Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/23/22 Chip Gibbons on the CIA’s War on Assange

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Scott talks with journalist Chip Gibbons about an article he wrote for Jacobin that details the CIA’s 2019 plots to surveil, kidnap and even poison Julian Assange. First, Scott and Gibbons reflect on the impact of Assange and Wikileaks. They then discuss the CIA’s 2019 activities and the pair of protests happening next weekend in London and DC against the illegal prosecution of Assange.  Discussed on the show: “Secret Documents Have Exposed the CIA’s Julian Assange Obsession” (Jacobin) The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire Wikileaks.org “What Happened to America's Civil Libertarians?” (TK News) [paywall]  October 8th Hands Off Assange Rally Chip Gibbons is a journalist whose work has been featured in In These Times and the Nation. He is also the policy director of Defending Rights and Dissent, where he authored the report “Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Legacy of FBI First Amendment Abuse.” Follow him on Twitter @ChipGibbons89. 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; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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, guys, introducing Chip Gibbons, policy director of defending rights and dissent,

and hosted the still spying podcast on the history of FBI political surveillance and is writing a book. about the FBI and American politics. Here, this extremely important piece, you've got to read this thing. It's at jacobin.com. Secret documents have exposed the CIA's Julian Assange obsession. Welcome back to the show, Chip. How are you doing?

I'm doing well. It's really great to be on America's leading libertarian radio program to talk about my piece from America's leading socialist publication. Well, there you go. What a strange world we live in when it comes to issues of the military industrial complex and surveillance and the outrageous legal and extra legal war against Julian Assange, a journalist who exposed U.S. war crimes. Yeah. Well, you know, they say if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything.

And the opposite of that is, if you stand for something, you'll notice that a lot of things are not right, including something so obviously horrible as the persecution and prosecution of this guy. And unfortunately, and this really should be completely the other way around. But right-wingers certainly in the past had reason to resent Assange for embarrassing Bush with the Iraq and Afghan war logs and stuff, although they should all be over that by now. I don't know. Certainly the Republican Party is not. The Republican Party in power is not even if right-wing Americans maybe are.

But then, of course, the liberal Democrats especially absolutely hate him because they believe this hoax that the Russians were the ones who hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. And so therefore, Assange helped the Russians rig the election for Donald Trump, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan and this and that kind of thing. But then somebody like you who's further to the left than the Democrats and not so beholden to Democrat narratives is going to have an independent view from that. that's not, you know, completely married to some kind of political parties, partisan obsession and take. And so just like some of the very best journalists on debunking Russiagate came from left of the Democratic Party, we have this kind of thing coming from you. Now, here I'm a guy. I hate both parties. So when he exposes the wars and he exposes the Clintons and all these things, I always do nothing but celebrate. And I think he's the greatest journalist of the 21st century. And I think that's pretty much

like a scientific fact, not even just a point of view, if you just look at the number of stories in the world based on the documents that he has published. What are you going to do? I mean, the impact of WikiLeaks is phenomenal. I mean, I have on my bookshelf, the Verso book, the role according to WikiLeaks, where every single chapter is a different subject matter expert,

people you know like Tim Sherrock, just writing about what WikiLeaks. exposed about like one particular country or one particularly particular region and you know you have everything from like like trying to lower the minimum wage in Haiti to to getting the Yemeni government to take credit for air strikes the US did to stuff about the burn pits I mean I had totally not realized that until they were discussing sort of the compensation for veterans who were victims of these burn pits that WikiLeaks played a tremendous role in in getting that information out to the public. So, I mean, like everything from like Guantanamo to the text of the Trans-Pacific

partnership. And, you know, I know Janus Farifakis, the former Greek minister of, I guess, finance and current Greek parliamentarian, always talks about things that WikiLeaks leaked that were important for their struggle in Greece. I mean, whatever the subject matters, is, I mean, there's an important revelation from Julian Assange. And these aren't like tabloid stories. These are stories about like backroom deal corruption, about trade deals that that undermine sovereignty at the enrichment of corporations about war crimes, about lies and deception. I mean, the United States government had no authorization to be bombing Yemen. The fact that the Yemeni government was taking credit for the bombings because they didn't

want their own people to know that we were letting the U.S. bomb them was bad enough? Like, where was Congress, right? They didn't authorize this. This was a, should be a major scandal. But, you know, here we are. Julian is sitting in Belmarsh. Wait, wait, wait.

Let's keep talking about the great journalism for a second. Because I got to mention Chelsea Manning deserves the credit for actually pilfering these secrets and giving them to Assange to publish. And I'm kind of resentful because. I've seen where Manning has thrown Assange onto the bus a couple of times, and that really pisses me off. But, so, I don't know, I still should mention that this is Manning's greatest hits here, and you just listed a bunch of them. But I just want to add a couple of more, because especially as time has gone on, maybe people either had forgotten this or never knew this stuff

in the first place, but like the one you just said there about the Yemeni drone strikes during the first stage of the war there against AQ before Obama switched sides was an important one. but they also revealed a war crime in Iraq where a family, including a baby, had been executed at point-blank range by American Army, and they called in an airstrike on the house to try to cover it up. The airstrike hit the wrong part of the house, and the body survived, and there was an internal army investigation, and it was completely covered up. And when this was exposed, this helped Maliki and the Shiite dominated parliament with their position that, no, you have. to leave and we're sticking with the deadline that we forced Bush to accept the end of 2011. Get the hell out. And people blame the rise of ISIS on that, but that wasn't it. It was Obama's secret war in Syria that led to the rise of ISIS. So it wasn't just leaving Iraq. So that was

all to the good. That was huge. That was what finally got America out at the final end of Iraq War 2 in 2011 was based on that revelation for one example. Yeah. And just on the subject of Chels I mean, she's paid a tremendous price twice for more than twice for what she said. I mean, she was tortured. She received the longest sentence of anyone ever for giving information to the media. She was subjected to, you know, treatment that was that was torture both before and after her trial. And, you know, she did go back to prison as a torture survivor for refusing to testify before the WikiLeaks grand jury. And by the way, I'm sorry, Chip to interrupt here, but.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit because I think we all know that Chelsea Manning was not given the CIA treatment the way that they did to, you know, the al-Qaeda suspects at the black sites in Poland? So what exactly do you mean by that? She was kept in solitary confinement in a cell smaller than that of a death row inmate at Quantico or whatever it was that she was held. And the then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Cruel and Degrading Treatment, conducted a very extensive review and found that Chelsea Manning's treatment absolutely raised to the level of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, which isn't less than torture. It just has a different intentionality level, and that could have risen to the level of torture, but the U.S. off-fuscated his investigation. He was not allowed to speak to Chelsea Manning without them listing in, so he could not reach that level. And this included sexual humiliation, making him her stand there naked and laugh at him and all that kind of stuff.

And it was Greenwald, by the way, who had broken this story and done at the time who wrote up the best write-up about this is how Manning is being treated at Quantico. And it was absolutely outrageous. And even after all that, when she was called to test before the WikiLeaks grand jury, I mean, she refused to do so, and they put her in the detention center in Alexandria. So I know she's had some rhetorical difference. Thanks for bringing that up. I had forgotten about that. That's a huge point.

I know she's had some rhetorical differences with Assange, but I don't think it's fair to say she threw him under the bus when she went to jail a second time. Right. It was after that. But you're right. It was just rhetorically. But, yeah, when it came to rubber meat in the road, yeah, no, you're after. Absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Between mean comments on a podcast and like torture survivor going back into solitary confinement in order to not participate in your persecution.

I don't know. I think, I think in terms of the buses you could be overthrown under, you know, I would take the mean comments on the podcast other than being testified against at a grand jury. And listen, I'm sorry, because I got a million more on my list of greatest hits, but I'll just tell people, go to wikileaks.org. look at the State Department cables look at the Iraq and Afghan war logs blow your mind man spend a rainy Sunday afternoon one day going through those Afghan

war logs and see what you think of that you know it's it's all in there and the State Department files hell just Google WikiLeaks cables confirm or you know phrases along those lines and just read the 10,000 news stories from around the world that came out of those files it's unreal

the level of journalism but so now I'm going to be quiet and let you talk about this entire massive article that you have here about what we're learning about the CIA secret war against Julian Assange. We've already known a lot for years, including the involvement of Sheldon Adelson and all of this weird stuff going on. But while Julian Assange was in exile in the Ecuadorian embassy, the CIA was out to get them. We know at least they seem to be bragging, I think they admitted to their buddy, Michael Isikoff, that they had considered very strongly whether to just murder the guys. guy and all of this stuff. But so now there are even new developments on top of that.

So please just fill us in. The floor is yours for the next 11 minutes. I mean, the number of plots from all of the three-letter alphabet agencies against Assange are just remarkable. You have the FBI lying to the government of Iceland to enter the country on false pretenses. You have the NSA putting them in their manhunting database, which is usually reserved for terrorist. I mean, they basically treat him like he's bin Laden. But the story I have in Jacobin is about one particular part of the larger war.

And I just want to stress, as horrifying and as shocking as his story is, it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. So when Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, because he was granted political asylum and the UK refused to recognize that right and basically put the embassy under siege, the Ecuadorian, intelligence services hired a company called UC Global, undercover global, to provide the security. And sometime around 2017, around the Volt 7 League, they started escalating their treatment towards Assange's visitors, making them turn their passports over, making them turn their electronic devices over, and installing all these new cameras that they assured both Assange and the Ecuadorian diplomatic staff did not have audio recording equipment in it. And sometime in 2019, a group of extortionists, so this is a really weird story,

a group of extortionist approach WikiLeaks with video and audio of legal meetings from inside the embassy, WikiLeaks participates in a sting operation, the Spanish government arrest them. But then El Pai-E starts publishing these stories about reports from the UC Global staff, about what it was like to listen to him, what it was like to spy his legal meetings. And around this time, this timeline isn't totally clear. A whistleblower comes forward to Assange's lawyers. And in September of 2019, David Morales is arrested. by Spanish authorities, it turns out they have been investigating him for violating Julian Assange's right to privacy, for violating his attorney-client privilege, and also for corruption and bribery.

And, you know, as they're sort of exploring this surveillance, they're getting photos that he's taken of Glenn Greenwald's passport, of Stefani Amarishi's phone. There's some allegations they hacked into Pamela Anderson's emails. So basically all of the visitors and Assange they were spying on. And then the big question is, why would they do this? And multiple, two whistleblowers have come forward and claimed that this man Morales, who openly admired Blackwater and would say, I'm a mercenary through and through, as though being a mercenary is, is something to be proud of, had told them they had gone to the dark side and that they were

working for their American friends. One of the two witnesses in the UK extradition hearing, there's legal proceedings in three countries on this matter, so it's very complex stuff to follow. And I think that's just the most important piece thing about the piece I did, is that I synthesized, you know, everything we know from these different sources in one place. And, you know, they confronted him, and he said it was U.S. intelligence. And Morales has changed his story several times, right? He initially claims there was no surveillance.

That's completely nonsensable because they have all of this footage from within the embassy that he took, including audio, including pictures of people's phones. So then he tried to claim that it was ordered by the Ecuador. government, but this raises some really strange questions as to why he was spying on his patron, right? The other task that he had was doing security for Rafael Correa, the then president's daughters in their European trip, and he's admitted to having installed malware on their devices, right? I mean, why are you spying on your boss, if that's who's ordering the surveillance? And I spoke to for the piece, Guillem Long, who is the former foreign minister of Ecuador under the Correa government. And he is absolutely adamant that this group was intercepted by the CIA and spying not just on Assange, but on the Ecuador and diplomatic staff.

And one of the things he's testified to in the Spanish court, it's public record, but I don't believe anyone before this. article has reported on it, is that, and he has all these emails now that he claims came from a deceased Ecuadorian ambassador, but they're so clearly forgeries, right? Like, the Ecuadorian diplomats all have the same domain ending on their emails. It's like eemv. Uh, EU.gov, like, something like that. And the email endings on the emails are wrong. They're like diplomat.com or something like that. So he has these documents that not only have like the wrong email, they have the wrong email domain name on them. They have wrong serial numbers. Like they are crude forgeries, right? They're what someone who knows nothing about Ecuadorian diplomatic services would come up

with under desperation. So we have this guy, David Morales. He first said there was no surveillance. that's a lie. He then said, well, this Ecuadorian official, who just so happens to be deceased, ordered me to do it. Here's the proof. All of his proof are comically forged documents. So then you're left with the fact that two of his employees have testified under SEAL that he was working with the CIA. Shuttle Adelson is a part of this story. Max Blumenthal at the gray zone has written the most extensive accounting of the allegations against him. I highly recommend reading that if you want to explore that angle of this story with so many angles. But right, so he goes to Las Vegas.

He has this very small-time security firm, but they have one of the most prestigious security contracts. and the world, right? Guarding the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and you can think about how if you're like a real small-time security firm, but you've got that contract, you want to go to Las Vegas and, you know, show off yourself. But after that, he got this absurd contract from Adelson to provide security for his yacht when it's in the Mediterranean. And as one of the whistleblowers told it a UK court, that makes no sense. The yacht is only in the Mediterranean very briefly and it has its own security crew on board, right? Like the security crew doesn't all leave when they go in the Mediterranean and then, you know,

this want to be mercenary takes over. That's not the way it works. But in spite of the fact of it being a completely pointless and unsensible contract, This guy's raking in big money for it. And he frequently goes out to the Las Vegas Sands Hotel that's owned by Adelson. And that's where many of his emails giving orders from the quote-unquote American friends comes from. The American friends want them to install new cameras with audio, which they lie to both Julian Assange and the Ecuadorian staff about.

They want them to have real-time audio access to these files. they discuss at one point trying to steal the diaper of one of Julian Assange's children in order to determine paternity according to the witness he refused to do this and told Stella Assange

not to bring her baby back to the embassy the American friends are at their wit's end so they discuss and this is real galaxy brain intelligence service business what if we just left the front door open and, you know, random people came in off the street and kidnapped them.

No one would know it was us because, right, the embassy security officials could just leave the front door open when they're taking everyone's passports and phones and have all these... The most surveilled house in the world. Yes. We just left the front door open. Coincidence, Julian Assange was kidnapped. 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 jalapeno, and the Blood Orange Ghost. They're all so good, I swear. And for a limited time, Tennessee hot sauce company is featuring official Scott Horton hotter than the sun thermonuclear hot sauce. It's full of Carolina Reapers, Scorpion Peppers, Dr. Pepper, Hydrogen isotopes, and all kinds of things that'll burn your tongue clean off. Seriously, it's really good.

Get yourself a hot sauce. subscription. Spend $40 or more and use promo code Scott to get a free bottle of hotter than the sun hot sauce. That's tnhot sauceco.com. Hey, y'all got to check out these awesome busts of our hero, the great Ron Paul. They're made by the renowned sculptor Rick Casale. They're 13 inches tall hand-painted bronze resin based on Casale's brilliant original. You may have seen mine in the background on my bookshelf in some recent interviews. The thing is unbelievable. Check out this incredible piece of art at rick casali.com slash ron paul and you'll see what i mean use promo code horton and you'll save 25 bucks and this show will get a little kickback too that's rick casali dot com slash ron paul

cassali is c a s a l i rick casali dot com slash ron paul and there's free shipping too 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 Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison 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. And then they also discussed a poisoning him. And I know that, you know, I try to, You know, I don't put anything past the CIA when it comes to Assange. But when I look at these claims, I try to look at what would someone who is not a fan of Assange

and it would be a skeptic of these claims would say. And I know they'll say, oh, what are these two Spanish guys know, you know, whatever. But a year or so after they had these stories come out, Yahoo News had a story based on people within the U.S. intelligence service. something like 30 former intelligence professionals. And what are they saying? They're saying CIA had access to the cameras. CIA considered assassinating him, but that plan didn't go far. CIA considered kidnapping Assange.

And that was far when plan went far enough to terrify the National Security Council lawyers who at the time Assange was not wanted for a crime in the U.S. and we're like, what are you going to do? Put him in a black site. Like, is this where this is going? So when you have these claims coming out of these Spanish whistleblowers, and then you a year or two later have claims coming out of former intelligence officials who aren't necessarily commenting on the UC global angle or confirming it,

but they mirror each other, I mean, that's pretty powerful corroborating evidence to me. I mean, with any of these CIA covert actions, a lot of it is just very murky. But we know that once again, I'm repeating myself. Two Spanish whistleblowers said the CIA asked them to do real-time surveillance, kidnap, and discuss poisoning asange. We now have 30-some intelligence officials saying the CIA had the access to that surveillance footage, considered kidnapping him, and, um, you know, discussed assassinating him.

And the other thing that makes UC Global even more insidious here is that the kidnapping plot per the Yahoo News story really escalated when they thought that the Ecuadorian embassy would offer Julian Assange diplomatic status to a third-party country. And we know that UC Global filmed that meeting, the meeting where the Ecuadorian Marine official came in. Assange's staff was willing to entertain a diplomatic status to like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, like all countries that obviously have bad relations with the U.S., but when you're, you know, hiding from the U.S., you have to go somewhere, you know, where there's bad relations. If I was hiding from Russia, you know, I would probably come to the U.S.

If I'm hiding from the U.S., Venezuela seems like a pretty good option. But instead they offered them Russia, and the legal team in Assange absolutely shot that down because they didn't want to vindicate these Russia gay conspiracy theories. But that meeting was recorded by UC Global and UC Global wrote up reports about it. And we know that that triggered, if we believe the Yahoo article, and I'm inclined to believe it, the most absurd and ridiculous phases of the CIA's war on Assange where they're discussing, like, getting to shootouts with Russian diplomats on the streets of London. So this company not only clearly was engaged in illicit surveillance, very likely on behalf of the CIA. I know it's an allegation, but I think there's very good reason to believe it to be true. They likely played a role in escalating it. So it's very serious stuff.

Absolutely. And of course, completely illegal in terms of... Like so many different laws, right? I mean, there's 100 U.S. citizens they allegedly spied on, so that's the Fourth Amendment, non-U.S. citizens international law. Nonetheless, violating the sovereignty of... an embassy that's a pretty serious offense under international law right i mean there's just no shortage of criminality in this story well and it goes to show too say he can't get a fair

trial if they've been spying on him all this time and never mind the fact that under woodrow wilson's espionage act the i thought i was doing the right thing by doing this defense is not even allowed in court at all um and so it's not a fair trial anyway the whole thing is rigged anyway, and he's to be tried in Alexandria, Virginia, by a bunch of spies' wives anyway, and it's sure to go to the clink, no matter what, you know. But here they make it sort of, what, like, there must be some kind of judicial precedent, too, where no, this is all fruit of the poison tree kind of thing. Their whole prosecution has got to be thrown out if they've taken this many liberties

with violating his privacy, and especially in talking with his legal counsel and that kind thing, right? No? I'm writing on the book about the FBI, and one of the early defeats for Hoover was in an actual espionage act case about a woman named Judith Copeland who allegedly gave, I actually don't think it was alleged, I think most people think she did, gave secrets to the Soviets, and the FBI didn't want the Department of Justice to take the case to trial, because this is before the Classified Procedures Act, so they have to like, actually, introduce the evidence. And all of the evidence of secret she was giving was all about FBI political surveillance of U.S. citizens. So it comes up because of the evidence they introduced into trial

that the FBI is spying or likely spying on her attorneys. And they ask them, like, were you spying on our legal meetings? And I don't think they give a definitive answer, but it's upsetting enough that an appellate court just strikes out two guilty verdicts totally think she's guilty but because the FBI was surveilling her legal meetings it throws the case out and this is someone who's accused of giving secrets to the Soviet Union in the early Cold War period where the tensions and height of that were really um really strong so yes there's absolutely precedent for having these types of cases thrown out. The attorney in that case was Leonard Budwin, who was also Daniel Ellsberg's attorney in

the Pentagon Papers case, and it was also the grandfather of Chelsea Budin, the now former DA out in San Francisco. Well, by the way, Ellsberg was sure to go to prison for life, although he was very guilty. But they spied on him. Henry Kissinger, spied on him. Well, that was why it was thrown out, right? It was because it was, well, there was a couple of things, but one of them was they tried to bribe the judge. And the other one was they sent Cubans to kill him.

They tried to bribe the judge with a, they promised him a seat on the Supreme Court. And he's like, come on, guys. No, they promised him to be director of the FBI. Oh, even better. Yeah, I know. I know, because Hoover was dead at this point, finally, after, you know, a vampire-like existence. Yeah, no. And, you know, you look at the types of things in those two cases, the Ellsberg and the Copeland case, and I don't want to mean them.

But they're very small potatoes compared to what they've done to Assange. Right. Yeah. All right. Now, so here's the other thing. Help me understand the role of Sheldon Adelson here. I mean, I know he's just Jabba the Hut and he likes to be involved in bad things. Or now he's a corpse, but back when he was alive.

But what does the CIA need with him on an operation like this? You know, that's a really good question, and I don't have the answer to that one. I know Max Blumenthal has written an extensive piece about it. I went off of the witness statements from the UK extradition hearings, and it's just a very strange angle, right? I mean, there's no explanation for why Adelson would have this yacht contract. it's clearly a payoff for something and there's very strange that every time he goes to his hotel he starts sending orders for um you know CIA surveillance to escalate so i mean i think a lot of this part is is speculative but not in a conspiracy theory way right right there's no other way

you you look at this and and don't wonder what's going on here uh which is why you know we need a church committee like investigation into this type of conduct because I'm not going to get the story out of the CIA about what they're doing with Edelson. I can tell you it doesn't feel right. I can tell you that if, you know, the local police were investigating something and you had these types of yacht contracts and these types of emails, they would pursue it. But it's just we really need a lot more facts about this case. Whenever you have these CIA plots, there's always, you know, for every answer you get, you have three more questions. Yeah.

Well, and now I'm trying to think of what's the last thing Kevin Gostola told me. I believe they are on their way to their very last chance to appeal this at the Supreme Court in the U.K., isn't that right? Yeah, they're on the cross appeal. If the cross appeal is rejected or denied, they can then possibly go to the European Court of Human Rights. Okay, they got two more. Yeah, and then assuming the British don't pull out of that, which has been a long-time goal, which it's not part of the EU, it's part of the Council of Europe. I don't know how many different supernational European governing bodies there could be, but apparently there's a lot. My expertise is in U.S. constitutional law.

The fact that so much of this has been in the European system has been a steep learning curve for me to put it mildly. But one last thing I want to make sure I say is that on October the 8th, there's going to be a protest at the parliament building in the UK, as well as one at the Department of Justice in the U.S. And Steve Donzinger will be there, Chris Hedges will be there. And if people are listening to this and are disgusted by it, and you are in the D.C. area, I would strongly invite you to come to this process. protest because we do need to be raising our voices because, you know, Biden and Garland are not going to drop the charges unless people really, really pressure them. Yeah. And by the way, our very good friend and, frankly, hero and now junior fellow at the Libertarian Institute, Jim Bovart is going to be speaking there. And so is our anti-war.com news editor, Dave DeCamp.

Are both going to be giving great speeches there at the protest. And then again, that's October the 8th. And that's, I'm sorry, at the DOJ or the FBI? It's at the DOJ building, but they're across the street from each other. I got you. Yeah. It's a scary place, man. I know. I worked several blocks.

My office is like three blocks over from there. There's all these signs up around me, like this way to the museum, this way to the metro, this way to the Jeter Hoover building. And it's like, oh, great. I just been to the press club, which is like a couple of blocks from me. there a couple of times and that is you know it's like the gates of mordor even just being at the press club get me out of here yeah i've been to the press club it is close to the jager hoover building um yeah it is yeah the rally is october the 8th 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. U.S. Department of Justice

um i hope to see you there i'll be speaking to so i'm happy to see your colleagues there. It's an exciting rally. I'm very impressed by the organizing of it, and I think it's very much needed. Great. And yeah, it's our friend Misty is I know one of the organizers. I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to be there, but I hope that there's a huge turnout. I mean, man, this is so important. And I know, you know, Dave Smith interviewed me last night, and one of his major themes of the interview was people's attention is so divided. on all these issues, especially really easy kind of grab-bag culture war issues that just come up every single day. And it's just such a distraction from all the most important things.

But, you know, this isn't just, as so many people have said before, it's just undeniable, right? This isn't just Assange going up on the cross here. This is the First Amendment itself. This is a publisher, a leak E, not a leaker, being prosecuted for espionage, as though, he was the one who had stolen the secrets when all he did was put them online the same as honestly there's no difference the qualitative difference between what he did and what the new york times does like assuming a good story which they do score occasionally right is and they will publish documents from time to time depending on what it is but they'll just also have like what

800 words or a thousand words explaining it whereas asanj was just saying look here's the document but that's no difference the question is whether he was the one who broke into the government computer and downloaded the secrets and took them himself and the answer to that is agreed by all no and they just have to in the indictment and the superseding indictment they go through this ridiculous sophistry and kind of bait and switch arguments that don't hold up

to try to say that somehow Assange was abetting Manning's breaking into the computer and taking of the secrets but it's just not so and even they admit it when they talk about the details of what they accuse him of doing it doesn't add up to the law they accuse him of breaking and the whole thing is just a joke the whole thing is completely transparently

horrible and regardless I don't know why he's such a hate figure seems like he could be somebody that everybody agrees on yeah he's the guy who saved us from Hillary Clinton and the guy who helped you know debunk George W. Bush's foreign policy once and for all like five years earlier than people might have given up on it. I don't know, something.

He helped. He did good things, you know? And people should be rallying around in support of him. There ought to be 10,000 people at this event in D.C., you know? I mean, it's the same with, you know, Henry Kissinger calling Dan Ellsberg, the most dangerous men in America. I mean, it's not necessarily about specifically what they leaked,

but the fact that they were willing to break this cult of secrecy. and that they have to set an example to make sure no one else ever does this. I mean, former CIA director Leon Panetta is in a German documentary saying just that. Like, all we can hope we can do is to prosecute these people, so no one ever does it again. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. They're making an example out of them. And it goes to show, too, the very libertarian perspective that there's really no such thing as law at all. You know, when you have a monopoly on enforcing the law, you don't have to.

to apply it to yourself at all if you don't feel like it. And the idea that an independent judiciary is any such thing is, I mean, look at the situation that we're in now. It's completely laughable. If that was true, the judges would say that all their powers that the executive has stolen away from them are, that's unconstitutional and we're taking them all back. But they don't ever rule that. It's like the Congress doesn't ever declare war anymore or anything like that.

They, you know, delegate all the big decisions. Great Matt Taibi this week about how the Justice Department has just. worked over time to remove every kind of judicial discretion and make it all an executive function. And the subject there was the special master, whether the judiciary ought to be the ones reviewing the classified documents for Mara Lago or whether just the FBI ought to be able to do whatever they want, and including going through the legal records of people who are not implicated in this in any way, but are getting scooped up with Trump's lawyers, teams, things, and all the rest of this stuff.

And so look what happens. When everybody knows that the First Amendment protects a publisher, they haven't tried to prosecute a case like this against a publisher. They have absolutely abused the hell out of the Espionage Act in using it against leakers. I'm not saying that's okay. It's not espionage to leap to the newspaper and the public interest, for God's sake. you know they're violating their written oath and promise and contract to not i mean to keep secrets you know they're they're violating their their uh the law in that sense but they're certainly not

committing treason against this country if you look at all the people who came out to talk about the um the uh you know justice department uh you know looking the other way on all the nsa spying and and all the legal memos just of all the secret memos just to find the torture and all that stuff um so anyways sorry i'm just rambling but it just seems like it's sort of a last ditch effort for the first amendment here people are either going to step up and take up this cause or we're going to kind of all go down with asanja's sinking ship i think yeah uh and i'm hoping not to go down with with the sinking ship i'm i'm hoping people will finally wake up i mean a lot of people in this country

have hoped they don't have the deal of this because the UK will resolve it when the UK ruled against Assange like a year ago we started to see a couple of people be more willing to speak out but not as many as we need it yeah all right well listen

I really appreciate all your journalism here on this important case I mean you're living proof right here if you don't do the work it doesn't get done right no People got to get to it. So, and thank you for, for planning on speaking at this upcoming event, too. Again, I hope everyone will turn out.

That's October the 8th, which is, geez, that's the anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, too. Somebody brings some Afghan war logs with you. October the 8th at the Justice Department Building in D.C., a big protest for Assange, and including a couple of our best buds, Beauvard, and DeCamp will be there, too. All right, cool. So we'll wrap it here, but thanks so much for your time, Chip. Really appreciate it. My pleasure.

My pleasure. All right you guys, that's Chip Gibbons writing at jacobin.com. Secret documents have exposed the CIA's Julian Assange Obsession. 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.

Dotorg.