Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/2/22 John Young on Cryptome, Wikileaks and the Persecution of Julian Assange

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Scott talks with John Young of Cryptome.org about his attempt to join the Julian Assange indictment as a co-defendant. Before Wikileaks published redacted versions of the State Department cables leaked by Chelsea Manning, Cryptome got access and published the entire collection of unredacted cables. Young believes that his inclusion in the indictment would weaken the state’s case against Assange. Scott and Young also talk about the early days of Cryptome and the state of classified documents on the internet today.  Discussed on the show: Cryptome.org  John Young is the cofounder of Cryptome.org, one of the earliest databases of classified documents on the internet.  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay you guys introducing john young from cryptome dot org which is i think certainly without question right the greatest treasure trove of documents

on the internet, which is a big place. Welcome to show, John. How are you, sir? Oh, no. Are you in Austin? Yes, sir. I'm in Austin. How about you? I'm in New York, a city, but I'm a native Texan. Oh, that's great. Well, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir. I've been familiar with your site for a very long time, although just going through it in the last couple of days here. I realize how proportionally little time I've spent on this site. It's such an important thing. And we have so much to talk about here, but can we start with your recent, I think, quite

serious petition to the Department of Justice that you would like to be added to Julian Assange's indictment and prosecuted along with him under the Espionage Act for publishing the WikiLeaks, I think particularly the State Department cables. Is that right? Please tell us everything about what's going on there. That's correct. That's all correct. Good for you.

Well, so please explain why it is that you asked for them to do that. Well, it has to do with that. It seems to be reaching a crisis point about whether he's going to be extradited or not, and we'd like to get on board for that trial. So we thought the best way to get on board for it was to join it. I also want to emphasize that we were the first. want to release these cables in an unredacted form before WikiLeaks did.

And while it's got a little bit of attention, there's not been a sufficient attention that because he's being blamed for that, but Krypton managed to decrypt the file and posted a while before WikiLeaks did. And so we'd like to own up to that and if necessary, explaining why we did it, but also to bear the burden of that and to diminish.

his responsibility for reducing this unredacted version. Well, I mean, that's frankly absolutely heroic of you. So to go back a little bit there for people who aren't as familiar with the story, when Assange got the Manning leak, that's the State Department cables and the Iraq and Afghan war logs and the Guantanamo files, he was going through and carefully redacting the names of informants in Afghanistan and things like that. But then it was a Guardian journalist who published the past, to the encrypted file that was out there that no one could crack. And once he published that password, then you and others were able to get the, and that's

Luke Harding, by the way, the journalist, then you and others were able to get the entire file, the unredacted version, which you, out of your librarian ethic, I think, just your First Amendment ethic went ahead and posted right there online. But this is important because the government is saying that he did that. and that this is part of their excuse for prosecuting Assange. And so that's why you're saying here, you actually want to come and take the rap for that part of it because you think he's being unfairly blamed for producing the unredacted documents when, in fact, he never really did that, or at least not until the cat was already out of the bag.

That's correct. Okay, so it's a very important thing. And then, so have you gotten any response from the Department of Justice here? Not yet, no. I've also, since writing the DOJ, I've written to the judge in the case asking the judge to approve my participation as co-defendant. I've not heard from anybody yet on that. That's an interesting thing. And now, I guess I'm not sure how one would ever go about that.

I'm not sure if I've ever heard of anyone asking to be added to a federal indictment before. I mean, do you have a lawyer? Have you talked to a lawyer about what's a way to actually make that happen? No, I would like to go into this my own way that I'm not comfortable with lawyers because of the fact that they're typically on the side of authorities rather than on the side of their defendants

even though they may claim their own decide. They are officials of the government. Of course, I have to quickly say that I'm also an official of the government as a registered architect in New York State. So the role of officials who are licensed by the state and what they do to maintain their privilege income source is an important factor here.

So I wanted to take part of this in my own way, like Assange is. Well, and listen, I think, you know, just from the outside, it's nice to know that you have this, apparently, this mutual respect with Julian Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks. Someone might assume that you guys are competitors. There's some bad blood there or any kind of thing like that. but you see a bit of yourself and him, is that right? Well, I actually helped set up WikiLeaks. I was asked by Jr. to serve as the registrar of the domain and was involved in the origination of Wikileaks for several weeks

until we had a falling out. And since then, we've gone in parallel routes. He, of course, had become far better known than we have ever been. and so that we're slightly competitors, but we don't rely upon media for our distribution like he does. We stay at a small-time operation, and by the way, since we're practicing architects, we do this as a public service rather than as a full-time job.

And I saw you have leaked blueprints of skyscrapers and things on the page right now. So it seems important and relevant. It is because we think that what's happening with cities right now is an important issue. We've spent some time working with the New York City Building Department where we had access to this material. So we're sharing that. It's not classified in any way, but it takes a while to get access to it. So we have ranged widely in what we published that we're not particularly focused on national security material, although we've done a good bit of that, but that's not all we do.

do. Right. Okay. Now, so, and tell us about your history here. You've been around since 1996, huh? Almost as long as anti-war.com. Yeah, that's right. That's when we set up with Cryptome. We had had a predecessor organization called Urban Deadline that we set up in 1968. That was a community service group, set up at Columbia University when we were graduate students. And then that segue into quick tone when we became active on the internet. That's really great. And then do you have some kind of estimate of how many files you have on here, or particularly like classified national security type stuff or formerly classified documents?

Not just those. The total archive was about 96MB, I'm sorry, 96,000 files. and so but it's a wide variety of public information that is hard to come by and now um i should say we have done a number of classified publications of from other countries as well as the united states from britain other countries that are much tighter in distribution of national security information has been sent to us and we've been happy to publish that um and now as far as the The asking to be indicted along with Assange here, I mean, it shouldn't go unstated how completely absurd this is.

Not the part about you chiming in, that's heroic, but the part about them daring to indict a publisher for publishing. Not the leaker, the government employee for leaking a document, but the leakee, the publisher. And the idea that they could prosecute you under the Espionage Act. Autosound is absolutely absurd in everyone's ear as the idea that they're doing it today. Julian Assange. What you guys are doing is not espionage at all. Now, I mean, I wouldn't, it's at least arguable whether someone like Manning who's leaking to you is espionage. I don't think that's what espionage really means in the first place there, a heroic whistleblower leaking to the public. But still, at least they have a contract and a promise not to leak. But as a publisher,

you have every right just as much as Benjamin Franklin to publish whatever the hell you want, right? Or what am I missing? that's correct is that thanks to the internet we have a broad base of distribution now that we did not have before when it was all in hard copy and so the internet has changed the game for everybody through to you um and so now i'm sure you've noticed that the new york times and then even the government of australia has come out in the last week saying okay it's time to go ahead and let Assange off the hook. I guess they made their example out of him punishing him before trial here. Do you think that maybe there's some movement and does it look to you like

maybe they are going to back off at this point and let him go? Well, it's going to be interesting because what's still not clear to me is what lies behind these publishers deciding to do this since they could have done it quite some time ago. One of the things we've learned is the backroom deals made between publishers and government. around the world, to build a stature for both of them by mutual agreement, kept quiet, and then they both crow about their roles. So we'll see what comes to this. For example, in our effort, we suggested that perhaps these five publishers would publish

the unredacted cables to show their good faith. We're not sure they will. Hmm. And now, on the site itself, I'm sure you're aware that WikiLeaks has been having a lot of trouble lately, their site is falling apart. And, you know, there used to be mirrors all over the place. I actually found a page of links to WikiLeaks mirrors on Cryptome, but they're all broken now. It's from a long time ago. And I'd wonder whether, I mean, and I know, I did see on your site that there's a torrent, five, of at least the State Department cables. But I just wonder, is it possible? Or did you already, is there somewhere a real and complete, independent mirror of the WikiLeaks site that people can go to that still have all the documents? Now, even the famous Nyet means Niette State Department memo from William Burns is 404 over there

right now. Well, good question. Now, this integration of Wikileaks is surprised to all of us. and we don't know what that's all about, whether it's under attack or being withdrawn on purpose by the operators, the remaining operators, and so we don't really know. At one point, there were a number of mirrors of WikiLeaks. I don't know what the status of those are right now, but we'll be looking into that. We've mirrored a few of the sites, but nowhere near the full collection.

I suspect there are collections out there. Not everyone's going to be willing to say they've got them all, them all, but they might. I know early in the days, Ricky Neeks encourage people to make mirrors other side, thinking they'd be taken down. So at least some of them are out there. I think it may be that WikiLeaks is also doing a counteroffensive by taking some of this stuff down to see what happens. Everyone's trying some new stuff these days, which is kind of exciting. I'm sorry, what exactly do you mean by that, taking it down in order to serve their interests, how? Well, I think not having a WikiLeaks out there with all this material,

I think it's going to disturb a lot of people. As it is doing, it's storing up some concern as to what will happen. Because I know in the past, WikiLeaks has warned that they could be taken down, and people said, oh, well, you're right, that you're just bluffing. We know you'll always be up. So they've actually swore people thinking it will always be available. So the question now is, will it come back up? Is it going to come back in a different form? Who's got it all? So that's why I see some interesting possibilities coming up now.

We wish we had it all. We'd certainly do our best to put it up, although we don't have the same resources as Wikilex does. But we'll be asking around as well. I mean, and there's just so much there. I mean, only the stuff that I know about off the top of my head, and I know there's a ton more than that. but we have, of course, the entire Manning leak, as I said,

that's the State Department cables, the Iraq and Afghan War logs, Guantanamo files. Then they have, of course, all the DNC leaks, but not just that. They have all the Hillary Clinton emails that the State Department released under the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. They posted all of that as well.

And then there's the Vault 7 leak. Do you have that? Some of that. I don't have it all. Like others, I wanted to be low-hanging fruit. The interesting stuff I make copies of, and so we'll offer that if it doesn't come back up. We've not gone over to see what's missing just yet, but we'll take a look at it and see if we can offer anything. But right now, the question is why is WikiLeaks suffering this outage?

We don't know what that's all about. Who's doing it if it's done by WikiLeaks are done by attacks? You know, they're still tweeting, and I tried to respond to a tweet of theirs and say, hey, guys, what's wrong with the site? Is there anything we can do to help? You know, I don't know. And I got no answers, so. No answer.

Well, that's true of others who've tried to find out. You know, one of the things about WikiLeaks, we don't know who's actually operating the site right now. They kept that pretty quiet. A song is always a public face. And except for a few close associates, most people who were running the side were unknown. So, go ahead. If someone were to try to reconstitute the WikiLeaks site, as I said, you can get the State Department cables torrent from Cryptome.

Do you have any other kind of full stashes beyond the State Department cables, or do you know where anyone else is hosting, you know, the Iraq war logs here, the Afghan war logs there, that kind of thing? I haven't looked lately. I'll take a look at it, thanks to your suggestion, and see what I can find. I should say that our version of the cables is not a torrent. It's actually the zip file, 368 megabyte file that you download. Okay, sorry about that. I misunderstood that. That's okay.

We'll take a look at what we've got and see, check around see who else might have it. We'll start offering some of the stuff we've got. Yeah. I mean, those files are just so important. And, you know, it's been quite a long time now. 2010 is when this stuff came out. There were a lot of people listening to this show who were just kids then or weren't interested in politics then.

Maybe don't know anything about it. But here we have thousands, tens of thousands of cables on the secret level. Not top secret with, you know, spies' last names and stuff. But a huge quantity of them from, you know, within the military and within the State Department, describing the wars and describing their diplomacy around the world. And it's just a rough guess. of mine that there must be five or 10,000 news stories that have been published in the last decade that include at least in part, according to the WikiLeaks cables, according to the

State Department cables, according to the Afghan war logs, and there are a lot of stories that were based on them, but there are also a lot of stories that even just one important detail is corroborated by the, by the State Department documents, something like that. And we're talking thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of important stories. that have been written based on these documents and all information that we had the right to know all along, too. So, you know, Manning and Assange both should really be celebrated for that. That was one of the greatest leaks in history. And, you know, they tried to accuse them both of getting informants rolled up and killed in Afghanistan and stuff like that. But it just

wasn't true. And eventually Robert Gates himself admitted that it wasn't true. That's correct. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee Hot Sauce Company. Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors. Garlic habanero, honey habanero, pineapple habanero, Poblano Halapeno, and the Blood Orange Ghost.

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And there's free shipping, too. So, yeah. Yeah, hugely important. Now, okay, so I, oh, I wanted to ask about the Snowden documents, too. I know that you and WikiLeaks both have, in the past, collected documents that were not leaked directly to you, but they got published somewhere, and then you back them up to, as I was mentioning there, with the emails that the State Department released that WikiLeaks was hosting, and you have all this stuff as well. And so I just wondered whether you have your own stash of the Snowden Docks. I remember the website, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF, they used to keep them all. Like whenever a new Snowden story came out and it had the PDF of the document,

they saved them all and they had this one page that had them all. And then that page is all 404 now. It doesn't work anymore now. And I just wonder whether anyone is keeping sort of the single stash of all of the Snowden Docks that were released, even though many weren't. We have a stash. I didn't realize that EFL's stash was down because it was comprehensive.

I'll have to look into that. We had a running account, too, of that and mirrored everything that came out that we could get access to, and it's still up. We sell them take anything down, so I'm surprised that EFF took it down, but I'll take a look. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, I think I'll go back and take a look, too, because actually the last time I saw it was a few years ago and I was disappointed to see that it was all broken then, but I haven't looked recently, so they could have fixed it, you know, I don't know. And by the way, so... Well, I'll just point out, as you may know, we've been complaining for years about how little of the snowed material was released. We calculated no more than 15% of what he gave to the journalists was ever released. And so there's an awful lot of material that you, journalists, ostensibly have. And they have claim that they released all the important stuff, but we don't know what's happened with the 85%

that was never released. I think that's a very important point. And, I mean, the deal was supposed to be, we publish everything that we can out of here, right? And then, but there's also going to be stuff since it was this huge dump. There would have been personal information about non-public people, you know, that was need to be protected bank accounts and whatever it is. Who knows? Things that a responsible journalist would not publish. But we should have got everything except that. And in fact, you know, the leak came out in 2013 and then it wasn't until 20, what, 16 and a half or something that Mertaza Hussein wrote that piece at The Intercept where he said, oh, here from the NSA docs is a Saudi princeling instructing the jihadists in Syria to attack the airport.

And if this had come out in 2013, it would have been a huge part of the narrative. about the Saudi role and the al-Qaeda role on the ground there in the dirty war in Syria. And then somehow that that document was available in 2016, meaning that it had been around for three years. And they hadn't published it until for some reason they felt like it. And by the way, Hussein was a partisan of al-Qaeda there. So I always like to point that out. He'll never get over the shame of that.

Well, one of the interesting things is, you know, some of the journalists have complained about being. curtailed by their own publishers from publishing what they'd like to publish. This raised a whole issue of any complicity between publishers and the government compared to journalists and the government. Publishers have a greater economic state in maintaining good relationships and journalists do. So I know that both Greenwall and Martin Gelman have complained about being restricted by the publisher of putting themselves at risk. So this is a game that's still being played. One of the things we'd point out from our long history of beating with cybersecurity people

is that none of this stuff is actually secure. So the part that people think they're keeping themselves is just accessible to people who are skilled at breaking into systems. We've always expected that our system to be broken into because the skill is so great, well beyond what most of us have. We think there's no cybersecurity that actually works on the internet. And so these folks who think are keeping their cash secret, it's just not true. One well-known cybersecurity person who met with Greenwall and looked at his security thing, laughed at how bad it was.

But Greenwald didn't know. He's a journalist. He's not a cybersecurity person. And that's true of most journalists. They don't have high skills at keeping stuff secret. So you can't really stash it anywhere without it being accessible. The thing is, is that it could be left in place. place and then the authorities just watch who comes in. They run these honeypots all the time.

Well, and they can even, even if you have it air gapped and turned off, they can, they have ways of interrogating an unplugged hard drive, right? Yep. Burglary. You know, research are professionals that are getting access to what do they want to get access to. And so I think that we know something in the dream world. I think that cyber-defense. security is sufficient, encryption is not sufficient. So I think that I don't want to sound like a paranoid nut, but it's that the skills these folks have who don't want this material out there

far beyond what most of us have. Therefore, we don't worry about publishing what we publish. It's out there. It's just that some people market this stuff, who are also highly skilled, including X-5s, and seal stuff from places like Mickey Leaks and us and market this stuff. So there's an underground market for this highly classified material. Other spies paid well for this material.

So it's still an ongoing story as to how all it's going to be sorted out. But right now, the whole notion of redacting stuff from files is ridiculous. Redaction is actually a sales gimmick. we're totally opposed to redaction just because people can find the unredacted file somewhere anyway so why bother? Is that what you mean? That's correct. In fact, just to say you've redacted

it makes you a target for bidding it what you've redacted. So to brag about it is in fact a wave of flag come hit us. We've got it. That's interesting. Now, so I saw a thing actually this morning where someone was correctly noting that General Hayden lost control of the

Vault 7 data when he was responsible for it and now he wants to go around demonizing Julian Assange and all of that but that was at least 50% his fault for it getting out but then it's interesting

of what you say there about there really is no defense I think even for them and I remember reading a thing I don't think it was Hayden but it was some kind of NSA type official a few years ago I read saying that

when it comes to cybersecurity sort of like you said there really is none and that like if there's a soccer game between america and russia over who can break into each other's computers the score is 7000 to 8000 right that there's basically no defense um you can run the tightest security that you can but there's always a way around and so it's easy to score and very hard to prevent the other side from scoring essentially is that more or less your understanding That's correct that the internet is a fabulous spy machine. It gets into places that it couldn't get into before. But it's also a nice cover story for how it's actually done. And so one of the things that the officials try to conceal is how they actually do this. And so they put up various false stories. One could almost say that WikiLeaks was a false story about how you actually protect stuff. But that's not meant to diminish what they're doing.

At least it's moved the ball a little bit further down the field. And I think that's why I say that what comes from WikiLeaks is going to be interesting and what will come from us. But, you know, there have been dozens of sites like ours since we first started. They're not WikiLeaks is just the most prominent one, but there are tons of other people working the same modus of operandi. But now does that mean, too, that you can't promise, you're not pretending to promise security if someone wants to leak documents to you, that you're saying that there is no secure drop,

not really? We actually post that message. We have one file that suggests how you could get stuff to us without disclosing who you are, but we can't promise cybersecurity where you say it's not possible. That's a file that's on our site. And now that curtailed some people who don't want to believe that there's no privacy. But we think it's something of a conge off to promise privacy and security. Well, now...

You know, it's a growing field, though, you know. It's amazing how quickly cybersecurity has come up, very low for you field. Sure. Well, like, so if you had a secure drop thing, which I don't know how it works, I'm just a guy over here, but something like secure drop, it'll protect you from some? people's observation, if not the National Security Agency or the CIA still, right? That are skilled hackers. You know, a lot of these people who have left these agencies are quite skilled at breaking and entering cyber assistance.

We were associated with some of those people, and they just quietly keep themselves and let the public people have their how to publicize fights. They'd like to work in the background. Yeah, well, and that's the whole thing about all the contractors from the new Homeland Security State, right, is they are kind of deniable spies for things that police and spies are not allowed to do in America, that they just hire a contractor to do it for them, that kind of thing, huh? Yep. Our recommendation, it's kind of like shooting ourselves on the foot, just don't use the Internet if you want privacy, but it's a seducting a tool.

We use it all the time, but we sort of. don't expect to have privacy on the internet. Well, it's certainly a double-edged sword. Well, let me ask you, so when they first announced the URLs and the links and everything

in 1994, I was still in high school, and there were a couple of kids who were on top of it and who were buying their own name.com right then and that kind of thing. And I was just too much of a cynic and a conspiracist then, and I said, this whole thing is a scam, so that

everybody is connected to, you know, the national government through our telecommunications firms that they completely dominate. And everything that we put out there, fine. But that means they can get everything in all our computers, too. It's a, it's the telescreen from 1984, even if it's two-way. It's still like us signing up for our own enslavement. And I ended up, actually, I didn't even really commit to getting the internet and, and using it for my own part. as a double-edged sword from my direction until like it was time for rack war two or you know even around that because I didn't want to invite this devil into my life for exactly the reasons that you're talking about but anyway so my question is though is that like that match sort of with

your perception from back then that that was sort of where all this came from in the first place this is all essentially a surveillance tool that some of us like you and me try to use back against them to some, but that really it's their game board that we're playing on. Well, that's what's up. But I think that the more we want to use

this system for our purposes, we've got to learn to be aggressive against others who are using it for their purposes. So there's a bit of a war going on now. And that it's a cyber war, if you will. And so I think the convenience of the internet and the pleasure we get from it,

we have to recognize that of we're being seduced by it. And so I think we'll have to just broaden our skills into seeing how we want to use it for democratic purposes rather than for authoritarian purposes. And that, of course, is well underway. And Wikileaks is part of that. We're part of that. We got involved in the Internet in 1994, too.

That's when we joined the cypherpunks. We'd been using computers in our architectural practice for years before that, but that was all local usage of the computers. So this network is what's phenomenal. But I think it has great potential for more democracy if we learn to use it correctly and fight for our rights. And that's why I say that we need more of the cryptones and make sure we need more people running their own unfettered

outlets and not be intimidated by these accusations of espionage and releasing national security information. I think that's bullshit. Excuse my Texas term. No problem at all. And look, every time I've ever talked to Daniel Ellsberg, he's spoken directly to the audience and said, please, leak, I know they're government employees here with the clearance

who know things and can prove things that the people need to know. And we send guys to war to get their legs blown off. You're not willing to do a couple years in the penitentiary? Come on. Man up, do the right thing. Tell the truth. Well, that's the buying these government officials have is they can be punished more than a citizen like me can for violating their national security agreement. So it's a faust and deal they got themselves into and noticed that the government really does come down hard on officials who leave.

Well, there's no, there's dozens of them out there who have been sent to jail. And they're trying to send a message that anything. that you leave from the inside, we're going to punish you more than we would an ordinary person. People even pointed out why has Krypton not been punished like WikiLeaks has, or I have not like Assange has. Well, it's because we're small. I'm a small fry.

They go for the big fry. When you're an American citizen, too, and he's not. Yeah, but they send a lot of American citizens to jail. And so we'd like to see what they do with us, if anything. And so you had to stick your nose in other people's business. I don't want to brag. Go ahead. Bring a text, and I might brag too much.

So I'm a quiet one. But we'll see what happens. I'd like to go to this trial and take part in it rather being an outsider. You know, it's interesting. I hope you'll cover it too. Come down to D.C. You know, I don't know if I'll be able to do that. definitely cover it on this show.

And, you know, I've been trying to do everything I can to help raise awareness of this issue and in the correct light of this issue. You know, Assange has been demonized in a lot of ways and try to do a lot to push back on that too. It's the same thing they do with countries, right? When they're going after a country, they demonize just the leader itself. And so, you know, they'll say, you know, France, Germany, Norway, Putin, right? Now Russia is called Putin because it's just easier to demonize him.

So now instead of WikiLeaks, it's all just Assange himself and try to find a way to make you not like him. He undermined the Republicans war. He undermined the Democrats' election. He's accused of touching these women and these kinds of things to try to make him toxic and radioactive so that people don't want to associate themselves with the heroic work that's being done there. And so, yeah, we should never buy into that. we should always be immune from that kind of manipulation the way that they do and well we had to be aware that they they are masters of the dirty trick and so i think you can't expect to get away free if you tickled the tail of these folks so asan for one reason he's a master showman that he is

also susceptible to being demonized in ways that most of those people are not um but they will So we'll see what publishers do. They start to get demonized in response to what they've done and see how they handle this trial that's coming up. Now, they might drop the charges because of the five publishers. We'll see what they do. But I suspect they'll keep this fight going as long as they can. Yeah. You know, the feds love publicity.

In a way, just in one way, it would be even one way, it would be even, worse almost kind of for them to just drop the charges because you know if they really meant to prosecute him under all their bogus theories of the espionage act and computer hacking and all these things then at least he'd have something like his day in court something like that but instead if they just go ah ha just kidding sorry and just drop the charges now then all they were really doing was just persecuting him and under the color of law imprisoning him in this way you know pretending that they want to go all the way to court and even break the New York Times precedent here about publishing classified information just to basically bully and torture the guy when they never even really meant to prosecute him at all, would be one interpretation of that, which is, like I say, in a way, almost worse than if they just meant to actually prosecute them in good, bad faith. You know what I mean? yep absolutely yep they're dirty fighters yeah crazy times all right listen well john it's great to

finally talk to you all this time i've been a big fan of your work for a very long time and i really encourage people to go and dig through this website i mean you could get lost for a whole summer in this thing uh with all the documents you have on all kinds of issues here so that's cryptome dot org everybody and including you can find there the um the zip file for all the state department documents from the man yeah i've sent my best all my relatives in texas some of which you're in austin san angelo odessa all around out there okay great and we and we love your site too well thank you very much i really appreciate that a lot john the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on K-P-F-K 90.7 FM in LA.

APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.