All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys on the line.
I've got Trevor Tim again from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Welcome back to the show, Trevor.
How you doing?
I'm doing all right, all things considered.
How about you?
I'm doing okay, man.
Listen, I appreciate you joining us here today.
We've got a couple of really important things to discuss.
Really, I just want to talk about Assange, but we've got to start with the court ruling about Edward Snowden and his massive NSA leak that just came down, what, two days ago in the federal courts.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this was a huge ruling and, you know, probably didn't get enough media attention or enough of the attention that it deserved given that Trump really dominates the news cycle.
But what essentially happened was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most important courts in the country, ruled that the massive phone surveillance system that was conducted in complete secrecy by the NSA for almost a decade that Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 was illegal and likely unconstitutional.
This isn't actually the first court to decide this.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals also said this years ago.
The case was actually argued four years ago, but the court waited almost this entire time before releasing the ruling.
But it really vindicates a lot of what Snowden did.
Yeah, well, and, you know, it's funny because I think all the different stories about X Key score this and, you know, all the different programs and that kind of thing, it dribbled out in kind of a way that I think it didn't quite cause the shock maybe that it could have.
But you know, I remember, for example, there was a page at the Electronic Frontier Foundation where they had collected all of the news stories from around the world, which is, you know, maybe 100 stories, 50, 75 stories from around the world.
And then the primary source documents that came with them.
And unfortunately, they all kind of came out over the course of like a year and a half or something.
But when you look at it all combined right there, it's beyond a nightmare or the wildest conspiracy kooks imagination about the ability of the NSA to surveil us all and the willingness of the NSA to surveil us in everything we do, right down to keeping for years the location data of all of our cell phones so they can see which living room you've ever had a meeting in or anything they want.
And so, damn right, the courts are finally saying the right thing about it.
But I guess I just wonder whether people remember, you know, just how extensive the surveillance was that Snowden exposed, you know, it didn't quite hit as hard as the Manning leak or something where it all kind of went up on WikiLeaks all at once.
Well, I mean, I think it's hard to remember at this point, just given it's been almost seven years.
But, I mean, this was a giant front page story and probably the story of the decade.
And when, you know, you go back and look at what the NSA was doing.
So this court case was actually related to the very first Snowden story that came out.
So, you know, the NSA was essentially collecting every single or logging every single phone call made in the United States.
And so they were they weren't collecting, at least in this program, the content of people's phone calls.
But there is they had a huge database saying who you talk to, when you talk to them and potentially for how long and and even where you called from.
And, you know, obviously, this information is incredibly sensitive, can paint a huge picture of your private life, even if they can't or weren't listening to the particular phone calls.
And so the NSA ran this in total secrecy.
It was never publicly debated in Congress or in the media at all.
Then when Edward Snowden exposed it, they defended the program, saying that it was entirely legal, even though there was no law that was written that said that they could do this.
And they were even defending it in the Ninth Circuit, in this courtroom, saying that not only was it legal, but that it was very important for saving lives.
Well, when you read the court opinion, it's it's quite fascinating, because not only does the court explicitly say, no, this was illegal, there was no law that authorized this and it was likely unconstitutional, but they also basically called the government out for lying, saying that the program was essentially useless.
The case that the government was, you know, claiming that it was vital that this surveillance system, you know, was was there to stop, it turned out the court looked at the classified evidence and found that the government was being misleading, that actually wasn't vital.
So you know, not only was this surveillance invasive and illegal and unconstitutional, it was also useless.
Yeah, I like that where they got they had to whittle it all the way down to one anecdote.
For a while, they were saying this is how they caught bin Laden and all this stuff.
They finally had to whittle it all the way down to, well, some cab driver sent some money home to Somalia.
And then here the court is saying, nope, that's not even true either.
Yeah, like you're you know, it sounds like that you're exaggerating, but that's exactly what happened.
The NSA at the beginning of this debate, 2013 and 2014, was saying this program thwarted dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks.
And then, you know, journalists started asking questions.
They're like, wait a second, like, you know, there's no proof of this, they'll tell us the cases.
And then they were like, well, actually, no, it didn't help in dozens of cases, it helped in a handful of cases.
And then then it became one case.
And you're exactly right.
The one case was some cab driver from Somalia, who was sending money back to relatives.
And that turned into a material support for terrorism case, which, and that's the one case they hung their hat on for this program that was collecting the phone call records of 300 million people.
And it turns out after all this, even that was a lie.
They didn't need it for that.
So it's just absolutely ridiculous when it comes down to it.
Yeah, I like how James Clapper's not in prison right now for perjury when, you know, first of all, he lied to send a war with Iraq at the National Reconnaissance Office, but nobody got in any trouble for that.
But here under oath, he straight told the Senate and the American people that, oh, yeah, no, we're not collecting your records when he knew that that wasn't true.
So it sounds to me like, I don't know, if you swore an oath to tell the truth and then you told a blatant lie to Congress, Trevor, that they'd lock you in prison, right?
Of course they would.
And, you know, James Clapper kept not only did he not get prosecuted for lying to Congress, which is felony, whether you're under whether you're under oath or not, he was allowed to keep his job under the Obama administration.
Now he's a highly paid commentator on on cable news.
And you know, the person that exposed that he was lying to Congress, Edward Snowden, has been exiled to Russia and is facing felony charges himself.
And so, you know, it's it's all of that is kind of leading up to the fact that that not only did the Clapper lie about this program, but the program that they were lying about was illegal the entire time.
Right.
And OK, two things real quick, and we got to switch to Asante, but I neglected to mention that he was one of the primary authors of the Russiagate hoax.
But then also the other connection to Russia that you mentioned there with the Snowden case is how Snowden is exiled in Russia.
And as I know, you're very familiar.
The Wall Street Journal and other assorted bad guys would have it that, yeah, that's because he's a traitor.
And yet the way I remember it was he was on his way to Ecuador and it was Obama who stranded him in Russia.
But you're a lawyer and an expert.
And I was wondering whether you could remind the American people whether Edward Snowden was trying to move to Moscow back in 2013.
Trevor.
Yeah, I mean, these facts aren't even in dispute.
The Obama administration admitted it at the time.
And then I think that people have convenient memories.
What had happened was Edward Snowden had bought a ticket to get to Latin America and he had to travel through Russia because the U.S. was blocking the airspace of any other way to get there.
When he was in the air, the U.S. canceled his passport.
So when he landed in Russia, he wasn't allowed to leave.
The U.S. did this on purpose and then used this to claim that Snowden was, you know, using Putin as refuge or whatever.
But this is not even in dispute.
The former NSA deputy director, who actually led one of the investigations into Snowden for the NSA, has actually publicly stated that, yeah, he, that Snowden was obviously trying to go to Latin America and he was stranded there, and that this deputy director would actually, if you want to watch this whole video, all you have to do is go to Snowden's Twitter account, and it's actually the first tweet.
This deputy director talks about this for two minutes, that the U.S. government doesn't even think he was trying to go to Russia, and the U.S. government doesn't think that Snowden handed over any information to either China or Russia.
So we know what the facts say, yet people who are in the national security establishment, you know, have taken the fact that he's in Russia and tried to twist that into meaning that he is some sort of spy, which, you know, couldn't be further from the truth.
Do you have any idea why they did that?
Was it just for the public relations of saying, ah, he's in Russia?
It seems like they were taking a risk that he actually could have been debriefed by the FSB and made to reveal actual American secrets.
Well, that is actually the irony of the whole thing.
The entire time that the U.S. government was claiming that Edward Snowden was damaging national security by giving this information to journalists, the U.S. government was taking a huge risk and potentially damaging national security far more than even they were accusing Edward Snowden of.
If they were really worried about Snowden giving information to the Russians, they should have done anything in their power to make sure that he didn't land there, up to and including just letting him go to Latin America like they could have done.
But what they did was, you know, they probably saw this as a perfect propaganda coup.
So if they couldn't arrest Snowden, you might as well trap him in Russia.
So then they can claim that he is, you know, in cahoots with the Russian government.
Now, you know, we know for a fact that that's not not the case.
Not true.
Even the U.S. government doesn't actually believe that when push comes to shove.
But they can use innuendo and implication to.
You know, what's interesting about that is it seems like the Obama government, they were opening themselves up to accusations by the Republicans that they were being reckless here in straining him in Russia, where he could be made to tell his secrets or something.
But they didn't do that.
It seems like the decision was made maybe by the CIA, not Obama.
And so both parties were informed that this is how we want to handle it or something, you know.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, the Republicans are often even worse on on these kind of national security issues.
And, you know, they had a contest for see who could, you know, claim their hatred for Snowden or in the media.
Yeah.
But they didn't really attack Obama over it.
Right.
They kept their focus on Snowden.
They did.
Yeah, they did.
But, you know, you can see now that actually there is some support even on the Republican side for for pardoning Snowden.
At least three members of Congress have come out recently and called on Trump to pardon him.
Right.
And Trump even said something about he was considering it, right?
He did.
He did.
It was kind of out of nowhere.
But apparently Trump has, at least in the past, considered pardoning Snowden.
Now, you know, I don't know the chances of this actually happening because I don't think anybody can can figure out Trump's motivations or what he's going to do at any point.
But it was quite interesting that actually he has considered this.
And the Biden team, led by Susan Rice, immediately condemned Trump for even considering such a thing, which just goes to show you where the Democratic Party is right now.
And you know, what's really terrible is that I was late to call you and you got to go early.
And so we only have two minutes to talk about a song.
So that ain't right.
Is there any way I can maybe call you back and follow up later in this afternoon?
Oh, yeah.
Another half of this thing?
You know, what we should do is why don't we wait until the hearing gets going?
Because the hearing in in the Assange case actually starts on Monday.
So this is actually going to be the they've had some preliminary hearings in the extradition case in the UK.
But on Monday, it starts the the real substantive stuff.
Right.
And this is probably going to go on for at least a month.
And we might learn a lot of new stuff.
Who knows what's going to happen?
But, you know, the facts of the case are, you know, Julian Assange is facing extradition to the U.S. for publishing the Manning State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan cables.
You know, one of the most important journalistic stories of the twenty twenty first century, which, you know, dozens and dozens of newsrooms wrote about at the time.
And it is a incredibly dangerous case that could potentially lead to the criminalization of of national security journalism in the U.S.
So it's not just Wikileaks at risk.
It's virtually everybody that covers national security, given how virtually everything in the national security realm is classified.
And so this is could shape up to be the most important press freedom case that we've seen in a generation or more.
And so there will certainly be lots to talk about next week and beyond.
And so I'm happy to come back and chat about it as we learn more.
Great.
Really appreciate that.
Thanks again, Trevor.
Yeah, no problem.
Take care.
All right, you guys.
That is Trevor Tim.
He's a co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Their URL is freedom dot press freedom dot press.
The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org, and Libertarian Institute dot org.
