Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/6/22 John Kiriakou on the War on Alternative Media

Episode Date: May 8, 2022

Scott is joined by CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou to discuss the recent uptick in deplatforming efforts against alternative media sites like Consortium News and MintPress News. They discuss the hold that the Intelligence Community has over establishment national security “journalists.” The example of Ken Dilanian comes up, the journalist who reported on the CIA, but who sent every draft to the CIA for approval before even sending it to his own editor. Meanwhile, alternative websites like The Grayzone, Consortium News, MintPress News and Antiwar.com get no access and are quickly labeled as unstable conspiracy theorists. Recently, the deplatforming attempts against these sites have ramped up with the new “misinformation” labeling group NewsGuard. Scott and Kiriakou agree that this is the logical consequence of the attempt to ruin Jullian Assange, but also that it could be an act of desperation. Discussed on the show: John Kiriakou’s books OKC Bombing Archive NewsGuard Radley Balko at the Washington Post “Ken Dilanian CIA” Google Search MintPress News John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer and author of The Convenient Terrorist: Two Whistleblowers’ Stories of Torture, Terror, Secret Wars, and CIA Lies and Doing Time Like A Spy. He is the host of Loud and Clear on Sputnik Radio. Follow him on Twitter @JohnKiriakou. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. 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

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All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antire war.com, author of the book, Fools 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 2000. 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 all right you guys hey listen here on the line i've got geron kiriaku used to be a cia analyst and then he became a cia operations officer guy and then he went to prison for telling some truth

about them torturing people. Yeah. Then he became, you know, one of us. Pretty good anti-war guy. And he writes articles and he tells the truth about things a lot. Hi, John. How are you? Hey, doing well, thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you joining us here.

A good friend of mine told me this morning that he just finished reading your book because I says to him, I'm going to interview John Kariaki today. And he says, I just finished reading his book, which is doing time like a spy. How the CIA taught me to survive and thrive. prison, which is also where they locked you. Yeah, they did. Who do they think you are? Carter Page, they're just going to stab you in the back like that? Poor Carter Page. I've talked to him once or twice. I feel sorry for that poor guy.

Yeah, boy, who would ever want to be a CIA asset or agent or officer if they'll just hang you out to dry, especially for doing the right thing? And they do. They do. They just walk away from you. And you're on your own. Now, if you sign up to be a knock, that's one thing. And, you know, a non-official cover, you're out there. But otherwise, don't they give you that same BS like in the army that like, hey, we're family and all of that? Oh my God, yes. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken, like, hey, we're all in it together. Yeah, it's all nonsense. All right. And you got a brand new book coming out. Wait, let's go back in time for a second here. The convenient terrorist you wrote with Joseph Hickman, who is a certifiable American hero because even though he was just a guard at Guantanamo, that's not heroic. He told the

truth that the CIA murdered some guys down there in 2006, July, if I remember, right, wrote a book all about that and heroically stuck his neck out. And you co-authored a book with him. Not about that. That's his other book. I'm sorry. Do you remember his book off the top of your head? Yeah, it was, oh, I'm thinking of his second book, which was the burn pits. That one you can't put down. The first one escapes me now. But yeah, he told, he told the truth. He told the truth about, you know, the CIA would take these Al-Qaeda or alleged Al-Qaeda prisoners into an interrogation room. And then by morning, these guys would be dead. And the CIA interrogators would say, oh, you know what? We just walked out for a minute and they committed

suicide. Yeah, seriously. I'm sorry, I have it on my shelf, but my shelves are like two and three rows of books deep sometimes. So I can't always find what I'm looking for. Yeah. Um, anyway, uh, and then, so you wrote this book with him about Abu Zabeda and then it turns out that the reason that everybody thought all these things that weren't true about Abu Zabeda was because he had an identical cousin like that TV show from the 70s. It's crazy, right? So there were two guys named Abu Zabeda. And so the CIA didn't know that there were two. And so you look at the CIA file and you're like, my God, this guy's a terrorist Superman. He's everywhere. He's in Jordan. He's in Montana. He's in North Carolina. He's in Pakistan. He's in Saudi Arabia.

Well, it turned out there were two of them. Oh, man. All right. Convenient Harris. And then before that, the reluctant spy. And this is the memoir about what you're doing, scurred around there, kidnapping al-Qaeda dudes and renditioning him off to Bangkok to be tortured, right? I never said Bangkok. You did.

But, yeah, pretty much. All right. I'm the one who said Bangkok. And then, so you weren't actually brutalizing these dudes, but you were standing there watching them getting brutalized? Is that really right? No. No. I was the only one who declined the torture training. I said, this is a torture program. I have a, I have an ethical problem with it. I think it's illegal besides being unethical. And I refused to do it. And so their first response was to pass me over for promotion. But, um, but I had kind of a rabble.

up on the seventh floor, and he promoted me out of cycle, and then I became the deputy director's executive assistant. So I was able to read all of this compartmented cable traffic that they were sending back from the torture site, all of which turned out to be false. They were just making it up. And we didn't even know that until 2009 when the CIA Inspector General released a declassified report finally, saying that all that crap that was coming back from the secret site was just made up. Or plagiarized from the FBI. And that's really what the truth was.

It was plagiarized. Yes. The FBI was like, here, have some tea and a cigarette. And that was what got him to talk. Exactly. All right. And then I know Gareth wrote most of this, but still it's great and it's got a good title. The CIA's, the CIA Insiders Guide to the Iran Crisis.

This is a Trump-era book, kind of shorthand, summary catch up everybody on the policies and all the history surrounding Iranian terrorism, if I remember right, and the nuclear program and all the different controversies surrounding America's relationship with Iran, a great one. But then you've got a brand new one here. You can comment about that too, but you have a brand new one here, how to disappear and live off the grid, a CIA insider's guide. So give us a comment about Iran and then tell us about your new one here.

Sure. Well, the Iran one was kind of fun because I got this contract from Skyhorse. they said, hey, can you write a book about Iran? And I said, you know, I'm not really an Iran expert. I said, I can write about the history of Iran. That I know. But let me talk to Gareth Porter because Gareth knows more about Iran than anybody I've ever met. So the funny thing was we start writing this thing. And I'm like, Gareth, we have a really short deadline. I said they have to have the book in eight weeks. So I wrote as quickly as I could. And then Gareth just keeps writing and writing and writing and writing. And it's like, Gareth, I was calling him

every day. You got to stop writing. But every day, there was like an update. Every day Trump would say something or Pompeo would say something. So finally, we sent it all in. And they ended up cutting out most of my part. And they took all of Garrett's part. And that's what became the book. Oh, that's too bad. Because I bet your part was pretty readable too. You know, what the hell? I was proud of my part. And then these, it's actually a trilogy of books that I did. The CIA Insider's guide to disappearing and living off the grid, the CIA Insider's Guide to Lying and Lie Detection, and the CIA Insiders Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection, and they're all coming out on May 25th.

Oh, all three of them are coming out then. Oh, I see now. Yeah, okay. And then I did one just sort of for myself. It's crazy, but I sat down and I just didn't get up from the computer, and I wrote this book in six weeks. It's going to come out in the next few months. It's called Remains of the Day,

The Complete Guide to Washington, D.C.'s historic cemeteries. That's interesting. Something completely different. It's just a little side hobby of yours, huh? Yes. Okay. Yes. It's the only place I can find peace is in a cemetery.

Yeah. Well, listen, I think a lot of people are going to be interested in this living off the grid one and line and lie detection. That can serve you in personal life and business. For sure. And surveillance and surveillance detection, you can't imagine how many questions I get from people who, you know, think their spouse is cheating on them, want to know how to do surveillance and not get caught, or vice versa, think that their spouse is having them followed, and how can they, you know, become certain that it's happening or it's not happening. So there's actually a market out there. Yeah, very good.

Well, I hope you make a bunch of money selling these to people, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's great. So everybody just type in kiriaku, just like it sounds. Yep. And put in Amazon with that, and you'll be awash in books to read. Listen, let's talk about the insane Soviet lawless, unbelievable persecution of my good friends and some heroes at consortium news.com. Man, yeah.

And not only them, but Mint Press News is getting. Isn't it? And my guy, Kyle Anselone at the Libertarian Institute, got zotst as Peter Lee, the Chinahan put it off of Facebook. And I thought things were turning around, John Kirooku. What the hell? Oh, I'll tell you, it's worse than ever. It's worse than ever right now.

The next interview is going to be about, well, John, you got kicked off at Amazon.com. Now what? Yeah, seriously. That's what the next step is. You know, and it's, it's a, uh, uh, uh, gray's, um, gray's, It has now a red tag from this fascist group called NewsGuard, and consortium news is being threatened with a red tag. Consortium News had its PayPal account suspended.

Garland Nixon, a guy that I work with who's very outspoken on the left, was thrown off Facebook yesterday for sharing an article from NBC News because it included a photograph of an Azov Battalion guy, guy wearing a swastika no way it's just gone completely out of hand it's like it's like McCarthyism seriously i mean that guy and this goes for everybody on facebook too but it's also important that that guy garland nixon is a leader he's the kind of guy who says listen everybody here's what's going on and people listen to him because he cares and he knows what he's talking about absolutely kick him off of facebook that's not nothing that's a big damn deal it is and for an nbc story

that was just handed to them by the Pentagon and the CIA. Exactly. It wasn't even a scoop, right? It wasn't like they did some good work. It was a press release. Exactly right. And that's what they do. That's what most of these national security correspondents or journalists do.

They just take a press release from the CIA and they gist it. You know, there's a guy. Because, by the way, the NBC story that you're talking about is the one where they're bragging about helping sink Russian battleship, right? Yes, yes, exactly. exactly um jason leopold from buzzfeed uh filed a freedom of information act request with the cia and he asked for it was just a blanket request he asked for all correspondence between the cia's office of public affairs and um and all reporters for the last five years okay they ended up giving it to him it's thousands and thousands of emails as you might imagine and what's in these emails but um a back

and forth with Ken Delanian, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, the last many years, decade, the chief intelligence correspondent at NBC News and MSNBC. And what was this clown doing? He was writing articles about the CIA and sending them to the CIA for approval before sending them to his own editor. That's not journalism. And it's especially not investigative journalism. that's just gisting what the CIA wants you to gist and what happens if you don't do it you don't

get invited to the Christmas party anymore so where's the investigative journalism who's actually covering the CIA and asking the hard questions I think the answer is nobody nobody's covering the CIA they all just get captured by their sources with like one or two stories and now it's like well where you're going to get your stories from if not for me right exactly and and this is a threat that the agency makes like if you don't do what we say if you don't write white if you don't write what we say we'll cut you off and then you get nothing and because there's no budget for investigative journalism at most of the outlets you know with a possible exception of the post the times the journal in pro publica yeah they just do as

they're told yep and then you have places like consortium news dot com which is mostly original opinion a little bit of you know uh real firsthand journalism but definitely an independent take on what the hell is going on around here. Oh, yes. And led by a guy, you know, Joe Loria for years was at the Christian Science Monitor at the Wall Street Journal. He was the U.N. reporter for the Wall Street Journal for like 10 years or something like that. Right. Rope for Sunday Times of London. Right. You know, so this is a guy who's a real journalist. It has been his entire career by all of their standards. And is now the editor of Robert Perry's site, Perry, who was at AP in the Newsweek before he found a consortium news.

um so these aren't they didn't come from pirate radio like i did these are real ass reporters who then went independent which is important and then but nope they can just get yeated as the kids say these days right off of the internet yeah you know one of the reasons really the reason why i went to consortium news was because of the respect that i have for uh for jo loria uh you you were exactly right a second ago when you went through his resume the guy is as serious a journalist as there is anywhere. His whole career attest to that. And because he was, and I knew, I knew Bob Perry, you know, before he passed away and

Joe took over, but Bob Perry was just as much a serious journalist who broke big stories. And, you know, he's a Polk Award winner for heaven's sake. I mean, he was really one of the major forces behind breaking Iran Contra in the 1980s Perry was. Absolutely. Absolutely. He was. And then, you know, what happens the other day, PayPal just decides in its infinite wisdom that that consortium news is somehow duping its readers and is in violation of the agreement with PayPal.

And not only do they permanently shutter consortium news's PayPal account, but at least for the first few days, they seized the $9,350 that was in the account. And it was only because people like you and me and, you know, those friends of ours in our circle complained and made such a big stink about it that they finally released the money. But the latest to the story is they're still not reinstating the PayPal account. So consortium's going to have to figure out another way to take donations and to pay its writers. Yeah. Well, look, I know what they say. And we all know it's true.

Bitcoin solves this and that's what we have to do I mean more and more we have to rely on this kind of thing and you know the Institute gets a certain amount of its donations and we save them too

unfortunately it's a very boomy busty market more than most so you know that's a turnoff to many but it comes down to it like what are you going to do if they can just I mean and PayPal is just absolutely essential I'm afraid to even say

how important PayPal is to every organization that I have any affiliation with including just my own ass. Like, what am I going to do without them? I'm doomed. And so, yeah, we have to work on this. This is a big deal. And they started

with Julian Assange. Because the State Department lied and said, he's breaking the law. Well, he wasn't breaking the law. They just lied. And then PayPal said, well, your word, it's good enough for me. I don't need a judicial judgment and order. I'll just

take the executive branch this word for and unpersoned this man. And that was where it started. And now we're all Julian Assange. Well, you are and I'm afraid I'm next. Yeah. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody's safe. Nobody. And, you know, ask Max Blumenthal. He'll tell you all about it because he's under the same kind of pressure and Mint Press News and Jacobin magazine. And, you know, it's all of us. They're coming after all of us. And look, they did the same thing back in 2016 or 17, I guess it was with that proper not BS with the Washington Post, published this list,

and it included anti-war.com and the Ron Paul Institute and the American Conservative magazine, I think, and Truthout and Truth Dig. And by the way, those guys, I mean, yeah, they're leftists, but it's not like they're even, you know, Trotskyites or whether, like the World Socialist website is at least a couple of clicks left of them.

Oh, definitely. Right? Like Truth Dig, I think you wrote for Truth Dig before. Like, Truth Dig, Truth Out there, like one click left the Democratic Party, you know what I mean, in a good way, in mostly good way. Just like reader supported news. Yes, exactly. But in other words, though, there's nothing extremely controversial about them there. And then it seemed like they threw in anti-war.com just to prove that they weren't only picking on leftists. So then they're like, oh, my God, I thought exactly the same thing. Yes. Yep. And so yeah, and then Google deranked us, you know, I mean, you think about all

the content on anti-war.com going back 25 years. We got some search terms. But They, you know, de-ranked, you know, all of what we're doing back then as much as they could anyway. And then, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, it's crazy to think that literally the richest man of the world buying Twitter might actually buy us a little bit of breathing space here. You know, how crazy is that? But I'm one of these people who is saying, listen, let's give Alon Musk a chance here. because if he's serious about being a First Amendment purist, okay, that's what we want.

We want somebody who's going to truly stand up for free speech even when it's ugly. So let's not judge the guy. Let's give him a shot. Yeah. Hang on just one second. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt

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for inline real-time winterization or leaving their competitors in the key. That's greenmill supercritical.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Thomas done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level. And it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Real history. Real economics. Real education. that's what I think too

and it is true that he's got government contracts and things he's not exactly Jeff Bezos working for the CIA but he launches satellites into space for him and for the military and things like I don't know that's that's pretty compromised but I guess it just depends on and you know what really

a lot of his you know auto empire is based on federal kickbacks in the name of environmentalism and all of that too so I don't know how much free reign he really has from the state yeah I wonder have you heard

of this group uh news guard this is going to be the next big problem for us yeah so somebody told me that uh my site the institute libertarian institute site says it's under review so that's where i'm at now and i mean they don't have nothing on me you know the most uh uh you know conspiracist type stuff um on there is the oklahoma bombing but you know what i'm bulletproof on that and all of that is is you know there's none of this um lorry milroy judith miller bs about saddam hussein did it no no no it's all about the fbi i informants who did it and we can prove it right it's all government documents it's all that the oklahoma bombing archive it's libertarian institute dot org slash okayc it's secret service documents, FBI, and justice documents, ATF documents, and court records, and all these

things. And it's not our fault that Andre Straussmeyer's name comes up over and over again. They're the ones got to explain that. By the way, you're a CIA guy. You ever heard of Andre, Mr. Executive Assistant, you ever heard of Andre Carl Strassmeier, the German Army intelligence officer who helped do the Oklahoma bombing? All I can say is that one of the Holy of Holies is sources and methods so I'm not commenting okay but you could just say no or you couldn't just say no let me okay okay this is a yes or no question could you just say yes or no or could you just say no instead of I refuse to answer yeah it's it's safer to say I refuse to answer because then they stay off your case all right I'll tell you something I want to know whether

that's really code for I yeah I know who you're talking about and he did it all right no no no no i'm not saying that i'm not saying that i know nothing as sergeant sholtz once said all right well i'm being news guarded right now just for bringing this up i guess and you know what i mean honestly if they want to use that as just a smear campaign about everybody who's not nbc news is some kind of fringe lunatic or whatever then that'll just be a badge of honor anyway you know warning explicit lyrics don't listen to this rap album because they talk about boobies in there you know right exactly exactly and look at the board of directors of news guard it's it's uh mike hayden the former nsa and cia director and

deputy director of uh national intelligence wait you mean the guy who was the director of nsa on september 10th 2001 that guy yeah and he's going to decide what is true and what's not true another board member is tom ridge uh the first uh secretary of home Homeland Security. It's a bunch of mainstreamers from the Wall Street Journal. I mean, it's everybody who hates alternative media. And there are the ones that are going to decide in this partnership they have with Google. If when you Google, you know, the Institute, for example, or Consortium News or Gray Zone, whether you get this red tag in your in your Google feed where it's

says that it's an unreliable source of news. Yeah. And I don't want the CIA telling me what I can and can't read. You know, I don't know, man. At this point, I wonder if that kind of act of desperation is really only more counterproductive for them and beneficial for us in that explicit lyrics kind of way. Well, I hope so. You wouldn't be warning me not to read Kiriaku if he wasn't telling me something crazy

about how many people the CIA tortured to death. or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Max Blumenthal said on the Jimmy Dore show the other day that that he welcomes this red tag, that it's his tag of honor. And if they want to put a red tag on gray zone, they're perfectly welcome to do it. See, the problem is, too, is all the consequences for, like, well, PayPal, then he's going to turn around and say, well, you got a red flag from NewsGuard, and Patreon is going to say, you got a red flag from NewsGuard. And, you know, that's where it matters. It's not necessarily with your popular audience, but with your institutional one, advertisers on your podcast. You know, I just cut a deal with one of these podcasting companies to insert, you know, real professional ads into my show.

I don't think they paid me yet. But I could see, you know, a situation like that where they go, well, I don't know. Our lawyer says that this red thing means that you're rushing disinformation, and we're going to get in trouble. Yeah, right. Right. You know, speaking of Russian disinformation, Scott, I got to tell you, and I make no secret of it, but I work for Sputnik radio. And when Sputnik first offered me a job back in early 2017, I turned it down. I said, thanks, but I don't think I want to do Russian media, but thanks for thinking of me.

And then they called me again like six months later, and they said, we'd really like to offer you your own show. And I said, well, because I still didn't have, you know, very good job at the time. I said, well, if I take this job, I want the freedom to be able to talk about anything that I want to talk about and to criticize anybody that I want to criticize, including Vladimir Putin. And they said, done. And I said, yeah, you put it in writing? He said, done. I'll put it in the contract.

And they did. They put it in the contract. And so I can say literally anything I want to say. And I do criticize Vladimir Putin when I feel that he needs to be. criticized. So I was doing the show. This is about two years ago, and I have a segment, or I had a segment every Thursday called Criminal Injustice, where I had Kevin Gistala, who's a journalist at Shadowproof and does criminal justice issues. Who's excellent, a friend of this show, and an excellent journalist.

Excellent. A great guy, a great friend, and a terrific journalist. And the other regular guest I have or had was Paul Wright, who's the editor and publisher of prison legal news and criminal legal news magazines. So we talk about, you know, crooked judges and prison conditions and and DAs that ask for more than the minimum or more than the maximum recommended sentences and, you know, stuff like that. So the Washington Post, it turned out, was listening to the show. and they did an article about it. And they said that this was an example of Russian propaganda interfering in the American judicial system, right? Three Americans sitting around and talking about corruption in the judicial system.

And sounding just like their man, Balco. Exactly. And what they said, and this is, I've actually, I've actually made a copy of it to save it as a souvenir. They said that by doing this segment every Thursday, I was very. weakening our democracy, that's what they said, that I was weakening our democracy by criticizing the judicial system. And then Georgetown University did some kind of academic paper in which they said the same thing, that I was perpetuating Russian stereotypes of the American judicial system by criticizing it. Jesus Christ, dude. How do you win against something like that?

I mean, the lack of historical reference there, too, is just spectacular, right? Well, like, this sounds like the, not just the birchers, but like the right wing of the birchers saying that anybody who wants civil rights for blacks is an agent of the commies, because the commies talk about how blacks are mistreated in America. Exactly. If you want to do something about that, then you agree with them. And that's all we need to know. And now this is the liberals now. This is the liberals now in America. You gotta love it.

Yeah, it's true. Well, and look, when I say there, man, Balco, he's my guy too, man. I think Ali Balco was absolutely great. And he formerly was at Cato and Reason and essentially was promoted up to the post. I guess because, you know, they needed somebody who understands police issues on his level. and, you know, I guess from their point of view, he's a right winger, not, because he's a libertarian, he's not a right winger at all, but you know what I mean, like, no, he's not. From their point of view, he's not a leftist. He's more grounded in constitutional law and this kind of thing, you know, for his arguments and all that. So he's not a leftist crusader, but more of a constitutional type one. But, man, he does such great work on exactly what you're talking about there. And hell, the Washington Post, I think, I won't say there. I won't say there. unparalleled, but they are neck and neck right there with the best projects for keeping track of police violence in America and killings of unarmed people. I mean, this is really their job.

Are they just, you know, back to Jason Leopold. Right at the time that it was not the Russians who hacked the DNC and gave that stuff to WikiLeaks, but right at the same time, Jason Leopold was getting his giant FOIA release from the State Department. And when you think about the most scandalous, some of the most scandalous of the Hillary Clinton emails. They didn't come from WikiLeaks in the DNC. You can find them at WikiLeaks because Assange's just cataloged them there.

But they came from our guy Leopold. And I'm a personal friend of his. He's a personal friend of mine going back many years. I'll scold him a little bit because he got a couple things wrong. I'm mad about, but not really. But he's the one who released all the ones from Sidney Blumenthal advising Hillary Clinton on the Libyan War.

And he's the one who released a bunch of those came from, in fact, where Sydney Blumenthal is warning her that, hey, our guys are rounding up blacks and murdering them. Look out. And then the war kept going for seven months after that. That was Jason that did that. So at the same time where this was Vladimir Putin's plot to destroy and disrupt and destabilize our democracy to benefit Donald Trump. Well, does that apply to Jason from BuzzSpeed, who's clearly a leftist or a progressive at least? and um and clearly is not in the tank for trump whatsoever but it's just doing his damn job as a journalist getting foyer records on the previous secretary of defense i mean pardon me on the previous secretary of state exactly how in the world jason leopold has not won a Pulitzer prize is a mystery to me yeah he deserves one he's got some real good ones and the more he relies on documents the better he does jason oh yeah no because you can never question his conclusions, they're always based on documentary evidence. And his sources have fun burning him sometimes. I don't think it's fair. He gets jerked around by liars from time to time.

But he is a good dude. I know I'm personally, and he is a good dude. And he does a hell of a lot of great work with those foias as well. And I had forgotten that he was the one who got that dirt on Ken Delanian. Yes. Yeah, and people just type in Ken DeLonion, even misspell it, Google will help you, Ken Delanian CIA, it'll come right up because he got criticized widely for this. Like, wow, you really can't do that, man. Even reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times were like, Ken, geez. Yeah, what are you doing?

It's a little over the top, bro. Oh, man. So true. Anyways, so let's talk about Mint Press News. Yeah. Well, tell me everything you know about them. I know I got a couple of friends there, and in the past, more than that, they come and go, but they've done a hell of a lot of great journalism over there. What's wrong with them? Is there something wrong with them I need to know, John Kiryaku? Oh, my God. You know, Minn Press News is owned by a Jordanian American woman named Minar Adley. I know Minar. I've known her for many years, and she's a terrific journalist. And besides being a terrific journalist. She's a good manager. And she has put together mid-press news and made it into a highly respected alternative news site, independent news site. She's constantly under attack. I'm sure that part of the reason is that she's a practicing Muslim and a woman and a progressive

and she's pro-Palestinian, as you might imagine. So she gets beaten about the face and head from all different directions. Well, when PayPal went after consortium news, they also went after Mint Press news and suspended their account as well. When NewsGuard went after Consortium, NewsGuard also went after Mint Press. And, you know, I've got a lot of friends who have cycled through Mint Press. um half a dozen or so and they're all serious journalists they're all youngish people with degrees in journalism who are out there looking for the big scoop doing investigative work and they're not doing it for the money god knows that and just because you don't tow the the dnc line

on issues like ukraine or israel then you're not to be taken seriously and if people continue reading you, then the government or others turn to organizations like PayPal or news guard or proper not to try to shut you down or to steer viewers and clicks away from you. Yeah. This is the world we live in now. It's outrageous. Yeah. And you know what, too? Because we're stuck with this left, right thing. No matter how bad the liberal Democrats get, all we got is a bunch of damn Republicans. So, we so desperately need a viable third party.

You know, you know me well enough to know that that I campaigned in 12 states with Gary Johnson back in 2016. I thought he would have been a terrific president. And, you know, he told me something that has really stuck with me. And that is that the libertarians, the libertarians would be so much more popular in so many more states if they had a benefactor. if money wasn't an issue like it's not an issue for the democrats or republicans you know that advertisement that the libertarians always always uh promote that you know in your heart you know you're a libertarian that's true when you give people that questionnaire that's on the libertarian party website everybody comes up as a libertarian because civil rights and civil liberties are important

to us but it's all about the money and uh you know i get these i get these emails from the libertarian party, they crack me up because they're so breathless. They're like, oh my God. Joe Blow just got elected to the Anchorage, Alaska waterboard. He's a libertarian. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. But we need a libertarian in Congress to start guiding people, you know, or to stand up for what's important to us. And we're just not there. Yeah. Well, as long as you brought it up, I'll go ahead and tell you that right now there's a project on to reform essentially the National Libertarian Party

and there are thousands and thousands of new members most of them coming in by way of what's called the Mises Caucus and that's essentially me and my friends and the thing of it is is we want to make

the Libertarian Party great again and what we don't have is a billionaire and you're right that that sure would help if we had a billionaire. However I think once the Reno reset is accomplished at the end of this month, then we're going to have a whole new round of intake of new members and of new donors and of new excitement and essentially having a grand reopening of the Libertarian Party under new management in the name of Ron Paul, in the name of annihilating Central banking and war and stuff like that and that is exactly what we need so it's on and it's happening and by the way if anyone listen to this is a delegate to the national convention and you're part of our misis group for the love of god please show up don't not show up and if you're a delegate to

the national convention and you're not on board for this meas caucus thing well i am and you ought to really consider it maybe talk to me when you see me there on Friday and we'll see if we can have a little conversation i can win you over to our side here because uh it's on and for a very good cause. And then, you know what, it's true. We used to have Ron and Rand had a strategy that included playing this stuff down, especially for the first few years there in a way

where it really just, we went from having a national leader to just not having one. And we're really working on that in the form of our next presidential candidate here. But the thing of it is, you're right, that it absolutely has time and when the libertarians are part of the conversation

yep we win it you know yeah it's true standard because we're the ones who care most about this stuff and have thought this stuff through in a way because we don't have any power we just really think of it in a nonpartisan way and just a cause effect solution sort of a way rather than just what the other side is saying about us and reacting against that and all that stuff you know yep yep you're exactly right Because the other side didn't say anything about us, right? We're not even, so we're just like, hmm, how can we really solve the problem of drug abuse or whatever it is,

or for an entanglement? What's Mitch McConnell going to say if I say this? Yeah. Or what's Schumer going to do if I propose this amendment? Yeah, too bad. You don't get that at all. And I understand how Rand was going to the Senate and had to find a balance, but I don't think he found a very good balance,

although he does seem to be getting his footing more and more recently. I hope so he's been particularly good the last couple of months I think yeah that's true especially yeah especially you know on an emotional issue like what's going on with Russia where he's willing to say man why didn't he just take NATO membership off the table come on exactly things like that he knows that he's getting himself in hot water but he doesn't seem to give a damn so well you know definitely give him credit for that he said that he said that what a couple of weeks ago and MSNBC and CNN immediately jumped on him, that he's a Putin apologist and he doesn't understand the suffering of the Ukrainian people. And then a few days ago, the Pope said exactly

the same words. Right. It's like, you're going to call the Pope a Russian apologist now? Or are you going to give this a serious analytic look? Well, at the Daily Beast, they call them a conspiracy theorist. And everywhere else, I think they mostly just ignored it, right? Oh, my God. I saw somebody joking on Twitter that, oh, look, see, the Pope listens to the Scott Horton show, just because which is really obviously just a reference to, you can't find this point of view very many places. Not that it's wrong, but, you know. Wow. All right. Well, so listen, I hope that you guys get back personed again or, you know, figure out how to get back on some sort of whatever the closest substitute to PayPal is

other than Bitcoin and get that going and let us know too, man. Make sure tag me in tweets about it and whatever and I'll try to promote whatever alternatives you guys come up with. We'll blog about it, anti-war.com and things like that. Appreciate it. Yeah.

I mean, hey, you guys do great work over there. We're all counting on you. And you do too. It's always a pleasure. All right. Well, take care, John. Appreciate, man. Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye. The Scott Horton show, and anti-war radio can be heard on K-P-FK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com anti-war.com

Scott Horton.org and Libertarian Institute.org