← John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
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- [00:00]
John Kiriakou
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- [00:29]
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- [01:29]
John Kiriakou
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Alan Katz
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John Kiriakou
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Alan Katz
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John Kiriakou
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Alan Katz
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John Kiriakou
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Alan Katz
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John Kiriakou
This podcast, it's a Costard and Touchstone production.
- [02:00]
Alan Katz
Part of what motivates whistleblowers, and it certainly motivated me, is the absolute belief that we are obligated. Obligated to call out our government when it breaks the law. If we don't try and stop it by telling Americans what they deserve to know, then who will? I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program because it broke the law and Americans needed to know what their government was doing in their name and on their behalf. A few months after I began calling Loretto prison home. That's with extra large quotation marks around it, a National Security Agency technical contractor named Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to the Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post. These documents told a damning story about how several top secret US And British government mass surveillance programs were violating the law and infringing on the rights of Americans and others. What made it worse, these leaked documents revealed, was that these mass surveillance programs were being run by America's NSA with the cooperation of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance. That's American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander spy agencies, along with the willing cooperation of telecommunications companies and European governments. That, it turned out, was a whole lot of illegal spying activity. Not a good look for anyone involved, but especially not for the United States. And we had specific laws prohibiting this kind of thing, at least in theory. I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop. What makes a spy tick? This is part eight of our series, Doing Time Like a Spy. As always, we thank you for liking, rating, reviewing and commenting on the podcast. Hell, we thank you for just listening to the podcast. Before we talk about Ed Snowden and whistleblowing, I want to give you a few clues about what to expect as we continue to tell this story. That's actually the lead right there, that we plan to continue telling this story. And that's because, and we hope you agree, there is still so much story yet to tell. It comes down to what this episode is all about. Whistleblowing why whistleblowing matters now more than ever. Whistleblowers are a country's or a company's, or even a family's moral compass. We know where north is. We refuse to unknow it. That's the nagging tug. Sometimes, even in spite of who we've been up to that moment, the tug wins. Doing the right thing wins. Even as the consequences of doing the right thing scale ever upward. The whistleblower goes forward full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes. Ironically, Ed Snowden, who'd end up attacking government secrecy, began as an advocate of government secrecy. In particular, he railed against government officials who leaked classified information to newspapers. Ironic. Right after he learned what exactly government secrecy meant and what it was doing, he changed his mind about government secrecy and about the morality of leaking it to the news media. That would be completely in keeping with how Ed's colleagues in the NSA's Hawaii office saw him as principled and ultra competent, if somewhat eccentric, but above all, incredibly talented and incredibly intelligent. The NSA assigned Ed to their regional cryptological center, one of the 13 NSA hubs devoted to spying on foreign interests. The Chinese, especially, because Ed was so talented. Journalist Andy Greenberg, writing in Forbes in 2013, quoted another NSA staffer who said, quote, the NSA is full of smart people. But anybody who sat in a meeting with Ed Snowden will tell you that he was in a class of his own. That kid was a genius among geniuses, unquote. And as I said, he was a little eccentric. He wore a hoodie featuring a parody NSA logo. Instead of a key in an eagle's claws, it had a pair of eavesdropping headphones covering the bird's ears. He had skills and a conscience. Greenberg reported that Ed kept a copy of the Constitution on his desk, and he wandered the halls carrying a Rubik's Cube. He would leave small gifts on colleagues desks and once almost lost his job sticking up for a CO worker who was being disciplined. Ed Snowden understood the NSA and understood what the NSA was doing on a granular level. You know how we feel about granularity here. Well, when Ed did what he did, he knew what he was doing, and he knew exactly what he was talking about. And he knew that it was abstract. Absolutely wrong. Ed was born in June 1983. His father, Lonnie, was an officer in the U.S. coast Guard who had married his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth, known as Wendy. Young Ed, with his thick blonde hair and toothy smile, moved with his family from North Carolina to Maryland, within Washington, D.C. commuter belt. At 18, Ed was already an intelligent young man with impressive IT skills who posted regularly, although anonymously, on the popular technology website Ars Technic. That's a fascinating part of Ed's story, how we can see his evolution across time in his own writing and words. The early version of Ed, staunchly Republican and dedicated to personal liberty, knew more about computers than most people. We've talked in this podcast how America took its eye off the 911 ball when we invaded Iraq in 2003. Mistaken as that war was and remains, it awoke something inside Ed Snowden. He wrote that he felt, quote, an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression, unquote. In May 2004, he enlisted, reporting to Fort Benning in Georgia. Unfortunately for Ed, he and the army were not a good match. During infantry training, he broke both of his legs. Things went downhill from there. In the end, the army discharged him. He returned home to Maryland in 2005 and got a job as a security specialist at the University of Maryland's center for Advanced Study of langu. That job put Ed inside a covert NSA facility on the university's campus. The center worked closely with the US Intelligence community, providing advanced language training for Ed with his unequaled IT skills. It was all right place right Time he wrote this quote, the degree thing is crap, at least domestically. If you really have 10 years of solid provable IT experience, you can get a very well paying IT job. As Ed discovered, one could pretty much name one's own price or feel like they had. Ed named his at the CIA in 2006, where they made him a telecommunications information Systems officer. In 2007, the CIA sent Ed to Geneva, Switzerland, to oversee security for the CIA's computer network and computer security for U.S. diplomats. For what it's worth, the embassy's heating and air conditioning also were within his purview. Oddly enough, at that point, Ed was 24 years old, leaning libertarian. He liked John McCain, didn't support Obama, but wasn't against him either. That changed once Obama became president and sought to ban assault weapons. Ed's displeasure deepened when the New York Times, using leaked classified information, published a report about a secret Israeli plan to attack Iran. Interesting in retrospect, isn't it? We had no idea how innocent we were back then. Ed wrote in Ars Technica. Quote, wtf? New York Times. Are they trying to start a war? They're reporting classified shit. Moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this? Those people should be shot in the balls. That shit is classified for a reason, unquote. Ironically, even as Ed was stewing in that us versus them vibe, he was wrestling with the US he wrote later, quote, much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world. I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good, unquote. Plenty of people get disillusioned by life, by their relationships, by their jobs, and perhaps they rationalize it away. Ed couldn't rationalize away his disillusionment. Once it set in, it took root. In February 2009, Ed quit the CIA and went to work as a contractor for Dell computers at an NSA facility on a US Military base in Japan. He got the job because of his outstanding computer skills and top secret security clearance. Except now those attributes were sharing headspace with Ed's conscience. Between 2009 and 2012, Ed grew increasingly concerned about the NSA's aggressive surveillance activities. Ed had hoped and expected that under Obama's leadership, the NSA's overreach would diminish or go away. Except it didn't. It increased and it got worse. Ed wrote this quote, I watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in. They are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them, unquote. All the checks that had been built into the US system, all designed to keep the NSA from abusing its power, had failed. Ed wrote, quote, you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act, unquote. Ed would later articulate it this way, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. Ed began to appreciate that undefended rights can easily become vulnerable rights or no longer rights at all. In 2012, still a Dell contractor, Ed left Japan for Hawaii for that job at the NSA's Regional Cryptological Center. Except now Ed was, as the Guardian newspaper called him, a whistleblower in waiting. Whereas the news media sought me out and then I told them the truth. Ed arrived in Hawaii planning to reach out to the news media, that is the news media that was interested in civil liberties with the truth. And not all are. Ed wanted the news media to understand that to him this was not about revealing state secrets wholesale. Not at all. Ed was blowing the whistle on illegal behavior with far reaching implications that already had impacted ordinary law abiding Americans and others. I had anecdotal truth based on information I had learned and documents I had seen. Ed had the actual documents in his hand and he intended to expose them in order to tell America some terrible truths that it needed to hear. The challenge facing Ed Snowden, how exactly to do it? The NSA would later characterize Ed as a malicious hacker who cheated on an NSA entrance exam and whose work computers had to be destroyed after his departure for fear that he had infected them with some sort of malware. That's entirely inaccurate. But the mischaracterization isn't a bug here, as it was in my own case. Mischaracterization is very much the point. If Ed isn't the person the NSA says he is, then it's likely his crime isn't what they say it is either. Was Ed a malicious hacker who stole access to the NSA computers? Hardly. Ed can hack a computer, of course, but that was a gross mischaracterization. Andy Greenberg in Forbes magazine pointed out that Ed didn't dupe his co workers or anybody else into handing over their passwords, nor did he fabricate SSH keys. Keys to gain unauthorized access. No, everyone gave Ed full access willingly because he knew the system better than anyone. Else. As malware was never part of what Ed was doing, then we have to ask, what was the real reason the NSA had to destroy Ed's computers? If it wasn't malware making them dangerous, what was to the worried folks at the nsa? You see, that's the problem with lying. Looking at you, nsa, you don't get to control how other people perceive you. Like, for instance, if they perceive you as dishonest. None of us gets to control whether or not we have integrity. That's for other people to judge. And when we lose our integrity, it's just gone. I suspect something like that was roiling Ed Snowden's conscience in early 2013. He'd learned things that had changed his worldview, changed what he was willing to do to stop the thing he'd learned about. The question of how to pull it off remained a question. According to Luke Harding, writing in the Guardian in early 2013, ED turned down an offer from the CIA to join its Tailored Access Operations, a group of elite hackers opting instead to take a new job with the private contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. His new salary was $122,000 a year, plus a housing allowance. By all rights, he should have felt like the king of the world. But on April 4, he seemed preoccupied, as Luke Harding put it, quote, as if he was nursing a burden, unquote. That was according to Ed's father, Lon. The two had just had dinner. Ed had flown to the US Mainland to attend training sessions at Booz Allen's office near Fort Meade, Maryland. Ed told the South China Morning Post, quote, my position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world that the NSA hacked, unquote. That, he pointed out, was exactly why he had accepted the job. This from Luke Harding's Guardian coverage, quote. Ed was one of around 1,000 NSA sysadmins allowed to look at many parts of this system. Other users with Top Secret clearance weren't allowed to see all classified files. He could open a file without leaving an electronic trace. He was, in the words of one intelligence source, a ghost user able to haunt the Agency's hallowed places. He may also have used his administrator status to persuade others to entrust their login details to him, unquote. Ed was a man on a mission. He knew the system he had to exploit to accomplish his goal, and he exploited it fully. Thumb drives are forbidden to most staff, but a sysadmin like Ed could say that he was fixing a computer. He was fixing a user profile, and needed backup. While most NSA staff back in D.C. had already gone home for the night, Ed. Ed in Hawaii would start logging on for the day there. From his cozy, remote perch, he would reach deep inside NSA's servers. Four weeks into his new job, Ed told his bosses that he was unwell. He wanted some time off and requested unpaid leave. When they checked back with him, he told them that he had epilepsy, a condition that affects his mother. And then, on May 20, Ed vanished. Enter then Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald regularly received emails with tips of one kind or another. That was part of the job. But In December of 2012, one of Greenwald's readers, a mystery correspondent, told him that they had, quote, some stuff you might be interested in, unquote. At the time, if you remember, Ed was a Dell contractor working at the NSA's Regional Cryptological center in Hawaii. And he was wrestling with his conscience. Late January 2013, having failed to connect with Greenwald, Ed reached out to a friend of Greenwald's, the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. Ed suspected that she would be sympathetic to him and his story. For six years, between 2006 and 2012, every time Poitras entered the US agents from the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, would detain her, interrogate her, confiscate her laptops, cameras, notebooks, and mobile phones, and demand to know with whom she was meeting. Ed emailed Poitras, quote, I am a senior member of the intelligence community. This won't be a waste of your time, unquote. He asked for her encryption key, which she gave to him. As she later explained, she was intrigued. Quote, at that point, my thought was, either it's legit or it's entrapment, unquote. It's worth noting to me anyway, that Poitras described Ed as, quote, an amazing writer. Everything I got read like a thriller, unquote. That's when Ed dropped a bombshell. He had a copy of Presidential Policy Directive 20, a top secret 18 page document issued in October 2012 that showed the agency was tapping fiber optic cables, intercepting telephone landing points, and bugging on a global scale. And Ed could prove all of it. Summertime and living is easy.
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John Kiriakou
Am I right, John?
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Alan Katz
That is one of the best parts of summer, Alan. Living really does feel easier. You're about to travel. Good thing you've got a couple of quince pieces going with you. They are as relaxed and comfortable as I want to feel. That's why, whether I'm traveling or staying at home, I reach for the same Quince go anywhere pieces. Again and again, Quince focuses on well made essential they're the T shirt I reach for first every time. In all seriousness, I just bought another one today. They're my favorite T shirts too. And when the ocean breeze kicks in at night, as it does here in la, a Quint lightweight cotton sweater is sublime. And perfect for travel too, which these days has all kinds of new challenges that impact how you pack. So versatility really matters.
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John Kiriakou
You got to pack smart. Like a spy.
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Alan Katz
That's why a pair of Quince's 100% European linen pants and a couple of linen shirts are coming with me. They're breathable and easy to throw on. Sometimes I add a T shirt underneath for a whole other look. They're the summer upgrade anyone's rotation needs,
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John Kiriakou
starting at just $34. 10.
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Alan Katz
That's not a typo? No, it's not. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you're paying for exceptional quality, not for brand markup. Ethical factories matter. They matter to me. And Quince now has all kinds of other essentials beyond clothing. Essentials for travel, home, everyday life. But it all starts with great summertime threads that just feel like they belong on you. Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quints.comdeaddrop for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too, that is quints.com deaddrop
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John Kiriakou
Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressives name your price tool for years. Now with the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law.
- [21:05]
Alan Katz
If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone Family Family Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories. His amazing news photos just can't what it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job, taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this just the photographer will put you right there on the ground, right next to David, inside his head. In fact, it's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or@costardandtouchstone.com There's a link in this episode's show Notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone, like the Donor, A DNA Horror Story, the Hall Closet, Sage Wellness within, and the how not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead Drop over the next few weeks of spring 2013, the whistleblower carefully choreographed a meeting with both the journalist and the documentarian in Hong Kong. By the time they arrived, still unsure who their source was, they'd already sampled some of what Ed was offering and and they were blown away. First of all, they hadn't expected their source to look or to sound like Ed Snowden. Greenwald, in particular, had expected a much older, much more grizzled person. He feared for his own credibility and the credibility of the Guardian. But Ed's answers all satisfied his reasons for being a whistleblower also added up the NSA could bug anyone from the President down. While the NSA was supposed to collect only signals intelligence on foreign targets, it was already, quote, hoovering up metadata data from millions of Americans. Phone records, email headers, subject lines seized without acknowledgment or consent. From this, you could construct a complete electronic narrative of an individual's life, their friends, lovers, joys, sorrows, Everything. Unquote. But the NSA wasn't just collecting illegally, it was acting on what it had collected illegally from the Guardian. Quote, secret courts were compelling telecom providers to hand over data. What's more, pretty much all of Silicon Valley was involved with the nsa. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, even Steve Jobs. Apple, unquote. The NSA claimed it had direct access to the tech giant servers. It had even put secret backdoors into online encryption software used to make secure bank payments, weakening the system for everybody. The spy agencies had hijacked the Internet to quote Ed I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything that I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of love or friendship is recorded, unquote. While these journalists were learning the extent to which the NSA and gchq, the British intelligence establishment, and Silicon Valley had all acquiesced and or participated in this illegal activity, The NSA was slowly becoming aware that Ed had gone awol. Ed's work absence had triggered an automatic procedure when NSA staff don't turn up. The NSA and police had visited Ed's then girlfriend at their home in Hawaii. The CIA hadn't found Ed either, though they too were looking for him. That's pretty disconcerting, actually. All anyone had to do was pull flight records to see that Ed had gone to Hong Kong. It would have been as simple as that. There he should have been easy to find considering that he checked into the $330 a night Mira Hotel under his own name and paying the bill with his personal credit card. The Guardian believed it had something very, very real. Which of course it did. They decided to give the NSA a four hour window to comment and disavow the story. Sensing disaster, Washington geared up. The White House sent in its top guns for a conference call with the Guardian, hoping it could flatter and if necessary, bully the news media into delaying publication. But the Guardian held firm and they ran the story. Just like that, strange and unusual activities began to happen near or around the Guardian's US office and the homes of its editors. The spycraft being used against them had been cranked up to 11. Ed, meanwhile, declared his intention to go public. Documentarian poitras recorded a 12 minute interview between Ed and Greenwald. When the video dropped, the Guardian reported, it was like a bomb going off. The world was just beginning to learn the extent of the NSA's illegal behavior and Ed Snowden had just become the most hunted man on the planet. And then Ed vanished again. That he turned up in Russia was not a reflection of any new political leaning. He was actually traveling to Ecuador via Cuba, expecting political asylum. While in transit at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, the US Government revoked his passport, literally stranding him in the airport. Russia granted Ed's first temporary asylum and then later Russian citizenship. I had been in prison for three months and a few days when Dave woke me up in the middle of the night and whispered excitedly that someone had gone public with explosive information about the CIA and NSA spying on Americans. Dave was having trouble sleeping that night and he was listening to this national AM show called coast to Coast AM. Usually they talk about conspiracies and UFOs and things like that, but the Snowden story was breaking. Middle of the night, I turn on my own radio to try to get updates. Now at night, that's when a lot of stations on AM go to 50,000 watts. Even in Loretto, Pennsylvania, I could hear news stations from New York, Chicago, Toronto, even Dallas. KRLD in Dallas. So I start hearing about this whistleblower. Nobody knows who it is, but he released all this incredible information. It was a violation of this law and that law and the other law, and, oh, my God, the CIA and NSA are spying on us. Well, within just a few hours, it became clear that this whistleblower was a contractor who had been a CIA employee and was now working for Booz Allen at nsa. His name was Edward Snowden. Of course, every news outlet then attempted a deep dive into who Ed Snowden was. And every hour, the story's being updated. It was Dave that said, you know what? You should write a letter to this guy. Clearly, you guys operate in the same circles. You could write him a public letter through Fire Dog Lake and the Huffington Post, but you should write him a private letter, too. Certainly you have friends in common. Well, he was right. At the time, Dave was still claiming to be a CIA employee or a former CIA employee. I later was able to determine he had been very, very briefly a CIA contractor for a minute. But he knew enough and was insightful enough that, you know, he thought this was a good idea. And lo and behold, it was. I emailed my friend and attorney, the whistleblower activist Jesselyn Radack at the Government Accountability Project, and I said, jess, do you have a path to this Ed Snowden? She said, I have several paths to Ed Snowden. First of all, my dear friend and attorney Bruce Fine ended up representing Ed Snowden. Secondly, my dear friend and former CIA colleague Ray McGovern immediately reached out to Snowden and visited him. In the meantime, Snowden was on the run. He had gone to Hawaii, and then from Hawaii to Hong Kong. He was able to escape to Hong Kong. He bought a ticket to Ecuador. The Ecuadorians offered him asylum. So he was transiting Moscow airport when Secretary of State John Kerry disingenuously invalidated his passport and stranded him permanently, as it turned out, in Moscow. I especially hate it when I hear people say that Snowden defected to Russia. Oh, no, he didn't. John Kerry put him in Russia. This is all on John Kerry. In retrospect, it was a stroke of luck that Snowden didn't get to Ecuador. You might recall that the Obama administration forced a private jet carrying the president of Ecuador to land in Vienna, Austria. Forced, using two F16s to land in Vienna, Austria, because there was a rumor that Snowden was on board the plane. That's an act of war. You can't force a Sovereign's plane down and then search it. Snowden was not on the plane. He was in the transit lounge at Moscow Airport. Well, Julian Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and was there for years, something like nine years. The US Government, really. The CIA was successful in removing the left wing government of Ecuador and installing a right wing pro American government in Ecuador. The Ecuadorians gleefully gave up Julian Assange. Ed Snowden would likely be in a maximum security penitentiary today if he had made it to Ecuador. Instead, he has become a Russian citizen. He's a coder at a Russian social media company. His girlfriend moved from the United States to Moscow. They got married there and they have two little boys. So he's a Russian citizen living his best life right now. I decided, based on Dave's prodding, to write two letters, a public one and a private one, to Ed Snowden. The first one I just called an open letter to Ed Snowden. And I wrote this. Dear Ed, thank you for your revelations of government wrongdoing over the past week. You have done the country a great public service. I know that it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders right now. But as Americans begin to realize that we are devolving into a police state with the loss of civil liberties that entails, they will see your actions for what they are. Heroic. Remember the immortal words of Abraham. America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. That is what's happening to our country right now. Your whistleblowing will help to save us. I wanted to offer you the benefit of my own whistleblowing experience and aftermath so that you don't make the same mistakes that I made. First, find the best national security attorneys money can buy. I was blessed to be represented by legal titans. And although I was forced to take a plea, in the end, the shortness of my sentence is a testament to their expertise. Second, establish a website so that your supporters can follow your case, get your side of the story, and most importantly, make donations to support your defense. Third, you're going to need the support of prominent Americans and groups who can explain to the public why what you did is so important. Although most members of Congress are mindless lemmings following our national security leadership over a cliff, there are several clear thinkers on the Hill who could be important sources of support. Cultivate them. Reach out to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Government Accountability Project, and others like them who value our individual freedoms and who can advise you finally, and this is the most important advice that I can offer, do not under any circumstances cooperate with the FBI. FBI agents will lie, trick and deceive you. They'll twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not, supporters, well wishers and friends, all the while wearing wires to record your out of context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy. It's a part of the problem, not the solution. I wish you the very best of luck. I hope you can get to Iceland quickly and safely. There you will find a people and a government who care about the freedoms that we hold dear and for which our forefathers and veterans fought and died. Sincerely, John Kiriakou Now I said Iceland in that original letter because for a day, and it just happened to be the day that I wrote this letter, there were reports that the government of Iceland was willing to take him in. That would have been very difficult because Iceland is a member of NATO. It's also a member of the European Union and the Icelandic government likely could not have withstood the pressure that the US Was willing to put on it.
- [34:43]
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- [35:44]
John Kiriakou
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- [36:23]
Alan Katz
i followed this up with a private letter that I sent to Ray McGovern. Ray flew to Moscow, which he has done several times, and hand delivered the letter to Ed. Now, I'm proud to say that Ed later told the New York Times that he followed my case, and he followed especially the case of NSA whistleblower Tom Drake. And we inspired him to go public with his revelations. Now, Tom Drake's case was very, very important. And in this most recent war on whistleblowers, Tom's really was the first case. Tom was a member of the senior executive service at nsa, the National Security Agency. His first day on the job just happened to be September 11, 2001. As soon as he checked in for his first day, planes began hitting buildings. And Tom said that what unfolded before his very eyes made his hair stand up on the back of his neck. NSA was already ready to go with a computer program that would intercept every phone call, every text message, and every email made or sent by every American, period. That's clearly illegal. Tom knew, because he had been briefed, that there was a competing program that was written in such a way as to only target the communications of foreign nationals and would protect the civil liberties of Americans. He went to his boss and made a complaint. Nobody's going to listen. On September 11, 2001, they told him to mind his own business. He didn't know what he was talking about. So he went to the inspector general. Well, guess what? This program was so over top secret that the inspector general wasn't read into the compartment and didn't have any idea what in the world Tom was talking about. So he went to the general counsel, and the general counsel said, buddy, you're in over your head. You need to stop talking. Continuing through the chain of command, he then went to the Pentagon inspector general. NSA is an agency within the Defense Department. The Pentagon inspector general ratted him out to NSA security and said, you've got a problem over there. When he didn't get any relief from the Pentagon inspector general, he did exactly as we're all taught to do, and he went to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And for his trouble, he was rewarded with nine felony counts, seven counts of espionage, and two counts of theft of government property, with the property being the information which he walked out of the building with in his head. He hadn't done anything wrong. He knew he hadn't done anything wrong. Well, they were demanding 35 years in prison. It was a death sentence. It was the White House that was behind this. Prosecutorial zeal. You know, we blame. And I'm guilty of this. I blame so much of this on Barack Obama and the Obama administration. But it really did start with George W. Bush. Not to the extent that we saw under Obama, but it started. This case started with George W. Bush. There was finally a proffer meeting between Tom and his lawyers and the prosecutors at the Justice Department in which they specifically said, you have the blood of American soldiers on your hands. And he said, whose blood? Name one soldier whose blood I have on my hands. And they offered him a deal. 10 years, 20 years. Whatever it was, he said, forget it. I'm going to trial. They said, you're going to die in prison. And he said, I don't care. I'm going to fight you. 60 Minutes did an expose that ran the day before the trial began. And that night, the judge dismissed all the charges. He said, there's no case here. This is bona fide whistleblowing. There's no blood of American soldiers on his hands. But Ed Snowd said, look how brave this man is. He lost literally everything. His wife was also an NSA employee. And on the morning of his arrest, they went to her and they said, we have just arrested your husband and we're raiding your house right now. You are either with him or you're with us. And she said, I'm with you. He lost his five children. He's only now after two decades, rebuilding his relationship with his family. He lost everything. He ended up working for the next 10 years in the Apple store in Bethesda, Maryland. And Snowden said, what a brave and selfless thing that this man did. And then, just as the case is coming to a head, I make my revelations. He knew that I was headed straight for prison, but I did it anyway. And so he told the New York Times that we had inspired him. I think I won't reveal what I told him in the private letter just because it was private. But his father came to Loreto to meet with me. It was quite controversial. The guards took sides. Half of them thought, oh, my God, this is like history unfolding before our eyes. This is so cool. And the other half took the position of a traitor and the father of a traitor passing secrets to one another. But it was a very selfless and generous thing that he did. Coming to visit me. I was very grateful when I finally got out of prison. I was able to meet Ed a number of times on Zoom Calls. But I told him how grateful I was to his father for coming and visiting me and saying some very nice things about me. Ed said that he was very grateful for the advice that I gave him. I will add one other thing, and I hope that I'm not speaking out of school. But in that letter to Ed, I advised him to hire the best attorneys money could buy. He hired my attorneys, and my attorneys negotiated a deal for him with the Justice Department. Ed said that he was willing to do 20 years in prison. And the Justice Department said, fine, then you do 20 years. And he said, okay, I'll come home and I'll do 20 years, but I want to be able to stand up in court and explain why I did what I did. And they said, absolutely not. He said, fine, then the deal's off. But he was willing to to sacrifice everything for the betterment of the United States, for the defense of the Constitution. And they said, absolutely not. We shouldn't have these kinds of secrets in democracies. What is there to hide? If the law clearly states that NSA and CIA may not spy on Americans, there's no wiggle room in that. Indeed, it is a part of NSA's founding charter that it may not intercept the communications of Americans. And it does it anyway. As the former director of NSA and CIA General Michael Hayden said, what are you going to do about it? That's exactly why we need whistleblowers. One of Ed's former NSA colleagues told Forbes that they felt shocked and betrayed when they first learned what Ed had done. But they said, as more time passes, quote, I'm inclined to believe he really is trying to do the right thing and it's not out of character for him. I don't agree with his methods, but I understand why he did it. I won't call him a hero, but he's sure as hell no traitor. No, he's not. He's a whistleblower who knew exactly what he was getting into because somebody had to do it. These days, Ed lives quietly in Moscow with his wife and two sons, advocating for digital privacy and journalism. To that end, Ed is the President of the Freedom of the Press foundation, on whose behalf he speaks frequently at tech conferences. Ed has said he's quite willing to serve prison time in the U.S. he told me that personally. His one caveat. A fair trial where a jury can.
- [45:09]
John Kiriakou
Most AI projects never make it past the demo.
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Alan Katz
They show real promise in a controlled
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John Kiriakou
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- [46:40]
Alan Katz
Consider his motivation has not been granted. So here we are fighting it out in the media. Ed's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast was the fifth most watched podcast ever. My recent appearance on Joe's podcast hasn't gotten quite that many views yet, but give it time. I'll catch up with you Ed, and thank you for catching up with us and for listening. And just like Ed did, please make your feelings known in this case about the podcast. Please don't forget to like, rate, review or comment on the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to it. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Kostart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.
- [47:52]
John Kiriakou
This podcast, it's a Costard and Touchstone production.