Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at Scott horton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show.

All right, you guys introducing the great Colleen Rowley former time Person of the Year for 2002. Of course, she was the FBI lawyer who told the real story about Zacharias Musawi not really the 20th hijacker, but still definitely an Al Qaeda member and in on all of what surrounded the September 11 plot anyway. And if only they had listened to her, they could have stopped the dang attack. Everybody knows that. And now it’s very lucky that we have her as a great anti war writer on a great many issues and here she is, again at consortium news.com. Ghost of J. Edgar haunts Flynn investigation. Welcome back to the show Coleen How are you?

Coleen Rowley 1:29
Well, I’m fine. Except we have mass chaos and violence breaking out 10 miles from where I live with the police shooting the other day. So they know there’s there’s I just wrote to someone I said, I think it’s another sign of the Empire rotting from the inside. This is it’s very sad for all of us to be witnessing but you see all these blowback, whatever you want to call it the sorrows of empire blowback and Right now it’s pretty up close and personal for us in Minneapolis. But it was just a question of time. And, you know, there’s lots of cracks breaking out in the Empire. I think if you look at all of this Russia gate and, you know, targeting leaders and all this is, you know, so bogus, it’s unbelievable. That’s another sign of rot in corruption and rot inside an empire as well. It’s it’s, you’re really are you can attribute this all to this really fool’s errand notion that the United States who is entitled to become the policemen of the world and unilaterally, you know, gain its power over other countries and control the world through illegitimate completely illegal wars and violence. And unfortunately, the worst of this started after 911 I did just want to quickly correct you on one thing about prevention of 911 I wrote about this That 911 could have easily been prevented. But I wasn’t the one personally, who did the warning, we had three or four agents actually two in Minnesota, one of whom called up headquarters in August and said, this is a guy who could fly into the World Trade Center quote, and the guy in headquarters said, That’s not gonna happen. So that’s that was the two agents here in Minnesota, an agent and his acting supervisor, then that the agent in Phoenix, who wrote the memo had noticed that all the al Qaeda, different terrorism suspects were training in flight schools and had an urgent request that the FBI check out flight schools and again, they didn’t even read his memo and it was so incredibly urgent. It was incredible. That that agent By the way, his last name is Williams. He testified just two weeks before me to the Senate Judiciary, but Robert Mueller was able to co opt in at the time, and he put his arm around, you know, Moeller put his arm around Williams and they walked in together. And Williams testified, I didn’t even expect anyone would ever read my memo. He completely reversed what he had written, you know, warning about it. Williams now is quite after all these years, he’s working for the 911 families trying to sue Saudi Arabia as an investigator. And he was appalled that the FBI was not going to allow him to help the victims of 911 after all of this was incredible. So he’s, he’s finally seen the light. And then there was another agent in New York who warned that people are going to die unless we do something about looking for these two hijackers or these two terrorists who had come into California. So there were agents and again, it was quite, quite easy to have at least reduced 911 Not maybe not have totally avoided or prevented it but at least to have reduced it greatly if the people at the top and you know Richard Clarke was trying to warn Condi Rice and she put him off, they all had their prior agendas before 911. Bush wanted to undo the treaties and and start, you know, start the anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and Condi Rice wanted to target Russia. They all had Ashcroft wanted to reinstate the death penalty. They all had their prior agendas when they came in. And terrorism was their lowest priority was just that simple. And then after 911 happened, then they use it. The worst thing here is they use this trauma as a pretext to do all these terrible things, including launching war on a country that had nothing to do with with the terrorist attack in fact, was an enemy of The al Qaeda and the Wahhabi group. And all these years, then we’ve never even looked at what what was the real problem? why did why were we attacked on 911. You know, none of us has really been examined, except I should say, by you, Scott, and by, you know, some other few others in alternative media, but the mainstream media has almost never examined This is so we were kind of on this, steamrolling you know, downhill, where one thing just leads to another and once they install loud mass surveillance of other Americans, and we’ve pretty much as I said, the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover, we’ve gone back to a pre Church Committee situation that Hoover was an expert at because he was spying on all the other leaders in order to maintain his own power and using blackmail against them. And I think we’re very, very close to two minutes. That situation right now. And you see it in the Flynn case you see it in the face applications for Carter page. You know, I told someone yesterday that if we don’t finally realize it’s the politicians don’t realize that they were that was the dumbest thing on their behalf to allow all of those prior standards that were the attorney general guidelines and the the Church Committee recommendations. And when they when they did those, they didn’t realize that they were really the first ones to be the potential victims of it. You know, it was like, Oh, well, this is going to be used on other people so I don’t care. Everybody was said Well, well, if you you have nothing to be afraid of if you’ve done nothing wrong, etc. So it’s not gonna hurt me. I think now maybe some of them people like Rand Paul and and maybe a few others have woken up to the fact that the the leaders that are possible Fall are actually the ones who are going to be the most the most likely to be the victims of abuses or different abuses once you lower those standards and you have a way around the Fourth Amendment as they did after 911. The most likely people to be hurt by it are going to be other leaders because now everybody’s just just like Hoover was using Hoover was using it for his own power. So anyway, I wrote that article about Flynn case because it’s his it’s an egregious case. Glenn Greenwald did it an even better job, he talked for an hour and 45 minutes about it and he just really lays it out. But in my my experience in the FBI, this is pretty incredible that they turned title 18 1001 false, making false statements to an agency or to the government, which is supposed to be used only as a warning. applications, so people don’t lie on on their applications for grants for government grants or for even employment. So that’s a warning, it’s supposed to be used as a warning so people won’t lie. We were told in new agents training, that we could use it if we thought someone wasn’t telling the truth in an interview, we could at least use it as a warning and say, Hey, you know, there’s a law that if you lie to us, you could be prosecuted. But at the same time, we were told about potentially using that as a warning to get people to tell you the truth. We were also told that it would almost never be prosecuted. Even if the person did lie, it would never be prosecuted, and only sometimes it was used if it was tacked on to another crime. So there were times that you that a prosecutor would charge the false statements law would be if it was tacked on to something bigger or more More important, it was never used, like in the Flynn case, where they tried deliberately to get him to lie, just so they could have something to charge him with, because they already knew his interview. I mean, that’s turning the this law completely on its head. And then of course, the threat threats of the Logan Act, which has not been used for 150 years. And even then, I don’t think even 100 fit I don’t think was ever used successfully. They tried to use it, you know, years and years ago in the 1850s or something once, but the Logan act all all up leaders tend to be not even leaders, but people are in contact with foreign governments, and especially, especially incoming administration’s would be in it would be normal for them to be in contact with a foreign government, you couldn’t possibly then say that you’re going to prosecute them under the Logan act. And that’s what Flynn was threatened with. And, you know, again, there’s just So many egregious reasons why this Flynn case should the judge Sullivan should have immediately dismissed it once the once the US Attorney recommended and Barr agreed that it was that it was really a travesty it was an entrapment and they were using it it was a ploy a real like in the in the notes, they call it a game or playing games, you know an exact that’s exactly what it was they were playing games to try to get him to lie and then use it to get him fired. Or, or in this case, you know, when they pushed it to charge him with making a false statement, but we’ll see how it ends. I think Sullivan really went out on a limb in a very unusual way when he called for a what he called for a friend, not a friend but another former judge or somebody to write an abacus brief That was very unusual. So let’s see what let’s see what happens. But it’s a it’s a mess and a half and right now, that’s for sure.

Scott Horton 12:09
Well, so there’s so many different facets of this, but I am somewhat fascinated by the judges reaction here where he says, Well, I’m not dismissing the charges even if the justice department wants to, I’m going to appoint this other lawyer to come in and see whether I should go ahead and see him prosecuted anyway, and possibly even explore a new charge of perjury for changing his plea. Now, to paraphrase Matt Taibbi, he said, Now listen, all good liberals are supposed to go along with this because the victim is Flynn when the correct answer is, this is like the kind of thing you’d see in Bella Reuss. This is insane. Can you even do that your FBI lawyer formerly Coleen, can they do that?

Coleen Rowley 13:00
Well, he the judge Sullivan tried to do it, I think he probably is to be to be generous with him. I think he’s probably as quite brainwashed by all of this Russia gate as most, you know, the people who have really put their heart and soul into this all along, have a difficult time now dismissing it all, as the bogus thing that it was from the start. And again, Flynn is just one aspect of it. I mean, the Carter pages is even worse, in some ways. They’re all really bad. there’s a there’s a lot of aspects to this Russia gate, that were simply You don’t have to be a fan of Trump or Flynn or Carter page or any of them. You don’t have to be any, you know, don’t have to be their supporters to understand that this is turning up our system of justice and fairness. And, and what I said is, is going around the Fourth Amendment now under the same way, the same example way that J. Edgar Hoover did, because he didn’t he did not have a wall J. Edgar Hoover was allowed to say national security. He was allowed to use those pretexts for bugging for eavesdropping on Martin Luther King Jr. And by the way, many other officials in Washington DC, the NSA, you know that minaret program that Frank church, eventually the Church Committee under Frank church exposed the see at some some of the CIA and the NSA, they weren’t able to expose it all on the NSA and the CIA, they expose a lot of the cointelpro of the FBI, but not that much of the NSA and the CIA. And you come to find out years later, that the NSA program back then was actually monitoring Frank church himself. That’s pretty incredible. So Frank church maybe didn’t even know that but he was one of the main targets of this. Now again, this is really some horrible stuff. That happened in the in the 60s. And of course not, not on coincidentally during the The worst part of the Vietnam War, which I think you have these wars abroad, and the wars abroad are then allowing this internal domestic corruption, and you end and by the way, terrorism breaks out and everything during these this time period. And I think that we’re seeing this repeat all over again, the same things that happened in the 60s. But I think judge Sullivan, like others are just really brainwashed, they watch too much Rachel Maddow, and they can understand that none of this was true. And that really, these are very quite egregious abuses. You know, people like Peter, like struck in the FBI, the FBI agent, I think he he was also brainwashed. He started to think, you know, we we have a manchurian candidate, you know, They all believe that there was this danger McKay probably did. They they’re in a bubble kind of like a groupthink, where they’re only getting this reinforcement from inside their own groupthink bubble. And you know, you see this of course, the worst. The worst of groupthink is of course during World War Two with the Nazis and stuff, but groupthink is a common thing. And when you’re only seeing and hearing things that confirm your own conspiracy theories or whatever, you’re going to get brainwashed. And I think that’s what happened here. I think a lot of people then grabbed on to ends justify the means. They said, Well, we have such a noble goal. You know, Hoover thought he had a new noble goal. He wrote a whole book whole book about basically suspecting a communist hiding behind every tree. And so if you start if you’re in that paradigm, like McCarthy and like j Edgar Hoover, you’re gonna think that You’re You’re entitled then to take these illegal means to accomplish your noble goal.

Scott Horton 17:08
Okay, now, I understand that. But are you sure I mean, there seems to be so many times in this case. And believe me, I’m a subscriber to your theory in generally speaking of the self justification angle, however, it seems like God they had to have known they’re lying when they put Halper and apparently Miss foot up to go in to talk to Papadopoulos in the first place. And then when they didn’t think that they could make a case out of that, they tried to make a case out a quarter page, and they live and pretended to not know that the CIA had told them that this guy’s with us. He’s not a pro Russian trader, he’s an American patriot and a CIA asset. And, and then even the fact that, you know, Muller even launched this investigation at all and kept it going for two years and keeping speculation about it. Trump’s treason going for another two years. As my friend Dave Smith likes to point out that when BuzzFeed got it wrong, that Trump had told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress that Muller had no problem putting out a press release saying that’s just not true. And we’re not going that that way. Well, he could have told us that it wasn’t true that Donald Trump was a pro Kremlin trader too. But he didn’t he let people continue to speculate about that and to believe that for another two years, which seems to me to be part of the conspiracy, just as much as sending Miss foot to try to get Papadopoulos to repeat something back into an open mic in this entrapment in the first place, you know, open mic, proverbially speaking you understand.

Unknown Speaker 18:44
Yeah, you know, and trap that has become, in a way a major tactic after 911 the FBI used constantly used entrapments in order to you know, show the public that they were doing so thing they were making progress and preventing terrorism. Meanwhile the real terrorist acts they had no clue about ever, you know, because things get lost in the in the in the mix the haystack you know all the stuff they’re collecting on people and going after but then the real ones would get lost. But this fools and of course our media is easily fooled. So they started they they really gravitated to the use of entrapment as a main weapon, and no one has there’s been a couple of books written about it, but that’s never really been shot down. entrapment. I’ve argued it over and over and people just cannot understand how if you can get someone to do something, but they never would have done it had you not coerce them or subtly pressured them etc. They don’t understand that that’s, you know that this this is wrong. We can it’s easy actually to get people to commit crimes especially When they’re the weaker and you put in a con artist or somebody like you said miffed said or some of these people, and you put them in there, and they’re trying to use their, their, you know, even sometimes it’s subtle pressures. It’s not like you’re twisting their arms but you you’re subtly pressuring. It’s still wrong. It’s still wrong because what are you doing? You’re creating crime, you’re supposed to be the ones who are working against it. And you know, in the history of the FBI, things like operating whitey Bolger, who’s killing, I mean, there were agents, and not just a few most people now believe it was a few rogue apples. You know what, it really wasn’t just a few rogue apples, the worst were the rogue apples. But then all these other people knew it was going on. And the whole of the FBI no one ever said Is it wrong to operate the top echelon organized criminals? I mean, I thought to myself, I mean, wow, that’s kind of like Why are we operating the top echelon of the crime structure? Does that make much sense for the FBI to be doing that just as a policy, and no one ever spoke against that policy? In fact, they praise the people who got the top echelon informants, and not until whitey Bolger? Did they really have a way of saying, Hey, here’s the problem here. You got the FBI now, who was who was helping commit murders and covering up murders and putting people in prison who weren’t the murderers, you know, that were framed, etc, etc. By the way, Robert Moeller might have had a role in that to framing the innocent people for whitey bolger’s murders. It’s it’s incredible that people like that, that otherwise good people and I know this sounds real naive, but it’s, I think, from what I’ve always witnessed, it’s true. Otherwise good people, when they fall into this paradigm of believing the ends justify the means. You know, you heard official say, you know, we can’t follow the constitution anymore. John you with his Oh yeah, now we can torture you know anything up to organ failure. You see people thinking that the that they don’t have to follow the old rules anymore because they have such a noble goal and it’s it’s a lot of its superiority but when you break down the rules, those rules existed for a reason. And the main reason is that, you know, they try to maintain a standard that will produce the best results overall. And so not torturing people produces the best results, you get the best information blah, blah, blah. And then you get your people afterwards you know, falling into this trap of saying we can’t follow the gold standards that we used to and line by the way you hear pompeyo say this now? Oh yeah, we were taught taught at West Point. Not too cheat or lie, or steal, cheat or lie and guess what I do in the CIA? Haha, that’s all we do every day is lie, steal and cheat to steal. And that’s that mentality, I would say maybe to a lesser extent maybe pompeyo is one of the worst here at least he’s open openly admitting it. But you know, most people fall into that if they think the green light is on and that their goal is so noble. They go against everything that they learned in Sunday school, and you know, that we learned in the FBI Academy and that you learned at it all these different prior stages of life that you thought were golden rules. And then you get into this situation where your bosses are saying, Hey, you got to do this because you know, the gloves are off and now we got to do this. And I think even salt Like I said, I think judge Sullivan has kind of fallen into this a little bit because he’s he’s You know, Ben, he’s read so much about how bad Flynn is, you know, Flynn has accused

Scott Horton 24:05
him of treason right at the sentencing before. Yeah. And then had to apologize and walk that back that actually yeah, that’s not one of the charges. Yeah, really.

Coleen Rowley 24:15
You know, I think Muller was trying actually to help his buddies to some extent, you know, they, you know, call me call me and Moeller, we’re close. And even Brennan and clapper. These people all work together. If you can think about how a whistleblower one of the worst things for a whistleblower is that if they do discover some wrongdoing, they know that they’re gonna be going against people that they work closely with. And you know, and everybody’s gonna hate them, even if it has nothing to do with their friends. Their friends are still gonna hate them afterwards for telling the truth about something. Yeah.

Scott Horton 24:51
It’s so remarkable though that you know, and I do see what you mean about them convincing themselves that there’s something to this enough to continue looking at or whatever there must have been some of that. And yet, you’re talking about spying on a major party presidential candidate. You’re talking about essentially, in trapping of fellow traveler like a no by this guy Papadopoulos didn’t have any real stature and then when that didn’t work, pretending to believe the steel dossier is reporting about page when the steel dossier says that the Russians promised page, a 19% ownership stake in Rosneft, the Russian oil company if only he would seize control of America’s sanctions policy toward Russia and fix it for him. Oh, yeah, sure. That is the least plausible lie in the world. I knew the moment I first laid eyes on the steel dossier. That that was obviously a blatant ridiculous couldn’t possibly be true lie, and therefore the FBI must have agreed with me about that. They were just pretending to think that it was true in order to use it as a pretext to spy on page Therefore by hops, the rest of the campaign and not that I’m would justify it this way or anything, but we’re not talking about spying on Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, who didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, no matter what we’re talking about the republican party’s nominee for president united states, who, on a regular day has a 5050 shot at being the next president, and for them to decide that they could do this and launch this investigation against him. And his team in that way is just absolutely amazing. And you know, I don’t know I hear you like if maybe part of them really thought that maybe there was a possibility there was something to this Russia stuff still enough to it to justify taking on a presidential candidate and then a president elect and then a newly sworn in precedent in the way that they did his just something for the history books for sure. You know, it’s really something else.

Coleen Rowley 26:58
I think Totally agree with you. I cannot believe how anyone could have read that dossier and have thought it was valid and not have asked questions. They didn’t even ask questions. They didn’t even question him after they realized he had lied and gone to the media.

Scott Horton 27:16
I mean, he had set up a spreadsheet I’m not sure on the date on this right but they said they’d set up this spreadsheet that detailed all of the different assertions of fact in there and then they had quickly debunked all of it like a good cop might if he tried

Coleen Rowley 27:31
Yeah, it’s it’s that’s really so unexcusable, but I’m gonna offer a couple of more devil’s advocate explanations for how egregiously bad this was

Scott Horton 27:43
or you know the devil better than I do. So go ahead.

Coleen Rowley 27:47
And one is Peter Principle. You know, people don’t like to know Peter Principle the majority of people when you say, the explanation is that this person is like Ted and Mary Tyler Moore. Or, you know, Bernie fights, they’re in positions of five or six levels beyond their competency, and why? Well, they had interpersonal skills. They were well liked all different reasons, but has nothing to do with their competency. And in fact, a lot of these big organizations actually want the competent people at the bottom. Yeah, I’ve seen this over and over in the FBI. I read the book Peters principal way back in college, I think. And then later on in the FBI, I thought, well, why is that guy in the FBI lab, who has degrees in chemistry and physics said, you know, advanced degrees, why is he the lab examiner, and his supervisor barely knows a little smidgen of biology. I mean, you saw this over and over. People were that couldn’t even speak the language were the ones that were supposed to be listening. I mean, I saw this over and over, and meanwhile the people that rose up to the top People like McCabe, they tend to have, you know, almost I hate to say this, but it’s psychopathic talents. They’re, they’re articulate, they know how to be convincing. They’re very ambitious. These are all kind of goes hand in glove with psychopathic traits, if you ever read the book wisdom of psychopathy, so those are the people who rise up but they are not necessarily competent in their job skills. And so that’s another explanation for this. There is a lot of Peter Principle, lots and lots of Peter Principle all through government, of course in and elsewhere. And then I think the the other thing is, is just that like what I said about going along once you have a green light, and you think your bosses have told you it’s okay to do these things. And you know, in the highest levels here, people like Brennan and clapper and Hayden and all these former directors, it’ll be Interesting to see, because someone asked me yesterday about the Durham investigation and how high level it would possibly go. And, you know, obviously the highest level it can possibly go would be, you know, to get people like Brennan and clapper and they did a lot of I’m sure some or all of them did some that were responsible for some of those illegal leaks just says call me, you know, was doing but I think at the very least they were responsible for that and probably more. But the question will be will Durham actually hold any of them accountable? He did punt on the CIA torture. So he has a pretty lame track record for going after officials on things. And at this point, like you said, it is it’s a really a large, it’s a whole party. It’s the democrat party leaders. It’s also a lot of these former agency directors and they Get kind of giving a green light into people on lower levels. And of course, the people on the lower levels just kind of say, Wow, they’re they’re saying it’s that dangerous right now I have got to do what I have to do. And so line obviously, becomes normalized. And, and this has happened, of course in the country on so many levels. You know, people constantly pointed Trump now about his double talking stuff. But, you know, Trump is just a symptom of a far greater disease here. There’s so much disinformation on the media part and whatever. You see it happening with Coronavirus where people are saying one thing one day and then turning around the next day and saying the opposite. And I think people are realizing that you know, what is truth they kind of almost get very cynical that there is no such thing as truth. Because you know, there’s so much line it’s so pernicious, and it’s so so rampant. So those are my my flimsy, flimsy excuses. is for how this could have happened. And I think the only remaining question is, will any of it potentially get fixed? Will there be any accountability? You know, I think if Flynn is finally exonerated on this, he will probably then he will probably go a long ways, you know, trying to remedy this and maybe some of the senators in Republican senators especially maybe maybe they will take it up. There is a chance there seems to be a chance now to fix the Pfizer. I’m not real optimistic that they will really fix the Pfizer process because the secrecy I was going to say that was one of the other main things here, Scott, you have to understand that when you think what you are doing will never come out and it will always be secret. The the doors open up to wrongdoing. When you No on the other hand that someone can Freedom of Information and find out what you did even if it’s a couple years from now, or, or even 10 years from now, people are going to be much more careful, accurate and cautious etc. You see the same thing with the police shootings until the cameras were rolling and now that the cameras are rolling, and there are starting to be a little bit of accountability for some of these seriously egregious you know, use of abuse of firepower by the police or chokeholds, etc. Now that the cameras are rolling, guess what? Everyone is going to be a lot more careful. What what happened here a few days ago in Minneapolis has happened repeat before the cameras before the police had cameras before people had their cell phone, phone, cameras rolling. It was happening all the time. It’s just that there was no way to prove it. And you had Very little accountability. So the good news is transparency and accountability, even though initially, it really shocks you. But that’s the answer. And with the five step process that has to be a part of the fix, if they merely say, oh, we’re going to have a devil’s advocate type advocates come in and will brief them and they can argue on the side of whoever the person being targeted is. That’s not going to work. In my opinion, that would be a very meager, very meager thing. What they have to do is inject a way for a secret Pfizer application to eventually as happened in the Carter page case, to eventually become public, and not tell the people doing it that this will all be covered up for the rest of your life. No matter what you do before a fight the court no matter what advice a judge authorizes, you know, to be honest, the Pfizer Judges judge themselves signed on these things are to blame to they should have asked a lot more questions.

Scott Horton 35:05
Well, and FISA is a criminal statute, right, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And so these guys who lied to the FISA court in order to get their FISA warrant, like for example, comi, and his people at DOJ, in the Flynn in the page case, they should be going to prison for what they’ve done not just for their illegal leaks, but for manipulating, essentially unlawfully using the FISA court against a political opponent. That’s right. I mean, that’s all was written to prevent right in the wake of Jackson and all this stuff.

Coleen Rowley 35:39
In all the thousands of cases of FISA, applications that turned out to be wrong. And there were there were probably hundreds, if not thousands, that turned out to be as you know, almost I would say as wrong is the Carter page when that’s terrible and because of his position in the campaign and trying to use it To go after other people in the campaign, but in all just average cases, there are lots and lots of mistakes. What What was the situation before the Carter page is that they would never, ever see the light of day. And if they’re never see the light of day, the only thing that an agent could fear would be that a supervisor or an inspector, eventually might, they had this IPR. What’s it called? office? I can’t remember if there’s an office, where if there was something like this internally, they would refer it up to that office, and then they would inspect it and they would, then yes, they could maybe hurt a person’s career a little bit internally. So there were things that they could do to the agent, but nothing like putting the pert No, he never thought they could go to jail for for making for saying wrong things to a feisty judge. And so this this has changed things. Now the Carter page, the whole the whole Russia gate fiasco has it has changed everything. Now whether the officials will be able to overcome that and continue business as usual, because even Bar Bar signed off on the renewal of the Patriot Act. Authorities. And you know, Rand Paul was saying, Hey, we have to fix FISA, this is the chance to fix fix the FISA process, but Barr was not on board. Barr actually signed off on this renewal. And now maybe because Trump has weighed in, but a lot will hinge on the next election. And I don’t know if it will be fixed or not, I’m not really that optimistic that it will really be fixed. The real fixed advice is you need to have a way to make it more like the criminal process where in fact because those deaths coloration because the affidavit is given to the court given to a defense attorney, they basically have the i’s dotted and the T’s crossed, there is very, very rarely a serious problem in requests for electronic surveillance that go to the regular District Court. They’re usually 100 pages long. They’re perfectly done. You know, one of my jobs in the FBI for 13 years as the legal counsel was to review these, these title three applications for surveillance of Americans under the under the criminal statute. And, you know, we we made sure that they were done very, very well. Not like in the, in the, in the Carter page case where they were written, you know, very quickly and we’re basically, you know, horrible. And you say, what’s the difference between the fight so the same, it’s a judge right, you’re going before a judge in both cases. Well, the difference is the agents believe in the face of and so does DOJ. And so does everybody involved. They believe it’s perpetually secret. And the difference is in the title three criminal case where you follow the Fourth Amendment. You know, if someone’s going to know about this, not right now, they’re not going to know about it. But in some time later, they’re going to know about it. And that changes everything that absolutely changes everything. That’s why the real fix is there to fix the problem. The process has to be a way. And I think I may have told you this story before. But I before I see, just after I retired, I was at a conference at a law conference in Washington DC national security law conference, and I think I was already retired. And I was going through the buffet line, and I happened to see be standing next to the gentleman counsel of the FBI, it was just a real quick since I was standing next to her I can’t remember her name. Now. She was kind of a really bad too. She went along with all of this post 911 stuff. And I said to her, you know, there’s 100 page Law Review, that if you had the process, and you told the judge, I don’t need perpetual secrecy, but please just give us five years, five years of secrecy until we can investigate this terrorist enterprise. And at the end of the five years, if we still need more secrecy, we’ll come back and ask for an extension. And maybe you could even if it was a really big, horrible terrorist, or if it was espionage, you could even ask for longer times. I said, if that was the case, you would have the agents really being more careful and cautious automatically, it would turn into much more like the like the criminal process. You know what this general counsel in the FBI said to me at the time, Coleen, that would be a real nuisance. We’d have to keep track of the time of the of the court orders and the time. That was her excuse that would be a real nuisance. And so that’s the mentality if you don’t have to do something, even though there’s a perfect fix to this really bad slicer process, they won’t even entertain the the idea, a suggestion from somebody that would make more that would make sense

Scott Horton 41:33
right? Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No dev no ops no it by Hussein Barack Johnny. It’s a fun and interesting read all about how to run your high tech company. Like a good libertarian should forget all the junk. Read no Dev, no Ops, no it by Hussein bodek. Johnny, find it in the margin at Scott Horton. org. Hey y’all, here’s the thing. Donate $100 to the Scott Horton show. And you can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you. It’s a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back you take a picture of with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price. And lets you know what that silver that ounces silver is worth on the market and Federal Reserve Notes in real time. It’s the future of currency in the past to commodity discs.com or just go to Scott Horton. org slash donate. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for expanddesigns.com Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing building and maintaining my sites and they’ll do great work for you need a new website? Go to expanddesigns.com/scott and save 500 bucks.

Again, sounds like typical bureaucratic incentives and politics and everything like that. No different than we’d expect. You know, I used to. I spoke to him for a long time but I used to speak occasion with Frederick Whitehurst who was the whistleblower from the FBI crime lab. And I guess, I think this was off the air. I was just talking with him, and was asking him about September 11. And, or maybe even on Oklahoma City, because he had been a whistleblower on Oklahoma City. And, and I was asking him about, you know, why they didn’t follow all the leads to the Nazis who were involved in the plot with McVeigh and all that. They were all FBI informants. You understand how it goes. But anyway, he said to me something like listen, if a regular beat FBI agent, goes to his supervisor, and says, Hey, check it out. I found out all this stuff, and I got all these leads, and I want to follow them that, you know, the average American might expect that the supervisor would say, great job Jenkins, get back out there and tell me what you find. But instead that even if it really is good work, and even if for whatever political reasons, the supervisor decides that yes, they should continue to pursue these angles, they’re probably going to turn it over to another cop, instead of letting the guy who was on the right track in the first place, continue doing what he’s doing. And just because essentially, like some sitcom or whatever, like the Peter Principle or whatever kind of thing, that you could just always expect them to do the wrong thing. You could never expect them to do what any regular Joe would assume that they would do, which is say, Good job Jenkins, get back out there and and finish it up. And that it just doesn’t work that way. It never does. And so that’s why everything is screwed up is because it has to be.

Coleen Rowley 44:35
Yeah, and you know, Frederick core Whitehurst would probably be the first to agree with me about the Peter Principle. He’s actually the example I was mentioning, you know, he’s a perfect example being far more competent, and at the lower levels and then have people that are your your supervisor, and your supervisor, supervisor and the directors and literally not have any clue about anything. But cronyism a what I actually knew a case in in New York City where it was a black female agent who had been a, I think she’d been a forensic coroner or something. She was very, very competent. She worked a whole case of a killing of a, of a Joint Terrorism Task Force officer, she got the guys it was already to go to trial. And they took the case away from her and gave it to a white friend of the supervisor. So and and by the way, that guy rose up I want to say to become assistant director, the guy that they gave a case to back when he was just a GS 13 agent. He got a case handed to him because he was buddies with the supervisor at the time and he rose up to be like an assistant director, maybe even Acting Director, incorrect, but that’s that’s that is how this Peter Principle works. And it does explain a lot. But people don’t like to know that because it really does. It’s it’s a scam. Your proposition in some ways that this kind of incompetence and cronyism and and you know, kind of a corruption a form of corruption infects our, our institutions and our structures so badly that it’s actually scarier than believing that there’s like evil, you know, like like our our movies will show some evil character who’s smart or evil genius, we’d almost prefer to believe that there’s an evil genius than there are than this Peter Principle. And I’ve seen this over and over, but it’s a problem. And yes, Peter principals guess what they do? They have huge ego defenses because by and large, they have very they don’t have the confidence they don’t actually they actually lack self confidence when when push comes to shove and so they’re nothing but ego defense. So they lie all the time. And that’s how they got ahead. They they you know, I even politicians They’re like this kind of in a way they, they’re always saying things that they think people want to hear instead of the truth.

Scott Horton 47:08
Yep. I was just having this conversation with another friend this morning about the studies that come out every few years or so that say, surprisingly, and coincidentally and interestingly, psychopaths and politicians share many of the same characteristics, which is just another way of saying politicians are psychopaths, you know, they probably usually are, you know, born to a better educated family. And so instead of going to the penitentiary, into the penitentiary, they go into politics or become a cop themselves, and put other people in the pin. And then they get to, you know, act with license to do whatever they want to other people and get away with it.

Coleen Rowley 47:53
I have a whole PowerPoint on on site, psychopathy and propaganda, and it’s basically This book, which I highly recommend, it’s maybe 10 years old now called the wisdom of psychopaths by Kevin Dutton. And it’s got charts in there. It’s not just politicians, all leaders, all leaders will possess psychopathic talents. It’s not that they’re bad things. We think of psychopaths, we think of serial killers, of course, well, that’s that’s only a fraction of 1% of all psychopaths, right? And

Scott Horton 48:28
I got a really nice email from a psychopath who said, Listen, I don’t care about anyone except myself, my own people, but I would never hurt anyone. Thank you very much. Like he’s kind of offended that I was conflating that term with someone who would actually do something bad to someone when that’s really not the same thing as it.

Coleen Rowley 48:45
That’s right. It’s a there’s a subset of psychopaths who are serial killers who actually get their only joy in life is you know, torturing somebody to death, etc. So that’s a very small subset. Most people with these tests Are are courageous, they are very persevering. They are very focused we think of focus, for instance, in persevering, even never giving up keep trying whatever we think of those as positive leadership traits. And in fact they are psychopathic traits. Most normal people will give up they will say hey, I tried this once or twice i’m i’m going to give up I psychopath keeps trying. And so the in the personal ambition, we think of that, you know, ambition is considered to be a positive trait. So but you know, when it goes too far, you know, a little bit of these things you will be you could become a surgeon and focus, there’s all kinds of professions that people with some of those traits end up in, including political leadership. But when you possess that gamut, you have to understand that those are those are the traits and that’s just the way civilization and you know, so Since the beginning of all time, this is the way human civilization has always been structured, equally problematic, besides the leader is the the groupies, the followers. And you see this very clearly with the Russia gate. And Rachel Maddow. So you know, switching over from writing a book about peace now to be in one of our main warmongers, you know, having Brennan on every other day and, you know, you see in all of her followers that you thought, you know, they thought they had principles, whatever, no, they all switch over. And that’s because people are very emotionally vulnerable. One thing a psychopath doesn’t have, they do not have emotional vulnerability, but most people do. And they in most people think of it as a good thing, oh, I’m empathetic, I have empathy I’m that’s a good thing. Well, actually no, in excess of empathy, which two thirds of all people have is emotional vulnerability, and it leads them to be very, very vulnerable and susceptible. To charlatan people that are no skate using fear and hate and scapegoating, because they’re manipulating those people. And that’s what again, this is the the history of the world is this. I think there, there’s probably very little we can do about it. There’s, there’s maybe some things we can do about it. But there’s not we can’t change it overnight. But what we can do is be aware of this right now, if we’re aware of it, that goes a long ways to, to, you know, trying to tell people Hey, you know, facts matter, not your not your emotions. Yeah. And

Scott Horton 51:39
yeah, right. And if you’re going to be emotional about it, mistrust and distrust, the burden of proof is on them, especially after everything that they’ve said this whole time has been wrong and so destructive. There’s just how could anyone have believed Russia gate after Syria? And how could anyone I believed in all the propaganda about Syria after Iraq, and etc, etc, all the way back? Because at some point we should be good and inoculated against these narratives. You know,

Unknown Speaker 52:05
it’s, it’s, I never cease to be amazed that people who I thought had minds. Yet when their leader or someone they know and trust tells them something it can it can be as silly as that like you mentioned in the steel dossier. It could be that Syria is Assad is using chemical weapons I mean, I saw a good piece activists here that fell for every bit of that simply because their leaders were telling them that in the same thing with Rachel Maddow and the Russia gate, and it’s it’s a it’s either as a way to to, again, I think if you understand what’s going on, maybe there’s a way we can deal with it. By the way, if you ever get on if you ever get a request for a talk on this. I have a PowerPoint on this on this issue on psychopathy. And so you know, I’d love to go and talk more about it because I think if more people understood it, I think we’d we’d have a better chance of dealing with it as well.

Scott Horton 53:13
Well, how about writing an article about it for the libertarian Institute?

Coleen Rowley 53:17
Well, you know, maybe I’ll, I’ll look at my PowerPoint again. I don’t know I i we take care of our grandchildren now during the corona virus. So I’m homeschooling. And you know, at the end of the day, I’m gonna like oh my gosh, I’m like worn out and I haven’t I wrote the the Flynn article is like the first article I’ve written in some time, but I’ll think about it and maybe maybe we could, we could co write one. That would be good too. But getting back to J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t think anybody wants to go back to the time of J. Edgar Hoover. If the situation right now if people do not put some hard thought into what has happened and how this is a perfect example of how this is really all of the things when they, you know, reduce the standards after 911. It’s a perfect example of of what it has led to, and how it needs to be fixed right now. Otherwise, we go back to a frank church being monitored by the NSA are our senators and everybody else. And here we are. We’ve seen it already happen. And I think that we’re on the verge of of on one of two ways we can try to fix it now. Or we can just continue on into this. You know, the Empire rotting from the inside.

Scott Horton 54:36
Yep. All right, you guys. That is the great Coleen Rowley. Writing again at consortium news.com. This one is called Ghost of J. Edgar haunts Flynn investigation. Thanks so much for time calling. great to talk to you.

Coleen Rowley 54:49
Yeah, thank you.

Scott Horton 54:51
The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com Scott horton.org and libertarian institute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right shall welcome Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at Scotthorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show.

Aren’t you guys introducing Ron ends Wyler. He was in the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan and also worked with us aid. But now he’s a good guy and writes for us at anti war calm from time and this one is really important gas lighting of the American public on Pensacola. terrorist attack continues. Welcome back to the show. Ron, how are you doing?

Ron Enzweiler 1:04
Hey, Scott, great, great to be on your program again and supporting your journalism and the anti war con people. So thank you.

Scott Horton 1:13
Yeah, well, we’re happy to have you around, you do good stuff. And this is, well, it’s a crazy time all the way around. And our news cycle is dominated, of course, by the big germ. So it’s important that we keep a spotlight on all this other stuff that is still also important, such as this terrorist attack at Pensacola and Naval Air Station, back on December the sixth of 2019 by a Saudi national who was in the US for pilot training at the Naval Air Station there. And as you remind us here, three Americans were killed and eight were injured. And then just last week, there was one right along these lines. I hope you know the details better than me because I don’t know him very well.

Well, about what happened in Corpus Christi was where there was something like an attempted attack along these lines, although apparently, a guard grabbed his rifle and put an end to it real quick. And I think that was the end of it there. But maybe you can fill us in on that, too. But this was, again, I believe, another Saudi student insurer in the country. Well, go ahead.

Ron Enzweiler 2:23
And that case, in that case, God Well, first of all, I almost put in my article that was published on your website a couple days earlier, as their as well as the Arabic word for a copycat because I was almost sure there would be other people tried to now this is back in the news, you know that some in the FBI you know, kind of glossed over all the all the background on the on the terrorist motivation, you know, anti Americanism and doesn’t like we’re doing in the Middle East, that sort of thing. And that case got actually I think it was it wasn’t so much a pilot. I saw the national in the country for pilot training. It was a local Arab citizen of the United States who just got flamed up and just tried to go through the front gate of the base. Oh yeah, he did shoot shoot it’s actually I think he’s doing a security contract with him sure as a US soldier a better

Scott Horton 3:15
citizen that did it Han that attacked a military base Jesus Christ.

Ron Enzweiler 3:19
Yeah, you know trying to crash the front gate there might have been a second accomplice. I never heard more about that but they thought it might have been another guy was part with and who got away then number one attacker got shot down shot killed. So that kind of ended that episode. But you know, back of the the information that came out, I guess it’s been about came out on May 18. I guess that’s like a, you know, 10 days ago or so. Scott, that was they actually did say in the police report or the FBI report that there are 850 Saudi nationals training at us air bases throughout the country. And after the guy in December sort of slipped through security in background checks and was obviously The detailed report on that that did come out from the Justice Department and FBI was that this particular Saudi national had joined them Saudi military on purpose to get say, Get get going to the pilot training bug and gets sent to the US then use his presence here to carry out a Jihadi attack and he was actually in contact with outside of the night before he akata of the Arabian potential. No, he was actually in contact with him the night before they finally got that off his cell phones, but I mean, this was one person who is 850 they actually sent home 21 more people in the last six months based on the fact that they thought they might be suspected Totti jihadi radicalized Saudis in our country when you think about a Scott work is next 911 looks simple. We’re giving them the airplane we’re teaching the fly we’re giving to the airplane and we’re letting them you know, fly around the country, at least within restricted areas you know for their pilot training and doesn’t take much imagination to find some guy decides he wants to, you know, plow that plane into a city or something like that and not land back at the base. And you

Scott Horton 5:10
guys imagination doesn’t seem to extend further than grabbing a gun. Hmm

Ron Enzweiler 5:15
You know and that’s it, you know if I was painting this I mean hey, I’m not trying to you know, it just couldn’t agree more. I mean if I was planning this thing out I don’t think I would have just, you know, got a gun run outside my base and shoot a couple of soldiers that me walking by, you know, as you got out there, but let’s not let’s not try to condone any of this stuff. It’s obviously horrible.

Scott Horton 5:33
No, of not just could be worse as all you know. Oh, yeah,

Ron Enzweiler 5:39
definitely. I mean, you know, and you know, it’s it doesn’t take much imagination to find it out.

Scott Horton 5:43
And when you look at what happened or

hood, where he knew he had a whole room full of guys and killed 13 you know, yeah. So and that was gone, I believe maybe two.

Ron Enzweiler 5:56
And this was definite, you know, motivated by US involvement in the Middle East, you know, pro Israel stuff, you know, soldiers and occupying Arab countries and you know killing 10s of thousands hundreds of thousands of Muslims for us geopolitical interest. I mean, it’s clear that this this was what motivated same as Osama bin Laden Of course going back to 911 if you read his manifesto, but so it’s kind of a you know, it’s getting I think the relationship I think the facts are getting pointed out here. I got I was just happened to catch a blurb last night I don’t normally watch much cable but I did catch a little bit of laura ingram she had prom pail on they were mostly talking about China and you know, softball questions about China and Hong Kong, that the anti Canada film is anger. And what about these this Saudi Arab guy in here propeller training, getting, you know, attacking and killing soldiers that are basis and how do we justify having these guys here to get this training when it’s obviously a security risk? And you’ll love this answer, Scott. So pangos from payout says, Well, you know, we have to train the soul. Pilots over here, we don’t have to send more American pilots in the Middle East so they can fly all the missions over there to try to keep Americans safe. So I said you got it. You got to be kidding me, you know, you know talking about gaslighting the American public. I mean, it’s as if we’re going to go over there and you know, of course we train these guys got to fly them here.

Scott Horton 7:19
Don’t have to train him over there. Like he’s literally flip floppy slogans, you know?

Ron Enzweiler 7:25
Yep. And we’re gonna walk.

Scott Horton 7:27
They’re keeping us safe from who the who these Is that it? Don’t make him finish that sentence about who the Saudis are helping keep us safe.

Ron Enzweiler 7:38
In the course, unfortunately, this kind of gets one of my questions I had about our article is that the American public gets so just you know, deceived us a nice word deceived by the press releases from the Saudi embassy. What these public officials what Trump says you know, Trump reads out this statement from King Solomon back in December. This was the article of one of my My first article that I wrote for you before@war.com back in December where he actually the kinko Saudi Arabs love Americans. I said, Gee, I lived there. My family’s lived there for a long time, my wife’s family, and I go, Wow, that’s news to me. I mean, it’s the most anti Western, you know, the Wahhabi establishment is practicing a very fundamentalist form of Islam. They still have, you know, Sharia law where you get your hand cut off if you caught stealing, and women who commit adultery are scorned, and there’s even does beheadings and stonings. I mean, you know, that that just I mean, any idea that there’s any sort of common values between our countries is just ridiculous, you know, and yet that type of information doesn’t get out to the American public and people in Washington, the mainstream media mainly tries to just downplay all that stuff doesn’t mention all the blowback and the fact that our presence there, particularly in Saudi Arabia, This cartel has caused a lot of anger in the Islamic world.

Scott Horton 9:05
You know, I think it must have been Daniel Davis, who recently was talking about that on the show about being in Saudi Arabia and how they told him during iraq war one, I think about how Yeah, you’re just the hired help, you know, they look at us like we’re Filipino maids basically here to fight their war for them.

Ron Enzweiler 9:24
Oh, yeah. I mean, and then, of course, we sell them, you know, 10s of billions of dollars of military hardware every year that, you know, fuels and ultra industrial complex and in

Scott Horton 9:34
that funny that, like whites are so in the West in the world, just generally speaking, that kind of so racist against Arabs, that they couldn’t imagine that the Saudis would be racist against us. And think that right that they’re the, the Uber mentioned, and that we’re just their servants. So here we are acting as their servants, but acting you know, completely oblivious to who’s zooming who, because how could those you know And, and words or whatever be, you know really taking advantage of us, not us.

Ron Enzweiler 10:07
Well, you know, the, the interesting The other factor that doesn’t come out too much am I mentioned, I did listen in on a Quincy Institute seminar on webinar on Wednesday that was the future of us Saudi relations. And besides there and David Miller, who’s a fairly knowledgeable person about the Middle East is most of your listeners will probably know, you know, in terms of being involved in us. Peace, probably the Israel Palestinian peace process as well as a scholar from London School of Economics and the Dow. We are Rashidi, who is a Saudi and lives in London. Very, very astute woman from what I could hear, but she even tells me she brought out the fact Scott that the pro West orientation of particularly Mohammed bin solem, you know, the current president, I guess he’s the king and waiting, whatever you want to exactly.

Scott Horton 10:56
Crown Crown Prince. Yeah, yes.

Ron Enzweiler 10:58
Yeah. He’s basically he He’s going so far pro Western, that he that the Wahhabi religious establishment is. He basically said right out in the in the interview that they basically here they have no legitimacy now anymore for a large part of the Wahhabi religious establishment, which is the dominant force in the country in terms of how people how the instability is maintained in Saudi Arabia. That’s been a very tenuous relationship. Ever since Aramco, which was the Arabian American oil company was formed in 1930. They didn’t want any Westerners in the in the country to even you know, help with oil production, that sort of thing. And they kind of had to make a deal where you kind of keep these guys profiled, and like you said, just use them as indentured servants to work you know, work on the oil fields and keep the oil flowing, and we keep all the money. So that was kind of like you were saying a moment ago, kind of the they looked down on us as inferior people because that we didn’t practice religion most. You know what I mean, and all the other things I think are important in life and that relate equals Appalachian I got really strain. We started putting us soldiers in the country. Of course, there’s been several attacks the Khobar Towers attack and other ones, where they just right out, yeah, they just don’t like Westerners in the country. And, yeah, I think there’s a good chance and this is kind of what she was alluding to this Arabic lady on the podcast was that she was literally on the fact that there could be the world’s under bin sama has to be a little bit careful because he could he could really upset things here. And that got to be interesting part of the discussion, Jen, is that how stable and how mutually beneficial is the Saudi us relationship? Yeah, at this point,

Scott Horton 12:39
right now when you know, their economy has got to be I haven’t seen the charts. I should ask david stockman to come on. Tell us about what the Saudi charts say about their oil production and revenues. But it’s got to look like the world’s deepest black hole right now.

Ron Enzweiler 12:56
Yeah, and, of course, they just went to that price for with Russia. You know, that was also discussed that

Scott Horton 13:01
you write for, for the world’s greatest drop in demand for fuel ever, by a million times, they were already in a price war with the Russians. Hmm.

Ron Enzweiler 13:12
Yeah. And with that, that’s a geopolitical I mean, you know, they’re doing us no favors by stuff like that, you know, because they probably realized that we’re getting more oil independent. So we’re not, you know, the big reason I was there in the 80s, you know, and people before me, and even up to probably 2000 or so that we needed, you know, four or 5 million barrels of oil of Saudi oil coming, you know, coming our way every every day. And it was made sense to have a military presence ever protect that. And that’s just no longer the real world anymore. That’s what

Scott Horton 13:43
david stockman used to always say that no, I mean, as we’ve seen since then, the solution to higher oil prices, in this case, not because Saudi cut us off, but just because of the disruption from Iraq war two over there, that the solution to high low prices is high oil prices. All that does is the obvious, which is create new discovery and new development and new investment in bringing new resources to bear so that greedy capitalists can profit off of those high prices and then that’s what drives the prices right back down again and so forth. So with or without, you know, the Saudis, the world find a fuel supply. There’s enough oil to last forever, and a lot of people think that’s unfortunate or whatever. But nevermind, environmentalism for the sake of the argument just in terms of our dependence on Saudi oil. There’s always been enough oil in Texas. The only question is, at what price Are you willing to develop it? Yeah,

Ron Enzweiler 14:39
you know, they have to go to more expensive recovery techniques. And let’s face it, we’re with our massive military industrial complex that we’re, we’re, we’re we’re subsidizing the carbon fuel industry, which mostly people that are environmentally concerned with climate change were the ones who were it’s kind of funny because you I think in that call was on with the Quincy Institute, Dr. Miller talked about the fact that we’ve spent $60 billion fighting terrorism, I’m not sure we got that number. As far as I’m concerned. All of our all of the all of the Afghanistan war might not even be low, you know, why would it be closer the truth? I think 6.4 trillion is the number I’m you know, in terms of, let’s face it, we, we got the the, quote, fighting terrorism started after 911. And that was the Iraq War and the Afghanistan war. And that’s all about I mean,

Scott Horton 15:32
the Pentagon is probably consumed as much oil in that time as Germany, you know,

Ron Enzweiler 15:37
yeah. And, clearly and, you know, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s our, quote, evil foreign policy in the Middle East has sort of caused us to spend all that money and get all you have all the other, you know, plus the names of local nationals. We killed them. It’s just it’s just incredible having been over there and seeing all that I can never could understand why we are fighting that What was this whole thing about but then it really, really caused a lot of problems. And yes, I think there’s a good I’m sorry, I was gonna say I think there’s a growing I think there was a consensus from some of those people that I on that call and i know i know Martin Indyk who was, you know, very prominent member of the blob in Washington and Middle East. He wrote a nice editorial in the Wall Street Journal after after the, out to the sulemani assassination in January about Hey, man, we got to start rethinking why we’re even over there, you know, because

Scott Horton 16:30
this is the primary author of the dual containment policy. It’s crying. Oh, yeah, finally.

Ron Enzweiler 16:36
Well, it’s finally saying i think i think he saw Trump going into the, you know, starting a war with Iran, which he of course, I would have read about you, but the stupidest thing you could possibly do, but that’s not i’m not sure that is a constraint on what? foreign policy Yeah, full of voice comes out of Washington these days. But I think I’m a little bit optimistic, Scott, that there’s a growing consensus, you know, I get the washington post some credit. Maybe because of your, their, their relationship with, you know, the Kasai guy that got murdered viciously by the Saudis, give him a little bit of credit for pointing out that some of this Saudi us relationship is starting not to make as much sense and should be reassessed. So most of the other people are just, you know, sweeping as long under the carpet, you know, making these terrorist attacks. I’m no big deal. You know, in terms of the pilots, we talked about being flat airplanes around our country and getting all this training. And, you know, I think, clearly Trump sees the whole thing is just a big business deal, you know, hey, they’re going to buy, you know, 10s of billions of dollars of aircraft and other military hardware from us every year. And that’s just good business. But he doesn’t think through the implications of that. And I think that’s very unfortunate because it is, I see it as a lose lose relationship. At this point. It might have started out as a win win, you know, back in the day, we needed the oil, they needed, you know, some economic development, we had to help them produce the oil. That’s why they had you know, a lot of Americans and Westerners over there, but I don’t see that anymore. That’s just as you gotta do. Reality the situation and we’re making the US presence there their Western president you’re you’re there your flaming terrorism I mean I love it in this one article I quoted from the in my in my article or quote at the press release the Saudis put out after after the press report last Monday. This is where they they claim that this is the report

Scott Horton 18:23
that came out was about the disc I really had been working with, okay, the long term Okay, something like

Ron Enzweiler 18:30
Yep. And the quote says the Saudi people are greatly angered by this barbaric act of the shooter. This person, the perpetrator, in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people who love the American people. And then there was one about how they later on in the article they talked about how they this one I liked, I said, as this attack tragic reminds us, the extremists and terrorists threaten both our nation’s will not stop in their efforts to target innocent people. But we in the course they talked about the Saudis will never let the terrorists win or allow other acts. There are other acts to hate a patriot to divide us. Saudi Arabia claiming that high ground on fighting terrorism is about his ridiculous as you know, you know, I mean, I mean, just, that’s just completely the opposite of the reality that and this came out in that call on Wednesday as well. You know, they are the greatest sponsor of all their jihadi ideology comes out of the Wahhabi ism that they find all around the world. And I saw all the masks and buildings that mosque and buildings I think they built in Afghanistan. I mean, they flew all the pilgrims back over to Mecca and stuff like this. I mean, they I mean, they are they are really, you know, the greatest source of terrorist ideology and financial support in the Islamic world and yet they in America to the American They claim they’re out there fighting terrorism and trying to work with United States on making everybody safer. I guess again, those are statements that just have no basis in reality. And I think the fact that the they’re sort of losing legitimacy with their own people, the Saudi royal family, that’s, that’s going to be that’s going to be a factor that comes up here fairly soon. I think.

Scott Horton 20:19
Hold on just one second. Be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com. Wow, that makes sense. They bring them right to your house. So what you do though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at Scott Horton. org. And I’ll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon’s into the sale won’t cost you a thing. Nice little way to help support the show. Again, that’s right there in the margin at Scott Horton. org. Hey, I’ll check it out. The libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight. Freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to Palestine by the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays. He’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show, interviews 2004 through 2019 interview transcripts of all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years, on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good, right? Find them all at libertarian institute.org slash books. You need stickers for your band, your business will Rick and the guys over at the bumper sticker.com have got you covered great work, great prices, sticky things with things printed on them whenever you need the bumper sticker.com we’ll get it done right for you. The bumper sticker.com

Well, not so There’s this report in the weekly standard, but it confirms my bias. So I believe it. It’s from back in 2001. And it says that in the 1990s, it’s the sources a unnamed Special Operations Command or a high level one says that the Joint Staff at the Pentagon used to always say that, well, terrorism is a small price to pay for being a superpower. And you know, the thing about that is not that this is justified or anything, I definitely don’t mean that. But I’m saying it is understandable why they would think that that, you know, a couple of truck bombs go off in Africa, and mostly Africans are killed and a few dozen Americans Yeah, somebody tries to sink the coal. They don’t even sink the coal. They kill 17 sailors. They bombed Khobar Towers, they killed 19 airmen, and how from the point of view of those guys that like hell, we had a storm on D day, the beaches Omaha and whatever the thing and so it is It’s a small price to pay if you look at all the advantage that we’re taking and that kind of thing, and then of course, September 11, at least temporarily changed the calculation on that, that Geez, you know, we really can do a lot of damage with a plane. Hmm. So that I worry that and of course, we have all the FBI entrapments over the years. But now the FBI doesn’t have to keep in trapping people because now they really are generating enough homegrown and pseudo copycat and Fort Hood style San Bernardino style attacks like these, where I fear that because you have I’m not saying it would be better if it was bigger. I don’t mean that but I’m just saying because you have a small attack where handful of people are killed and doesn’t reverberate through the society and everything. It’s just another news story goes away again. I think, you know, there’s no reckoning right? There’s no it doesn’t matter that it happened. And so, where we’re supposed to be saying, Oh my god, you know what? Keeping our bases in Arabia and continuing to bomb Arabs from them continues to cause problems for us here. And so we don’t even have that conversation at all. We just continue on like, it’s okay. And then you and I are having conversations like this where we’re going chasis kind of lucky he didn’t suicide crashed his plane into downtown somewhere, which he might have, considering he was a flight student. You know, this is the kind of thing where it’s like, all other things being equal, if it was just a regular Tuesday or whatever, that the needle should scratch off the record, everyone should stop and go, look, we still got been last night type attacks in our country. You know, 20 years after you guys promised you were going to end terrorism by fighting it over there. So what in fact is the damn deal and instead, that conversation isn’t even happening?

Ron Enzweiler 24:50
Clearly, and I’m, you know, the sooner we withdraw troops out of Afghanistan, that place becomes a non problem. And then same way in the Middle East, you know, get out of Iraq. In Syria These are places that we’re creating more problems and issues than we can possibly any do any good but as I mentioned, Scott the other shoe that’s gonna drop and this came up in the Quincy a seminar on Wednesday is the fact that you know Trump is Trump and Kushner and net and I you are pushing this one sided land grab deal by us Riyal. And there was a question that came up that I think was a good one where you know, if this if this is clear that Saudi Arabia is not going to this was Aaron, David Miller’s opinion not going to support that in any overt way. Because it’s just too much chance to do they don’t want their fingerprints on it. But if the Trump administration pushes it through with the new with the network, they’re continuing now, you Israeli Government. I think the jihadist elements in Saudi and the other countries I just don’t see them abandoned in Palestine. is a core is brahmic issue. That is You know, been around that region now for 50 6070 years. I, I agree that the Saudi Crown Prince is probably, you know, not going to rally against it any overweight because he needs to, you know, he stays in power only because the US supports him. So but I just think there’s enough. And I think modality, the lady from London kind of thought the same thing that there is, there’s no probability that that goes down, maybe it won’t go down because we won’t go anywhere and Trump may not get elected who knows what but if it does go down, then it’s going to be a real that’s gonna that could be a real game changer in terms of Jihadi activity and Arab unrest and attacks on US military installations over there with almost no consequence of what the what the secondary effects are, is I think that’s still out there is a, you know, is a potential problem if, depending on how that situation goes, yeah. Someone has to keep that in mind and I can’t do things without ran. I’ve kind of been toned down a little bit, but I still think there’s the There’s still there’s still underlying issues there and the continuing strangulation of their economy is only going to, you know, make things worse if Trump gets reelected, but let’s just You mean, those are still a very dangerous place? And yeah, I’m just interested to see some of the big name Middle East experts so called coming to the same conclusion that more or less, you know, I am is that, you know, hey, it’s just time to get out of there because you just, I’ve heard him Andrew Bacevich talked about this in some of his books, seminars and things that, you know, we got to just reassess this thing and realize it’s, there’s no wind out there as we might as well, just down, you know, minimize the involvement and realize are never going to change that part of the world. Israel can take care of itself, it’s got the strongest military in the region by far, and just, you know, just focus, you know, spend day with our own problems here at this country, but that’s kind of kind of the philosophy I’ve developed just having been around the world and vents on these places and seeing things a little bit closer up and, you know, in realizing that whatever good USA did, we probably did more But all sorts of other ways Believe me, State Department, same way military clearly, you know, so we just don’t have the our institutions are not the Empire This is not receive any place in the world that I’ve ever lived. I can almost say that is a fact. Yeah.

Scott Horton 28:15
Well, and you know, the real danger. One real danger here is it’s so easy for Al Qaeda to jerk America’s chain. And, you know, by that I mean, take one example where there’s at least I don’t know, I think a 5050 chance that the attack on December 27 on the American base in Iraq, wasn’t even ca t ball Hezbollah, the Shiite militia at all Iran backed or otherwise, but was actually an ISIS attack makes perfect sense to think that it was Yeah, America’s they’re embedded with the Shia fighting against ISIS. Why wouldn’t the presumption be that it was ISIS that attacked the damn base? But then, so it goes to show though that when you have Americans in the Foreign Policy establishment and particularly in the form of our current Secretary of State and his cabal inside the administration, that they are so primed to blame Iran for anything that, you know, think about if that same principle took place inside this country and so instead of a local rocket Katyusha attack kill her, instead of a local Katyusha rocket attack in Iraq, you had a major terrorist attack inside the United States. And wouldn’t we expect that pompeyo and the people with him would be saying to Trump, that this must have been Iran and now’s our chance to hit Iran and relying on the fact that Donald Trump actually does not know shit from apple butter and would say, Okay, if you guys say it was the shear who did this, let’s hit him and go along with something like that. I think that is the real danger and by the way, other than the overthrow of bin Solomon or you know, the The installation of the watt Zawahiri as Pharaoh in Egypt or something like that, can you think of anything that al Qaeda would like to see better than the ayatollah beheaded? And the current regime on overthrown?

Ron Enzweiler 30:15
Yeah, matter of fact, at this webinar, listen to the Airbus lady, Huawei, she said that they actually call their attack on the houthis down in Yemen, jihad, they consider that to be jihad against, you know, infidels and Islam or whatever you want to do that shia Sunni issue. Of course, coming back, maybe

Scott Horton 30:36
that was Obama Trump al Qaeda war against the Houthis in Yemen. Uh huh. Go ahead.

Ron Enzweiler 30:41
Is that’s why she said, we’re supporting what the Saudi fundamentalists believe is jihad. Yeah. See, we are actually talking about spreading terrorism and we are reinforcing the notion that they are saving their form of Islam or whatever they think they’re saving, but you’re to be even territorial integrity, but you may so that gets so muddled in next You’re right, there’s no, there’s no idea that there’ll always be the tension between the Iran is a Shia power and Saudi is the Sunni power, you know, that we don’t that’s, that’s been going on for a century. So I mean, to think we’re going to get involved in that and resolve it, but we just got to get out of the middle of it. And, you know, by the way, going back to your rocket attack story, episode there, Scott, I lived in all those bases in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We got we got we had rocket attacks every week. I mean, it was just standard procedure. The sirens go off, you’re jumping the bump bunker, you know, sometimes they would hit sometimes they would miss. But I mean, I just like anybody that served over there lived over there. That’s just, I mean, that’s just like not even news. I mean, that’s just Yeah, they don’t want us here. They want us out. And every day, they’re gonna remind us of that fact. And that’s about what those things are all about. They’re not really intended to be capacitate the military or have any big strategic value. It’s just reminding you that we don’t want you over here. And so you get out the better and you know, they might Every now and then kill somebody by locking out I mean, and but that’s mean to make a major issue out of that and to go launch this war against, you know, assassinate a government official of another country set that precedent Think about that for a minute, you know that, you know, now someone comes to Washington, this acetate some assassinate some government officials just paid back for the Samadhi execution, you know, I mean, you got to recognize that these, you know, some decorum or some rules of war here that we’re violating. But so that’s kind of what I mean, I never I always thought that i think i think you’re right about the intelligence and intelligence masses, whatever assessment, the powers to be wanted to win, it’s to say, I mean, I’ve been through that I’ve seen how they would come up with all these assessments that were winning the war in Afghanistan every year, you know, and yet we always did, the one commander would come in and claim he did better than the guy before him, and even then, then the next guy would, you know, do better. Well, we’ve had five or six successive commanders are all doing better why we went to war. I mean, no one ever asked that question. So I totally I agree that the, the the intelligence community’s assessments of who did what, for what reasons, is is designed to fit a narrative that somebody wants to achieve based on some other objective or interest they have. It’s not based on hard reality. So that’s kind of my ground level observation of that. As I said, the rocket attacks are just that’s just, that’s just not even a significant event.

Scott Horton 33:25
Yeah. Now, so, back to the Pensacola thing in specific here. A fun kind of sort of side note about this. I guess it’s not that fun is that there was a republican congressman who tweeted out some of the statement that was made on Twitter by the attacker at the time last December, and Twitter took down his page for the day or two days or whatever it was a republican congressman, and the Congress Congress made that this is terrible censorship which I Totally agree, obviously not official government censorship, but it’s totally against the spirit of free speech is totally uncalled for. And the fact is that if they had let his posts stand, his post actually refuted itself, because what he claimed the statement said, was that Islamic extremism will not sleep until all Americans are dead or something like that, when that, in fact is not at all what the statement says. In fact, it begins. I’m not against you for just being American. I don’t hate you because of your freedoms. I hate you because every day you supporting funding and committing crimes, not only against Muslims, but also humanity, I am against evil and you are evil, etc, etc, etc, etc. has nothing whatsoever to do with I’ve signed on to this extreme form of Islam that says that I You must travel to North America and kill innocent people for believing in Jesus peace be upon him but not Muhammad peace be upon him too. Yeah. Right. And instead and and it goes on, by the way, and by the way. Yeah, I think you know this my article as far as I know, my article@antiwar.com from last December, which is held Pensacola blowback terrorism is the only place in the world where you can find this guy’s entire statement at set. If you follow my link, there it is on the web archive, they saved his tweet at the Wayback Machine is where I linked to and go it, which I’ll give credit to the New York Post because they actually were the first to link to the Wayback Machine there. But they didn’t quote the whole thing and I quote the whole thing, and in no way justifies this guy killing anyone. It’s just a matter of shedding light on the reality. It’s not an excuse. It’s his reasons and we need to know what are the motives for doing this kind of thing and what he’s talking About, of course, his violence committed by the American government against the people of the Middle East at large. And he ain’t wrong about that. And as Ron Paul said, you know, if we ignore that people are upset about what we do to them, then we ignore that at our own peril. And we put ourselves in danger. If we think we can just go around bombing people and not end up getting shot in return. This is the way it works. And so here we still are having this conversation in 2020.

Ron Enzweiler 36:34
Yep, but that was Matt gates OR gates, I guess it wasn’t, wasn’t for him to close. So it’s his his his his his his district. So you’re right Scott, because I was working on my article Yo, and I tried to link back to his tweets or whatever his statements and he was gone, you know, because I wanted this guy. I knew this guy said this. I just read it five hours ago, what happened to it? And you know, I had to wait to your article came out where you actually could link back as you mentioned, to the The original tweet on Twitter, but you know they Twitter in the MSM, Wall Street Journal had an article, they just completely whitewash it with any of this Manifesto. You know, I, you know, anti Israel anti American military interventionism the white horse at all out of the news stories, as I mentioned in the article we just talked about the one I wrote last week. No one did I give the Washington Post credit. They do make a few words in that regard. But no one talks about the manifesto about why was he radicalized? What was the real issue that was perpetuating this attack? And what are the implications for our foreign policy? That was my whole point. What’s the implication our military and foreign policy for myself, all these jets to Saudi Arabia, these warfighting machines have to bring their pilots over here to train them. That’s, that’s a, you know, that was that was the question the wisdom of doing that, given the large potential for a major attack and problem. And of course, secondly, if if it’s all driven by blowback from our policy in the Middle East, is a time to reassess our policy and realize like you just said that the fundamental problem, we’re creating the problem we think we’re trying to solve by just the way our actions are over there and how we support, you know, despotic regimes and, you know, don’t care about the Palestinians and do all sorts of things that are just anathema to most of the people in the Islamic world. And these are, I worked a lot of real educated, you know, people, you know, in the jobs I had, you know, doing training government officials and doing business stuff and things like that as God and they would have very intelligent conversations with them where they’d ask these very simple questions and I had a hard time you know, you’re right, I got a great we’re not we’re just doing this for some geopolitical reason that has no real interest in your society of your culture, your people, we’re just, you know, have our own reasons to be spend all this money and doing all this and I really can’t answer those questions about why this makes sense from your viewpoint because I kind of agree with you. It doesn’t you know, that’s that’s just the reality of how that plays out. I mean, we Always try to oversell I think our you know our how the rest of the world loves America and our way of life and things we do and and stuff like that I just don’t come away with that.

Scott Horton 39:11
Just funny stuff is mostly just for American consumption that don’t worry everybody we’re going to help the people over there. They know that the people over there know better, but they know that we don’t so

Ron Enzweiler 39:23
that you’re definitely right about that. What did I did maybe they have to sell it to the American public doesn’t have most of them are not world knowledgeable people just because they lived the other very life, you know, without traveling a whole lot over abroad. But in reality, you’re right it and you know, they, yeah, but you never you want to trust your gut, right? You want to believe what they’re saying is true. But you know, you get out in the real world and experience some of the causes and effects of these things and negative consequences, civilian casualties and daily bombing runs and, you know, just disrupting people’s lives. You realize, man, this isn’t really up in advance anything You know, any legitimate humanitarian interest I mean, I was kind of always my final judgment on the whole thing but and then like the article said, we get the the US public gets gaslighted by the politicians who are taking money from the arms industry and other, you know, people that are influential in Washington. So it’s just a perpetual machine trying to maintain the status quo. I mean, that’s, you know, it’s gonna be hard to see that break in. But that’s, that’s hopefully there’ll be some you know, some crack in the blob there. And some of the thinkers they’re starting to realize that this is perpetuating this makes no sense and this hope it winds up as I say, at the end of my article, you really got this the only way this silver we just got to retrench in the Middle East if you want to really get rid of make Americans safe here in this country because it’s you’re not going to make them safe by going over there and interfering in all these other civilizations and destroying countries and creating refugees and bombing people. You’re not gonna win in the hearts and minds by you know, running massive bombing campaigns and you know, The people you support one day they they support you the next day, they’re getting used to you and there’s no loyalty to any cause that would be sympathetic with what the American military is trying to do.

Scott Horton 41:11
Yeah. All right, you guys, that is Ron ends Weiler again writing for anti war.com gaslighting of the American public on Pensacola terrorist attack continues and check out his book. When will we ever learn question? Thanks again But

Ron Enzweiler 41:29
okay, Scott, thank you.

Scott Horton 41:31
The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APS radio.com antiwar.com Scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome it’s 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 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow.

All right, you guys introducing max Blumenthal. He is the author of the book, Goliath, and also the 51 Day War. And his latest book is the management of Savitri, a great retelling of the War on Terrorism there. And of course, he runs the gray zone project. Where he co hosts the podcast, moderate rebels, and where he writes articles including this important one, the American friends, new court files expose Sheldon Adelson security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Max?

Max Blumenthal 1:23
Good, good to be back.

Scott Horton 1:25
Great. Great to have here. So let’s see, two or three months ago, we talked about this with Kelly flay hosts from the American Conservative magazine about this connection to Sheldon Adelson, which is very interesting, and which I’m not sure I completely understand. But first of all, can you give us the background here, starting with Assange holed up in the embassy and this security company that was providing supposedly security for the embassy, and then how that all change here Understand it right? The guy that runs that company just saw an opportunity to go ahead and prostitute himself to the CIA. Is that it?

Max Blumenthal 2:10
Exactly. I am building off of what Kelly was reporting on at the time. And you know, some of this has been out there, particularly in Spanish media, because it’s all relates to a Spanish high court case, where David Morales, who you just mentioned, who’s the mercenary, the CO owner of the UC global mercenary security contractor firm, is on trial for various crimes, including, you know, bribery, violating Julian Assange, his attorney, client privileges, money laundering, violating the privacy of Assange and what I demonstrate is he was possibly involved in a global criminal black operation guided by Mike Pompeo, CIA So the way that I put this story together was working with court documents, mostly court documents that had been leaked to me, including protected witness testimony, who the witnesses being the former workers of Morales, including people who were at the embassy where Julian Assange had taken sanctuary legal sanctuary, and a former co owner, or business partner of UC global. I conducted my own interviews and did my own research. And what I focused on was the role of Las Vegas Sands. And Sheldon Adelson, tons of kind of financial and political empire in giving cover to the CIA, to hire this guy Morales, to spy on Assange and pretty much everyone associated with him. And so how that came about is I think what’s interesting here. So I’ll take you back to 20. 16 before Trump was elected, David Morales was playing in the minor leagues of the mercenary world. He had really one contract, which was significant. He got it through. Rafael Correa, who was, at the time the leftist president of Ecuador. And it was, you know, first to guard court as children and then it was folded into guarding the Embassy in London, where Julian Assange had been given asylum by Korea. The reason Morales got it is simply because his company was based in Spain in the EU, and Ecuadorian Security Service. officials were having trouble getting visas to enter the EU to enter the Schengen zone. So this guy just got it by luck. And then he realized that he had something big on his hands. I mean, he had he was overseeing and protecting the top target of the US government. Someone the US wanted arrested because Julian Assange had humiliated them. leaked, or he had published classified information, the, the, you know, the the Chelsea Manning leaks of you know, Iraqi reporters being murdered on camera cable gate all of the State Department cables that just showed how the US was attempting to subvert governments around the world. And, you know, everybody’s listening to this is pretty much familiar with what Wikileaks did. So Morales goes off alone to a security fair in Las Vegas in 2016, which I believe was held at the sands Expo owned by Sheldon Adelson. And this is the part that’s completely original to my investigation. He was recruited by the Israeli vice president of Sheldon Adelson security team, whose name is Zoho lahav. And lahav is you know, former Israeli security services either Shin better Mossad Adelson server rounded himself with these guys. Israelis really formed the core of his sort of Praetorian Guard, and lahav. You know, recruits Morales, Morales returns to Spain and starts bragging to his employees. We’re playing in the big leagues, now we’re playing in the First Division, and I’m going to be working for the dark side, and his employees start to become suspicious of him. From then on, they’re all brought into a black operation that they credit American intelligence with devising, but it was run through Las Vegas Sands. So I mean, you’re familiar with the CIA and other intelligence services, using friendly billionaires as kind of cutouts in using foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers foundation or the Ford Foundation to kind of fund cultural activities that they don’t want to take direct credit for. But this was a little bit different because Sheldon out Nelson security team, including figures who have experience and intelligence, American and Israeli intelligence, are actually kind of running the running point on the operation. They’re handing down instructions to David Morales, who’s basically just a mercenary who wanted to be the next Eric Prince and is going to do whatever it takes. So basically, to fast forward to 2019 to explain, you know, how I got this story how this story got out there, the employees after, you know, months and months of engaging in these black operations, which included theft, and you know, I’ll describe it as we go on. They became disgruntled, disgusted, they said, you know, we broke the contract that we had with Ecuador security services, we lied to our client. Our business is completely destroyed by what you did. Out of vanity, and we are going to go they went to Assange law After Julian Assange was arrested on April 11 2019, and confessed, at least, the former business partner in two employees, and Assange, as lawyers then brought all the evidence which included, you know, a massive trove of company backups, emails, call logs, all a lot of evidence, even backup files of all of the, you know, the surveillance tapes, showing Julian Assange meeting with his lawyers, you know, including audio. And a Spanish judge accepted the case and acted a secret investigation. And Morales was arrested in and charged in October 2019. And so he had to hand over his phones there D encrypting the phones. All of this is coming out still as we speak. But that’s how this case came about. And so between Trump’s election when Mike Pompeo, also a close ally of Sheldon Adelson, you know, Adelson spent his fortune to get Trump elected. When Trump comes into office, that’s when this operation really kicks into high gear. And it runs under the watch of UC global through early 2018.

Scott Horton 9:23
Now, it’s interesting to me just right there about when you’re talking about the Spanish case, that the CIA was unable to prevent the Spanish government from proceeding with that, it seems like that’s the kind of thing that they could have scotched, so to speak.

Max Blumenthal 9:38
Yeah. I mean, I’ll describe one incident that might have factored into the decision of it’s a Spanish judge and the judiciary in Spain is, I would argue, possibly probably more independent than ours here. Certainly less partisan but, you know, UC global was was doing a lot to antagonize Spanish authorities. In one case, according to a protected witness testimony, David Morales, the CEO, proposed robbing the Office of Baltazar Garson who is Julian Assange, his lawyer, and not an insignificant figure in Spanish life. I mean, this is someone who oversaw the prosecutions of Franco’s men for crimes committed under his dictatorship. This is someone who helped pioneer the concept of universal jurisdiction. He’s one of the most famous lawyers in Spain. And somewhere Alice proposes this his his workers, at least the ones who testified in the case and this is insane, like, you know, you’re taking us down a really dangerous path. But two weeks after his his proposal, there were reports in Spanish mainstream media have Carson’s office being burglarized by three men wearing hoods. Who took nothing of value but rifled through files? And I mean, it’s it’s a classic kind of Nixonian Watergate style burglary. It’s, you know, it recalls, you know, Chuck Colson proposing firebombing the Brookings Institution. So thieves disguised as firemen could run in and steal the Pentagon Papers because they were being held there. I mean, this really is worse than Watergate. And it was being done on behalf of the CIA. On behalf of Mike Pompeo, who bragged we lied, we cheated we stole when he spoke at Texas a&m last year. And you know, it’s it’s worth revisiting while going back and watching that clip because when he says that, an audience full of students cheers and laughs You know, when the rest of us were horrified. But uh, you know, this was the the, these are the kind of dirty tricks in black operations that characterized the attack on Assange that Mike Pompeo laid out in his first speech. As CIA director in April 2017, at CSIS in Washington, and he said Wikileaks can no longer hide behind free speech. Basically, he is laying out countermeasures that aim to explode the concept of free speech, not just as a constitutional right, but sort of as a global human rights principle. And so I think for Spain, it’s really a question of the rule of law, as well as I mean, it could be also a question of democracy. And then you have a parallel case running in the UK, where the British government basically, you know, in its, you know, traditional postwar role as Americans, America’s poodle is deciding whether to extradite Julian Assange. And as I demonstrate towards the end of my piece, America, the US government is basically running the British Prosecution Service. See photographs from a witness to the extradition hearing in February of supposedly, are allegedly, DOJ officials who are seated behind the British prosecutors throughout the trial, were basically whispering in their ears the whole time. And everyone expects that the British judge will do whatever the US wants. And the UK has refused to allow Assange to testify in the Spanish court. So to your question and the implied point, it does appear like the CIA is trying to sabotage the Spanish case and they have much more leverage in the UK.

Scott Horton 13:39
Yeah, and you know, just I guess as I read about this, I haven’t seen any pictures of it but I read about how they have Assange in that extradition. The the series of extradition hearings there in the UK. They have them in this plexiglass box. Like he’s Hannibal Lecter or something To try to which the judge doesn’t need any impressing anyway, but they’re doing this to impress who with the danger of this villain, right? He’s radioactive or like he’s I got up maybe has a bomb under his shirt or something.

Max Blumenthal 14:16
Right. And they would you know, he can’t confer with his lawyers. And as I demonstrate in my piece, he his meetings with his lawyers, especially the most sensitive ones, we’re all spied on by the same forces that are prosecuting him. Yeah. And by the way, I do have a feeling. You’ll be seeing some photographs of that glass cage soon. Good.

Scott Horton 14:39
I’m sure must be rushed. And now so and there’s so much to discuss here. But to your recent point there about free speech and pompeyo claiming that Assange is hiding behind the First Amendment to the US Constitution which says that the federal government cannot criminalize speech, which so far has meant including the publication of government secrets. And and so it’s interesting there because on one hand, he’s saying that, well, WikiLeaks is not a journalistic enterprise, like, say, The New York Times or The gray zone. It’s, as he put it, a private intelligence agency. And so therefore, those don’t apply. And yet, that’s such bs that it seems like it could also apply to the gray zone or anybody else who was publishing government secrets, right?

Max Blumenthal 15:38
Yeah, I mean, pompeyo called it a hostile foreign intelligence agency. That was the language he used when he laid out the countermeasures that were apparently put into play by UC global, which by

Scott Horton 15:51
the way, is just has no factual basis. It’s just a turn of phrase that means nothing. I mean, it’s a website run by a guy. It’s not an intelligence agent. See that belongs to a state or any power anywhere never has.

Max Blumenthal 16:05
Right. But you know, when we let draconian

hawkish government officials, like Mike Pompeo define what journalism is, in many ways that was an expression of the anxieties of these kinds of figures. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t just Mike Pompeo, Joe Biden, when he was vice president called Assange and WikiLeaks, digital terrorists, terrorists, hostile intelligence agency, whatever it is, they do see the gray zone in a similar light. And that’s why we were recently listed among deprecated sources at Wikipedia. Which if you look at the Wikipedia foundation and who runs it, these are people with ties to Western governments and intelligence agencies and USA ID in organizations like this. They’re liberals, but they still see Those who expose national security secrets and criminality as threats. So,

Scott Horton 17:09
I think therefore instead of but but yeah, I understand

Max Blumenthal 17:16
guess, you know, the the liberal mentality augments the way that the anxieties and resentment is expressed. I mean, upon pose address, really, it has to be seen or, you know, read the transcript with the CIA website to, to really understand how extreme this figure and the people behind them are. You know, if you had leon panetta giving that address, it would have been much more elegant. And you know, what I’ve been told, actually, by people I’ve been speaking to around this investigation is that the Obama administration was so much more sophisticated in the way that they were trying to undermine Assange, because they worked through the Brits, but they themselves win. Meeting with, you know, Ecuadorian, Ecuadorian officials. You know, they, they wore a velvet glove, and then in meetings with the Brits, you’d have the doors slamming and screaming and British, you know, British soap opera. And, you know, Trump comes in and just, it’s run in a classic trumpian way it just lifts the mask on us Empire. And that’s partly why we’re learning so much about it just because it was carried out in such an absurdly clumsy way. I’ll give you another describe another episode, which has been reported before, but for some reason, it didn’t generate, I think, you know, sufficient interest or outrage. I mean, honestly, like, can’t believe that journalists in you know, mainstream journalists are just completely ignoring this story because, you know, you had Ellen Nakashima from the Washington Post, you had Anthony Lowell Bergman, you know, these are mainstream correspondents going to the embassy to interview Assange and having their belongings taken while they were in the meeting. And their phones hacked into with their SIM card numbers taken. You had Pamela Anderson, who’s a friend of Assange going to the embassy, and having her gmail account password stolen, because she had written it on a piece of paper, and it was photographed by the spy cameras that had been installed. So you have Stella Morris, who is a lawyer for Assange, showing up at the embassy, and usually she was preceded by a friend of Assange carrying a baby, US intelligence or you see global, suspected that the baby belong to Assange, and that Stella Morris was the mother. So a worker for UC global was assigned with a task of stealing the baby’s diaper from the trash and extracting the feces in order to conduct a DNA test to connect the baby to Assange. Apparently, they had Assange his DNA somehow Then they realize though you can’t get DNA from feces go get the babies pacifier. So the worker had had enough. He said, this is just ridiculous what we’re doing. He actually stopped Stella Morris outside the embassy and said, stop bringing your kid here. There. The US government is trying to steal his body matter. So that was that. And all along, Assange knew he was being spied on. But there was, I mean, there was only so much he could do when everyone around him was a spy.

Scott Horton 20:35
Hey, guys, Scott Horton here from my Swanson scrape book, The War state. It’s about the rise of the military industrial complex and the power elite after World War Two, during the administration’s of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and jack kennedy. It’s a very lightning take on this definitive era on America’s road to world Empire. The war state by Mike Swanson finding the right Hand margin at Scotthorton.org. Hey, yo, Mike Swanson is a successful Wall Street trader with an Austrian School understanding of the markets, and therefore he has great advice to share with you check out Mike’s work and sign up for his list at WallStreetwindow.com and that’s what you’ll get a window into all of Mike’s trades. He’ll explain what he’s buying and selling and expecting and why. I know you’ll learn and earn a lot. Wall Street window.com that’s WallStreetwindow.com and now what’s this about the proposal at least to poison and kill him?

Max Blumenthal 21:38
Yeah, there was a proposal to poison him put forward. Apparently by morality. This was described by a witness who was an IT specialist who was in charge of basically installing all of the spy cameras. There was also a proposal to leave the door of the embassy open, you know, make it seem like an accident. So then, you know A team of like a special forces style police team could run in and kidnap Assange. There were those though those were proposals that were rejected by employees because they said, you know, we don’t want to all go to jail.

Scott Horton 22:18
Yeah, well, not much chance of, you know, accountability, although I guess, you know, there was a trial and in Spain, where does that case stand now?

Max Blumenthal 22:30
It’s pending. I mean, it’s an ongoing investigation, and we’re learning more, including about, you know, how, to what extent the Trump administration managed this campaign of dirty this disk criminal global campaign. I write in my piece about a proposal or a plan that was enacted and by Assange his legal team and Ecuadorian diplomats in December 2017 to grant Julian Assange, diplomatic immunity by making him a diplomat of a friendly country, you know, a country that was friendly with Ecuador. Yeah. And as this was taking place, the US was apparently getting really nervous because it was completely legal under under the Vienna conventions, and then he could have left the embassy. And so they’re ramping up the surveillance people, everyone going there is getting their phones taken and hacked. You know, I have the journalists to funny Mr. eetzi from Italy, telling me that you know, her phone was taken and then calls stopped going through from her editors to her. The cameras were on and recording sound when Julian Assange would put on white noise. The UC global spies put a magnetic microphone underneath a fire extinguisher in the main conference room to listen to the sound. They put a camera in the women’s bathroom where he was holding meetings with the faucets open so they could listen there to what he was saying to his lawyers. And it was around this time that Todd Chapman, who was at the time the US ambassador to Ecuador, started running around badgering and threatening Ecuadorian officials telling them don’t enact the plan. And they were wondering How did he know that this was taking place? On December 20, the head of Ecuador’s senayan security services Rami via via visits the embassy to put into place the last components of the plan. His phone is opened, the cameras are uploaded to a server. And Morales had just been in Las Vegas, staying at the Venetian hotel. This is the hotel owned by Sheldon Adelson. It’s his signature Hotel in Las Vegas. I have the emails in there from a static IP address at the Venetian hotel and Morales was receiving all the instructions, including of which visitors to specifically target. You know, when, you know, he was receiving instructions on creating separate servers on the cameras for the American friends, and the their instructions were coming down in English. He was receiving them apparently from someone at Las Vegas Sands. So it was very clear that this this footage was being fed to the Americans. And the day after via home meets with Assange, a secret indictment is introduced in a Virginia federal court by us prosecutors. This timing in this chronology has never really been put together December 21. That indictment was made public much later and you know, you of course had the media and US officials and Adam Schiff and all these other people denying That any secret indictment existed but that indictment was issued because of the fear of Julian Assange using international law to exit the embassy. And his plan was ultimately foiled through spying and threats. And of course, you had a new government in Ecuador. The government of Lenin Moreno, who is basically a US stooge, who called Assange a hacker cut off his internet restricted guests to him and ultimately handed him over to the British police in exchange for a gigantic IMF loan.

Scott Horton 26:37
Man, this all sounds like something that happened in the Soviet Union or something. This is the US government that is doing this that’s behind all this. It’s just crazy. And we’re so used to it now. It’s the new normal max that freedom is dead. The bill of rights is over and this is just the way things are they gonna go after a journalist in this fashion for simply doing Good work. And you know, you mentioned earlier about the media, essentially forsaking this guy and refusing to take his side and cover even cover his story and what they’re doing to him. When men Is he the canary in their coal mine, they have everything to lose if the precedent is set against him. And yet, instead, they’re trying to sacrifice him for their own gain and say, Oh, yeah, no, he’s not one of us. And this is not the alternative media, but the mainstream media that posts in the times and there are other and you know, and then but also, you have the left and the right with the right wingers always hated him because he helped Manning make a fool out of George W. Bush, and hurt him. You know, that 2010 leak was mostly about bush ears. There was some Obama stuff in there, but mostly that hurt the right and so that was their big cause back then was demonizing Manning and Assange. But then, with all the accusations about the DNC leak being published, by WikiLeaks in 2016, which turned all the liberals and progressives, not all, but many liberals and progressives against Assange were now he’s a co conspirator with Vladimir Putin to install the hated Donald Trump in power. But right. He just came out in private secret transcripts of closed congressional hearing testimony, that the company that determined that it was the Russians and told the FBI and the FBI cited from then on that the Russians had hacked the DNC and given those emails to WikiLeaks, that they had no evidence of that after all, and that that entire half of the story that has convinced liberals and progressives to join in the forsaking of Assange, who ought to be the greatest hero for people on all parts of the political spectrum, but, you know, certainly it’s the left that champions this kind of aggressive muck right. journalism, historically speaking, and that kind of thing, and they were all duped by a giant CIA a lie that Assange was somehow in it with Vladimir Putin. And so they have, you know, basically given up on defending him, and Manning for that matter, they are manning the collateral damage in that when no one ever no one ever even accused Manning of having anything to do with this Russia stuff. But Manning by association with Assange, as you know, her name is also now dirt. And so as she was doing a year in jail on contempt of court charges for refusing to testify against Assange, largely speaking, the progressive movement that had championed what Manning had done in 2010 was nowhere to be found. And so what about all of that Max?

Max Blumenthal 29:47
Right, you know, the, the the hillary clinton dead Enders who helped stir up Russia gate didn’t wasn’t so much that they were duped by Russia. What upset them the most That there, corruption was exposed for everyone to see. And so Julian Assange became part of this long list of, you know, Democrat Party scapegoats along with Ralph Nader and Jill Stein and everyone else who cost them elections that, you know, they really won. They really lost through their own ineptitude. Julian Assange was also, you know, the target, a reputation destruction campaign that was being stirred up by intelligent Western intelligence services, starting with the claim that he was a rapist. I mean, this was to, you know, turn feminists and liberals away from him before the DNC leaks and the he was blamed for Hillary Clinton emails that actually came out, thanks to a FOIA request by Jason Leopold, which I think were actually more damaging than the DNC emails, right. Well, I don’t see any real evidence that the DNC leaks cost Hillary Clinton the election. And honestly, if they want to have escape go, what about James Comey? dropping, you know, all of the the dirt on anthony wiener and, you know, this is the story that Anthony Weiner may be indicted. There may be, you know, indictments around Hillary Clinton two days before the election. When Hillary Clinton was surging in the polls, they could you know, easily blame comi but call me sort of became a resistance hero after the election because he turned against Trump. But, you know, what I’ve shown here in this piece is a inner, the inner circle of Donald Trump, with some of the most villainous characters surrounding Trump, just a grotesque gallery of high right wing authoritarian figures starting with Sheldon Adelson, who is like this, some sort of human project have like an anti semitic hologram from the imagination of a deranged neo nazi. He’s a walking anti semitic stereotype whose entire existence focuses around it building his global casino Empire number one. And number two, building apartheid Israel atop the heads of Palestinian fella in the West Bank on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean, you couldn’t get a more odious figure. And he’s right in the thick of this black operations campaign, which also which included, you know, armed robbery and all sorts of hideous acts that Mike Pompeo seem to brag about in public.

Scott Horton 32:46
And this is a guy that gives 100 million dollars every two years for the Republican Congressional campaigns.

Max Blumenthal 32:51
Yeah, I mean, he basically is running the Republican parties for him. He’s, he’s, he’s helping run the Republican Party. In To the neo-con ground, he’s helped bring the US to the brink of war with Iran. I think it weren’t if it weren’t for Sheldon Adelson, qasem soleimani would still be alive and hundreds of American servicemembers wouldn’t have suffered traumatic head injuries at the Al Assad military base in Iraq. And so then you have Donald Trump authorizing the whole thing after, you know, praising Wikileaks in 2016. And Mike Pompeo opening a senate exploratory committee in Kansas and reaching out to Sheldon Adelson to fund it. So I mean, you would think, on top of all of that, then you have the spying on us journalists, mainstream journalists under the watch of pompeyo. This to me seems worse than Donald Trump being mean to journalists in press briefings, right. It has all of the elements of, you know, the perfect congressional Ambassador allegation for House Democrats to open the problem is that the target is someone that all these democrats blame for Donald Trump being president. So not one member of Congress on the Democratic side. I mean, I haven’t heard from anyone on the Republican side either. It would be interesting if you know, someone like Thomas Massie could say something about this. But, you know, not one person on the Democratic side is willing to say anything about this Titanic scandal. Meanwhile, you know, everyone’s freaking out because one of the inspector general’s under pompeyo was fired by Trump. And I think that that is scandalous because he was looking into many of the same things that I’ve been looking into in this investigation, like whether pompeyo is using official state department trips to advance his own political ambitions. But, you know, that scandal pales in comparison to what I’ve laid out here.

Scott Horton 34:56
You know, you reminded me to about The story that Assange was making a deal with the CIA, that he would not publish the vault seven week, if they would see to it that he would get the charges dropped. He would be promised, you know, immunity and, and allowed to go free. And then I forget, I think part of it was he would reiterate again, that the Russians did not give him any of the 2016 material. You know, Panetta leaked or not Panetta sorry Podesta leaks or DNC emails there. And then the FBI found out about it and leaked it to a democratic senator, and got that deal ruined. Do you know much about that?

Max Blumenthal 35:48
Well, I mean, I explained how David Morales from UC global was flown from Spain to Alexandria, Virginia, just down the street. From Langley on February 28, which is two days after Wikileaks announced the release of vault seven that they were going to release vault seven. So, I mean, there’s a clear connection between the escalation and the attack on Assange and vault seven. I actually hadn’t heard the story that you just described. I do know that Dana Rohrabacher went to the Embassy in London to propose a pardon, and he’s disputed the claim by Jen Robinson, who is the lawyer of Assange, that he was dispatched personally by Trump as an emissary of Trump to offer the pardon. But the pardon was contingent on Julian Assange demonstrating that he did not receive the DNC emails from a Russian source. And he of course, refused because he refuses to identify his sources. That’s part of, you know, the ethos of WikiLeaks. What made it so successful is that, number one, he always protects his sources. Number two, all the material is verified. And so they’ve never made a mistake or published something that was false, right. And number three, the material is protected. The site has top notch security. And that’s what I think is frustrated. The US government.

Scott Horton 37:24
Now, by the way, that story, it was a john Solomon story from June of 2018. How Coumi intervened to kill Wikileaks immunity deal. That was at the hill

Max Blumenthal 37:36
for an army. That’s it. That’s interesting. I mean, Solomon obviously is sort of a partisan pro Trump reporter, but

Scott Horton 37:42
you know, he did some great scoops on this stuff.

Max Blumenthal 37:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I hadn’t seen it.

Scott Horton 37:49
And, you know, I mean, if he’s right, that really goes to show how bad the CIA did not want that vault seven stuff to come out that they were willing To even intervene with the rest of the government on his behalf If only he would withhold it. But then it was comi who screwed the whole thing up him and I got Senator Warner is the story here and Warner got it killed.

Max Blumenthal 38:15
Oh, interesting. Well, Warner’s, you know, the coach, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time. That’d be something he do. I mean, I woke up today and my smart TV was on that always happens. And it’s because of vault seven that I wonder if I’m being spied on because vault seven revealed that the CIA has hacking tools that can listen to their targets through their Samsung Smart TVs. It also shows that they can break into encrypted messaging applications like signal and telegram. Then there’s the spying application called marble, which allowed CIA spies to implant code that obfuscates the identity, on the identity of the hacker on Google computers that they hacked. So, you know, theoretically, and I’m not I’m not asserting this in any way as my theory or what I think happened. But theoretically, the DNC emails could have been hacked and Cyrillic code could have been implanted by a intelligence agency or private hacking group that was not rushing through the marble program or something like it.

Scott Horton 39:26
Yeah, no question about that. In fact, you know, when I talked with Jeffrey Carr, right after the story came out, he said that essentially, it’s impossible to prove who broke into a computer by examining that computer, you know, because anyone could fake and leave breadcrumbs and, and telltale signs and clues pointing to others, and so it can never be conclusive. In other words, no one can know for sure, except for the NSA, because they have the ability to oversee the whole internet and every packet that ever went Anywhere. And so they can tell you 100% no one else can tell you beyond 10% essentially, you know,

Max Blumenthal 40:07
yeah, I mean, you know, another agency that has top notch hacking capacity is the Israeli Mossad. And then you have the NSO group, which was spun out of the Israeli aid unit at 200. In the Israeli military. We’re all Israel’s hackers are assigned during when they do their army service. And they have the Pegasus software that has been used to implant code, malicious malware, on the phones and computers and devices of human rights activists and journalists around the world. There’s so much technology out there. Clearview AI is scraping facial, basically the images of millions of people off of social media To use and facial recognition technology around the world. So the the idea that someone could basically attribute blame to Russia on the hacking side, sort of plant Cyrillic code or something that would easily identify Russia, which was done. I mean, maybe it was the Russians is not it’s not outside the realm of possibility. And then beyond that, I mean, the whole CrowdStrike attribution. Their their record of attribution is terrible. They’ve been exposed. First of all, CrowdStrike is the private security firm that was hired by the FBI to conduct the attribution investigation of the DNC email, suppose it hack, and they’d already been exposed for falsely attributing the hacking of Ukrainian artillery system to Russia’s FSB turned out a possibly The artillery system hadn’t even been hacked but the Ukrainian military came out and said no, that was totally false. The head of CrowdStrike who had carried out that investigation Dimitri al Petrovich is a Russian dissident, a Russian exile who’s had a fellowship with the Atlantic Council, which is one of the main think tanks in Washington that was spinning out Russia gate. It’s funded by NATO. It’s NATO’s unofficial think tank in Washington. So you got to clearly part is in character. He’s working with Sean Henry, who was a former FBI agent who is at MSNBC contributor. And these are the guys that were hired by the FBI to determine who hacked the DNC email server. And they never had the email server. They had what’s called sort of like a print of it. I don’t know how that works, how you get a print of it, but the email server was destroyed by the FBI. It was never subpoenaed. And then finally, Julian Assange was never interviewed. In the Mueller investigation, why is that? Why he was right there? It’s not like he’s hiding. There’s three rooms he can hide in. So I’m sure you can find him in one of them inside the embassy and ask him what took place. I don’t know why

Scott Horton 43:13
they was Craig Murray. I mean, Craig Murray said that, not that he received the leak. That’s what the Daily Mail kind of miss quoted him as saying, but yeah, he met the leaker of the DNC leak in the woods in Washington, DC. And I don’t think he said that he would be happy to identify that person to the cops. But he was certainly happy to testify to them under threat of going to prison for lying to the FBI, etc. that this person had no conceivable relationship with the Russians and that he knew for a fact that this was the person who had provided the emails, and they didn’t want to talk to him.

Max Blumenthal 43:50
Yeah, and you just they resort to sort of the reputation destruction campaign, Craig Murray’s and eccentric you know, he’s been attacked in British tabloid Lloyds for having a weird lifestyle or something I don’t I don’t know what they would say. This is someone who exposed torture when he was in the British Foreign Service. And he was completely correct about that he sacrificed his career to expose human rights violations when he was the British ambassador to Pakistan. Yeah. Julian Assange has never, ever published a faulty document or a false document. And he was accused, I think, first by Donna Brazil, than by Malcolm Nance of publishing doctored files, and, you know, basically writing the names of democratic officials he wanted to embarrass into them, it was they were the liars. So there’s really no basis to believe that these individuals would deliver false testimony, but they were just completely ignored. And, you know, so then you have the congressional transcripts that were released, because of pressure by the Trump administration, Richard Grinnell and others. And they show Sean Henry from CrowdStrike testifying that he had no evidence that Russian intelligence had hacked the DNC email servers. It’s within the realm of possibility that Russia did it. It would have been a pretty elegant response to everything the US has done to Russia over the years. Most recently, with basically attempting to put NATO troops directly on their border in Ukraine, Georgette Musburger, mosbacher, the US ambassador to Poland, just proposed, like a week ago putting nuclear weapons in Poland on Russia’s border. So, I mean, it’s within the realm of possibility but there’s still no evidence. There’s no evidence and up the congressional testimonies are hilarious because you have all these people who were, you know, Twitter pundits spinning there, you know, former intelligence experience into kind of Twitter expertise and getting the resistance all whipped up, and then they have to and then they’re talking about, you know, call this collusion and then they’re asked to testify. Do you see any evidence of collusion? And they’re forced to say no, because they’re under oath. You know, there’s, they’re sworn to tell the truth. So Adam Schiff knew what through witness after witness that there is no evidence of collusion and he delivers this grand narrative in 2017. About CrowdStrike, attributing the Russian hack and WikiLeaks being in the thick of it. It was all just a kabuki theater for a bunch of, you know, Kooks and dupes delivered by, you know, Cold War spooks.

Scott Horton 46:48
Yeah. You know what’s funny, too, it is kind of mildly ironic that Trump spent all these years pretending that Barack Obama was a completely you know, unlawful usurper. john mccain’s rightful throne on account of the fact of him being born in Kenya, supposedly and all of this stuff. So, on that basis alone, he kind of really deserved it, you know, although the collateral damage in this case in Russia gate compared to the stupid birther thing from back then is just incredible and especially again, with the prime example being the heroic Julian Assange, who ought to figuratively be hoisted on all of our shoulders all of the time, has instead just been demonized into the ground here. And you know, hardly anyone except I hate to say it, but you know, more fringe media are on a high call marginal media, like antiwar.com and the gray zone project and consortium news, calm and others. We’re still trying to stick up for him as best we can. But overall, you know, broadly speaking, the left and right political moves movements in America, I have no interest in defending this guy. And all wrapped up in these bogus narratives, you know, because of these bogus narratives,

Max Blumenthal 48:09
well the other bogus narratives and their partisan narratives that are completely divorced from any principle and the principle here is first amendment. The principle here is free speech. If Julian Assange is extradited to the US and goes to jail, he’s an Australian citizen for publishing documents that the US media reported on the First Amendment is over. I mean, it already is in so many ways. But that’s the end of it. And Mike Pompeo was explicit about his intention to destroy free speech in order to protect his view of national security. It’s also about crucifying whistleblowers in the town square. It’s not just Julian Assange, it’s Chelsea Manning, who has been heinously abuses everyone associated with Assange has been abused through the Gross Misconduct of a US intelligence agency that has a black budget that’s not subjected to public approval, basically, the most undemocratic opaque agency. So that’s what this is about. That’s what the stakes are. And everyone’s so consumed with partisan narratives, including Trump world, that these principles have been completely lost. It’s not It’s not like, you know, this is anything unfamiliar. But, I mean, that’s what Russia gate was about is about getting Trump and now Oh, the open skies treaty was just shredded and you know, any any democrat who’s up in arms about that has their themselves to blame? Because they’re the ones who helped ratify and reinforce this new Cold War of hostility?

Scott Horton 49:53
Absolutely right about that man. Hear democrats complain about Trump breaking treaties with the Russians at this point. Got to be the most obnoxious thing in the world. No self reflection whatsoever. Yeah, it’s so odd that a baby’s hard. The reason he’s doing it is to protect himself from this narrative. In fact, he’s completely abandon the get along with Russia policy for adopting the Cold War policy, in self defense against their false accusations of his treason.

Max Blumenthal 50:22
Yep, he’s overcompensating for the summit with Putin where, when he was handed a soccer ball, CNN reported that a listening device was potentially inside the soccer ball. I forgotten about

Scott Horton 50:33
that one.

Max Blumenthal 50:35
john brennan went on. Where was he a country hired as a contributor. msnbc. Yeah, he’s the msnbc renta spook called john called Donald Trump as a trader, I mean, for basically meeting with Putin and what were they talking about? They were talking about new treaties on intermediate range ballistic missiles. That’s really what they were talking about. So here

Scott Horton 50:57
we are, we got rid of the old one.

Max Blumenthal 51:00
Yep, yep. And so that’s why I was opposed, really, ultimately why I was so opposed to Russia gate aside from it being a completely and transparently false narrative. And you know, I stood up against the, the birther campaign against Obama, because the blowback is no more racism and more Islamophobia. it justifies the targeting of Muslims and increased anti muslim attitudes. And so, you know, all of these phony partisan mccarthyite campaigns have terrible blowback. And, you know, whatever’s left of democracy hangs in the balance here. I think that, you know, the final chapter of Russia gate is what happens with Julian Assange. I mean, we’re left with a new Cold War. But yeah, I think this is sort of the undecided episode. And so you have these two parallel court cases, one in Spain, and one in the UK. And it’s really important to pay attention to what happens with Spain. They’ll continue to. I’ll continue to report out anything I get out of that court.

Scott Horton 52:06
Yeah. Well, you know, at this point, they might as well just move the White House and the Department of Justice buildings to Langley. And just let these guys rule because they’re the charge anyway. And the washington post in New York. them too, for sure. All right. Well, listen, man. Thanks for coming back on the show max. Great stuff as always.

Unknown Speaker 52:26
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I got to run off to an interview with chris hayes now and then, you know, I’m heading into New York Times building to talk about my blockbuster bombshell investigation. I’m so sure.

Scott Horton 52:38
It’s not flying on my show, Max. All right. Thanks, man.

Max Blumenthal 52:41
All right, Scott.

Scott Horton 52:42
Aren’t you guys? That’s max Blumenthal. You got to read Goliath. It’s all about Israel. What is Israel? What’s the deal with Israel? Anyway, read that thing. It’ll blow your socks off. And you know, I forgot to mention at the beginning there to watch his documentary. It’s like three bucks to watch the documentary he made with Dan Cohen called Killing Gaza. And it’s just so good and so important. It’s important for me to remember to mention it all the time. And, of course his most recent book is management of savagery, which is excellent. And this article is at the gray zone. It’s called the American friends. New court files expose Sheldon Adelson security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange.

The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s 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 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing James Bradley. He wrote the movie and the book Flags of Our fathers. And yes, the sequel was just called Eva Jima wrote the book Imperial cruise, and also fly boys and his latest is called the China Mirage the hidden history. American disaster in Asia. Welcome back to the show, James, how you doing?

James Bradley 1:06
Hey, Scott, thank you for having me again,

Scott Horton 1:08
good to talk to you. It’s been a little while. And you know what, I am so busy fighting the last war in the Middle East all the time. I am way behind on our problems with China. But I gather we’ve got loads of them and that you would disagree about many of them being necessary conflicts. I have this great press release sent out by the Institute for Public accuracy. Talking about the danger of even real war with China and an unnecessary war, in your opinion. So what do you think about what’s going on here recently?

James Bradley 1:50
Well, I, you know, I’ve been watching the news and the Chinese navy is not in San Francisco Bay and they’re not in The Caribbean and they haven’t built a base in Canada or Mexico. And it’s a mirage and, you know, ridiculous to think they would. So what is the problem with China?

Scott Horton 2:15
Yeah, what is the problem with China?

James Bradley 2:18
Well, I’d like to add, I mean, you know what we’re really what militarily? What’s the big problem? Ray McGovern, ex CIA briefer to Ronald Reagan. His name is Ray McGovern. He’s at Ray McGovern calm. Ex CIA briefer to Ronald Reagan. George Herbert Walker Bush just told me in an interview that the pivot to Asia that President Obama announced in Australia in 2011 was all about Raytheon and Lockheed popping champagne bubbles, big bottles, because war in the Middle East, you know, we’ve destroyed almost every building there and chasing terrorists down alleys. You know, it’s it’s it’s not hard. profit, whereas China biggest country in the world, population wise, there’s a, you know, generations of of business to be done there. So that the preparation for war is the key. And then the American media is, you know, hyping that China is some danger. But, you know, I’ve been living on and off in Asia since 1974. And, again, I’m looking for this danger to be defined.

Scott Horton 3:28
Yeah. Well, I mean, you really hit the nail on the head there when you talk about business and all the business to be done building up a cold war against China. But of course, when most people think of China in business, they don’t think of militarism at all. They think about all the trade back and forth between China all the American investment in China and all the cheap plastic crap we get from them. And not only that, but other quality goods as well. And so it would seem like war, or even the threat of war Cold War with China, like we have, you know, beginning right now are really beginning back in Obama years, but continuing now, that that would be a huge detriment to American big business. If you’re not Lockheed or Raytheon. What about everybody else? All the auto manufacturers, all the blue jeans and all the soda pop and all the whatever, you know, equipment that people use to run their businesses and all the other trade back and forth.

James Bradley 4:29
Well, again, I’m quoting another expert here a guy by the name of Michael Claire KLE. If people want to look up his many articles, he’s uh, you know, he’s deep into Washington and is consulted by the Pentagon. And he says that the few you know that we are decoupling from China. And if if any of your listeners are ever looked at 1920s or 1930s maps of the various trading entities, you know, Indochina was French, so it was this color. And then you use the French franc within these three countries, Cambodia, Laos, you know, and then over here was the British Empire and Malaysia and Singapore and then you use the British pound. So he says we’re going back to less world trade, less of a large economy. It’s going to be smaller and more trading bloc’s like I’m in New Zealand, New Zealand’s working with Australia to form a healthy bubble from the virus and they’re cutting off all tourists and then they’re just going to intermingle among themselves that will go on forever. But the idea is smaller trade and trade within these, you know, decoupled blocks.

Scott Horton 5:50
Yeah, I mean, the virus really has changed everything as far as the entire globalist project goes. for better and for worse, but you know, a lot of what you say they’re reminding Me of Jim Powells book about World War One, where the whole first I guess introduction or chapter one to the thing or something is about the different trade bloc’s that became the Central Powers and Allied Powers alliances in war. And that, you know, there were these multinational trade bloc’s not entirely, you know, they weren’t entirely seeking autarky, but they weren’t seeking global free trade either. They just had them within these two kind of minor alliances that grew into war alliances, you know?

James Bradley 6:33
Yeah, that that’s, you know, one of the recurring things in history, another recurring thing specifically between American China and the reason I named my last book, The China Mirage, is there there’s been since you know, George Washington’s time all the way up to ours, this recurring thing where we don’t like China don’t pay attention to China and then China comes into fall. Because, and the key is that China’s going to become more like us. And in the 1930s this was typified by Franklin Roosevelt perot buck, the number one author of the 1930s, Henry Luce of Time Magazine. I document it all in my book. And we’d love to China, because China was going to be like us. They’re going to have white Christian churches on hilltops, and they had a Christian leader and Chiang Kai check. And he posed for pictures, you know, holding the Bible. And we supported this dictator because, you know, China wanted to be just like us. We’re, you know, once he took control of all of China, then it’s going to be christianized. And our missionaries are going to be happy. And God, do you know, after Pearl Harbor, they did a poll who’s the number one most popular ally in the world, and it wasn’t that it wasn’t with Churchill. It was. Check. I check in China, because China wanted to be just like us. perot buck told us this. Franklin Roosevelt told us China is the best example of American democracy in the world. This is when it was being run by a dictator. Then the second that Milo came to power in 1949. The Chinese people wanted Mao overtake. I checked, there was a civil war. They fought it out. Oh my god, China didn’t want to be like America. So we cut relations. I don’t know if you know, but we fired everyone who knew Chinese in the State Department. We fired anybody who knew Mao Zedong and cut off relations for a couple decades. Now then, oh, globalization, China. What we’re going to do back in the bush in the Obama administration’s is the same thing that FDR and Henry Luce and Pearl buck are doing, we’re going to work with China say we’re Americans and then we’re so democratic and, and we’re just extraordinary people. And then we’ll go over you know what these Chinese who we view as a third world nation rising, and then they’ll liberal liberalize, the more they work with us. the more they’ll liberalize the more, in other words be like us, they’re gonna want to eat apple pie, they’ll probably give up their chopsticks. And they’ll have potluck suppers across the country. Now, if you look at the American media, which I don’t much, but I studied, you know, what they’re saying about China. You see this on the it’s on the, you know, the liberal spectrum that the conservative spectrum the up and down left and right, every Americans agree now, gee, we got screwed. You know, we worked with China so well over the past 20 years, and they didn’t liberalize and they’re, they’re still Chinese, you know. And it’s the same China Mirage, the China is going to change. Oh, look at New York Times front page article today. Look what China’s doing in Hong Kong, they are restricting democratic rights. We got to get involved in this you know, China should be more like a I mean, you know, whatever. We’re going to give it up. China’s the largest thing in the world. It’s one fourth of the world. And I’m not arguing for China’s policies. I’m just saying, hey, for a few thousand years, they’ve had this system. It’s the same system. It’s the Emperor system right now the Emperor is committed. But it’s the same system. They are Chinese, there’s 1.4 billion, and they’re not bombing America, you know, there are no threat to America.

Scott Horton 10:28
And then what was the thing to I mean over when you talk about americanizing them and all of that kind of thing, I mean, they did abandon communism for fascism, which is still a totalitarian system, but at least they have prices. So now instead of laying down dying by the 10s of millions to get rich, this glorious and they have improved the standard of living created a massive middle class and even, you know, like a pretty well to do working class. You know, all things considered over there. As Lew Rockwell wants to wrote an article called from death camp to civilization, about how the mouse had just raised the entire society all the way down to the ground. And to and it just had to be started all over again kinda and so when people demonize China now, you got to take into account. This is probably, you know, because of the artificial constrictions against them. This is probably the greatest rags to riches story in the history of the world. And then on top of that, I’ll also add was you say whatever you want about that, but also, it seems to me like maybe if America wasn’t soaking in the blood of a million dead Iraqis, and we hadn’t blown the entire 21st century being the most bank robbed and destructive, blood soaked hypocrites going around talking about freedom when we obviously have no idea as a society, what that’s supposed to mean, or you know, have absolutely zero commitment whatsoever to living up to it, then maybe the Chinese and everybody else in the world would have taken the American brand of liberty a little bit more seriously. But instead it’s it’s not liberty, we’re exploiting its democracy. And that means whatever the republicans say, or something, you know, which Why would anyone take that seriously, and then surprise, they don’t?

James Bradley 12:15
Well, it’s the greatest rags to riches story and the Pew Research Foundation and American polling organization polls and tells us that like, 80% of the Chinese, but this is before COVID 80% that the Chinese are happy with their leadership. And why would they be the leadership of China has put like 50 million people a year into breaking into the middle class. I mean, it’s a I saw it. It’s just an economic success story. Yes. China has a lot of problems. Yes. I’m not saying you know, I agree with all our policies. My point is, we have bridges to build in America. I mean, I was living in New York about three years ago. And, you know, I don’t know how many tires I had to replace just driving to JFK Airport from Connecticut, you know, potholes. We we can take care of our own country and let’s do that. And but why are we, you know, pushing way across the Pacific to dig around with China. We’re not going to have a fight with with China, if we just withdrew a bit. We don’t need our military out there. We need to work on some world problems. And we’re not going to change China is my message. Yeah. Am I agreed with China and my arguing for China? No, what I’m saying is China’s China, United States is the United States, Mexico, you know, let’s invade Mexico and try to change them. Right. Well,

Scott Horton 13:51
so. So now do you discount the accusation that they have this more aggressive foreign policy now as signaled by their rising Navy in their calling Have all those little hotels in the South China Sea and all that stuff?

James Bradley 14:04
Well, those are a lot of words. And you know, there’s a lot of information out there about it. The way I look at it behind the scenes is the Emperor looks at the maps and says, Hey, this lane from Singapore, when the oil comes out of the Middle East, and it turns the corner down there on the bottom of Singapore, and then it sails up the Malaysian coast pass Vietnam in between Taiwan and brings oil to the Emperor’s people. That’s a lane that has to stay open. I mean, you have highway 95, in the United States on the east coast of America, you have to keep it open for national security. So everything else is a detail in the bumpers ready to wait a few hundred years to, you know, consolidate that highway. But the Emperor would say, Hey, we’re not in the Caribbean. You know, nobody is stopping your movement around San Francisco, San Diego. So get off our bags.

Scott Horton 15:04
Yeah. Hey guys, just real quick. If you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org. I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. org slash show the old whole show feed. And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there. Hey, guys, here’s how to support this show. You can donate various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott horton.org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend. Oh, yeah, and buy my books. fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and the great Ron Paul. The Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019. And thanks. Hey, guys, check out listen and think audio books. They’re listening think.com Calm, and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Rhys, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception. But essentially, they’re all libertarian audiobooks. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate, it seems like part of the problem might also be just kind of a matter of projection by the Americans against the Chinese that as our empire is falling apart and is being forced to retrench, at least in some ways, that Well, obviously they’re going to try to fill the vacuum and be the global hegemon in our place. And yet, I wonder if you think that that’s true. I mean, they do have, as you said, a very long tradition of just being China and not intervening around the world. All but then again, it’s been 100 years of chaos over there. So who knows what they want to do now? I don’t know.

James Bradley 17:07
Well, no, we have history what, you know what the Emperor wants. The Emperor in that was at the 11th or 12th century sent this unique Admiral out, he had the largest fleet of ships that were ever out in the sea, it was only equaled until World War Two. If you can imagine they had that like 700 doctors in the fleet. And they, they built this huge fleet of ships. And they went all over the world, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia. And they brought back you know, the artifacts and food from all over the world. And the mandarins and the Emperor said, What is this there’s all we you know, in the world, there’s only barbarians a bad food, and they burnt all the ships and they said we’re not going out to the rest of the world. You China could have been conquering countries for thousands of years. And they weren’t interested in it’s it’s more of an inward looking country, you know, the capitals in Beijing, in the middle of the country. This is a land country. This is not a project power outside and invade other countries country. I’m not saying, you know, there’s such wonderful people and I’m naive. No, I’m just looking at history who invaded China and World War Two, the Japanese. The Chinese didn’t invade. Others, the South China Sea. Okay, let’s worry about the South South China Sea. Let’s look at the last 66 in my lifetime. Let’s count up the deaths from China in the South China Sea. I don’t know if Are there any? Let’s see Americans. john mccain was flying off aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. I interviewed hundreds of Vietnamese who are bombed from you know, South China Sea Ships 3 million people died because of the American presence in the South China Sea. So I don’t see this argument that the world’s gonna fall apart if the Emperor keeps open the South China Sea is his lane.

Scott Horton 19:14
All right, but the big one is Taiwan. How many million people live in Taiwan now?

James Bradley 19:19
daughter lives there in the downtown Taipei. I go to Taipei an awful lot. That is a big one. And short term. It’s just an argument, you know. And long term, it’s part of China. I mean, if you look at back long term in I, let’s see, I document this in the Imperial cruise, and also the China mirage. You can see that yes, Taiwan was under Chinese influence. And it was an American general who got the Japanese to invade I think it was an 1878 and start to poke around Taiwan. So historic. It was Chinese and someday it will be Chinese. And it’ll probably be, you know, folded in peacefully. But the Emperor has got a few centuries to wait.

Scott Horton 20:10
Now, so you don’t think it’s an emergency that the Chinese might attack and try to take over Taiwan sometime soon?

James Bradley 20:16
Well, who knows, but they didn’t do it yesterday. And, you know, but that See, that’s their waters. It’s like, let’s it to the American public, I just say, Okay, put an enormous Chinese presence in Bermuda or in the Bahamas. And and China’s sell in the Bahamas, you know, aggressive weaponry that could hit Washington, DC. Yeah. We’re not talking. I’m not talking right or wrong. I’m just saying. I don’t think you know, like I question Why are Americans debating what China doing and what about the I mean, what’s going on here? debate about San Diego. I mean debate about Miami or something. I’m from Wisconsin. And if you had taken, let’s say some people from New Orleans who really were in New Orleans well, and brought them up to Wisconsin and tried to run Wisconsin, like they ran New Orleans, we’d go absolutely nuts. They can’t understand Wisconsin, they don’t know our traditions. You know, it’s, it’s just it that can’t be done. But we think we can take the American military and send them someplace and have a good outcome where they don’t even speak the language. Hmm. So I just asked America, America to pull back. I mean, I just interviewed David vine who wrote bass nation. And he said, you know, James, if he cut the American military budget by half, we’re still the largest military by far. Right. And I mean, if you eat Ray McGovern, who says we have to have China’s in enemy because That’s the only reason you can squeeze the American taxpayer for 50% of his taxes is to have a huge enemy. And Russia got boring in the Middle East isn’t profitable enough?

Scott Horton 22:10
Yeah, it does seem like the Air Force in the army prefer picking on Russia and the Navy in the Marine Corps prefer picking on China, which is sort of all you need to know. Right? This is just parochial interests of, you know, corrupt, self interested bureaucracies here doing what they do. But here’s the thing I want to ask you about. I noticed this all the time, in regards to Russia and China, and all the war plans, you know, they have the air sea battle plan and all of this stuff. And they have their various theories for fighting with the Russians as well. And I just hear this all the time discussions in DC and among military people and think tankers and what have you about fighting Russia and or China with conventional weapons. And it’s discussed in a way where the best I can tell The phenomenon works like this. It goes without saying that they got nukes, everybody knows they got nukes, they got h bombs, they could destroy all our biggest cities in one day. And we all know that and everybody knows that it’s not in dispute. It’s not controversial or in discussion. But so because it goes without saying, it literally goes unsaid. And then, for time after time, after time, they talk about, Hey, you know, it could really be a lot of fun, fighting a big naval battle against, you know, big Naval War against China. And this could be, you know, all we ever dreamed of, in the excitement as naval warriors, this kind of thing. And just ignoring the fact that if we ever do really have a fight with China, that it’s almost certain that we’ll lose San Francisco and LA, and possibly Denver and New York and DC and Houston and every, you know, major city in America, and they only need hundreds, and that’s how many they have. But I just wondered, I mean, do you notice that there’s there really is More talk all the time about, you know, this air sea battle strategy and this kind of thing where we could really get into a war if you listen to these guys.

James Bradley 24:10
Well, let’s talk about listening to these guys. I mean, America has said, we’re going to have a I mean, we have a war college. It’s called the War College. We have West Point what I think that what’s the official name of West Point, the United States Military Academy, and we’ve got the Air Force Academy, we have the Naval Academy, so what are they studying, you know, gardening or, you know, surfing or or, you know, hydroponics. They’re studying war. So, yeah, there’s a lot of war plans when you’ve got colleges turning out really bright people whose job it is to have war plans.

Scott Horton 24:53
Yeah, well, and you know, I was still a kid during the Cold War. I remember it, you know, pretty well, but You know, even at the height of the brinksmanship in the early 80s, the idea was that Yeah, but we’re not really gonna fight them, because we can’t. And everybody knows that ronald reagan don’t want to fight them anymore. And they want to fight us, and so kind of don’t worry about it. But things seem actually worse now than then it seemed like it was a more stable kind of a situation with the Soviet bloc there the way it was, and all that and where are the Americans? Even the Reaganites seem to be a lot more rational than the people who represent the centrist foreign policy consensus now.

James Bradley 25:39
Well, I don’t know what exactly what to say about that. I, Trump doesn’t want more. That’s kind of obvious, if you look, you know, globally, but the president is not in control of the entire situation. And let’s say there was a mistake. See, this is what the the real geniuses, and I’m not in that category. But john Pilcher, the Australian journalist who did the great documentary that’s online called the coming war with China. I’m in it. And Michael Claire, who I mentioned in this interview earlier, what they’re concerned about are accidents. Not you know, President g wanting to go to war President Trump wanting to go to war, but oh my god, something happened and there’s 70,000 dead Chinese and the something came from Okay. Now. What could the president of China do? Even if he doesn’t want to fight? You know what I mean? Oh, 4000 Americans are dead in a sunken aircraft carrier. Control prevent it. Could any president stop war at that point? Right. What they’re concerned about is an accident that I brought up john Pilger, in his documentary the coming war with China in there. He interviews the guy who got the order on Okinawa to nuke China and Russia. So it was in the 60s. It’s a true story documents. And so these accidents have happened.

Scott Horton 27:14
And you’re saying, This guy got an order? That was the mistaken order that he refused to carry out?

James Bradley 27:19
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s a it’s a famous story. And it’s documented in in pillagers. I mean, it’s documented many places, but he brings it out and actually interviews the people. So, you know, accidents happen. We’re humans. And that’s what these big thinkers are really concerned about is that there’s just so much movement, intention, and tit for tat going on right now, between China and America that an accident could happen. accident, flames, public opinion. And then we’re not talking about the decisions of presidents in Beijing or Washington. We’re talking talking about forced hands.

Scott Horton 27:56
Yep. And when you talk about those different war plans, I mean, Oftentimes, it seems like, you know, the blue binder on the shelf there essentially is written in stone. And so if the war plan says in the event of x, you do that, then they just do that. And it seems like, you know, so many governmental type things, thinking goes off. And the the previously provided structure kind of takes over, you know, back when, as Ellsberg talks about in his book, the doomsday machine, when when he took over nuclear war planning in the Kennedy administration, the plan was that if war had broken out over Berlin, that they were to nuke every city in the Soviet Union and China, you know, and just kill however many hundreds of millions of people, even on the very first day, and that there were no other plans, that if, in other words, if the Soviets had decided to conquer Western Berlin that That’s exactly what would have happened. And there wasn’t anyone in the chain of command to say no, no, just let’s implement page two, but not page three of the plan or anything like that. You know, it’s all just kind of automatic at that point.

James Bradley 29:12
You know, reading daniel ellsberg books, I mean, just when it’s nonfiction, he’s talking about, you know, the egghead, high national security situation he was in if your listeners don’t know, you know, he was an assistant to McNamara and Vietnam and nuclear policy, and he’s just a fantastic guy. But reading his books, you know, you don’t need science fiction. When you read what Ellsberg was talking about, at these meetings, what they’re actually thinking about,

Scott Horton 29:41
yep, yeah. He says when he and his buddy from the RAND Corporation went and saw Dr. Strangelove that they walked out of there saying, Man, that’s not a satire, that’s a documentary.

James Bradley 29:50
This is ya know, really how we do business. What are we doing? No, it’s true. And then he, you know, he knew And then when Kissinger got promoted to national security director, what national security director, Ellsberg went to him and said, You know, you’re going to get more stupid, because there’s all these classifications. So let’s say we have a team of 10 people, well, I got the lowest classification. So I don’t know what you know, and you have a little more classification. So you know, more than I know, but you don’t know as much as the other person up the line. And then if Henry Kissinger is on the top of the totem pole, and so he’s listening to his team of 30 people, but he has a higher classification. So he has information they don’t. And then as he says, you just become stupid in this highly classified secretive machine.

Scott Horton 30:42
Yep, that’s exactly it and had no regard whatsoever for anybody with open source information because what could they possibly know since they don’t have access to the secrets, even though a lot of times the real context that matters is you know, much broader and not secret, but Those kind of voices get completely ignored by essentially this cult of, you know, je s employment, right?

James Bradley 31:09
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned today’s present leadership and I don’t want to talk politically because I don’t care Trump Obama Bush, you know, Republican left, right. That’s not my game. I’m out in the Pacific. You’re just counting who’s doing what. And, oh my god, Trump is Trump is a peacenik compared to Obama who was bombing nine countries at one point, the pivot to Asia is is a brock obama, Hillary Clinton thing, the the Clarion, the South China Sea as a place that we that America would fight. That was that was from the mouth of Hillary Clinton.

Scott Horton 31:45
Right. So she wrote that article in foreign policy announcing the whole thing.

James Bradley 31:50
So people, you know, Trump and there’s going to be war and I mean, I heard from friends, you know, we’re going to go to war with Korea and the beginning of the administration, and then there’s a We’re here and there’s war here and and what are you talking about? This is all mythical. This idea that Donald Trump is going to go to war, where is it? Whereas with Obama, there was a lot of war and a lot of droning. And the movement, the reason we’re even talking about conflict with China that came out of the Obama administration with Secretary of State Clinton.

Scott Horton 32:21
Yep. Although in the aftermath of the virus and all of that it looks like things are getting pretty ugly. Trump was talking the other day about just cutting off all trade with China altogether.

James Bradley 32:31
Talking. No, I got the talk. Can I get it? Can I talk about talking? Yeah, Australia, here in Australia, they’re rabidly anti Chinese right now. And I mean, some of the some of the commentary is almost comical, but you know, anti Chinese. Well, then, the Australian media exploded because the Chinese said, you know, your Australia, your mouth and off so much. We don’t want Buy your wine. And I think it was wine and beef, some types of wine and some types of beef and oh my god that newspapers are full of this. Well, a friend of mine said, look at iron ore. So what he says the game between China and Australia is all about iron ore. You can’t make steel with iron ore and Australia has 65% of the world’s iron ore. And so at the same moment that the Australian newspapers are saying, oh, they’re not gonna buy our wine, the Chinese and Australians we’re negotiating import IRS regulations that become easier for iron ore, we want to buy more. In other words, China is upping the amount of imports that they will take into China. But with the other hand, they’re talking talking, yeah, so Trump talks and says this about China and whatever, you know, he didn’t bond Beijing. Obama didn’t say all those words and he bombed places. So I’ll take Trump’s talk. I like it. It’s nice and it’s it’s peace. He was beating up the North Korean leader and you know, what was it a missile man or something? And, you know, but there’s no war. He went mad. It’s the I it’s a Trump way. I don’t understand it, but I’m out in the Pacific. And I don’t see Trump, you know, or mon green out here.

Scott Horton 34:20
Right? Well, yeah, like you say, if he wants to talk tough, who cares? As long as he’s doing the right thing, as we saw on North Korea, he’s made more progress than any president since the end of the Cold War. Well, I don’t know Clinton had that pretty good Agreed Framework deal in 94. But never did live up to that. And

James Bradley 34:38
I really don’t. And I don’t mean to get political for Trump or against Trump.

Scott Horton 34:43
Yeah, no, I hear you. It’s just a matter of policy. No partisanship on this show anyway, so it’s fine.

James Bradley 34:49
You know, but um, it people really do ignore the eight years of Obama and the amount of warmaking that went on there. And Trump is building up the military, but you know, we haven’t broken out into war. So he’s a piece like compared to the last two presidents.

Scott Horton 35:09
That’s true. I mean, Bush and Obama, conservatively speaking, probably killed about a million people each. And Trump at most is in, you know, probably half a million. He certainly helped to wage a genocidal war in Yemen has been the very worst bit of it. He escalated start.

James Bradley 35:28
Again, no defense of Trump, but that was the machinery was in place with Obama. Obama started that.

Scott Horton 35:35
Yeah, no, he inherited all of those wars, and he’s actually doing everything he can to wrap up the one in Afghanistan.

James Bradley 35:41
Yeah. Really.

Sorry. And, and again, I don’t want to Obama versus Trump, but right now. tough talk against China. Well, gee, there’s an election. Gee, the American people say no. document this in my book about World War Two. The American people, you know, we came from Europe generally, you know, especially at that time, and wow, they were the American people were debating, you know, you know, Northern Italy versus this place in France and should we move troops here and but in terms of in terms of Asia, they were just ready. It was like 90% ready to go to war with Japan. Lindenberg was saying, No, we shouldn’t fight Germany, America first and, you know, let’s stay peaceful. But you know, Japan was just bombed, you know, whatever out of them. And right now, it isn’t Trump beating up China. It’s Trump looking at the polls. 80 to 90% of Americans are upset with China, anti China. Well, guess what I’m running for president. I’m gonna say some anti China things. I need to get elected. You know, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a campaign speech slide and his eldest son sent to them after the speech, Dad, you lied. And Roosevelt said, you know, the job of the President, I gotta get elected first. That’s the only thing that matters.

Scott Horton 37:10
Yep. Well, of course, they rationalize everything that they do and say like that. And always, my

James Bradley 37:16
point is my point is Trump, you know, why is Trump gonna say something in the next few months? It’s to get elected?

Scott Horton 37:24
Well, you know, Biden also is talking it up against China and claim Yeah, that yeah, it’s Trump, who’s the one who’s rolling over for them all the time, etc.

James Bradley 37:34
But I mean, you know, and then I could sound cynical when I say that people might think that cynic No, no, this is the system we set up. This guy’s got to get elected, you know, and they look at what the American people want. And if the American people are all of a sudden polling 90% for Red Hats, or I don’t, I don’t mean to say that because that’s a trump hat. But if they’re pulling for you know, surfboards, Trump is going to To be talking about surfboards, and the American public, our polling anti China once again, you know what all this trade stuff about how China rip this off? Why don’t we do this? I’m in New Zealand, I’ll fly to America. Let’s go into an American home. And there’ll be a big screen TV now we’ll do some deep research. We’ll look at that TV. Oh my god that’s made in China. Okay, we’re getting close here. Now we’ll look at the receipt. Where’d that come from? We got to get them. It came from Walmart. You know what I mean? If we have a problem with trade with China, let’s talk to Walmart, which was the front for Chinese goods. That’s how Walmart grew. That television is in that American consumers house because it’s an excellent value because it’s high quality and kept American inflation down. So it’s a bigger story than this simple black and white China’s bad but If you keep it black and white, China’s bad 80 90% of Americans, Democrats, Republicans left right are polling with you.

Scott Horton 39:09
Yep. Well, I wonder if they’ll regret it for one, you know, half of a fraction of an instant as they’re being vaporized by hydrogen fusion one day not too soon over it, but hey, as long as it makes them feel better for now, I guess that’s all right.

James Bradley 39:29
Well, I don’t know that’s above my intelligence level, the hydrogen fuse. You’re gonna have to take us through that once again. I’ll just watch the

Scott Horton 39:38
nukes they burn real hot. I mean, that’s really all you need to know.

James Bradley 39:44
Yeah, it’s it’s, uh, I don’t know, there’s a lot of rhetoric and there’s a lot of tension. But I don’t. The guys I’m interviewing on I have a podcast channel called untold Pacific and I have a section called war. with China question mark, and I’m bringing experts on who really do know, deep knowledge. And they all say there’s, you know, the leadership has no intention on either side. But there’s a potential for accidents is kind of the bottom line, right? So all the anti American stuff in China and all the anti Chinese stuff in America, these political leaders have to maintain their power. And it’s, I’m saying it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s well enough from the people. I don’t look at Trump. And what he’s saying about China, I look at the American people saying 80 90% were mad with China, and then it comes out, of course, out of Biden’s and Trump’s mouth,

Scott Horton 40:42
yeah. necessarily translate into any specific policies against them. I mean, that much is up to the government to exploit that sentiment. But it is always regretful when the people are even worse than the politicians on their feelings toward foreign countries. That’s the last thing we need in the World.

James Bradley 41:01
Well, the, I mean, I wrote a whole book about this. When when Mao said, you know, the Christian leader Chiang Kai Shek, you get out of here and Chiang Kai Shek was flushed out to Taiwan. We just this this was unspeakable. I mean, we just couldn’t face it. And we stopped relations with the biggest country in the world. See, everybody says Nixon opened up China. No, I documented my book. Mao was right into Franklin Roosevelt, hey, you’ve got the capital. We’ve got the workers and we need to work together, you know, to have this globalization industrialization. Mao, Mao didn’t like Moscow. He wanted Wall Street. Right. So the globalization, the industrialization that’s taken place in the last 20 years, Mao was writing to FDR about that Mao wanted to come to the White House to explain the benefits of American Chinese friendship. America slapped his hand over He tried with trohman he tried with Eisenhower. He tried with Kennedy. He tried, you know, and then he

Scott Horton 42:06
tried communism. It was a disaster. It’s too bad. They didn’t take him up on his offer in the first place.

James Bradley 42:13
But I’m talking about relations between I’m talking about Nixon opening up China. Yeah. Mao had his hand out all that time, Nixon was the one who, who finally shook his head. Yep.

Scott Horton 42:26
All right, well, listen, I sorry, I didn’t have a chance to read this book. But I’m gonna get my hands on it. And and maybe this will be my first step on catching up on the, you know, China, part of the American Imperial story as it’s being written now. So Scott, really appreciate your time, James.

James Bradley 42:48
Yeah, and I appreciate it if you’re agreed my book, The China Mirage, but I also want to say take a look at the documentary that’s online. It’s called common war with China by john Pilger. brilliant guy. And then take a look at the writings of Michael Claire KLRE. Oh, yeah.

Scott Horton 43:06
Claire well,

James Bradley 43:08
so war with China is already happening in there. He talks about the motivations of both sides. And it’s brilliant.

Scott Horton 43:17
Great. Yeah, I was. I had that queued up to watch. But then I saw it was two hours and I just didn’t have the chance to get to it today, but I definitely will watch that. And I’m sorry, it’s john pillager is the director and then what is it called again?

James Bradley 43:29
the coming war with China coming to China.

Scott Horton 43:32
Okay, great. All right, you guys. So that is James Bradley. He is the author of the China Mirage and of course, Flags of Our fathers and imperial cruise. And, and, oh, you can find his own website at untold pacific.com as well. Thanks again.

James Bradley 43:53
Okay, Scott, thank you for having me.

Scott Horton 43:56
The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org