Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/2/24 Kevin Gosztola on Julian Assange’s First Speech as a Free Man

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Scott interviews journalist Kevin Gosztola about Julian Assange’s testimony to the Council of European Parliamentarians — his first public speaking appearance since he was released from prison three months ago. Scott and Gosztola talk about what he said, how he appears to be doing and what this all means for the future of Wikileaks. Discussed on the show: Video of Assange’s testimony The transcript “WikiLeaks cables: Saudis proposed Arab force to invade Lebanon” (The Guardian) Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” He is the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey there. It's good to be back. Oh, good, man. Good to have you here. So, Assange speaks. The man earned his vacation. He's been back in Australia for, remind me how long now. And, but he gave a talk. What did he tell him? Three months, a little more than three months since his release.

And what brought him out of his family time, I suppose, is the, fact that the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, as they call it, it's known as Pace for short. So if I start saying Pace, that's what I'm referring to, that this assembly in Europe, these are all European Union states that are part of it. So they have parliamentarians from those countries make up this body. And they're supposed to be like norm setting protectors of human rights. Of course, they aren't always, and because of the deference that Europe often shows to the United States, they tend to look the other way when war crimes and torture and other things like that happen, which did come up in Julian Assange's testimony, but this was his opportunity

to go before them and speak in support of a resolution that was before the parliamentarians to declare him a political prisoner. Now, he's free, but they didn't know when they were considering this resolution that he was going to be freed. They had no idea that when they began to do this work to support him, there was a parliamentarian from Iceland

who was in the spearheaded this, and they didn't know that he was going to be freed. So now there was a opportunity for him to go before these parliamentarians and speak for the first time. And if you thought in the back of your head that everything he went through, his brain is now scrambled,

he's not capable of speaking and addressing a important group of people the way that he did when presenting WikiLeaks publications almost 15 years ago. If you thought that was his health currently, he showed that a lot of himself is still intact. He was nervous. He was visibly nervous about being before this assembly, being at this committee meeting.

But he still was very good at covering everything that you would hope he would address in his comments. Great. So, yeah, now I notice, and this is part of his prepared statement that he referred to his mental damage. I know, you know, you're being kind and you're saying, well, he did pretty good up there, but he even had in his prepared statement that I'm not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured, he says, and apologizes in case his words fall. or his presentation lacks polish isolation has taken its toll he said which i'm trying to unwind so in other words we might have thought you know hey our hero up there you know you kind of dehumanize

your heroes the same way you do your enemies in a way right that like hey our idol i bet like he's doing great or whatever but no they were beating the crap out of him metaphysically the whole time anyway he's had a very hard time here apparently um but not to take away from him as you say his strength and being able to show up there and say what he did say but you know it's it's worth remembering that he is just a man and what that was why what they did to him was so horrible right so this was something that i made sure to highlight in my coverage which was i believe he's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder based upon what he saw in Belmar's prison. This is a high-security prison.

And he says in his prepared statement that he saw murders. There were people who hang themselves. There were other examples of violence in the prison. And it scarred him. But he didn't want to talk about any of it. And there was even a point where during the question and answer portion, which was just parliamentarians asking him questions that there was something put to him about what he went through in Belmarsh.

They wanted to hear anything he could say to confirm, you know, the resolution had something about him going through inhuman treatment or torture in Belmarsh. And he avoided the question. He didn't, he didn't even come back to it. he just you could tell that was a very difficult part of what he went through he was he was able to focus on the extradition proceedings he was able to speak about the u.s espionage act and and how it was used to rob him of so many years of his life and he could speak openly about the CIA he didn't hold back when he said what was done by CIA director mike

Pompeo to target him and his family while he was in Ecuador's London Embassy, but he didn't really want to be open about what went on at Belmarsh. Yeah, well, I guess, you know, hope we'll hear about that someday. It's worth noting here, right, that he did, and this is sort of what he's talking about in the speech, the main thrust of the speech is that he did have to compromise in order to get out of jail. He pleaded guilty to journalism. And I think it's notable, right, that for all the trumped-up crap in that superseding indictment and the original one for that matter, that he didn't plead guilty to any of the lies. He only pleaded guilty to doing the right thing,

which they claimed was illegal, but fine. But he only pleaded guilty to the truth, which wasn't really the wrong thing to do at all. That's correct. The words that he spoke were that he was free today, not because the system worked, but because he pled guilty to journalism. He said, I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else. And also, what I thought was good that he spoke about was how the U.S. government,

through the Justice Department, no matter what presidential administration is in power, has had a history, at least since the September 11th attacks, of pressuring journalists into ratting out their sources. I mean, you can go back before that, but I'm thinking more in the Global War on Terrorism context. And he said in this instance, what they did to Manning after being convicted, of being the whistleblower after being convicted of violating the espionage act was to drag manning before a grand jury a secret grand jury and force manning to testify against the journalist so so in this instance it wasn't the journalist that was being asked to rat out a source it was the other way

around and i do think that he was picking up on something important about where this case had crossed the Rubicon, as he put it. There were several parts of his speech that spoke to the novelty of this prosecution, which sometimes lost on us because we've spent so many years. We've recorded so many conversations. How many times have we spoken to each other? How many times have we really just repeated these issues over and over again? And you forget that there was many parts of this that were different from other cases. Right. Yeah.

As he notes, there was, I don't think he calls it this, but it was known as the New York Times test where the Obama Justice Department said, we'd like to nail this guy. However, we can't really come up with a line of BS to explain the difference between this and Charlie Savage printing a still classified press release, you know, of whatever lies they want him to tell. That's essentially the same level of classification and that Assange is playing the same role as Savage as far as just being a recipient and then a publisher of the leak rather than the leaker, whereas Manning clearly was breaking the law as a member of the U.S. Army who had sworn who had been sworn to secrecy. And so they really were just bluffing, right? As we did talk about, and as you say, it started going without saying.

But clearly the process was the punishment here. They had no real crime that could stick under American law other than, as we talked about, where they just had to embellish and pretend that he helped break into a computer and stuff like this, which wasn't even true. Yeah. And there was some language that he... he was using. So he knew the Julian Assange and Stella and the people around him who worked on this speech. He knew, and this might be of interest to you, that he was going before member

countries in the European Union. And there were words that he could say to make sure that, you know, not only would they be happy that he was there to speak to them, but that they would actually cheer him and welcome him with open arms. And he used this phrase transnational repression, transnational repression throughout his speech. And I did a panel with Matthew Ho, and he said, I think if you put together like a word cloud where you could see what was said the most, you might see that transnational repression was used by him. Apparently, this is something that some liberal human rights spaces are using more and more. it came up and he was speaking about how the United States had basically violated the, you know, the sovereignty of some of these European countries or, you know, the way in which they would abuse mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties that are supposed to be respected by both parties.

But as he said in his comments when he was being asked about this by a parliamentarian, it's pretty lopsized. The U.S.-UK. Extradition Treaty is not even in the sense that there's better protections for people. It's harder for the UK to extradite Americans to the United Kingdom than it is for America to extradite people from the United Kingdom. There's something like nine times more people have been extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States than to the UK. So he was pointing this out, and he also, when he was speaking about his case and connecting it to other issues with journalists, attacks on journalists, he mentioned the journalists that have been murdered in Gaza by the U.S.-backed Israeli government over the last year. And then he also threw in Ukraine. And I don't know how many journalists have actually been killed in Ukraine, but I was talking about this with some people. And we figured this was a very carefully calculated decision that he was going to pair the two conflicts together because these EU, these European Union parliamentarians, are so invested in helping Ukraine fight this war that if Julian Assange acknowledged it, it would help him with the parliamentarians.

And I think it kind of worked. There was an Irish parliamentarian the next day when they had the vote on this resolution who said he was glad that Julian Assange spoke about both of these conflicts. And so anyways, that was some aspect to it, you know, that we don't think of Julian Assange as a kind of politician, but he seemed to know when he went before them what would be good to say so that he could get the most support. Yeah. Well, and it's also just objectively true that the Russians have been accusing all kinds of people at treason for disagreeing with their war. And I don't know all the specifics of reporters going to jail, but I know it's been pretty ugly over there. So whether he's sucking up to them with that or not, it's also just a statement of fact. So I think what I was saying is it's it's just an unimpeachable fact that the death toll. in Gaza is like 150 to 170 journalists, depending on how you classify them, versus the number of journalists in Ukraine killed by Russian military forces. I mean, maybe a few dozen. I don't know, but I don't think the number even comes close to the damage that Israel is inflicted. That said, I don't think you want to play that game before a bunch of European parliamentarians who aren't going to

hesitate to send arms and continue this war. Yeah. Well, I mean, so at anti-war.com, we have the transcript here. And he just says the war in Ukraine has already seen the criminalization of journalists in Russia. So I didn't see him address like journalists being killed in the war unless I miss that. No. No. So I'm speaking about a comment that he made when he was asked by a parliamentarian. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I missed that. Yeah. And so in his speech, Yes, I don't know how much he spoke about it, but eventually, you know, he did get around to and this, this actually hit me. I thought this was a really good comment that he made as at one point he spoke about how WikiLeaks had basically made quite an indent in the news media space by releasing the collateral murder video. And he was showing the, just to remind everyone, if anybody doesn't know that this is the Apache helicopter with U.S. soldiers that are gleefully shooting journalists, Reuters employees, a cameraman, and then killing a father who shows up with his kids in a van to try and rescue.

And while the journalist is crawling, wounded, gets killed. and the children were wounded pretty badly, but survived. He was saying that that was incredible then, but now we're all just every day. The massacres are being live streamed to us from Gaza. And he felt like, I think he felt the kind of like desensitization. He felt very cynical. That was when I saw Julian Assange, the cynic of saying,

Like he's not really sure how to deal with that because it's not like if Julian Assange and WikiLeaks got videos of what was happening in Gaza today and release them. I don't know that it would have the same impact that that video had. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, the idea would be that, well, if that kind of thing would be available, then you would get the kind of reaction necessary to make it stop. And then here we are and we're flooded with it and nobody can do anything about it. so it just goes on and then like you say we get desensitized to it they're like oh the Israelis blew up another family it's i guess it must be tuesday yeah yeah so um but on that collateral murder video that is important too and because he also he just brings up the

whole um the effect of the the war logs um you know in the media at the time as well and the effect that that had on the war which was huge, wasn't it, Kevin? Oh, yeah. In the end of it anyway. Well, in the end, what happened was, and I actually had some involvement in this, and I mentioned it in the book that as I was going through the cables, I was looking at this communications log, or I came across this communications log that told a story of a raid in which this, I think it was a family. They were brought out. They were were, um, they had their hands tied behind their heads. They were executed. And then I think there was a bombing of this compound or a home in order to cover up the executions. That was you

that found that? Yeah. I, I, I, I'm not just trying to like puff myself up here. I, that's okay. It's, I, I, I found it. Um, I, I, I shared it. And then, uh, at, uh, uh, WikiLeaks. jumped on it. And also, I would credit Glenn Greenwald, who was familiar with my work, who shared it. And then it got a wide audience. Two days later, it was on, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now did a segment. And then was talking to journalists who had previously reported on the incident, who were now able to confirm what had happened. And then what you're getting to is that the, the, communications law itself was referenced by the Iraqi government in refusing to approve a status of forces agreement that President Barack Obama wanted, which would grant immunity to Iraqi soldiers

for any war crimes that were committed while they continued to be stationed, I presume in the green zone or, you know, to be deployed out in different areas of Baghdad. And when the, it would have been under Nuri al-Maliki, when he did not agree to it, his government, then that was when Obama said, okay, we're going to withdraw all of the troops. And also, by the way, I always like to point out to people that it's President George W. Bush, who had engineered the plan for withdrawal. And then Obama was continuing that plan for withdrawal and then accelerated it because Maliki didn't want to grant soldiers immunity. I just say that because Joe Biden likes to go around

taking credit for ending the Iraq war, but he didn't really do all that much. Yeah. No, and in fact, he helped rig the election of 2010, which secured Maliki staying in power at the expense of Alawi, who was a Shiite but Abathist and had been America's first sock puppet dictator there, but he had the ability to at least try

to bridge the gap there between the major factions a year before they really started backing al-Qaeda in Syria, which two years and three years later blew up into the Islamic State, which conquered all of Western Iraq. So, anyway, don't give me start on Joe Biden and Iraq War II. But, yeah, no, that is a huge one. And that is exactly the history of it, that that story was, the thing that really, you know, was behind the final straw for the Iraqi parliament to say, no, we will not give you that sofa. And for Maliki to say, sorry, guys, I tried to get them on board, but they wouldn't do it. And by the way, because I mentioned the support for ISIS there, people say, yeah, but see, because of Kevin Gostela and finding that and horrible Manning and Assange,

putting that secret out, that that caused America to have to leave Iraq. And then ISIS took over. But don't leave out the part where Barack Obama backed al-Qaeda in Libya and then in Syria for years, which is what led to the rise of the Islamic state. Billions of dollars and all of our allies supporting the bad guys there because they hate the Shiites more because they wish they hadn't fought Iraq War II for him. But anyway, so it wasn't, it is true that if America had been occupying Western Iraq, ISIS wouldn't have been able to roll in like that. But it's not true that that is the main causative deal there. It's the support for the bad guys on the other side of the line in Syria is what led to the rise of the caliphate and the invasion of 2014. People always leave that out and make it sound like, yeah, see, once you invade a country, you have to stay forever or else ISIS will take over. Yeah.

Anyway, I congratulate you on that. I didn't know that you were behind that, but I did know, and it's in my book, that, hey, that was the... crucial leak and news story that was the final death of the status of forces agreement. And then without a UN resolution justifying the occupation and without the Iraqis inviting us to stay, they had to get the hell out. So that is absolutely huge. Yeah. Now, your listeners might be interested in this one particular comment that Julian Assange made about his naivete i don't know if this got to you yet but uh he confessed that he was naive to believe in the rule of law that it would protect wiki leaks i thought this was a pretty remarkable

thing that he was willing to say in public uh because he said that wikileaks had done some analyses. They had looked at what was acceptable for publishing in Europe. And he had looked at the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And he understood some of the Espionage Act history. And it was determined that he thought it was pretty straightforward, you know, that you would have a freedom to publish and it would be protected. And that was the law. But these were his words. to shove laws are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency. They are the rules made by the ruling class more broadly. And if those rules don't suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them or hopefully changes them, which is clearer. And then he also

said that part of what led to the reinterpretation of this right under the First Amendment and whether Julian Assange was protected, he said that it was the CIA, it was that a key constituency in the U.S., the intelligence sector, the security state, the secrecy state, however you want to describe it, was angered and so that forced the Justice Department into a position of reinterpreting the U.S. Constitution, wrongly, but reinterpreting it to come after him and put him in prison. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me here. You guys, I'm so proud to announce the publication of the Libertarian Institute's 14th book. It's Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq oil war. Undue influence, deceptions, and the neocon energy agenda by Gary Vogler, former senior oil consultant and deputy senior oil advisor for U.S. forces during

Iraq War II. Remember how I wrote and enough already about how Ahmed Chalabi sold the neoconservatives on a plan to rebuild the old British oil pipeline from Mosul and Kyrkoq Iraq to Haifa Israel, if they would only get the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein for him and how they bought it because they are as dumb as they are corrupt well Gary was there as senior civilian consultant

to the DOD and Iraqi oil ministry he had a unique window and experience witnessing the Pentagon neocons and their machinations on behalf of Israel before and during that war and it turns out that even though they did not get their pipeline as Vogler demonstrates

the neocons and their Lekudnik bosses figured out an effective plan B anyway. You are going to love Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War by Gary Vogler, available everywhere. Check it out, along with our other great books at libertarian institute.org slash books. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Robertson Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore. Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to. to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts.

Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like it always has been. Now Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own. Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. Look up Roberts and Roberts at rrbi.co. That's rrbi.co.

Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things Comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg,

Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney. A hilarious new comedy, filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now.

Tell us about what he says here about Joshua Schulte, who is, I guess, he's the guy that did the Vault 7 leak. Well, he was speaking, if I know what you're saying, I think he was speaking about how Joshua Schulte was put in prison. Was this in his speech? He just talked about the severest isolation, a white noise machine in his windows blacked out and all of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then also this was... Gipmo, he says. Yes, yes.

That's correct. He said something about the white noise machine. And he was also, you know, it was good to hear that he believes that the revelations from the Vault 7 materials that angered Pompeo were as significant as, you know, we have all discussed. I mean, that supply chain. I mean, we think about the supply. Actually, when you think about the way that WikiLeaks revealed through these materials, that supposedly came from Josh Schulte. But I will just say here on your show that the first trial that Josh Schulte went through

ended in a mistrial. And the second one, I think ended in a conviction because he's a terrible lawyer who should never have represented himself. That's just my opinion. But the thing with how they were planting malware into the supply chain is something that we're all thinking about now after we've seen those pager attacks. those walkie-talkie attacks that the Israeli government through, I imagine, Mossad, were able to commit against Hezbollah in the last couple of weeks.

And so the idea that you can do that in the supply chain, I think we have to credit WikiLeaks and their work for waging us up to this six, six, seven years ago. Yeah. Now, did he mention the Russia leaks or the so-called Russia Democratic Party leaks there or anything surrounding that? No, there was nothing about the work on. Did anybody ask about that either? No. You know, the only thing I'll say is, I just caught this because he's using political

language that seems to appeal to an American audience that I don't believe European parliamentarians can totally appreciate. What I'll say is in his speech, he called Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo Wolves in Maga Hats. And so I think he seemed to be wanting to say to people, I don't I don't know. I mean, he was pretty sympathetic because he wasn't going to endorse Hillary Clinton for the fact that she had openly spoke about drone bombing him to death, that, you know, he's gotten some flack for believing that Donald Trump would defend him and give him a pardon and would try to end the case against him. But in the end, he allowed the attorney general Jeff Sessions. Mike Pompeo to do whatever in order to target him and his family. I guess this was him trying to recognize that these people weren't ever individuals that were worthy of support. Yeah. Well, now, okay, so you mentioned his family there. What did he say about that? So his family, he went back over the fact that his infant son had been targeted. You know, they

were collecting DNA. The security contractor, UC Global had basically dug through the garbage to try to find a diaper so that they could ID him as the father of, well, actually, that wasn't, that was somebody else's baby, if I understand correctly. But they were, they were constantly trying to figure out who he was having relationships with and if he was fathering any children while he was in the embassy, kind of like, you know, FBI co-intel pro type stuff. And then he, you know, he just, he just shared that the stress of all of this was, you know, he blamed Pompeo for what was inflicted upon him and his family. I'd say he was very strongest in his condemnation of U.S. officials.

he reserved a lot of his, I guess, rage for Mike Pompeo. Fair. Who doesn't agree with whatever bad thing anyone could say about Mike Pompeo, even if it was made up? Yeah. I'm with it. And then the other thing to just quickly work in here is that the United Kingdom's government wasn't spared, which is important because this is in – they're part of it. of the Europe, they're part of, they have parliamentarians that are in this body. There was this dope named Richard Keene who tried to get stuff removed from this resolution because he didn't

like the idea that they were going to pass a resolution that said torture had happened at Belmarsh prison and he couldn't do it. He couldn't convince them to take it out. And so anyways, Julian sat there and called out the UK, all UK parliamentarians sat there. And these are the same parliamentarians that have been on the take or probably socialized with judges that were keeping him in a dungeon. Yeah. Well, and, you know, as we discussed on the show in severe solitary confinement,

I think eventually it was reduced to merely supermax conditions where he would get an hour out of his cell. But at first they were giving him the deepest, darkest dungeon in there, right? Yeah, he wasn't in general population until, and I still find this remarkable, until the prisoners at Belmarsh got together and petitioned the warden, or I suppose the administration of this prison, to release him into general population. In other words, you know, they heard that this prisoner was there. And they said, well, that's wrong.

He should be with us. And they got him out of isolation. Isn't that strange? I wonder, like, how hard they had to push to make that happen. Did anybody ever tell the story, like the detail of that? Well, I did, look, my understanding is, so just based on the Manning case, what I presume is that, and this is also what the U.S. might have wanted the U.K. to do. is that he was in isolation and they would say this is protective custody and or or yeah something to to that effect and so he couldn't be let out into general population and the protective custody

which was done to Manning at Quantico would be done at Belmarsh and it's a cover because what you want to do is prevent Julian Assange. from being able to talk to any prisoners about the classified information that he would know. It's just a standard that is applied. I mean, they do to the Schulte, too, who is in extreme isolation. They don't want him talking to any federal prisoners in New York City about classified information. And so... And that is literally what they did here, did Julian write, was they had him.

They called it medical isolation. protection, you know, suicide precautions, right? Yeah. Well, and it's true that after he left the London embassy, Ecuador's London embassy, that he did need medical treatment. But I also am of the belief that that can be used as a cover. Sure. You only need to be kept in a bed for so long.

And then as you recover, they can justify giving you medical attention. It's what they did to Manning saying, oh, uh, manning's on suicide. watch. So, you know, and taking clothes and all of this. And meanwhile, that's just because it helps them with their case. It helps to control a person. It's about pressure. Some would say that it was because they want Manning to go out and reveal people that were in WikiLeaks who they were talking to and all of that, so the government can then make a case to go after Julian Assange. You know, in this instance, I don't know what they wanted to get from Julian Assange, but because of all the different sources, all the people that made submissions to WikiLeaks, you could imagine

that he probably could talk to them about a fair amount. He probably, you know, for one, he may or may not know, we don't know to this day, but he might be able to say who was giving him those emails from the DNC and then who was giving the emails from Clinton campaign. And those are supposedly different sources, but sometimes that's not actually appreciated in the conversation. And he can at least rule some sources out possibly, you know? Yep. Yeah. So all of this conversation that he could have with the FBI or, you know, so you're trying to break somebody so that they then come to you with a confession and bargain and do a plea deal. In this instance, just to be clear as we, as we wind down our conversation, the plea deal was not a product of him giving anything up, just so nobody

gets any weird ideas. It was actually because the case was collapsing. And he spoke about that. by the way, he spoke about how the United States couldn't claim to give people the same speech rights when they are put on trial unless they were Americans. And so that was something that I think resonated with the Europeans. I don't know if that ever gets dealt with again later, but it does hang over future cases, probably future extradition cases. Yeah. Now, I don't know like all the ins and outs of, you know, immigration law and whatever. I know that that's different. But I know that in a basic criminal law sense that the rule is that if they have their hands on you, then you're a U.S. person. And if you're a U.S. person, then you get the Bill of Rights. And certainly when it comes

down to basic Fifth and Sixth Amendment court processes and First Amendment protections. I don't know like what the courts have ruled as far as the right to bear arms or whatever, but, you know, for foreigners. But certainly on stuff like this, this is, we went over and over all this during all of the torture where the Supreme Court said, look, that's because you think you found a cute loophole by torturing these people at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, instead of inside the United States. that's not true as long as you have them then they're still u.s persons and we still have responsibility for them and of course they put out some lukewarm rulings and whatever but

they did at least assert sovereignty over the case as long as it's u.s. government agents who are doing the persecuting and the holding and the prosecuting that's the point yeah uh well i think the issue was more that he's going to say as I would, as an American journalist, that the First Amendment protects me when I publish U.S. secret documents, and so I should be immune from prosecution under the Espionage Act, or if you're going to charge me, then I'll get my lawyer and we'll go into court and I'll say that there aren't grounds to bring this charge because I have a First Amendment right

to distribute or disseminate that information, whereas what the Justice Department was telling the U.K. courts was that, oh, no, he doesn't have that right because he's a foreign national. He can't claim that he published these documents and it was protected because he's in Australia. in yeah although i mean if it was just an australian law that said it's against the law to publish american secrets or something the first amendment wouldn't protect them then it all comes down to who's

to in the prosecuting whose courtroom he's in you know whose law he's being subjected to so um but anyway well yeah so then that goes back to what he was saying about pieces of paper and how you know the law can be manipulated however and and you know that's true and certainly as as you said earlier and i think is probably the biggest takeaway from what happened to julian asan just that punishment by process and they call it lawfare you know the right the taking out an opponent the CIA wants to take out an opponent and so they are either there's a there's good cop and bad cop here if you read the reporting. You know, it's, oh, we're going to do a disruption campaign against WikiLeaks. We're going to plant false information. We're going to turn

people in WikiLeaks against each other. We're going to try and steal their devices or hack into their computers. And we're also going to threaten rendition and assassination. Oh, if the Justice Department doesn't like this at any time they could issue an indictment and charge him. And then we'll just step back. But we're going to get our way. because hopefully he'll be brought to Alexandria to the espionage court as John Kyriaku dubbed it or as described it and I guess it has a reputation as that and then we'll get what we want so that's you know and that was always the goal yeah now dare I hope did he mention did anyone ask him about the future WikiLeaks so nothing came up about the future of WikiLeaks so nothing came up about the future of WikiLeaks here but what I gather from watching is that they're trying to feel their way around and figure out how to restart WikiLeaks all I'll say is this current observation but WikiLeaks has a section on their website where

they post press releases and at any moment they could go back to work and And they could, you know, they could post what had just happened at this Council of Europe and share it with people through WikiLeaks. But they're still using Julian Assange defense or the Assange defense campaign. What I think is kind of peculiar because at some point, it should just be WikiLeaks that is doing this work again. And what I take away is that it's not ready, that there's, that there's still. not really sure where they fit. And I think that I don't know that, I don't think they're going to stay away. I think they are going to start doing WikiLeaks work again at some point. I mean, there wouldn't be Christian Horroffson is the WikiLeaks editor in chief. I imagine he would just

step aside and say, we're shutting this down if they weren't going to continue. I believe they want to do something with WikiLeaks going forward. I just think that as Julian Assange has now entered the world and is trying to figure out where it fits. Looking at Ukraine, looking at Gaza and other sectors of the globe, they're trying to figure out where WikiLeaks could have the most impact and how they could regain people's trust to convince sources to submit material to WikiLeaks again. Because I think any source in the world looks at what happened with Julian Assange and thinks, how am I going to submit this information and not be found out by the most powerful country in the world. How are they going to protect me and make sure that I don't get prosecuted turned into

Manning or John Kyriaku or Daniel Hale or Jeffrey Sterling? How am I going to avoid that? And so I think that's the big thing on Julian Assange's play. I mean, also, he's still recovering mentally and physically from what he went through. So it could be next year later before we hear anything. but I do tend to believe that WikiLeaks is going to be trying to have an impact and perform journalism again. I just think that it's going to be something we have to be very patient and wait for. Yeah. All right, listen, I know you got to go. I'll let you go, but it's got to be mentioned again that Manning's leak to Assange,

the Iraq and Afghan war logs, the State Department cables, and the Guantanamo files as well. This is God's gift to journalism, man. this is the greatest thing that's happened to journalism in 21st century so far and there's been a lot of great stuff and including at WikiLeaks but those State Department cables I mean talk about a treasure trove man of the reality in there

and it wasn't like Aldrich Ames selling out the secret identities of all our spies on the other side of the iron curtain or whatever's thing get their throat slit it wasn't anything like that It was confidential and secret, not top secret stuff. So in other words, it was the dirty, ugly, filthy truth, but without compromising sources in a way like they claimed. And, you know, just for my part, I've relied on that stuff so much. And I know that, because I did the research before, I remember, you know, searching this before, just the terms. according to State Department cables

or WikiLeaks documents reveal or you know these kinds of terms you'll find tens of thousands of hits from stories all over the world of people citing these documents for at least just a part

of their article that they wrote where they go well the State Department cable from 09 does say this to confirm that one thing that we had heard or whatever it is and and so I mean that's the thing of it and that's why they nailed him is because he nailed them and so you know um not

that he deserved it but they sure did and and it's you know the value of that stuff is equivalent to the penance he paid for putting it out you know what i mean yeah well as you close what if i give you uh one topical document here as a as our as my last uh concluding comment here so So I got WikiLeaks cables. Saudis proposed Arab force to invade Lebanon. And this is incredibly relevant what we see happening with Hezbollah. So Saudi Arabia proposed creating an Arab force that would be backed by the United States and NATO air and sea powers to intervene in Lebanon.

This would have been around 2008. And to basically have a proxy battle between the U.S. and Iran in Lebanon. What are we seeing now? I mean, come on. Like you're saying, all of these documents are incredible primary source materials for us as we cover foreign policy. Yeah, absolutely. And everybody can still find all that stuff at WikiLeaks.org. In fact, some of those cables were like pulling up 404 errors like a year or so ago.

They all seem to be working just fine right now. And I urge people to just pick a country and dig, you know, do some learning on your own, see what you find. It's just amazing stuff in there. And as we talked about, help end the war with a little help from our friend Kevin. Thank you, man. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.