05/03/13 – Robert Greenwald – The Scott Horton Show

Oh man, I'm late.
I sure hope I can make my flight.
Stand there!
Me?
I am standing here.
Come here!
Okay.
Hands up!
Turn around!
Whoa, easy!
Into the scanner!
Ooh, what's this in your pants?
Hey, slow down!
It's just my- Hold it right there!
Your wallet has tripped the metal detector!
What's this?
The Bill of R- That's right!
It's just a harmless, stainless steel, business card-sized copy of the Bill of Rights from SecurityEdition.com.
There for exposing the TSA as a bunch of liberty-destroying goons who've never protected anyone from anything.
Sir, now give me back my wallet and get out of my way.
Got a plane to catch.
Have a nice day.
Play a leading role in the security theater with the Bill of Rights Security Edition from SecurityEdition.com.
It's the size of a business card, so it fits right in your wallet.
And it's guaranteed to trip the metal detectors wherever the police state goes.
That's SecurityEdition.com.
And don't forget their great Fourth Amendment socks!
Hey, guys!
I got his laptop!
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's the Scott Horton Show.
I'm him.
And first up today is the great filmmaker Robert Greenwald.
I'm begging you, first of all, to go and look at Rethinking Afghanistan.
It's a few years old now, and they didn't take his advice.
They went ahead and escalated it anyway, but it's such an important documentary.
I really do hope that you'll take a look at it.
And then the new one, just coming out and maybe in a theater near you, is called The War on Whistleblowers.
Free press.
The free press in the national security state.
Welcome back to the show, Robert.
How are you doing?
I'm doing wonderful.
And I just want to make sure that people know if they go to waronwhistleblowers.com, they can get a free, as in free, DVD if they agree to have some kind of screening or a house party.
And so it's very simple.
We've had a wonderful donor who thinks word should be gotten out about whistleblowers, the national security state, the media.
And I hope people will take advantage of it and get the free one and screen it.
Wow, me too.
Yeah, I had no idea about that.
That's absolutely great.
Again, and then it's just waronwhistleblowers.com, right?
I have it here somewhere.
Yep.waronwhistleblowers.com.
Free DVD as long as you promise to show it to your buds.
You know, I think that's great.
Exactly.
You know, these films, as you know, are only impactful to the degree that people like you and your listeners help spread the word.
We don't have Hollywood studio budgets, but we have thousands and thousands of people around the country who want to be involved, who want to do something, and who want to connect the dots.
Yeah.
Well, and now listen, this is such an important subject.
Jeez, I thought that there were already laws that said that, you know, leaking is one thing and whistleblowing is another.
And if you're a whistleblower, then all these protections kick in and they can't just lock you up.
But your documentary tells the story that not only can they lock you up, they'll charge you with espionage as though you're actually working for the Russians or something, even if it's the most obvious case of just pure whistleblowing.
Well, there are some very good laws protecting some whistleblowers, and the Obama administration has done some good things there.
But where it's been a tragedy and a disaster is on national security state whistleblowers.
And this goes on no matter who's in office, no matter who's the president.
The national security state, which believes in secrecy, uses, as you said, every tool at their advantage, lawsuits, threats, and the people in the film, to their credit, have stood up, these whistleblowers.
They've seen something and they said, you know, I can't be silent.
I have to tell the story.
This is fraud.
This is abuse.
This is misuse of my dollars.
This is breaking the laws on illegal wiretapping.
And so we highlight these personal and, I think, very moving stories of real heroes.
Right.
Yeah, you know, I was thinking, too, I really like the way you did this thing.
It becomes very easy to identify with, particularly Thomas Tam and Thomas Drake, both of those.
Well, all of the guys, really.
But you can really see what they're going through.
I mean, they both of those guys really wear it on their sleeves.
And maybe even the mixed feelings that they kind of have, like they know they did the right thing.
But, boy, things have really not worked out for the best like they should have when you do the right thing.
And it's just it's very well done.
It's really easy to see what these guys have given up in order to do what they knew was the right thing.
Thank you.
Well, I think I think that, as we say in the film, these are really heroes who should be given parades down the main streets of cities.
The last thing we should be doing is prosecuting them.
Franz Geil, who is in the film, is literally saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives by insisting that the MRAP vehicle be used in Iraq instead of the vehicle that had been over there.
And as he says, he came right up against the military industrial complex, which is dedicated to its own continued being, or as Dana Priest says, like a self-licking ice cream cone, which is one of the great lines in the film.
And also that there's profit motive at stake.
So there's lots of issues here.
And appropriately for your program and your work, they're all connected to the fact that when we are a country perpetually at war, these are the kinds of challenges, strategies, tragedies and other incidents that it's important that we highlight, that we use the film and that we talk about.
Well, you know, one thing that really comes across to in all the different individual stories is the economics of the military industrial complex and just how that works and how from the reputation of a general who's been responsible for some program for a little while to the profit margin of Lockheed or whatever other contractor is involved.
All the incentives seem to be built toward cover up and keep going and doing the wrong thing, where, you know, whatever you think of free market capitalism, at some point, usually the boss gets mad if his bottom line is just being bled over stupid mistakes and he will fire somebody.
He will correct the mistake at some point, whereas when it's government money, just it's all in.
It's the biggest honeypot in the world.
So everybody just it doesn't matter how bad you fail.
You can just keep reaching in.
Well, you know, capitalism is always functioned to the degree you believe is supported.
It's functioned when there are a series of protections and restraints.
What we have now is all the restraints have been taken off.
So you have everybody from the Koch brothers on up or down running wild with almost no laws that keep them in control and that protect the what you want to call it, the fairness, the equity, the society, that's based on a way that we treat each other and the way that we interact.
Well, but I mean, with the Pentagon, with Pentagon spending, with the capitalists that do their business with the Pentagon, they don't even have to keep their customer happy.
The customer doesn't care whether the product is any good or not.
They'll just keep buying ships that will break in half.
They don't care.
Right.
Well, that's the point.
And, you know, we in our Iraq for sale film, we talked about this cost plus contracts.
Just think about that for a minute.
You get the cost of the contract plus you get a built in percentage.
Now, that's it.
That's if we've ever seen one, an incentive for creating all cost overruns and spending more money.
And then you have the Pentagon, which literally doesn't even do an audit of itself because it's too big.
So they don't know where all of our money is going.
And when you have these large corporations taking and outsourcing so many critical functions that should be stayed in the government, this should not be the profit motive in any shape or form around war.
And that wall has sadly been broken down.
And what these whistleblowers point out in the film, and again, not in a wonky fashion, but very personal human story, seeing something bad and saying, I will not remain silent.
Right.
All right.
Now, I brought up the ship.
So let's talk about Michael DeCourt there.
He was.
What exactly was his position at Lockheed?
Well, Michael was an engineer and he discovered very well at some point in his job that and, you know, this is hard to believe.
But they were building radios.
The radios were built to go on ships.
Ships go in water.
The radios were not waterproof.
And, you know, it defies logic if you think about it.
And there's a wonderful clip in the film where Michael is on 60 Minutes explaining that to them.
And the commentator says, hard to believe.
And Michael says, yes, sir.
Very hard to believe.
And for his speaking out, he also was punished, as Thomas Drake was, as Tom Tam was, as Franz Geil.
Fortunately, Franz Geil, with the great work of Pogo and Gap, who do organizing work and help protect whistleblowers, he was able to get his job back.
That's why I think the film can play an important role, not just about individual jobs, which, of course, is important, but understanding the need to protect these people.
And as some of the great journalists in the film said, because we've got all kinds of, as you know, investigative journalists speaking out, saying you really need these basic functions protected if you're going to have democracy.
Right.
I mean, especially when they keep so much secret.
We have to have those kind of investigative reporters, but they have to be able to talk to sources.
Or we can't even have the slightest modicum of anything you could even call a self-government with a straight face around here, you know?
Yes.
Well, that's exactly right.
And that's what got us doing the film, the realization that there was the possibility, sort of using all this pressure, using these threats, using these lawsuits, that a very important avenue of the way you and I and all of your listeners get information was going to be cut off.
And we opened the movie with a kind of – we were calling it a valentine to whistleblowers, reminding people of, you know, everybody from Daniel Ellsberg on Forward and Backwards who have played an important role as whistleblowers and why that allows us to learn things, to know things, to find out things, and therefore why we damn well want to be aware and raise some hell about it.
And now, onto court real quick.
It wasn't just the radios.
Didn't he also say that the boats that they were buying from Lockheed would actually, in rough seas, likely break in half and sink?
That the hulls were not to be trusted?
Yes.
He mentioned that some people came to him with that information, exactly.
And that's pretty serious of a cover-up to, well, you know what, let's not do anything about that.
Let's just keep making more, and we'll let it be someone else's problem.
How about the tanks in Iraq?
You know, I mean, the Marines were asking, asking for this.
And Franz speaks up, and they try to punish him.
I mean, you know, this is very clearly measurable lives being saved.
Or when Tom Drake speaks out, because laws are being broken with illegal wiretapping, and they say, oh, yeah, you know what, we're threatening you as a spy.
Right, yeah.
Thomas Drake and Thomas Tam, both, they had different aspects that they blew the whistle on the warrantless wiretapping, and the government really went after them, and I guess Drake ended up pleading guilty to half a misdemeanor or something after they were threatening him with lifetimes in prison and espionage as though he was a spy for a foreign power.
Right.
As Jess Raddick, who did a brilliant job in organizing and working for Tom Drake, says, his punishment was the equivalent of a parking ticket after they started out with incredible attempts to silence him.
But it's also more than just trying to silence Tom Drake or Tom Tam.
It's really an effort to send a message to shut up other people, because the national security state, above all, believes in secrets, believes in silence, believes in protecting itself.
And to the degree that by their threats and actions against any of the whistleblowers, they can discourage others from speaking up and out, they've been successful, which is, again, the reason for the film, and that I hope people will get copies free and screen it.
Yeah.
And again, that's waronwhistleblowers.com.
You get the DVD free if you promise to show it to others, which is the best deal in town to watch a documentary like this.
And again, it's very well done.
One more thing you talk about here, and you couldn't emphasize enough, you couldn't possibly emphasize enough the chilling effect and how important it is of just kind of the seen and the unseen here.
We don't know which whistleblowers might have come forward by now if the clampdown hadn't been quite so hard.
And I know my wife is an investigative reporter, and sources just became harder to reach and harder to get anything good out of, and not just for her, but for a lot of other people.
Exactly.
That's why we need everyone's help, because the reporters can't do this alone, and whistleblowers can't do this alone.
It takes all of us.
Yep.
And, oh, one thing real quick here, too, is about Bradley Manning.
I was going to ask you, he doesn't seem to get that much coverage in the movie, and I wondered if there's a reason.
Well, I think that the Bradley Manning case, obviously, is a critically important one, and it deserves, and it's getting its own movie or movies.
So, I didn't want to just skim the surface, but I wanted to bring out some stories that perhaps weren't as well known, and where we could, again, help people understand it's not one case, it's not two cases, multiple cases, multiple people, clearly speaking up and out for democracy.
Yep.
Okay.
Right on.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
I really appreciate it, Robert.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
All right, everybody.
That is Robert Greenwald.
He is the producer of the new movie and director of the new movie, War on Whistleblowers, free press and a national security state.
And of course, they'll take care of all your custom printing for your band or your business at thebumpersticker.com.
That's libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
CNI stands against America's negative role in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war party's relentless push to bomb Iran, and the roles played by twisted Christian Zionism and neocon-engineered Islamophobia in justifying it all.
The Council for the National Interest works tirelessly to expose and oppose our government's most destructive policies, but they can't do it without you.
Support CNI's push to straighten out America's crooked course.
Check out the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
And click Donate under About Us at the top of the page.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
First of all, thanks to the show's sponsors and donors who make it possible for me to do this.
Secondly, I need more sponsors and more donors if the show is to continue.
ScottHorton.org.
Donate has all the links to use PayPal, Give.org, Google Wallet, WePay.com, and even Bitcoins to make a donation in any amount.
You can also sign up for monthly donations of small and medium-sized amounts through PayPal and Give.org.
Again, that's ScottHorton.org.
Donate for all the links.
To advertise on the site or the show, email me, scott at scotthorton.org.
And thanks.
Or to contribute, just look for the big red Donate button at the top of fff.org.
Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
See what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
And Mike's got a great new book coming out, so also keep your eye on writermichaelswanson.com for more details.