das Land der größte und beliebteste Partei, der Partei der Regionen, der verdrängt geführt Präsident Viktor f . Janukowitsch. Stattdessen wird die Regierung noch durch die mit einem ehemaligen Ministerpräsidenten Julia Timoschenko V. , die häufig für das Scheitern der Orangenen Revolution 2004 , korrupte politische System der Ukraine ändern verantwortlich gemacht wird " verbunden dominiert. Erlanger Analyse deutet darauf hin, dass die russischen Ängste der neuen Regierung gelten - und , noch wichtiger, dass die Befürchtungen vieler Ukrainer , vor allem im Osten der Ukraine, sind gültig. Andrew Wilson, ein Ukraine -Experte an der European Council on Foreign Relations , sagte, dass eine frühe "Fehler" von der neuen Regierung war die Umkehrung des Gesetzes, das erlaubt Regionen der Ukraine Russisch zweite Amtssprache , " unnötig beleidigen russisch- 2012 machen dominierten Regionen wie dem Donbass und der Krim " . Kommentatoren auf Ereignisse in der Ukraine scheinen in eine Art "links gegen rechts "-Muster brechen . William Blum, deren Schreib oft sinnvoll , argumentierte kürzlich in einem Stück , die Entwicklungen in der Ukraine sind Teil der bewussten Muster der USA, die Welt zu beherrschen , die US-Aktionen im letzten Jahrhundert regiert hat . Vieles, was geschrieben hat Blum Wert hat, aber das ist Unsinn - es war im Jahr 1914 Großbritannien , die die Welt regiert , WW Ich hatte gerade erst begonnen , und die USA nicht im Bewusstsein ihrer " neuen Schicksal " zu werden , bis nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg . Andere Zahlen - Staatssekretär Kerry, Präsident Obama und Hillary Clinton - sind so außerhalb der Basis , es wäre lustig , wenn es nicht ernst wäre . Was soll man sagen, von Obama , spricht auf einer Pressekonferenz im Weißen Haus mit dem israelischen Ministerpräsidenten Netanjahu sitzt neben ihm , als er des Völkerrechts sprach, ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass Israel die Westbank in Verletzung des Völkerrechts besetzt , mit erheblicher Brutalität und Gewalt , für mehr als vierzig Jahre. Und natürlich , was kann man über alle Aktionen auf der Krim russische sagen (auf dem ich in einem Moment Kommentar ), wenn sie von dem Führer einer Nation, die den Irak einmarschiert , in den Prozess , es zu zerstören zu kommen, und hat einen Rekord von blutigen Militär Interventionen , von denen einige noch nie rational Sinn gemacht ( wie im Fall von Vietnam, wo schätzungsweise drei Millionen Vietnamesen wurden getötet ) . Es hat eine fast vollständige Mangel an Ausgewogenheit in den Medien. CNN war glücklich, längere Zeit, um Interviews mit John McCain, einer der wenigen Veteranen, die lange für den Krieg scheint , aber nur wenig Zeit, um ruhigere Stimmen zu geben. Um zusammenzufassen, was bei Maidan passiert , ich bin mit einigen der linken mir erzählen es eine antisemitische Veranstaltung war zugeführt wird, und jeder auf der rechten sagen, es war ganz eine demokratische Veranstaltung. Klar - wenn man durch die Berichte zu arbeiten - es war nicht nur eine "linke vs richtigen" Ereignis, sondern eine, in der viele junge Ukrainer , sich mit der Korruption der Regierung zugeführt wird, in eine weitgehend spontan und sehr spannender Moment der Revolte brach . Allerdings gibt es keine Frage, dass die politische Rechte war , und keine Frage überhaupt , dass es gegeben Schlüsselpositionen in der neuen Regierung.
Ein Hinweis auf der Krim :Krim ist historisch Russisch. Es muss nicht die unabhängige Geschichte der Ukraine . Es hat auch nur warmes Wasser Hafen Russlands . Es war unvermeidlich , wenn die Ereignisse in Kiew nahm die wiederum taten sie, dass Russland in der Krim zu bewegen, und es ist nicht zu verlassen. Denken Sie zurück an unsere eigenen Handlungen - als Fidel Castro die Macht übernahm in Havanna im Jahr 1960 keine Bedrohung er in die USA - nur um die US-Kontrolle in Mittel-und Südamerika. Doch die USA war so gestört, es startete einen militärischen Angriff (der Schweinebucht ) und hat viel von der im letzten halben Jahrhundert lang versucht, Fidel zu ermorden , und Verhängung drastischer Strafen . Und wir sind überrascht , dass Russland nahm Schritte, um zu schützen, was war historisch ein Teil von Russland?
Der Auslöser für die russischen Aktionen :Anfang Februar , als Veranstaltungen auf dem Maidan eine Krise geschaffen , mit der Todesopfer steigt, erfüllt polnischen und deutschen Diplomaten sowohl mit der ukrainischen Regierung und den Rebellen , die Ausarbeitung einer Reihe von Kompromissen , die Janukowitsch an der Macht gelassen haben würde, aber würde auch haben viele der Anforderungen von denen in der Maidan erfüllt . Es ist wahrscheinlich, dass Putin mit , dass gelebt haben , aber wir werden es nie erfahren , da die Randalierer setzte den Aufstand, der bereits damals eine Revolution , und Janukowitsch war gezwungen zu fliehen. Der Kontext der ukrainischen Krise:Hier möchte ich einen Schritt zurück von der unmittelbaren Krise der Ukraine, für einen Blick auf die Geschichte , die viel russische Politik diktiert - unter Putin , wie es unter Stalin . Russland hat nicht die natürliche Barriere - kein Fluss , kein Gebirge - um es auf seiner Westgrenze zu schützen. Unter Napoleon zweimal unter den Deutschen und dann - Es war Invasion aus dem Westen drei Mal in der jüngsten Vergangenheit gelitten. In der letzten Invasion , unter Hitler , zwischen 25 und 27 Millionen Sowjetbürger ihr Leben verloren. Alle Fabriken , Staudämme , Eisenbahnen. Städte und Gemeinden westlich einer Linie von Leningrad im Norden nach Moskau, um Stalingrad im Süden wurden zerstört. Amerikaner machen viel von 9.11 (und ich kein Licht zu machen ), aber für Russland war es nicht nur eine Handvoll von Gebäuden in einer Stadt , die zerstört wurden - es war ganze Städte , eingeebnet. Und dann mit dem verwundeten zu pflegen, die Waisen , die Witwen . Amerikaner haben nie verstanden, was der Krieg soll und warum Russland nach dem Krieg versuchten die Sowjets , eine " Schutz Band" des Territoriums zwischen sich selbst und Deutschland bauen. Dies war Osteuropa, die unter der eisernen Stiefel von Stalin wurde "Volksdemokratien " oder " gegenwärtig existierenden Sozialismus " . Etwas Amerikaner (vielleicht einschließlich unseres Präsidenten und dem Außenminister ) vergessen haben, war, dass Russland wollte einen Deal mit dem Westen zu machen. Es war Frieden mit Finnland, das (wieder, sind Erinnerungen kurz, und wir dies vergessen zu haben ) auf der Seite der Nazis gekämpft hat . Die Sowjets zogen sich aus Österreich nach dem der Westen einig, dass Österreich, wie Finnland, wäre neutral.The Sowjets sehr viel wollte ein vereinigtes Deutschland , entwaffnet, und neutral. Stalin nicht die Integration der Ost-Deutschland in den osteuropäischen Wirtschaftspläne für einige Zeit , in der Hoffnung , dass er viel schlagen konnte . Aber der Westen wollte die Bundesrepublik Deutschland als Teil der NATO , und so die Teilung Deutschland dauerte bis Gorbatschow an die Macht kam . Ich würde radikalen Aktionen durch den Westen im Jahr 1956 aufgefordert haben, als die ungarische Revolution brach aus - es war offensichtlich, dass, wenn die Sowjets nicht Osteuropa herrschen ohne das Senden in Tanks (wie sie bereits in Ost-Deutschland im Jahr 1953 zu tun hatte ) , sie stellte keine wirkliche Gefahr eines Militärschlags in den Westen. Was, wenn wir nach Moskau gesagt hatte , zurückziehen Ihre Tanks aus Ungarn, und wir werden die NATO aufzulösen , während Sie den Warschauer Pakt aufzulösen. Aber natürlich ist der Westen nicht tun. Insbesondere die USA ( aber ich würde nicht befreien , die Europäer von einem Teil der Schuld ) wollten ihre Militärstützpunkte in den Osten zu umranden. Wenn der UdSSR gab die Kontrolle über Osteuropa , drückte die US- NATO weiter zu drücken Osten, in Polen und bis an die Grenzen der Ukraine. Pause für einen Moment, und davon ausgehen, dass revolutionären Ereignisse in Kanada gemeint hatte, war im Begriff, Kanada aus der NATO zurückziehen und laden in der russischen Militärberater . Was denken Sie, US-Antwort wäre ? Warum sind wir überrascht , dass Putin gesagt hat, sehr deutlich ", nicht näher - wieder aus ." In diesem Fall hält Moskau die hohen Karten. Europa wird nicht in den Krieg Krim. Und es braucht russisches Gas . Sanktionen werden in beide Richtungen schneiden - Europa ist sehr zurückhaltend und , Ironie der Ironien , ist es Deutschland, das Verhalten ist mit dem größten Diplomatie. Wenn von all dem US- Planer die Tatsache akzeptieren, dass es echte Grenzen, wie weit Ost NATO schieben kann , dann ist die Krise wird uns geholfen haben, sich mit der Realität zu kommen. Es kann sogar dazu führen, uns zu prüfen, Auflösung der NATO ! Die Bedeutung der Zivilgesellschaft.Alle Staaten handeln in ihrem eigenen Interesse . Staaten haben keine moralischen Werte . Was wir brauchen, zu zählen, auf die Zivilgesellschaft - und Russland hat ein - die staatliche Verhalten ändern wird , wie die Zivilgesellschaft hier kann manchmal Zustandsverhalten ändern. Wir - die Leute in der amerikanischen Zivilgesellschaft - Notwendigkeit zu erreichen, um die Leute in der ukrainischen und russischen Zivilgesellschaft. Es gibt Anti-Kriegs- Aktionen in Russland zu dieser Zeit - toll, wollen wir versuchen, mit ihnen zu verbinden. Wir müssen uns Sorgen machen, wenn , wie in Nazi-Deutschland , der Zivilgesellschaft wird zum Schweigen gebracht. Zu einem großen Teil , die hier passiert ist , in den USA . Natürlich haben wir für eine faire Volksabstimmung auf der Krim hoffen sollte - aber ich denke, die möglichst gerechte Referendum noch sehen Krim nach Russland zurückgekehrt. In der Zwischenzeit müssen wir andrücken die Rede von Militäraktionen , von Sanktionen und der Bemühungen um Putin zu demütigen. Er ist nicht mein Held , aber die meisten Russen sind mit ihm zufrieden. Er hat in Russland wieder etwas von dem Stolz verlor sie mit der Auflösung der alten Sowjetunion. Amerikaner , aller Menschen , sollte dies zu verstehen, mit unseren endlosen ( und lästig ) Beharren wir sind die große Nation der Welt. David McReynolds war die Sozialistische Partei Kandidat für die Präsidentschaft im Jahr 1980 und 2000 , ehemaliger Vorsitzender der War Resisters International, und fast vierzig Jahren auf das Personal der War Resisters League ein. Er ist pensioniert und lebt mit seinen zwei Katzen in Manhattans Lower East Side. Davidmcreynolds7@gmail.com : Er kann erreicht werden unter
I can’t take credit for the brilliant pun that it the title of this entry, but the author is in the legal profession and, hence, can not be revealed as it reflects on state secrets.
Since people have been interested, at least for awhile, in Ukraine, many have turned to RT for information.Its audience has grown considerably, although it is not prompted other stations to provide facts.Instead, efforts were and are being made to cast aspersions upon the station.This article goes into detail on that.And this is also an opportunity to say that we are no longer carrying RT at our site.This is not for any other reason than the Java script provided made the image so large that it distracted from anything else.We may replace it with a link to the site soon.
James Kirchick is just theneutralreporter the Daily Beast would assign to report on the ideological controversy surrounding the Russian backed RT-TV Channel’s coverage of the crisis in the Ukraine.
The Beast lives up to its name by sending a hardcore polemical ideologue to uncover what he predictably labels as ideological media bias.
Kirchick is a veteran of the anti-communist wars, now revived as the anti Putin wars, not some neutral journo crusading for democracy.
According to Wikipedia, he is afellowwith theFoundation for Defense of Democraciesin Washington, prior to this he was writer-at-large forRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He is a graduate of the New Republic, Murdoch’s Weekly Standard and writes for Azure, a magazine that described itself as pro-Zionist and free market.
Ok, just so we know who are dealing with here.
And now, to bolster his “credibility” he presents himself as a victim in his latest article that exposes himself, far more than his target, asserting that his rights as a journalist were somehow compromised because of a gutsy quest for truth.
Here’s his exhibit:
•The Headline: “Watch RT, Putin’s TV Network, Call the Cops on Me”
•The Lead:“That’s what happens, it seems, when you ask some simple questions outside RT’s Washington headquarters.”
•The Polemic:“What would possess an American to work for a Russian propaganda outlet, especially now that the world is on the brink of a potential war in Eastern Europe?
I asked that question of about two dozen people coming in and out of the Washington headquarters of RT, the Kremlin-funded television network that has become infamous in recent days for whitewashing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. No one would answer me directly. Instead, RT called the local cops on me. …”
Kirchik’s first story in his jihad against RT was to interview Anchor Liz Wahl who resigned flamboyantly on the air denouncing the channel she worked and making her an instantsheroamong Russia-bashers the world over.
Wahl offered up sweet innocence laced with the veneer of red white and blue (drop the red) patriotism, declaring,“I’m very lucky to have grown up here in the United States,” she said. “I’m the daughter of a veteran. My partner is a physician at a military base where he sees every day the first-hand accounts of the ultimate prices that people pay for this country. And that is why personally I cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin. I am proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth and that is why after this newscast I’m resigning.”
Cue the National Anthem!
Funny, after her declaration of independence, and stagy pledge to quit was broadcast on a network that could have cut her off, none other than former Congressman Ron Paul who was interviewed by Wahl weighed in after she claimed RT censored her interview with him.
He denied it, saying, “I don’t think it was slanted in any way.”
Earlier, another RT on-air personality, Abby Martin, also denounced Putin’s Ukraine policy on the air but was not fired and did not quit.
Later, she turned up on CNN debating Piers Morgan, he of the show about to be cancelled, about how fair and objective most American TV is. She was far better informed on that subject than this departing British host in assessing the US press, and on a network considered by some critics as an “American propaganda outlet.”
In an article about Martin in National Journal, Lucia Graves wrote, “While it’s clear the networkmaintainsastrong pro-Russian bias, Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday defended RT’s coverage, saying it isn’t so different from what we saw on American media outlets in the lead up to the Iraq War. “For all the self-celebrating American journalists and political commentators: Was there even a single U.S. television host who said anything comparable to this in the lead up to, or the early stages of, the U.S. invasion of Iraq?”he wrote.
On Google, a story from CNN on Wahl’s hyped farewell to RT carried Martin’s picture, not hers.
Oh well, details, details!
Back to Mr. Kirchick’s heroism in defense of democracy!
What you see is a wise-guy provocateur harassing people entering the building with hostile, if not nasty and self-righteous questions, in an argumentative and aggressively hostile manner.
RT later challenged this image-building exercise of the “man who is not afraid of Putin” with a denial that they called the cops, an “update” that the Daily Beast tacked on to their story.
“RT America did not contact the DC police at any point,” Anna Belkina said in a statement. “The building’s security personnel called in the police after an intruder has been reported inside the building. The police questioned Mr. Kirchick as part of the investigation of that incident.”
Kirchick’s shouted out questions were there to call attention to himself, and score political points, and not to challenge the network that actually offers programs with views that are more diverse than on any US TV news channel. It features programs with Tom Hartmann and even Larry King, both of whom deny they have been censored.
As an occasional commentator on RT News myself, I can and have said the same. I am not surprised that the networks I once worked for, ABC, CNN and CNBC never have me on, while BBC, RT, Press TV and Saudi TV, among others, feature my commentaries without telling me what to say.
Kirchick is less bothered by what gets on RT than that it exists at all, and especially because the network has built an audience among Americans disgusted by how controlled and manipulated most US media outlets are.
His real target are RT’s viewers who he bitterly denounces as a “species,” perhaps because they are looking for information you never find on the Daily Beast or many of the outlets he whores for as a self-styled “objective newsman.”
Listen to this: “RT has become the go-to network for a particular species of disillusioned American, fed-up with what the “corporate media” is telling them about the world.”
He doesn’t waste any putdowns either from an arsenal of vituperative broadsides and even—get this— denounces RT employees as “slovenly.”
He then rants on to share what may have been his Yale-bred elitism about his perception of the people the network interviews that includes politicians and commentators of all stripes.
“RT, both in its employment and viewership,” he writes,” seems to attract a particular type of person. You know the man who writes political chain emails IN ALL CAPS or the bag lady shouting on the street corner about the metal device the government has implanted in her head? Under normal circumstances, no one would give them a television show. But these are the people who appear on, and watch, RT.”
Oh, really– another round of clichés to keep the truth from getting in the way of his preconceived perceptions.
Now, now, feel better Mr. Kirchick, time to take your medication, before you melt down, or stir up more hatred and animosity for people who lack your years of slimy experience as a media warrior in the service of a neocon empire.
MR KIRCHICK?
Oh, you have more to say?
“For the past 9 years, RT has provided steady paychecks and frequent media appearances to a veritable insane asylum of the great unwashed and unemployable dredges of the American fringe.”
Whew, I am glad he got that out of his system, until tomorrow, of course, when he will find another way of cursing without cursing, while showcasing superiority to those of us in that other sub- human “species.”
Now, let me get back to my Rolling Stones record: I‘ll never be your beast of burden I’ll never be your beast of burden Never, never, never, never, never, never, never be
Also, by the way, do I need to say that I am not a Putin booster, my father was a veteran, I have pledged allegiance to the flag many times, and wrote two books and made a film about media miscoverage of the Iraq War. My critique was based, in part, in my own experience in network TV.
News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org and blogs at NewsDissector.net. His latest book is Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela. Comments todissector@mediachannel.org.
First, let’s get one thing straight:if you are not 100% in favor of Israel taking more and more land from the Palestinians, you are anti-Semitic.If you do not accept this basic truth, you will go to hell and die a horrible death and join Mark Twain in the fires of hell.There is no room for being a-Semitic.What are you, an agnostic or something?
Ok, so we have a brief interview of North-Eastern University in Boston and the actions they took.Now you have to get another thing straight: if you support boycott, sanctions, and divestment in relation to Israel, you are also going to hell.You are pure evil.
Now the Israeli army is in a fight for its life against that sect, you know, the one with the robes, hats, and pigtails or braids, standing by the wall, bowing and reading out loud.It seems they don’t think they have to join the army.They do not realize what a great contribution they could make to peace.Just imagine some hell-bound evil people trying to stay in their houses with a bunch of these guys surrounding them and praying out loud.Wouldn’t you move out?
Well, before they take the houses of the people, they first give them eviction notices.It seems some Arab Association in Boston at the university was passing out fake notices that resembled the ones that the Palestinians get before their houses are taken down and bull-dozed to the ground.Well, the administration at the university didn’t want to burn in Hell, so they kicked that group out.
Here is the interview:
A War on Campus? Northeastern University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Chapter
The Northeastern University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become the latest student group to face reprimand for organizing around the Palestinian cause. Northeastern has suspended the group until 2015, barring it from meeting on campus and stripping it of any university funding. The move comes just weeks after student activists distributed mock eviction notices across the campus during Israeli Apartheid Week. The notices were intended to resemble those used by Israel to notify Palestinians of pending demolitions or seizures of their homes. We speak to Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine member Max Geller and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of the new book, "The Battle for Justice in Palestine." His new book includes a chapter titled "The War on Campus."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The Northeastern University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become the latest student group to face reprimand for organizing around Palestinian issues. Northeastern University has just suspended the group until 2015, barring it from meeting on campus and stripping it of any university funding. The moves comes just weeks after student activists distributed mock eviction notices across the campus during Israeli Apartheid Week. The mock notices were intended to resemble ones used by Israel to notify Palestinians of pending home demolitions or property seizures.
AMYGOODMAN:Northeastern University accused the student group of disregarding university policies over an extended period of time. Michael Armini, Northeastern’s senior vice president of external affairs, said, quote, "The issue here is not one of free speech or the exchange of disparate ideas. Instead, it is about holding every member of our community to the same standards, and addressing SJP’s non-compliance with longstanding policies to which all student organizations at Northeastern are required to adhere."
We’re joined now by two guests. Max Geller is with us, Northeastern University School of Law student and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. And Ali Abunimah is with us in studio, co-founder ofThe Electronic Intifada, author of a brand new book,The Battle for Justice in Palestine. His new book includes a chapter headlined "The War on Campus."
Let’s go first to Boston, to Northeastern University. Max, what happened? Why have you been decertified as a student organization? And why are—what is Students for Justice in Palestine attempting to do?
MAXGELLER:We have been suspended as an organization because the administration feels that they can no longer control our activities, and this is the best option they have left.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And what are the violations, repeated violations, they claim that you’ve been engaged in?
MAXGELLER:I think it’s insubordination, is what their—their claim is that we—they said it’s a pervasive rule violation. But what really happened was we distributed a bunch of fliers, and the Hillel organization on my campus lost their temper and pressured the university into calling the police on us.
AMYGOODMAN:Now, Max, you’re a Jewish student, part of the Northeastern University Law School, with the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Explain this last act, that you didn’t get permission for. Explain why you did distribute these, what, mock eviction notices that you slipped under residents’ doors, students’ doors.
MAXGELLER:Yes, Amy. I mean, it’s important to understand, in the context of the greater repression of our activities, prior to our official suspension, we were suspended in everything but name. We were constantly thwarted and deprived funding. Our events were moved around, and roadblocks were put up. The only sort of—the only recourse we had, the last educational activity we could engage in, was a sort of direct action, where we didn’t need university funding or university space. We went door to door and slipped mock eviction notices under people’s door. But we were careful—
AMYGOODMAN:Why?
MAXGELLER:Because we wanted to simulate the sort of common Palestinian experience of coming home to find that your residency and existence has been criminalized.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Ali Abunimah, I wanted to ask you, this—what the students at Northeastern are facing, increasingly across academia, professional organizations of professors, as well as other universities, the battle is raging now over—against the supporters of self-determination for the Palestinians.
ALIABUNIMAH:Absolutely. What’s happening at Northeastern is part of a much bigger war on campus that’s being waged by university administrations and by pro-Israel organizations. I mean, in addition to the harassment the students at Northeastern are going through, I mean, right now I’m scheduled to speak at Northeastern on April 1 as part of this book tour, and now we don’t know: Can that event go ahead? Am I banned from campus because the student group can’t book rooms or get resources? This is what it’s about. It’s about shutting down the discussion.
And the group, the off-campus group that has been harassing students at Northeastern is an extreme right-wing group called Americans for Peace and Tolerance, founded by an extreme Islamophobe called Charles Jacobs. He is the founder of another group called the David Project, which is taking this war national. And they have said that campuses in this country are the main arena where support for Israel has to be rescued and saved. And the David Project, as I write inThe Battle for Justice in Palestine, has said that the war on Palestine solidarity must effectively be a war on the broader left and progressive movement, because that’s where support for Palestine is nurtured.
AMYGOODMAN:On the—at the student level, polls show across the country that especially young Jewish students are much more now critical of the state of Israel and identifying with the plight of Palestinians.
ALIABUNIMAH:Exactly, because young Jewish students in this country, like all young students, identify with universal human rights and equality. And that’s why we’ve got legislatures in New York, in Illinois, in Maryland, even the United States Congress now, considering bills to penalize universities if students or faculty express support for the Palestine solidarity movement in the form of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. It really is a free speech emergency. And just this week in New York City, at Columbia University, at Barnard College, students had gotten permission—they had gone through all the authorizations to put up a banner that said, "Stand with Justice in Palestine," and the university administration took it down after complaints from pro-Israel groups and basically said, "We’re not going to allow any more banners." Free speech is losing out to support for Israel on our campuses, when administrations are left in charge of people’s rights. That’s why we have to stand by the students at Northeastern and all over this country.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, and meanwhile, Israel has launched its most intense bombing of the Gaza Strip since the assault of late 2012. Around 30 Israeli attacks have hit Gaza since Wednesday, following a barrage of Palestinian rocket fire. No casualties have been reported on either side. The group Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks in what it called a response to earlier Israeli strikes that killed three people. More rockets have now been fired from Gaza as the flare-up continues for a third day. Ali, could you talk about this latest—this latest escalation in the actual conflict there?
ALIABUNIMAH:Well, you mentioned the November 2012 assault by Israel, which killed 170 Palestinians. That ended with a ceasefire agreement between Israelis and the Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza. Israel has incessantly violated that ceasefire and has been escalating its so-called targeted killings, extrajudicial executions, in recent weeks. And I think what we saw yesterday was an attempt by Palestinian groups in Gaza to say, "Look, if Israel keeps violating the ceasefire, we have the capacity to hit back." But I don’t think there’s anyone in Gaza that wants to see a total breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.
AMYGOODMAN:What about the so-called peace talks between Israel and Palestine that John Kerry is presiding over? How much faith do you put in them, Ali?
ALIABUNIMAH:As much as John Kerry, which is none. I mean, John Kerry was caught by a reporter the other day, in a private moment, saying that his talks with Netanyahu were going absolutely nowhere. I think the significant thing and what’s really happening now is, you know, look at the fact that when Netanyahu was speaking to the Israel lobbyAIPAC, he spent a third of his speech condemning the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, because this is really what’s changing the equation. It’s grassroots activism in this country, in Palestine and all over the world.
AMYGOODMAN:Now, it’s an interesting quote. When the prime minister of Israel addressedAIPAC, he said, "Those who war theBDSlabel should be treated exactly as we treat any anti-Semite or bigot. They should be exposed and condemned. The boycotters should be boycotted." I want to go back to Max Geller. The equating of those critical of the Israeli state or the Israeli military with being anti-Semitic or being a bigot, your thoughts on that?
MAXGELLER:I mean, especially in the university context, it’s deeply troubling. It’s deeply troubling to demonize a viewpoint before one can debate it, especially in a university context. The Israeli-Palestinian question remains difficult to answer. And if those answers are not going to come from the academy, I don’t know where they’re going to come from. And to render a certain subject taboo is to deprive the students on campus of important perspectives when they—crucial to making informed decisions. It’s very troubling.
And, Amy, I think it’s really important to understand that Northeastern students put up fliers where they’re not supposed to every day. Every day, every student at Northeastern walks by fliers that weren’t authorized to be put up. But the only time you ever hear about students being disciplined for it is when the content contains pro-Palestinian messages.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And, Max, what are the plans for your group? Are you going to challenge this ban at all, or how are you going to continue to function or operate in the future?
MAXGELLER:Well, I’m pleased to say that the outpouring has been overwhelming. We received in less than 24 hours over 3,500 signatures to our petition. And we are right now considering the most spectacular way of delivering this petition to the president’s door. We have had student groups who are pretty apathetic. I mean, the—politically speaking—the debate team has offered to engage in a walkout of class on SJP’s behalf, and it’s been really inspiring and moving. But we are still trying to figure out the best way to sort of catch this lightning in a bottle and force the university’s hand.
AMYGOODMAN:Ali Abunimah, we just have about 45 seconds. The title for your book isThe Battle for Justice in Palestine. Do you hold out any hope?
ALIABUNIMAH:Well, I hope people will look at this book, because while I think the battle is raging in Palestine and in this country and on campuses and everywhere where people are gathering, I have a lot of hope. And in the end, this is a book about what the future looks like, a future based on equality, anti-racism and decolonization in Palestine, where everyone can live, because people are sick and tired of this conflict and the violence that comes with it.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, I want to thank you both very much for being with us. Ali Abunimah, co-founder ofThe Electronic Intifada, his new book is calledThe Battle for Justice in Palestine. And thanks, Max Geller, Northeastern University School of Law student, actively campaigning with Students for Justice in Palestine, known asSJP.
And that does it for our broadcast. Happy Birthday to Aaron Maté! As I said, we’re on the road: tonight,Flagstaff; tomorrow night,Santa Fe; Saturday night, I’ll be inDenver, Colorado; and then March 29th,St. Louis. Check ourwebsiteat democracynow.org.
We have been subjected, you and I, to a constant stream of erroneous and quite biased language on the subject of the independence of Crimea and its joining of the Russian Federation. We warned of it, it happened, and now we are making things worse. This is quite an accomplishment for this country, but we are full of, er, resources.
For example, our media usually uses words such as the "invasion" of the region, "annexing," and "takeover".
A short after this former Reagan/Bush ambassador to the Soviet Union and then Russia gave this interview, Obama got on the networks to say he is imposing "sanctions" against Russia. Shortly after that, Russia imposed sanctions on several U. S. Senators, the correct ones, BTW.
THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2014
Former U.S. Ambassador: Behind Crimea Crisis, Russia Responding to Years of "Hostile" U.S. Policy
The standoff over Ukraine and the fate of Crimea has sparked the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on top Russian officials while announcing new military exercises in Baltic states. Meanwhile in Moscow, the Russian government says it is considering changing its stance on Iran’s nuclear talks in response to newly imposed U.S. sanctions. As tensions rise, we are joined by Jack Matlock, who served as the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. Matlock argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting in response to years of perceived hostility from the U.S., from the eastward expansion ofNATOto the bombing of Serbia to the expansion of American military bases in eastern Europe.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:The Ukrainian government has announced plans to abandon its military bases in Crimea and evacuate its forces following Russia’s decision to annex the region. Earlier today, Russian forces reportedly released the commander of the Ukrainian Navy, who has been seized in his own headquarters in Crimea. At the United Nations, ambassadors sparred over the situation in Crimea. Yuriy Sergeyev is the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.N.
YURIYSERGEYEV:The declaration of independence by the Crimean Republic is a direct consequence of the application of the use of force and threats against Ukraine by the Russian Federation, and, in view of Russian nuclear power status, has a particularly dangerous character for Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, as well as for international peace and security in general. Accordingly, I assert that on the basis of customary norms and international law, that the international community is obliged not to recognize Crimea as a subject of international law or any situation, treaty or agreement that may be arise or be achieved by this territory.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, defended Moscow’s move to annex Crimea.
VITALYCHURKIN:[translated] A historic injustice has been righted, which resulted from the arbitrary actions of the leader of the U.S.S.R. at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, who, with the stroke of a pen in 1954, in violation of the constitutional norms, transferred the Russian region of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was part of the same state then. And he did this without informing the population of Crimea and, of course, without their consent. And nobody cared about the views of the Crimeans.
AMYGOODMAN:Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the U.S. Navy warship, theTruxtun, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, conducted a one-day military exercise in the Black Sea with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies. And Vice President Joe Biden has been meeting this week with the heads of states of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, promising Washington would protect them from any Russian aggression. On Wednesday, President Obama addressed the crisis during an interview withNBC7 San Diego.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine. What we are going to do is mobilize all of our diplomatic resources to make sure that we’ve got a strong international coalition that sends a clear message, which is: The Ukraine should decide their own destiny. Russia, right now, is violating international law and the sovereignty of another country. You know, might doesn’t make right. And, you know, we are going to continue to ratchet up the pressure on Russia as it continues down its current course.
AMYGOODMAN:To talk more about the growing crisis in Ukraine, we’re joined by Ambassador Jack Matlock. He served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1987 to 1991. He’s the author of several books, includingReagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. He recently wrote acolumnforThe Washington Postheadlined "The U.S. Has Treated Russia Like a Loser Since the End of the Cold War."
Ambassador Matlock, welcome toDemocracy Now!Talk about the situation right now, what has just taken place, Ukraine now pulling out of Crimea.
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Well, I think that what we have seen is a reaction, in many respects, to a long history of what the Russian government, the Russian president and many of the Russian people—most of them—feel has been a pattern of American activity that has been hostile to Russia and has simply disregarded their national interests. They feel that having thrown off communism, having dispensed with the Soviet Empire, that the U.S. systematically, from the time it started expandingNATOto the east, without them, and then usingNATOto carry out what they consider offensive actions about an—against another country—in this case, Serbia—a country which had not attacked anyNATOmember, and then detached territory from it—this is very relevant now to what we’re seeing happening in Crimea—and then continued to place bases in these countries, to move closer and closer to borders, and then to talk of taking Ukraine, most of whose people didn’t want to be a member ofNATO, intoNATO, and Georgia. Now, this began an intrusion into an area which the Russians are very sensitive. Now, how would Americans feel if some Russian or Chinese or even West European started putting bases in Mexico or in the Caribbean, or trying to form governments that were hostile to us? You know, we saw how we virtually went ballistic over Cuba. And I think that we have not been very attentive to what it takes to have a harmonious relationship with Russia.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, Ambassador Matlock, Americans often look at these crises in isolation, and some of the press coverage deals with them that way. But from your perspective, you argued that we should see the continuum of events that have happened from the Russian point of view—for instance, the Orange Revolution, the pronouncements of some of our leaders several years back, the crisis in Georgia a few years ago, and how the Russians are seeing the original good feeling that most Russians had toward the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union compared to now.
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Yes, that’s absolutely true. You see, in the Orange Revolution in Kiev, foreigners, including Americans, were very active in organizing people and inspiring them. Now, you know, I have to ask Americans: How would Occupy Wall Street have looked if you had foreigners out there leading them? Do you think that would have helped them get their point across? I don’t think so. And I think we have to understand that when we start directly interfering, particularly our government officials, in the internal makeup of other governments, we’re really asking for trouble.
And, you know, we were pretty careful not to do that in my day. And I recall, for example, when I was being consulted by the newly elected leaders of what was still Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. They were still in the Soviet Union, and they would come to us. We were, of course, sympathetic to their independence; we had never even recognized that they were legally part of the Soviet Union. But I had to tell them, "Keep it peaceful. If you are suppressed, there’s nothing we can do about it. We cannot come and help you. We’re not going to start a nuclear war." Well, they kept it peaceful, despite provocations.
Now, what have we been telling the Ukrainians, the Georgians—at least some of us, officials? "Just hold on. You can joinNATO, and that will solve your problems for you." You know, and yet, it is that very prospect, that the United States and its European allies were trying to surround Russia with hostile bases, that has raised the emotional temperature of all these things. And that was a huge mistake. As George Kennan wrote back in the ’90s when this question came up, the decision to expandNATOthe way it was done was one of the most fateful and bad decisions of the late 20th century.
AMYGOODMAN:I wanted to go to Vice President Joe Biden, who criticized Russia recently during his trip to Lithuania Wednesday.
VICEPRESIDENTJOEBIDEN:I want to make it clear: We stand resolutely with our Baltic allies in support of Ukrainian people and against Russian aggression. As long as Russia continues on this dark path, they will face increasing political and economic isolation. There are those who say that this action shows the old rules still apply. But Russia cannot escape the fact that the world is changing and rejecting outright their behavior.
AMYGOODMAN:And in a speech Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted what he called Western hypocrisy on Crimea, saying that the U.S. selectively applies international law according to its political interests.
PRESIDENTVLADIMIRPUTIN:[translated] Our Western partners, headed by the United States of America, prefer in their practical policy to be guided not by international law, but by the right of the strong. They started to believe that they have been chosen and they are unique, that they are allowed to decide the fate of the world, that only they could always be right. They do whatever they want
AMYGOODMAN:Ambassador Jack Matlock, if you could respond to both Biden and Putin?
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Well, I think that this rhetoric on both sides is being very unhelpful. The fact is, Russia now has returned Crimea to Russia. It has been, most of its recent history, in the last couple of centuries, been Russian. The majority of the people are Russian. They clearly would prefer to be in Russia. And the bottom line is, we can argue 'til doomsday over who did what and why and who was the legal and who was not—I'm sure historians generations from now will still be arguing it—but the fact is, Russia now is not going to give up Crimea. The fact also is, if you really look at it dispassionately, Ukraine is better off without Crimea, because Ukraine is divided enough as it is. Their big problem is internal, in putting together disparate people who have been put together in that country. The distraction of Crimea, where most of the people did not want to be in Ukraine and ended up in Ukraine as a result of really almost a bureaucratic whim, is—was, I think, a real liability for Ukraine.
Now, the—we should be concentrating now on how we put Ukraine back together—not we, but the Ukrainians, with the help of the Europeans, with the help of the Russians, and with at least a benign view from the United States. Now, the American president and vice president directly challenging the Russian president and threatening them with isolation is going to bring the opposite effect. All of this has actually increased President Putin’s popularity among Russians. Now, you know, most politicians, they like to do things that make them more popular at home. And, you know, the idea that we are acting, you know, contrary to what Russians would consider their very natural interests—that is, in bringing an area which had been Russian and traditionally Russian for a long time back into Russia—they look at that as a good thing. It’s going to be very costly to Russia, they’re going to find out, in many ways. But to continue all of this rhetoric, I would ask, well, how is it going to end? What is your objective? Because it isn’t going to free up Crimea again or give it back to Ukraine.
I think it would be most helpful to encourage the Ukrainians to form a united government that can begin reforms. The proposals before, both by the EU and by Russia, would not have solved their problems. And they are not going to solve the problems by taking a government that basically represents one half of the country and making it work on the whole country. And all of this interference, both by Russia and by the West, including the United States, has tended to split Ukraine. Now, that is the big issue there. And we need to turn our attention more to it. And I just hope everyone can calm down and look at realities and stop trying to start sort of a new Cold War over this. As compared to the issues of the Cold War, this is quite minor. It has many of the characteristics of a family dispute. And when outsiders get into a family dispute, they’re usually not very helpful.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:Well, Ambassador Matlock, what would you, if you were counseling the president, urge him to do at this stage? Because obviously there are these pretty weak sanctions that have so far been announced. What would your advice be?
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Well, I think, first of all, we should start keeping our voice down and sort of let things work out. You know, to ship in military equipment and so on is just going to be a further provocation. Obviously, this is not something that’s going to be solved by military confrontations. So, I think if we can find a way to speak less in public, to use more quiet diplomacy—and right now, frankly, the relationships between our presidents are so poisonous, they really should have representatives who can quietly go and, you know, work with counterparts elsewhere.
But fundamentally, it’s going to be the Ukrainians who have to put their society back together. It is seriously broken now. And it seems to me they could take a leaf from the Finns, who have been very successful ever since World War II in putting together a country with both Finns and Swedes, by treating them equally, by being very respectful and careful about their relations with Russia, never getting into—anymore into military struggles or allowing foreign bases on their land. And they’ve been extremely successful. Why can’t the Ukrainians follow a policy of that sort? I think, for them, it would work, too. But first, they have to find a way to unite the disparate elements in Ukraine; otherwise, these pressures from Russia, on the one hand, and the West, on the other, is going to simply tear them apart. Now—
AMYGOODMAN:Ambassador, on Wednesday—
JACKMATLOCKJR.:—in the final analysis, if the—
AMYGOODMAN:On Wednesday, the head of Ukraine’s First National TV was attacked in his office by members of the far-right Svoboda party, including at least one member of Parliament who serves on the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech. The attackers accused the station of working for the Russian authorities, after it aired a live broadcast of the signing of the agreement between President Putin and thede factoCrimean authorities. In a video posted online, the attackers are seen forcing the head of the channel to write a resignation letter. Heather McGill of Amnesty International condemned the attack, saying, quote, "The acting Ukrainian authorities must waste no time in demonstrating that basic human rights are protected in Ukraine and that nobody will face discrimination because of their political views or ethnic origin." Ambassador Matlock, can you talk about this attack and the role of these far-right-wing parties in the new Ukrainian government?
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Well, I’m not intimately informed about all of the details, but—and I would say that I think Russian media have exaggerated that right-wing threat. On the other hand, those who have ignored it, I think, are making a big mistake. We do have to understand that a significant part of the violence at the Maidan, the demonstrations in Kiev, were done by these extreme right-wing, sort of neo-fascist groups. And they do—some of their leaders do occupy prominent positions in the security forces of the new government. And I think—I think the Russians and others are quite legitimately concerned about that. Therefore, you know, many of these things are not nearly as black and white, when we begin to look at them, as is implied in much of the rhetoric that we’re hearing. And I do think that everybody needs now to take a quiet breath to really look at where we are and to see if we can’t find ways, by keeping our voices down, to help the Ukrainians in present-day Ukraine to get to a road to greater unity and reform that will make them a viable state.
AMYGOODMAN:Jack Matlock, we want to thank—
JACKMATLOCKJR.:And I would argue that—
AMYGOODMAN:We want to—
JACKMATLOCKJR.:—they are better off without Crimea.
AMYGOODMAN:I want to thank you very much for being with us. Ambassador Matlock served as the U.S. ambassador—
JACKMATLOCKJR.:Thank you.
AMYGOODMAN:—to Moscow from 1987 to 1991 under both President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, and he’s the author of a number of books, includingSuperpower IllusionsandAutopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, as well asReagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.
