The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ITHAKA DETAILS FATHERS FIGHT TO FREE JULIAN ASSANGE

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

John and Gabriel Shipton discuss their gripping documentary, Ithaka, which chronicles the unrelenting struggle to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, their son and brother, from a high-security prison in Britain for his part in releasing classified US government files to the public.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Journalism is under attack right now. And I think that this is a story as this week marks the fourth year that Julian Assange has been, it appears to be in virtual solitary confinement for having released footage and things that were handed to him that told the truth. He didn't lie. It was handed to him. He didn't work for the government. He can't be charged with espionage. He didn't go in and get it.

Someone handed it to him. And he said, you know what? The world should know the truth about what's happening here. That's what journalists do. That's why they've always been protected. And if you don't know his story and somehow you slept through it, this is the story of Julian Assange. Julian Assange, the controversial WikiLeaks founder.

But who is Julian Assange? Some people say a Messiah, some people say a terrorist. Hacker, activist, some people say a maniac, or a fugitive criminal. The WikiLeaks organization published hundreds more internal government documents. Assange has embarrassed the powerful and revealed top secret information. about U.S. and other government activities. He's such an extreme figure that he absolutely polarizes people. He is the mastermind behind WikiLeaks, which has published the Secrets of Nations

and is now at the heart of a global debate over the public's right to know. This video was released by Julian Assange's WikiLeaks organization in 2010. Classified US military video shows a helicopter gunship attack on a crowd of people in Baghdad. At least 12 Iraqis were shot dead, including a Royalist's military. including a Reuters photographer and a driver. The US military said it was engaging armed groups, I claim disputed to this day. It was revelations like this that put Assange in the spotlight

and made him powerful enemies in Washington. WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. People may die as a consequence of what this man did. It is possible the United States will be attacked because terrorists may now know how to protect themselves. Not a single U.S. government official, government official. No one from the Pentagon, no one from any government says that any of our

revelations in the past six years has caused anyone to come to physical harm. In 2010, Julian Assange was working in the UK and Sweden requested his extradition. In 2012, facing imminent extradition to Sweden, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. Julian Assange, he has been granted political asylum by Ecuador. He has been pulled up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June. Surrounded by British police, wanting to arrest him, he remained confined in the embassy. The charges in Sweden were later dropped, but he was to face a much more serious problem.

The US now sought to have Assange extradited on charges of espionage. WikiLeaks releasing the newest batch of what are believed to be campaign chairman John Podesta's hacked emails. More than 1,900 emails released just this weekend. We are talking about a slow leak every day, a new batch. And the Clinton campaign knows this could be a problem for them every day until election day.

He is at the center of one. of the biggest counterintelligence investigations in the United States, the Russian attack on the 2016 election. But up until now, Julian Assange has been untouchable, hold up in a couple of rooms inside Ecuador's embassy in London for almost seven years, living under asylum. We do begin with breaking news for you because London police have arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Here you can see him being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy by British police. Julian Assange remains in Belmarch prison in London. He's appealing against extradition to the US

to face charges of espionage and computer hacking. Assange's legal fate being decided in a British extradition hearing later this month. He has been in a Southeast London jail since 2019. The 50-year-old is wanted in the United States on 18 criminal charges, including breaking a spying law. The British government has approved his extradition, but he's appealing. Saanj is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents, charges that could land him in jail for 175 years.

Many of these charges could have been brought against national security and investigative journalists for doing their jobs. Because Julian Assange is in a jail cell, China's foreign ministry, who has said that they do not have to address concerns about how they treat journalists. The extent of the CIA's efforts to silence Assange must send a chill down any national security reporter spying. The fate of the WikiLeaks found,

remains in the balance. To some, he's a hero of free speech and journalism. To others, he's committed criminal acts and must face the consequences of his actions. As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. This story obviously pushes a lot of us. I am sure that out in the audience right now, there are varying views on this story, but I want to say a few things about this. When I look at the headlines just over the last couple of weeks about the reporter that has been taken in Russia. Russia charges Wall Street Journal's Evan Gerskovich with espionage. And clearly the Biden administration has come out against us. Biden slams Russia's detention of Wall Street

Journal reporter Evan Gerskovich as totally illegal. What moral high ground does the Biden administration have? What do they, what can they say to Russia and be listened to with any credibility when we are the ones imprisoning Julian Assange at this very moment for doing what? He didn't break the law. He simply reported what was handed to him. And in probably the most damning case showed that America had killed Reuters journalists, innocent journalists, and possibly other innocent people tried to hide it. Really?

Somehow that we're putting America at risk by letting them know that they're lying about killing journalists on the ground in the middle of a war. This is obviously a topic that hits very close to home for me and the work that I do is a journalist. We are directly involved with the government. I sue the government. We win with our nonprofit. We show you their internal emails that we're receiving. So if Julian Assange is not protected by his First Amendment rights in the United States of America and our Constitution

and the fourth branch of government, then who is? Then who amongst us is safe? and how can you ever be allowed to tell the truth and challenge your government, which is what our founding fathers in America stood for. It's such an important story, and I was honored to be joined by Julian Assange's father, John and his brother Gabriel Shepton, who were polling through town just over a week ago with a documentary discussing this story. I had an incredible time talking with them.

Their interview is brilliant. It's coming up right after we show you this documentary trailer of Ethan. Can we talk about your contact with Julian through his childhood? It's part of the story. It isn't part of the story. The story is that, you know, I am attempting in my own modest way to get Julian out of the ship. Tumen Assange is the hero of our time. He was the darling of the left.

All of a sudden he's a puppet of Russia. My name is John Shipton. I'm Julian Assange's father. WikiLeaks found that Julian Assange has been arrested. One of the most notorious and controversial figures in custody. Assange will remain behind bars until that extradition hearing, which has been set down for the end of February. I urge the Department of Justice to drop the charges. The maximum jail sentence of 175 years.

Because he published the truth. How does it feel to be the father of such a controversial? controversial, I guess somebody that was not known around the world. Was that him on the phone before? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What are you talking about on a kind of regular basis? If Julian is extradited to the United States to face these charges,

he will be the first, but not the last. What are your worst fit? It just collapses under the strike. It looks as though what journalists do. for living is seen to be criminal act. I'm going to know shit to keep it up, man. Thank you. I wish I had your energy.

I really do. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I've done. Why do you think there's not a great public love and support? This is really a truly good question. What's at stake?

If he goes down, so will. Journalism. But if people walked away from this film, understanding you, how would you feel about that? We are here, and this has only come about because we have a child in the ship, and I want to get him out. The film is called Ithaca, and is my honor and pleasure to be joined right now by the subject, which is Julian Nisange's father, John Chippton. Thank you for joining me. And then, of course, Gabriel, brother of Julian Nisangelo, director of this film, which is chilling.

It's powerful and this story is horrifying to people exactly like me, journalists in the world today. So to begin with Gabriel, you know, what made you decide to make this film? Well, it came about in 2019. It was just after Julian had been taken from the Ecuadorian embassy and put in Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison, where he remains to this day four years. he spent there. John and I went to see him with journalist John Pilger and at that time he was being kept in solitary confinement in a section of the prison called the prisoners call it the hellwing of the prison and it's a place where they keep terminally ill most desperately suicidal

prisoners it is the deepest darkest place in that British dungeon and it was at that time that I left the prison after that visit after seeing him feeling that I might never see him again and started to think about ways that I could help I'm a film producer that's my background and you know started to think of a way how can we tell a different side of to this story aside to the story that we experience as Julian's family that we didn't really see in in in the media you know the media was betraying this whole situation and as something entirely different to how we were experiencing it.

And so we started to think about a documentary and that's when John was traveling around Europe, advocating for Julian, meeting politicians, talking to media, and we started following him with the camera. We shot with John for a bit over two years and that's how the sort of story, the Genesis story of the film came about. John, it's, you're an interesting

subject in a documentary because you seem to be someone that, you know, I think under any other circumstance would not be putting yourself afront. No, no, no, not my calling. I'm from the building industry and we like to have jobs that have a beginning and an end. Right. This job just is, well, pretty compelling. It's founded on the power of the supporters. So everything we do, every cent that's paid to lawyers,

is all raised from support right around the world, and that gives heart and strength. You know, I try to think about it, and watching the film as compelling, because, I mean, look, we all know that, I mean, I truly am 100% behind this effort to try and get. Julian Assange, you know, out of the trouble that he's in and none of it really makes any sense.

All he did was pass forward records. Nobody's died because of it really just revealed that we were being lied to. But, you know, it does feel as though this was the beginning and there's been a coup, I would say, on free speech and journalism taking place worldwide, but especially in First World Nations like this. And it feels like this story of Julian really sort of launched this new effort to take away journalism's ability to challenge government and especially governments in war and the things that they're doing. But when I think about being a parent of someone that pushes them in, can I say when this all started, were you concerned about the work that Julian was doing? Yeah, yeah. Well, not concerned about the work, but some of the results, you know, I imagine somebody would push him off a bridge somewhere or other,

particularly after the cables and the Iraq War files and the Afghan war logs came out, I thought, and the Guantanamo Bay files. I thought that some forces within the United States would move to, destroy Julian and the capacity of WikiLeaks. That's in my fears, you know. I didn't tell Julian of those fears at all. But it is, as you say, it seems to have run parallel with and be the icebreaker for governments in the West, in the first world,

to remove the capacity for people to have knowledge. and formulate their positions on government policy on a foundation of knowledge. I saw the other day that Robert Kennedy Jr. had issued a tweet, which is just fantastic in its compression and condensation. The first sentence is that there is no America without free speech. And the second sentence is there's no free speech without free speech without a free Julian Assange. Yeah.

Yeah. So the first section unpackes really well with the constraint of publication by the use of the 1917 Espionage Act to chill, truncate, or ruin the capacity of publications. Now, that in itself says to you, what is the United States without the symbiosis between free press and democracy. What does it become is the question? And Robert asks that really well. Without the First Amendment and without the which is number one in the Bill of Rights without the First Amendment the action of the First Amendment then you have no America and the question is then what are you left with?

Really important. Very, very important. So, you know, as Julian's brother, you're obviously in media, you know, you're producer. So, you know, you had, I think, an interesting vantage point. A lot of times families, you know, we don't understand what our siblings or others are doing. But from your perspective, when you were watching the work that he was doing, what were you, was there concern? Or would you just think this is awesome? Yeah, certainly a lot of admiration for Julian's courage and fearlessness in publishing all the material that he has.

But the sort of really understanding the effects that his work would have came to me when he published information about the Kenyan government that led to a change in government in Kenya. And this was back in 2008. And at the time, we understood that some people who Julian was working with in Kenya ended up murdered surrounding this publication. So at that point really understood, okay, the powerful people or the people in power around the world who Julian is exposing will go to great lengths to stop this from happening. And that was my first, you know, real time of beginning to sort of just be concerned for Julian's well-being, but always, you know, admired his courage. And, I mean, he does, he's doing what journalists should be doing every day, you know, publishing without fear or favor. And he should be the example for all journalists. And really what is happening to him now is these, the National Socialists,

Security DOJ and these forces that he's exposed, that he is, whose crimes he's exposed are making an example of him. They're saying to anybody around the world that if you publish this information, if you expose our war crimes, if you expose corruption or torture, we will take away all your rights. You know, we will throw you in a prison without a conviction. You know, Julian's not convicted. He spent four years in a prison. He's held. incommunicado so he cannot speak, he cannot use his platform to defend himself. He hasn't been able to attend his own core proceedings since January 2021. He applies to attend them and the application is rejected. And so what this is is just really removing Julian, removing any sort

of semblance of a human, of Julian Assange, the human from people's view, dehumanizing him, so that this torturous process that's been set up is able to continue without resistance. You've visited him several times to the years. How would you describe his health and mental state now? So in mid-20019, the United Nations rapporteur on torture and unusual punishment visited Julian. His name is Professor Nils Melzer, accompanied by two doctors that

specialise in determining the results of psychological torture on the body and on the mind. Professor Nils Melser wrote a report 26 pages long which he submitted to the United Nations, to the United Kingdom government, to the Swedish government, with several questions in which all outlined irregularities, due process failures, and the consistency of malice mobbing amounting to torture. Over a period of up until that time, seven and a half years, constant. So that has had dire effects on Julian's health. He had a a stroke about three months ago, which has caused the left eye to collapse a little bit. Circumstances like that are dilatious to even the strongest human being.

However, the work we are doing and the support that Julian gets around the world is heartening Because a fundamental aspect of being in jail is you're completely isolated and you're at the intricate command of forces which you can't alter even in the slightest way. That is, you become isolated and awfully lonely. And loneliness causes you to rely on relationships with the jailers and those sort of and other prisoners. Having support around the world is, as Julian does and as we do, is strengthening, as you can imagine. Now that's the circumstances of Julian's well-being. His health is dire, however, his resilience is supported by us and by the supporters around the world. Outlining what that's outlining, what that support action.

is for a minute here. Every Western Parliament, even the exception of Sweden, and Sweden used to have supporters but they're retired. Every Western Parliament has an Assange cross-party group in it. Even the Congress of the United States of America has people on both sides of the oil who support Julian. As a consequence of the absolute necessity to preserve our capacity to have what we call free speech or a free pest. It covers both sides of the aisle in an umbrella and every Western nation has adopted in one way or another the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. In particular the Council of Europe's Clause 10 says that you can

have free speech under certain circumstances. But we keep in mind that the First Amendment is categorical in its statement that the government will make no laws and we hold that to our hearts and we try and emulate that throughout the Western world. Now that's the general outline of circumstance. In the Greek Parliament, it has 300 members, 92 in the Assange cross party group. And so it goes from there. Every parliament I can outline.

Council of Europe, declaration that Julian is a protected journalist. 27 of the greatest civil society organizations, human rights watch and so on and so on and and so on, have written a letter to the Department of Justice Head, Mary Garland, saying that these charges ought to be dropped. Gabrielle can go on with several other great organisations that have made it plain that this ruination of the First Amendment and compression and chilling of the capacity for publications to inform the public outside of government dictat. is essential.

When just for people to understand or and for me to understand, he is in this maximum security prison which seems just over the top anyway for a journalist and kill anybody. I mean, it doesn't really make sense, but he's in a jail in England. What is England have him arrested for? Well, he's held in this jail solely at the request of the US National Security DOJ. They have charged him with 17 counts of the Espionage Act in relation to the Chelsea Manning Leaks from 2010-2011. So we're talking about the Iraq Warlogs, Afghan War Diaries, Guantanamo Bay detainee files, and the State Department cable set.

So that's all those charges, those 17 Espionage Act charges, all relate to public. publishing that information, which includes, in the instance of the Iraq War, the famous collateral murder video of the Apache helicopter gunship that mows down to Reuters journalists and then also shoots the van of Good Samaritans that come to rescue these injured people. So that's what he's charged with is publishing, possessing that information and also attempting to protect Chelsea Manning's identity, as well as encouraging a source to leak information. So this is the bread and butter of journalists everywhere.

There's literally been like movies made using, you know, based on the information that's come from there. People are making millions and millions of dollars off the stories and the ideas that we now understand about some of these wars, the underpinnings of Guantanamo Bay, all of these things, yet the reason we know these things, you know, Julian is in a prison, I find this interesting, and is this common that other countries jail you for what America wants? I mean, I don't really know the history of this approach. Yeah, well, I mean, it is, you know, this is the template, right? Like what is happening to Julian is the template for this sort of action.

This is what we call extraterritorial use of the espionage act to reach into another country and put a journalist in prison or put a business person in prison. You know, what's happened to Julian is now be able to be a copycat sort of thing that's happening around the world. You look into the Wall Street Journal journalist in Russia who's just been charged with espionage. Right. So since the Cold War, Russia has ejected journalists. You know, they just throw them out, oh, we don't like you, you know, get out of the country. But this is the first time since the Cold War that they've actually gone one step further and said, okay, we're going to charge a journalist with espionage, you know, and they're looking

at the US and the national security do DOJ, and they're saying, well, you can do it, why can't we? Right. Yeah. And similarly with Jamal Khashoggi, right, like the Saudi journalist who, who was a lot of the government was murdered in a Turkish embassy, Saudi Arabia can look and say, well, the U.S. has a publisher in prison in the UK. You know, what's to stop us from doing what we want? And essentially killing him. I mean, they're killing, you know.

Yeah, slow-motion murder, what Neil's Melsa, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described it as a slow-motion murder before our eyes. As you've traveled the world, are you, are you getting? gaining hope, John, that this effort making a film, you know, you've been standing with these organizations and groups, you know, outside of capitals around the world, outside of the jail itself. Do you feel hopeful about the future of this story? Yeah, I mean, we sort of like, we exist under the saying, you know, hope makes a good breakfast from a bad dinner.

They just do your very best each day that comes to you. And it seems as though to us that there is two things. We're a catalyst for the interest in people's, in the interest of people in Julian Assange's Wikileaks

and those publications. We are a catalyst. We don't create it. We just move into societies and exhibit the film and find within them in those societies that there's this heartening thing, this uplifting thing, a revulsion at injustice and a yearning for justice. So we find that. We've now have in Australia, for example, 88% of the population want Julian brought

home and 25% of the Parliament support Julian Assange. Now, parliaments are sovereign institutions and in the majesty of Parliament, they instruct the executive on their concerns and the concerns that the people bring before them. This is really important. The revitalisation of Congress and the Australian Parliament in this case and the model that we create in the pursuit of freedom for Julian Assange is a model that can be followed by other people with current concerns. For example, the conflict in Ukraine.

This is a model that can be applied to people who want to see peace, not war. So we have found that in the Australian example now, the High Commissioner, which is slightly higher than an ambassador, the High Commissioner of the Australian Government to the Court of St James, that is the United Kingdom, is visiting Julian in Belmarsh on the 4th of April. This, we must understand, articulates the concept of the concerns. of the Australian government over the treatment, the malice, the bureaucratic off-splication, the refusal to allow Julian to travel to his own court hearings, the collapse of due process, the irregularities, for example in the irregularities, the

Crown Prosecuting Service of the United Kingdom and the Swedish prosecuting Authority conspired together to remove the capacity for Julian to be interviewed in the embassy, a usual procedure done 44 times while Julian, by the Swedish prosecuting authority, while Julian was in asylum in the embassy. A simple solution, nine years they had the matter, the longest preliminary investigation of allegations in the Swedish prosecuting authorities history. Four prosecutors, nine years, all expired on time, you know, just wore out. They only stopped their persecution of Julian Assange after Julian was removed from the embassy by force, which you see in the trailer.

They stopped it because they had achieved their aim. They had broken every due process, their own laws. In fact, Julian's lawyers took two cases to the federal court, that's their highest court in Sweden, took two cases to the Swedish federal court to insist that the Swedish prosecuting authority progressed the case. And the federal court determined that the prosecuting authority had been laxed and instructed them to progress the case.

Every element of this is covered in Nils Mills's book, The Trial of Julian Assange. One due process, one irregularity, malice after the other. It's just an ongoing scandal. Sorry. No. It's, I mean, it's really, really important, and it's important for us all to understand. And I think it's hard for people that aren't journalists, I suppose, just, you know, sort of get into this space.

But when you look at this now, Gave, when we see these other governments all sort of, as we're saying, he's in a jail in England. England doesn't even have anything against him. They're literally holding him because of, you know, the U.S. and their desire to extradite in which has been denied and covered that in the documentary that gets denied but when you start to look at this whole global you know sweden and these other nations england what is your does it has it changed your perspective of how the power systems work because why do these other countries care about an american problem and why are they getting involved in keeping julian from getting

his story out and what you know is there do you have this sense that there is a is a bigger globalist agenda involved? Is America have authority over all these other nations? Do you think about that at all? Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, with John talking about all these abuses of process and these sort of respected institutions that have now been weaponized against a publisher and against a journalist for publishing the truth, you know, the Swedish prosecuting service, the Crown prosecutors, to an extent the Australian government who were, complicit in Julian's persecution for a very long time by staying quiet.

And we look at it, or I sometimes say that, you know, this is another, this is like another leak, you know, the fight to free Julian, and the forces that have exposed themselves in Julian's persecution is, you know, like you say, another leak to show all these forces coming together to keep this publisher in jail, explaining. to us that how afraid these power structures are of actually being exposed of having their secrets come out and the coordination between all these nations between the Swedish prosecuting service and the Crown Prosecuting Service you know there's email FOIs the Swedish prosecutor emailing the Crown prosecutor saying you know

we want to come and end this we want to drop this it's gone on too long and the the Crown Prosecutor saying, response is, quote, don't get cold feet. This is about more than a simple extradition. So we have that in writing, you know, primary source documents, this conspiracy to keep Julian in the Ecuadorian embassy. And also with the UC Global, the security company that was supposed to be protecting Julian when he was inside the Ecuadorian embassy, there were two employees. who worked for that company who blew the whistle on what they were up to and they had been co-opted

by the CIA and were spying on Julian they put high-definition cameras all through the embassy to spy on his meetings with his lawyers his privileged meetings with his lawyers his meetings with his psychologists and doctors were all spied on they installed microphones all through the embassy even in the women's toilet because they thought Julian might think oh that's a safe place to have a meeting so they put a microphone in there and these these whistleblowers exposed this and showed that the CEO of this company every 15 days was flying to the US with this information with this with this footage these recordings and he made over 100 flights it's recorded on the flight logs and this was all confirmed in at the

end of 2021 three investigative journalists in Washington DC did a 6,000 word piece and over a year of investigating and they found 30 or they cited 30 former and current intelligence community sources that said there were plots to kidnap Julian that made it as high as the White House and this there's actually in this report it says that you know they took this plot and and and the DOJ were in the same, you know, said to them, well, if you do kidnap him, if the CIA does kidnap him, what are you going to do with him? You know, where are you going to put him? We don't have any charges.

And so that's when we saw, you know, this really pick up pace during Mike Pompeo's time as CIA director and at the State Department. And recently in Pompeo's book that's come out, I keep talking about Pompeo's book. I don't want to promote his book and sell his book for him. But there is a section on Julian Assange where he claims credit for lobbying the Ecuadorians, he says successfully lobbying the Ecuadorians to eject Julian from the embassy. He claims credit for this prosecution, which is a direct evidence that this is a politically motivated prosecution of a publisher and a journalist.

And the DOJ, you know, they always, this DOJ likes to say, oh, we're, you know, we're beyond reproach, we're not politically motivated. Well, there's direct evidence that this is a Mike Pompeo pushed prosecution. And now we're looking at a Biden DOJ. Why, you know, it's, it's, you just have to scratch your head. Why are they pursuing this still? When you go in and visit with Julian, what do you say to him? You know, I try and make him laugh or smile, but we have hug and then sit down and talk

about, you know, friends that I've seen because he can't see his friends and family and then usually kids, you know, the kids and so on. And then circumstances of his, of our our work to free him. So that's sort of covered last. Usually run out of time because you only get an hour. And then you start to develop all these ideas and the bell rings and they start to scream, get out. So it's always sort of heartbreaking, you know, to leave because you always see, you know, you're

It's braved, yeah, tear it apart. I don't like it really, yeah. I mean, I like to go there, but I don't like that. Yeah, it's got to be, so. But there's, you know, like there's 80 or 90 prisoners in the room and the circumstances of Julian's are quite different. It's a maximum security prison and it holds murderers and terrorism. terrorists and rapists.

Julian is a publisher and now he's the longest inmate of that prison. It's a remand prison, specifically keeps people on remand. Then their hearings are done and their sentences are made and they go to a prison to serve sentence. He now is the longest inmate of that particular prison. And that's the circumstances of the visit. Actually, they're very thorough. They look at the, when you go in, they have a sniffer dog.

They look at the soles of your feet. You take off your shoes and all. You're not allowed to carry any paper, any money, so on and so forth. Look in your ear, your mouth. You go through two X-ray machines plus a wand and then the sniffer dogs. They're very thorough that way. in four portals that you go through. I was going through with AYWI, who's the artist you see in the trailer, and he's in front

of me. And he's, I look at him, I watch him carefully, and his nerve is so steady, you know, because I notice everybody else is looking around like that, displaying nervousness. But Aywai We is sort of cruising on. I say to him, you're pretty steady. And he says, oh, been in a lot of these places. You get an, he was a Chinese dissident artist. So right now the film, you're sort of doing a theatrical tour, correct?

So how do people find out if it's going to be in a theater near them? Yeah, so we're doing this theatrical tour. We've got around 59 events around the country. We're about halfway through. They can go to Ithaca.movie. That's ithaka.movey. That's the film's website. They can follow us on the social media, Ithaca movie.

We're always updating where we're at, what's coming up next. It will have an eventual release, eventual broader release, but they can come out and meet us. We'll have, we're chatting with people all over the country. A lot of people come up to us and say, thanks for doing this, which is a very moving reaction that we're getting as we travel around. Just one more thing, if I could add. This is essential to understanding of the importance and the gravity of this circumstances. the five partners in the original release of all of those files and the cables.

That's Le Monde in Paris, El Pais in France, De Sbegel in Germany, and the Guardian in the United Kingdom, and finally and most importantly, the New York Times in America. Each of those partners signed a letter to the head of the, the Department of Justice Mary Gallen insisting that the charges against Julian Assange be dropped. That was on the 30th of November last year. It's really important that we understand each of those great newspaper combines.

The publisher signed a letter, not the journalist. The publishers realize that their stature, their prestige, their capacity to comment is completely truncated by this prosecution. They stand in line if they in any way go against what the government wishes. You would have to imagine what we were in Burdenstein would be in jail under the same circumstances now. We're going to live in the same culture. You know, what we've known as journalism that reveals lying and deceit by government officials,

which are founding fathers in America, that's exactly why they called this the fourth estate of the fourth branch of government was a free press, and that without a free press, all the ideals and dreams of the founding fathers would be lost. We really hang on the precipice now of exactly that. We're seeing a story of someone that text messaged out a joke in that you can vote for Hillary Clinton by tweet is now looking at 10 years in jail here in the United States of America, you know, just, and as you said, we're watching journalists being held in Russia, and I wonder, authority do we have any more. It's sort of like torture. You can't

complain that the Geneva Convention is being broken when you're breaking yourself. You cannot, you know, accuse Russia of treating journalists incorrectly when the United States of America has your brother and your son in the maximum security prison simply for, you know, sharing documents that were handed to him. We have a very active audience. So what is it that we can do with our audience right now? Besides, I know you can do screenings with the film in your house, but, you know, what do you recommend that we do? Because we do, we have a congressional, bipartisan congressional letter that has been sent out. On behalf of Julian Assange, as you said, we have Thomas Massey and AOC standing next to each other on this issue, which is probably

the only issue those two people will ever agree on. Yeah, and so as we travel around, we're always encouraging people to take their concerns to their representatives. And that's why we see people like AOC jumping on because they're getting calls from their constituents, you know, saying that we're concerned about this. These are our rights that are at stake,

you know, our First Amendment rights that are at stake in this case. So yeah, we're always encouraging people, get involved, call your congressperson, and ask them to join onto this letter or support Thomas Massey or Rokana in their bipartisan Espionage Act Reform Bill. That's the main ask that we're asking people to do.

They can also go to Assange-defense.org and sign up to our mailing list where they can receive updates and we can communicate with them directly. I want to thank you for taking the time. I know you guys have a very busy schedule. You know, and I think people would be just honored to see your films wherever it is. They should make that happen.

How does this journey end? Is this, have you set a timeline for, you know, how long you're going to fight this fight? No, no. Probably have to stop by the time I'm 80, you know. It gives another year and a half. You know, so yeah, but Gabrielle and the rest of Julian's family can carry on. And they've become much more articulate and better at it than me. And they make films and raise money and so on.

So I'll slowly fade into the sunset while the rest of the world's realizes, the rest of the Western world realizes that this is a wrong track we've traveled down and time to straighten up and fly right. You know, Gabrielle, when you look at John, you know, certainly you would think that someone at this point in their life, successful builder, should probably be just enjoying more time on a beach hanging with grandchildren. When you watch him doing this work, what is your thought as his son? I mean, I'm a big admirer of my father, you know, very, yeah, I think it's awesome, basically, you know, to watch him do this, you know, the way he is able to communicate with people and really explain the ideas behind, you know, what Julian's work was all about and what's at stake for people.

I'm really in awe of the way that he's able to do that. But it'd be good if he gets some time to enjoy a bit of retirement, so to speak, yeah. I want to thank you both for coming in, taking this time. This is an incredible work. It's such an important issue. So, you know, I just want to wish you, Godspeed to all of your travels. Thank you very much. Thank you.