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THE ABSURD TIMES
Free Syrian Army
Illustrations: Moslem Brotherhood, NSA’s Prism, related stuff.
Since the Zimmerman trial was the major concern of the major media, or the corporate media, for the last several weeks, most Americans have missed the fact that the Government of Egypt was overthrown, Syrian Terrorists are killing each other, and the project “Prism” and other fun things have been conducted by the NSA (including making and keeping a copy of any and all material of, by, for, and about you without your knowledge), and that attention has been diverted to a discussion of one individual, Edward Snowden rather than the snooping itself. As a prominent American journalist who is trustworthy stated, “If Morsi wants to get his point across, he should comment on the Zimmerman trial.”
We want to fill that void a bit, but there is just so much to cover. In order to save space, we will only concentrate of one of the many things the media didn’t cover: THE WORLD. We will cover the rest later as it is less complicated.
So, let’s get rid of the small stuff first. Russian scientists who, unlike us, maintained the proper chain of evidence proved wrong our accusation that Assad was using chemical weapons, gas, in the civil war in his country. The stuff was home made and thus the work of the terrorists.
At a meeting of the terrorists, or opponents to Assad, an Al-Quaeda agent killed the lead FSA (so-called “free Syrian army”) general. In the U.K., Prime Minister Cameron wanted to send arms to these maniacs but had to ask of permission from Parliament. The vote was 124 against, 1 in favor, with suspicions that the 1 was very confused at the time. Damn, that’s the sort of thing that can happen in a democracy.
A 5 year old boy threw a stone on occupied Palestine and was arrested by Israeli soldiers, screaming and crying in fear. They were reprimanded, but not for doing it, but for doing it on camera.
What else? Lots of stuff, but lets go on to Egypt as that is the most intellectually messy issue.
Originally, the Muslim Brotherhood was not allowed to participate in political activity in Egypt. When Nasser liberated his country, the first thing he had to do was hang twelve of them, and then they behaved and the ban instituted. In Syria, a few decades ago, Assad’s father saw the Muslim Brotherhood starting trouble and fomenting violence in Homs, so he attacked and killed 20,000 of them. There was no further trouble until the recent activities and if his son did anything wrong at all, it was probably not following his father’s example. But, after all, he is an eye doctor, not a military or political person so he let things simmer.
Well, in Egypt, one member of the Brotherhood resigned in order to run in the elections after Mubarak was evicted. You have to realize that we scoffed at Saddam Hussein’s claim to be freely elected when he got 98% of the vote, but made no official comment when, that same year, Mubarak got 99% of his vote. After all, democracy is voting, right? So we kept sending the 1.5 billion dollars of military equipment and other stuff to Egypt. He got so bad and vicious that Egypt (remember the “Green” revolution? Or the “Arab Spring?) camped out in Tahrir square and other places until nothing worked anymore and the army, to great applause, took over.
The secular forces had so many factions that they divided their votes amongst at least 5, maybe 9, candidates (this is typical of left-wing or centrist political movements). The Moslem Brotherhood was allowed to run a candidate, Morsi. Now, there is also a right-wing fundamentalist group of maniacs called “Salafists,” whatever that means, who are the Jerry Falwells and Oral Roberts of Islam in Egypt. Morsi had the most votes and they came in second so there was a run-off. Many held their collectives noses and voted for Morsi, or rather against the maniacs. We do the same thing here when we vote Democratic instead of Rick Santorum or the like.
Now, once Morsi got into power, he started consolidating his control, sort of like Mubarak did. Many democratic options were removed and the rule became more and more fundamentalist. Also, there was hardly anything to eat and long gas line and so forth. Most of the people started demonstrating again, just as before, and the army was forced to take over again, just as before. The people were revolting, very revolting. At any rate, the country would have fallen apart unless the army did take over. This was called a “coup” this time, rather than a “revolution” – at least by the Brotherhood.
Now, a caretaker government is trying to put together a new constitution (although they had a pretty good one in 1971 before Mubarak started to change it – or they could borrow ours as we aren’t really using it anyway), and then have elections.
The U.S. threatened to suspend the 1.5 billion to punish Egypt, but Saudi Arabia and another Gulf State gave them 8 billion, so the U.S. decided it really wasn’t a coup anyway (except for John McCain, a friend of Sarah Palin).
Well, that is where it stands right now. The other topic is Snowden and we may straighten that out later. There are enough quotes and sources below to lead you to many other places as well, so you had no worries as to having the information.
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THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2013
Jailed Journalist Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years For Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms
Journalist Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week on a range of charges filed after he used information obtained by the hacker group Anonymous to report on the operations of private intelligence firms. Brown faces 17 charges ranging from threatening an FBI agent to credit card fraud for posting a link online to a document that contained stolen credit card data. But according to his supporters, Brown is being unfairly targeted for daring to investigate the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors. Using information Anonymous took from the firm HBGary Federal, Brown helped discover a secret plan to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. Brown similarly analyzed and wrote about the millions of internal company emails from Stratfor Global Intelligence that were leaked in 2011. We speak to Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, whose article "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown" recently appeared in The Nation. "Considering that the person who carried out the actual Stratfor hack had several priors and is facing a maximum of 10 years, the inescapable conclusion is that the problem is not with the hack itself but with Brown’s journalism," Ludlow argues. He adds that the case against Brown could suggest criminality "to even link to something or share a link with someone."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As NSA leaker Edward Snowden remains at a Moscow airport, Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is on trial, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, today we look at the strange story of another man tied to the world of cyber-activism who faces over a hundred years in prison. His name is Barrett Brown. He’s an investigative reporter with ties to the hacking collective Anonymous. He has spent the past 300 days in jail and has been denied bail. He faces 17 charges, ranging from threatening an FBI agent to credit card fraud for posting a link online to a document that contained stolen credit card data. But according to his supporters, Brown is being unfairly targeted for daring to investigate the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Brown’s path crossed with the FBI, he frequently contributed to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, The Guardian and other news outlets. In 2009, Brown created Project PM, which was, quote, "dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance." He was particularly interested in the documents leaked by WikiLeaks and Anonymous. In the documentary We Are Legion, Barrett Brown explains the importance of information obtained by hackers.
BARRETT BROWN: Some of the most important things that have been—have had the most far-reaching influence and have been the most important in terms of what’s been discovered, not just by Anonymous, but by the media in the aftermath, is the result of hacking. That information can’t be obtained by institutional journalistic process, or it can’t be obtained or won’t be obtained by a congressional committee or a federal oversight committee. For the most part, that information has to be, you know, obtained by hackers.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2011, the group Anonymous hacked into the computer system of the private security firm HBGary Federal and disclosed thousands of internal emails. Barrett Brown has not been accused of being involved in the hack, but he did read and analyze the documents, eventually crowdsourcing the effort through Project PM. One of the first things he discovered was a plan to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks and sympathetic journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. Brown similarly analyzed and wrote about the millions of internal company emails for Stratfor Global Intelligence that were leaked on Christmas Eve 2011. Shortly thereafter, the FBI acquired a warrant for Brown’s laptop and authority to seize any information from his communications—or, in journalism parlance, his sources. In September 2012, a troupe of armed agents surged into Brown’s apartment in Dallas, Texas, and handcuffed him face down on the floor. He has been in prison ever since.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, for more, we’re joined by Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. He has written extensively on hacktivist actions against people—against private intelligence firms and the surveillance state. His recent article for The Nation is called "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown."
Peter Ludlow, welcome to Democracy Now!
PETER LUDLOW: Hi. Thank you very much.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk to us about Barrett Brown, the importance of his case, given all the others that we’ve been dealing with on this show now for many years.
PETER LUDLOW: Well, yeah, it’s important for two reasons. First of all, it’s showing that, to some extent, all of us could be targets, because the principal reasons that they’re going after him with this sort of claim that he was involved in credit card fraud or something like that, I mean, that’s completely fallacious. I mean, in effect, what he did was take a link from a chat room and copied that link and pasted it into the chat room for Project PM. That is, he took a link that was broadcast widely on the Internet, and it was a link to the Stratfor hack information, and he just brought it to the attention of the editorial board of Project PM. And because there were, for whatever reason, unencrypted credit card numbers and validation codes among those five million other emails, the government is claiming that he was engaged in credit card fraud. They’re claiming that Project PM was a criminal enterprise. And so, basically, for our interest, why this is interesting to us is basically it makes this dangerous to even link to something or to share a link with someone.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And—
PETER LUDLOW: Go ahead, yeah, please.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, one of the things that you raise is, in some of your writings on this, is the incestuous relationship between the Justice Department, the government and these private firms that are being now targeted by cyber-activists. And could you talk about that, as well?
PETER LUDLOW: Well, sure. A lot of these private intelligence companies are started by ex-CIA, NSA people. Some people come from those agencies and rotate back into the government. I mean, you even see, with the case of Snowden, he was actually a contractor for a private intelligence company, Booz Allen. And, I mean, people think about the NSA, FBI, CIA, and they think of—those are the people that are doing the surveillance of you and doing this intelligence work, but really, if you look at how much the United States spends on intelligence, 70 percent of that is actually going to these private intelligence contractors. So, you know, if you add upCIA, NSA, FBI, that’s just a tip of the iceberg. So there’s all this sort of spook stuff going on in the private realm. And, yeah, right, a lot of it is very incestuous. There’s a revolving door. And no one is investigating it or even talking about it, as far as I can tell.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Barrett Brown in his own words. In March 2012,Democracy Now! spoke with Barrett soon after his house was raided.
BARRETT BROWN: On March 5th, I received a tip that I was about to be raided by the FBI. I left my apartment here in Dallas, went to my mom’s residence here in the same city. Next morning, three FBI agents arrived at my mom’s place. I went out and talked to them. They said my apartment had just been raided. The door was damaged. They would take care of that. And that they also asked me if I had any laptops with me that I wanted to give them. I said no.
A few hours later, the FBI returned to my mom’s house with another warrant, this time for her house, and detained the both of us for three hours while they searched the residence. They found several laptops I had stashed somewhere in the house and left the search warrants and left another one in my apartment, which I got when I came back here a little after, the next day or so.
The warrants themselves refer to the information that they’re seeking as regarding Anonymous, of course, a few other things of that nature, and also two companies: HBGary and Endgame Systems. Both of these are intelligence contracting companies that Anonymous had a run-in with in February of 2011, during which a number of emails were taken from HBGary, in particular, which themselves revealed a number of conspiracies being perpetuated by those companies in conjunction with Justice Department and several other institutions, including Bank of America, against WikiLeaks and against several journalists.
The time since, I’ve spent a lot of time going over those emails, researching them, conducting other research, otherwise trying to expose a number of things that have been discovered by virtue of those emails from HBGary having been taken. I sincerely believe that my activities on that front contributed to me being raided the other day and will no doubt contribute to any further action that the FBI decides to take. I would just also note the Justice Department itself is very much intertwined with this issue, and has been for a while, and in no way can conduct a fair investigation against me, based on what I’ve revealed, what I’ve helped to sort of emphasize about them.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Barrett Brown in his own words just after the raid.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Ludlow, talk about what he had released. Talk about what he got from HBGary and how this links to Glenn Greenwald.
PETER LUDLOW: Sure. Well, what they uncovered was—I mean, it’s actually a little bit subtle, right? Because it begins with the Bank of America being concerned that WikiLeaks had information on it. Bank of America goes to the United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice leads them to Hunton & Williams, the big law fix-it firm in the D.C. area, who in turn hooks them up with a group of private intelligence contractors that went under the umbrella Team Themis. And Team Themis had a number of proposals and projects that were exposed in all of this. They included running kind of a psyops operation against the Chamber Watch, which is a group that sort of monitors the Chamber of Commerce, and it was an attempt to undermine it and Glenn Greenwald and other individuals. And, I mean, there were many, many plans that they had, many, many things, but some of the documents released showed that they were saying they were going to create fake documents, leak them to Greenwald, and then, when Greenwald eventually released them, they would expose it as a fraud and attempt to undermine him in that way. And they had a similar plan for Chamber Watch, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And their concern with Greenwald was that he was giving—that his defense of WikiLeaks was giving legitimacy to WikiLeaks—
PETER LUDLOW: That was—yeah. That was the concern.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —it didn’t deserve.
PETER LUDLOW: That was the concern, yeah. And they actually said in there, "Well, he’s just a professional journalist, and he’ll fold under pressure immediately. I mean, apparently they were wrong about that. So, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There were also emails found where these private security firms were assessing the damage that Jeremy Scahill’s books had done to Blackwater?
PETER LUDLOW: Well, actually, those—I ran across that in the Stratfor leaks, and that was kind of interesting, because they were monitoring—they were monitoring this because they were concerned that Blackwater was going to get into the private intelligence business themselves. And they were commenting on Scahill. They go, "Well, yeah, Scahill, you know, I don’t care much for his politics, but he’s really got these guys figured out, yeah?" So that was a little compliment for Scahill, I think.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But the amazing thing in all of this is the degree to which these private security firms are engaging in attempts to influence what’s going on in the public debate on—
PETER LUDLOW: Oh, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —on intelligence.
PETER LUDLOW: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the most crazy things in the whole thing was when Coca-Cola approached Stratfor, and they were concerned aboutPETA, you know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. And why, I’m not entirely sure, but one of the people in Stratfor said, "Well, the FBI has a classified file on PETA. I’ll see if I can get it for you." Now, that little story sums up a lot of stuff that’s wrong about this. First of all, why are private—why is Coca-Cola going to a private intelligence company for this? Why is—why did the private intelligence company feel that they had immediate access to a classified file by the FBI? And why did the FBI have a classified file, to begin with? I mean—but, to me, the creepiest part of that very creepy little story is the fact that the guy at Stratfor felt that he had access to this classified file by the FBI. And the Barrett Brown case revealed something like this, as well. It’s almost like the FBI has become just another private security firm, that it’s become like a private cop for these companies, as it were. And, I mean, that’s part because of the revolving door. It’s part because they get pressed into service for companies that want inside information on activist organizations like PETA.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to take break—
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —and then come back to this conversation. We’re talking to Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, has written extensively on hacktivist actions against private intelligence firms. The piece he most recently wrote is for The Nation, and it’s called "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown." When we come back, I want to ask you how it’s possible he faces a hundred years in prison.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: It makes us think about Aaron Swartz.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: He didn’t face anything like that, but he faced decades in prison.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: He ultimately committed suicide—
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —before prosecution. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Ludlow is our guest, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, has been tracking the case of Barrett Brown and wrote aNation piece about him, "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown." So, the FBI raids his home, and he ultimately is arrested. He faces 100 years in prison?
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah, if you add up all the charges and if he serves them sequentially, it will be 105 years in prison. Yeah, that’s right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the decision for no bail?
PETER LUDLOW: That’s a mystery to me.
AMY GOODMAN: He’s been in jail now for 300 days.
PETER LUDLOW: Three hundred days, yeah, over 300 days, no bail. For a while they were—they had frozen his—the contributions to his legal fund, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, that sounds like WikiLeaks.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Meaning that’s what happened to Wiki—well, WikiLeaks, they had all these different corporations like PayPal refuse to allow money to go to them.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to an interview Barrett Brown did with NBC’s Michael Isikoff serving as a spokesperson for Anonymous.
BARRETT BROWN: Our people break laws, just like all people break laws. When we break laws, we do so in the service of civil disobedience. We do so ethically. We do it against targets who have asked for it.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: You go against targets that have asked for it.
BARRETT BROWN: Yes.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: What do you mean?
BARRETT BROWN: Targets who have engaged in a manner that is either unethical and contrary to the—sort of the values of this age, information freedom. Just, I mean—and sometimes just plain common sense, in the case of them going after journalists, going after WikiLeaks, in the way that they were planning to do so.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: But you can attack websites.
BARRETT BROWN: Yes, we can attack websites. We can DDoS them. We can sometimes hack them. We can sometimes take over the websites themselves, put messages up, as we did today with Westboro and as we did with—with the company HBGary and other federal contractors during that attack.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: You can—you can—
BARRETT BROWN: Take it over, debase it.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: —take over the websites of government contractors.
BARRETT BROWN: And governments, of course. In Tunisia and in Libya, Algeria and Egypt and Iran, we either took down or replaced government websites. We replaced them with messages from us to the people of those nations, explaining what we’re doing and why and what we’ll provide if they choose to revolt.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Are you worried you’re going to get prosecuted?
BARRETT BROWN: I’m not worried about it, but I am going to get prosecuted at some point, yes.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Because you’re involved in hacking activity.
BARRETT BROWN: Because they could do whatever they want to anyone they want.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: But you’re not worried?
BARRETT BROWN: No, because, again, like I said, I’m well protected right now.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: What do you mean, well protected?
BARRETT BROWN: I’ve got a lot of lawyers. I’ve got a lot of higher-up people. I’ve got people to talk to who will—who support us. And if they come after me, they’re going to find that they’re not going to like everything that they see.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Barrett Brown talking to NBC’s Michael Isikoff. Well, the fact is, Barrett Brown has been in prison now for 300 days, and he faces decades in prison. Can you explain—that’s when he was an Anonymous spokesperson—what Anonymous is? And then also talk about the groups he exposed, like Endgame and others, though he wasn’t the only one to do that.
PETER LUDLOW: Sure. I have to think he was a little bit optimistic there in his claims about how he was all lawyered up there. But he was a—he was related to Anonymous, which is—it’s not a group, per se. You know, you or I could claim to be members of Anonymous. It’s more like a flag that you fly if you choose to. And so, there was a loosely knit group of hacktivists. Some of them were intersecting. They carried out hacks against—as he says, against various private intelligence contractors and other kinds of targets. He’s quite right that during the Arab Spring and the Tunisian uprising and so forth, members of Anonymous did a lot of work in keeping protesters online and in minimizing the effectiveness of the governments in the Middle East in that time.
And then you asked about—
AMY GOODMAN: Endgame.
PETER LUDLOW: —things like Endgame Systems, for example. Yeah, Endgame is a very interesting thing. I mean, Endgame is this kind of very secretive private intelligence company. And you even see in the HBGary hack, you see these messages where someone from Endgame says in an email, "We don’t ever want to see our name in a press release from you guys." And what makes it particularly interesting is, if you read the search warrant that’s issued to Barrett when he’s busted, it says, "Well, we’re looking for stuff related to HBGary and Endgame Systems." You know, like, why Endgame Systems?
And this is a corporation that’s involved in what are called "zero-day exploits." Now, what’s a zero-day exploit? Basically, what that means is that there are certain security flaws in the software that we have and that we use, and sometimes the company doesn’t know about it. Sometimes it’s known about it for seven days, and they’ve had seven days to work on it. A zero-day exploit is one that the software company doesn’t know about. And Endgame Systems packages these things and sells them. So, for example, they have one where you get—it’s a subscription for like $2.5 million a year, and you get these exploits. So it’s things that a hacker would do, but because they’re a business and they’re making money for it, it’s—apparently it’s OK, right? And it seems that the Justice Department is kind of running interference for these guys. And there’s a—I mean, you don’t have to take my word for it. There’s a great article inBusinessweek on this in which they talk about the guys from Endgame, you know, running—setting up slides and showing you targets in airports, telling you what the computers are running there, and what kind of the—what the vulnerabilities are and so forth.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And who runs Endgame? Where are they based?
PETER LUDLOW: They’re based in Atlanta, Georgia, I believe. Someone recently posted a video on YouTube in which he walked into the place and—just to see what was going on there. And the people—I think it’s an ex—it’s started by an ex-intelligence person and by a security guy at IBM.
AMY GOODMAN: And, very quickly, Project PM?
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah. Project PM is basically Barrett’s—I mean, one of the genius things about Barrett was that he wanted to crowdsource all this information, because you get a hack of Stratfor and it’s five million emails, and how do you sort through all that? So he had a number of friends and acquaintances, including Michael Hastings, by the way, who were members of Project PM.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hastings, the reporter who just died in a fiery car crash.
PETER LUDLOW: The reporter who just died in the suspicious car accident, yeah, exactly right. And so, they would—he would basically crowdsource this. And so, the case where he copied that link, he was basically notifying the members of Project PM where they could find the information from the Stratfor hack.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what’s the schedule of—we just have 30 seconds—
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —of what will happen to Barrett Brown right now? He’s in jail in Texas.
PETER LUDLOW: Yeah. I mean, he’s got a great legal team. Charles Swift is one of them, the guy from the judge advocate general’s thing that took that Gitmo case all the way to the Supreme Court.
AMY GOODMAN: From the JAG.
PETER LUDLOW: Ahmed Ghappour, who’s at University of Texas Law School. There’s a group of individuals with freebarrettbrown.org who are raising money for him there, and they’re available if you have questions and so forth.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll certainly follow this case, Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. He’s written extensively on hacktivist actions against private intelligence firms and the surveillance state. His most recent piece is in The Nation; it’s called "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown." We will link to it at democracynow.org.
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2013
Testifying for Bradley Manning’s Defense, Ex-Guantánamo Prosecutor Says Leaks Caused No Harm to U.S.
Lawyers for accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning have opened their defense at his military court-martial with a bid to dismiss a number of charges, including aiding the enemy. We’re joined by the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, Col. Morris Davis, who has just wrapped two days of testimony for the defense. Davis told the court that many of the files Manning leaked on Guantánamo were already out in the public and that they had no value to enemy groups and could not have harmed U.S. national security. We’re also joined from Fort Meade, Maryland, by Kevin Gosztola, a civil liberties blogger covering the trial for Firedoglake.com and co-author of "Truth And Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Defense attorneys for Army Private Bradley Manning are trying this week to show that much of the information he is charged with leaking was already publicly available. At his ongoing court-martial, Manning’s lawyers filed four motions on Tuesday asking for a "not guilty" verdict, arguing the government has not been able to prove he committed espionage or other offenses. The leaked files include assessment briefs for more than 700 prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay prison. On Monday, Manning’s attorneys began by playing the video he leaked of U.S. forces shooting and killing Iraqi civilians from a helicopter in 2007. The prosecution had sought to block the video from airing in court, calling it, quote, "not relevant." Lawyers also submitted a transcript published in the book The Good Soldiers to show that the video had already been circulated before Manning made it public. Manning’s defense also asked the court to drop a number of charges, including aiding the enemy. During his pretrial hearing at Fort Meade in February, Manning acknowledged he gave the classified documents to WikiLeaks and said he wanted people to learn from his revelation.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, to talk more about the trial, we’re joined by two guests. Kevin Gosztola is civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake. He’s attended Manning’s trial in Fort Meade, Maryland. He’s co-author of Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning and plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights that challenges government secrecy in Manning’s court-martial, as Democracy Now! is, as well.
Colonel Morris Davis is a retired Air Force colonel. He resigned as the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo in 2007, and he testified at the Manning trial Monday and Tuesday.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Colonel Davis, let’s begin with you. What did you say in court yesterday?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Well, part of the charges in the Manning case relate to documents from Guantánamo called detainee assessment briefs, that I was familiar with from my two-year tenure as chief prosecutor. There were five particular detainees that the government had selected as kind of a representative sampling, and what I did is take those classified documents and went out to open-source material, much of it available on government websites, and was able to find the vast majority of the information in the public domain, which—you know, to try to establish that there was no harm from the release of the documents on WikiLeaks.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe courtroom scene? What surprised you as you went in there?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Well, there was a large crowd, a lot of Manning supporters in the courtroom, as there have been throughout. It was the first chance I had to actually see Private Manning in person. And he’s fairly diminutive in size. And I got to speak with him briefly afterwards. And I’d say, you know, he’s in good spirits and positive, but you can see this has taken a toll on him and is wearing on him, as I’m sure it would with anyone in his circumstance.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Colonel Davis, you also suggested that the WikiLeaks documents on Guantánamo detainees were in fact, quote, "wildly inaccurate." Could you explain why you said that?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Sure. And just to add to that, President Obama appointed the Guantánamo Review Task Force that issued a report on January 22nd, 2010. And if you look at the report, his task force came to the same conclusion, that the detainee assessments, which were just a general biographical accounting of who the individual was and an assessment of how big of a risk they were—even the task force came to the same conclusion that many of the reports were inaccurate, some were overinflated, some were underinflated. So you never—you can’t tell. By picking up an assessment and looking at it, you don’t know if it’s right, wrong or, you know, how it really fits in. And so, certainly my experience from being the chief prosecutor is that just looking at the detainee assessment really had no value. They’re based on underlying documents, and those documents are important, but just the assessment itself—which we referred to as baseball cards, because it gives you the person’s name, height, weight, place of birth, date of birth, that kind of thing—really had no significant value. And I certainly can’t see how it would help al-Qaeda in any way to have access to these.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the five Guantánamo detainees in the Manning case? I mean, this is extremely significant that you testified on the defense’s behalf, on Bradley Manning’s behalf, as the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo.
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Right. In a—I guess as an example kind of the level of absurdity in this case, I can’t tell you the five names, because the detainee assessment briefs are classified. However, the open-source documents I compared to were admitted into evidence; they’re not classified. As I stated, three of the five, they’re featured in a film called The Road to Guantánamo that you can go on the Internet and see who those three are. You’ll have a pretty good idea of who three of the five in the assessment briefs are. But at least for now, that information is classified.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Colonel Davis, you also spoke on Monday to some of Private Bradley Manning’s colleagues and superiors in the military. Could you explain what they said, what most struck you, and also your conversation with Private Manning?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Yes. On Monday, there were four of Private Manning’s former military colleagues—two captains and a chief warrant officer and a sergeant, so all people that were superior to Private Manning in rank, who were with him in Iraq. And it was really interesting to talk with them both, you know, in the witness waiting area, but also in their testimony, because, you know, the government has painted this picture of Private Manning as being inept and a malcontent. Their testimony was that he was their go-to guy, you know, the guy that really knew what was going on. If you needed information, he was the person to go to and, you know, was really a star performer. So it was interesting. It was a totally opposite perspective from the way he’s been portrayed by the government as a malcontent. And again, after I testified, I had just a brief opportunity to talk with Private Manning. He shook my hand and thanked me for testifying on his behalf. And I just told him that—you know, to hang in there, there are a lot of people pulling for him. So, again, I think it’s really wearing on him, but he appeared to be in good spirits and upbeat.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also—
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: And certainly his attorney—his attorney, David Coombs, is really doing a stellar job of representing him.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Kevin Gosztola. He’s in his car in the Fort Meade parking lot. Remember, that’s where Bradley Manning is being court-martialed, the trial is taking place, also the headquarters of the National Security Agency. Kevin, the prosecution wrapped up their case last week, and now it’s the defense’s turn. What is most significant for us to know in the trial at this point?
KEVIN GOSZTOLA: What I think people should pay attention to is this push to get charges dismissed, which you mentioned at the beginning of the segment here. The aiding the enemy charge is the most severe charge that he faces, and I think that people should really pay attention to how they’re charging it, because they’re dangerously conflating the act that WikiLeaks engaged in of publishing, which is a First Amendment act, with treason, with espionage against the United States. And they have, the prosecutors, through their arguments, suggested that Manning was working on behalf of WikiLeaks, going into the secret government networks and harvesting information. And so, they don’t believe that Manning was doing what he did as part of himself wanting to change the world and spark reform.
I think that people should really consider that—you know, we know that if you shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, that that is generally frowned upon. Well, the prosecutors in this case should not be able to shout "Terrorism!" in a military courtroom when there is no evidence at all that Manning’s act had any connection whatsoever to terrorism. There has been no evidence presented that Manning did any searches for al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, this figure who was a spokesperson for al-Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, who was in a propaganda video that has been entered into evidence. There’s no evidence that he ever looked at Inspiremagazine, which is an al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula magazine. And even though, you know, al-Qaeda used this as propaganda, the releases of WikiLeaks, there is no strategic or tactical advantage that it can be seen that al-Qaeda used to launch any attacks against the United States. And yet, after the fact, the prosecutors are going after Manning and trying to paint him as somebody who aided terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’re going to continue this in a post-show conversation, and we’re going to post it online at democracynow.org. Kevin Gosztola is speaking to us from the Fort Meade parking lot where Bradley Manning is on trial. He is a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake and has been attending Manning’s trial from the beginning. We also want to thank Colonel Morris Davis for joining us, retired Air Force colonel, resigned as the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay in 2007. He testified at the Manning trial Monday and Tuesday.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2013
With Deadly Crackdown, Is Egypt’s Military Repeating Same Mistakes of Post-Mubarak Transition?
The standoff between Egypt’s interim government and the Muslim Brotherhood party it replaced in power continues to widen. Egypt’s top prosecutor has ordered the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie and other top officials on charges of inciting the violence that ended in the army’s fatal shootings of at least 51 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and the wounding of hundreds more. The charges come one day after the Muslim Brotherhood rejected a role in Egypt’s interim Cabinet, which now includes former Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi as interim prime minister and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president. We’re joined from Cairo by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. "Many critics say that this is repeating a lot of the same mistakes from the first army-led transition following Mubarak’s ouster: It was drawn up by an anonymous committee without any input from the main opposition groups that were calling for Morsi’s ouster, including the National Salvation Front, including the youth-led group Tamarod, who have voiced criticism for not being consulted in this process," Kouddous says. "It’s a bare bones document that outlines the bare necessities, but given that, it makes very clear that it shields the military from civilian oversight."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Egypt remains in a state of political crisis one week after the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi after days of massive protests. On Tuesday, Egypt’s interim president named former Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi as interim prime minister and also named Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president. The appointments came one day after Egypt’s interim leaders announced a timetable for forming a new elected government and ratifying a new constitution.
But several key groups have voiced concern over the military’s plans, including Egypt’s Coptic Church, Salafis and the youth-led Tamarod movement. Tamarod said the military’s plan, quote, "lays the foundation for a new dictatorship." Members of Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood continue to oppose all moves by the military to form a new government. This is Safwat Hegazy, a prominent cleric and Muslim Brotherhood supporter.
SAFWAT HEGAZY: [translated] Egypt’s legitimate president is Mohamed Morsi, and he alone has the right to appoint a prime minister or agree on other ministers to be appointed. And with regards to the military and the person they are calling the interim president, they are all thieves, and it is not their right to appoint ministers or prime ministers, and we reject these appointments altogether.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Meanwhile, Egypt’s prosecutor’s office has ordered the arrest of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Mohammed Badie. He’s accused of inciting violence in Cairo in the days after the coup. The arrest warrant is seen as part of a broader crackdown on members of the Brotherhood. Hundreds of members of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have been detained along with the former president’s top advisers.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the Egyptian armed forces shot dead more than 50 supporters of Mohamed Morsi during a protest outside Cairo’s Republican Guard barracks where the deposed leader is believed to be held.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered $8 billion in aid to the interim government to help shore up the economy and counter Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Well, for more, we go to Cairo, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Welcome back, Sharif. We last talked to you on [Tuesday]. You had just come from the site of the massacre. Now the—Egypt’s top prosecutor has ordered the arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie. Can you talk about the significance of all of this?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right, this news just came down a few minutes ago that Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been ordered arrested along with several top aides. They’re reportedly going to be charged with incitement to violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters. As you mentioned, more than 50 supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the ousted president, were killed in early Monday morning, mostly by live ammunition. And this was one of the bloodiest days since Mubarak’s overthrow, if not the bloodiest incident of state violence. This is a very troubling trend of an increasing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, still the largest political group in Egypt. We’ve seen their members detained. Now their leaders—their figurehead, the supreme guide, is being ordered arrested. We’ve seen their media channels being shut down. And the state media and private media have taken a—completely adopted the military’s line, repeated the military’s claims that the military came under attack first by armed assailants, hardly shown any video or footage of the attack and of the many dozens dead or wounded, and have called the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and so forth.
And this has only increased the polarization and division in the country. And it will be very difficult, going forward, when we have this kind of crackdown by the army and state security services, which are—have ridden this popular wave of anger against Mohamed Morsi for his many failures in his year of office, and looking to reassert themselves into the state and into positions of authority. It’s going to be very difficult, going forward, to have the biggest political group in the country not taking part and feeling like it is being oppressed, as it has been for many decades under successive autocrats. And we’ll have to see what happens in the coming days.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sharif, what do you think accounts for the disproportionate crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood? What has been historically the relationship between the security forces and the Muslim Brotherhood?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, as I mentioned, the Muslim Brotherhood has suffered—long suffered oppression under successive autocratic regimes in Egypt. It was Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, after he led a coup against the pro-British monarchy, who first clamped down on the Brotherhood and drove them underground, where they remained for very years. And they—many of their leaders have been jailed. Many of them have been killed.
But since the revolution, they, I think, sought to co-opt parts of the state when—after coming into power through the ballot box. And so they struck political pacts with the army, and granting it everything it wanted in the constitution. Mohamed Morsi repeatedly thanked the police for their work, even despite mass police killings and torture. And instead of, I think, addressing grievances of people, he was seeking to co-opt these parts of the state, but ultimately failed. And once this popular mobilization got going, in large part because of the steadily declining economy, as well as political isolation and no real way for people to air their grievances, I think the army sought to step in, push the Brotherhood out and reassert itself into the state.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the $8 billion promised by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which—to try to prevent the collapse of the Egyptian economy, but also seen as a counter to Qatar, which has been supporting the Muslim Brotherhood government, the vying between Arab rivals for Egypt?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. I mean, this is very significant, $8 billion coming at a time when the Egyptian economy is on the brink of collapse. This will certainly support the shaky military-led transition. And it comes in the wake, as you mentioned, of repeated cash injections from Qatar, which has supported the Brotherhood through this kind of aid, through gas deals, and helped prop up the Egyptian economy in sort of an artificial way when it was really, you know, collapsing from a lack of foreign reserves. So, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which very much want to see a return of, you know, an army-led and—or a return of the former regime, which they very much backed, and were very much afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood and their claims to political Islam through the ballot box. I think they were very threatened by that and have historically been at odds, in certain ways, with Qatar over foreign policy, although Saudi Arabia and Qatar, of course, have the same—similar policies toward Syria. So, I mean, this is a significant cash injection. Eight billion dollars almost matches the total that Qatar has given over many months, so it’s a clear sign of support to this military coup and to the army-led transition.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sharif, could you outline what some of the more controversial aspects of the constitutional declaration are and what the main opposition to the transition plan has been from all groups involved?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. So this constitutional declaration essentially now is the law of the land after the head of the armed forces abolished the 2012 constitution that was pushed through by the Muslim Brotherhood, and it basically sets forth a very speedy transition to a civilian government. It’s about 33 articles. And it will essentially go in the order of amending the 2012 constitution within four months by a committee of legal scholars, followed by parliamentary elections and then presidential elections.
Now, many critics say that this is repeating a lot of the same mistakes from the first army-led transition following Mubarak’s ouster, that it’s—it was drawn up by an anonymous committee without any input from the main opposition groups that were calling for Morsi’s ouster, including the National Salvation Front, including the youth-led group Tamarod, who have—who have voiced criticism for not being consulted in this process. You know, it’s a bare bones document that just outlines kind of the bare necessities, but given that, it makes very clear that it shields the military from civilian oversight. So, that’s a clear—you know, it clearly prioritizes the military. And it promises inclusiveness, but gives no procedural guidelines for how to do that. And the timetable is very fast. So, it’s not a—you know, it looks like it’s repeating a lot of the same errors of the first transition which led to this political crisis. And we’ve seen the National Salvation Front and Tamarod come out and be quite critical, which is a step forward. At least they’re voicing concerns that they’re not being consulted, but we’ll have to see, going forward, how much their voice carries weight with the military at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, the U.S. is not quite willing to call what happened in Egypt a coup, which would jeopardize the $1.3 or $1.5 billion the U.S. government gives to Egypt. Can you talk about the significance of that? And what people are saying in Egypt, the many—perhaps the largest protests, even larger than the anti-Mubarak ones that led to Morsi’s downfall, like Tamarod, the youth group, what they are now saying?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, this is a very divisive question in Egypt, this issue of do you call it a coup, or do you call it an uprising overthrowing Morsi? And it’s part of a growing polarization between different camps in Egypt and a very complicated situation. I would say, technically, of course this was a coup. It was the army that ousted Morsi. We saw the head of the armed forces, al-Sisi, get on TV. And, you know, the interim president that we have right now, in his constitutional declaration, stated that his power comes from al-Sisi’s statement. So that’s a clear sign that this was a military coup. And we saw APCs and soldiers deploying to the streets of Cairo.
Having said that, what forced—or what facilitated the military to come in was a mass popular uprising, like you mentioned, one that even eclipsed the level of protest we saw against Hosni Mubarak. And I think there was a culmination of different forces coming together, ordinary Egyptians whose daily lives have become much harder given the deterioration of the economy, political groups who felt completely isolated and rejected and not consulted on any policy by Morsi or the Muslim Brotherhood. And we saw that the Brotherhood used its very thin electoral mandate to push through all of its policies without really consulting NGOs or civil society on any kind of state policy, and also, as I mentioned before, looking to co-opt elements of the deep state, like the army and the police, and not looking to reform them whatsoever.
So I think all of that culminated, and we had elements of the former regime, as well, coming together on June 30th in this massive protest. And that allowed the military to reinsert itself into civilian politics in a very real way. And it’s a very difficult time right now because I think the military is the most, possibly, destructive force to Egyptian politics, and it’s the most brutal force. It has the biggest economic interests to defend. And we’re seeing them, very successfully at the moment, reassert themselves, use this wave of popular anger against Morsi to try and clamp down on any kind of dissent, and that is being targeted really at Islamist groups right now. And we’re seeing the state media, the private media, really drumming—acting as a conveyor belt for the army’s policies. And so, it’s a very difficult time right now in Egypt.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, during the attack on Muslim Brotherhood supporters on Monday, an Egyptian photographer working for a newspaper affiliated with the party was killed. The 26-year-old journalist, Ahmed Assem el-Senousy, reportedly filmed his own death. His family released footage he took that reportedly shows an army sniper taking aim at him. This comes as several Al Jazeera reporters were arrested. In the past two weeks, two journalists and a student have been killed while documenting protests. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, prior to these deaths only four journalists had been killed in Egypt since 1992. Sharif, could you talk about the significance of this? What’s been happening to the media in the midst of these protests and the ouster of Morsi?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, we saw, right when the head of the armed forces ousted Morsi, in that statement on July 3rd, the channel, the main channel of the Muslim Brotherhood, Misr 25, went black. There was also raids and attacks by security forces on other pro-Morsi channels, where workers were arrested, although many of them have been released, but those channels shut down. And so, we’ve hardly seen any coverage by the private media and, of course, the state media, which has completely toed the military line, of these continued protests by the Muslim Brotherhood, hardly any coverage of the massacre that happened on Monday at the hands of the military, completely adopting the military lines. There is this crackdown on the media.
And Al Jazeera, which has been seen, especially since the beginning of what we called the Arab Spring, as being a pro-Morsi channel, has also come under attack. Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, which is a local affiliate, was raided. A lot of its—its director was held for a day. And then, subsequently, a lot of its workers resigned, saying—claiming bias from their managers to, you know—bias to influence the editorial line towards the Muslim Brotherhood.
But more than that, we’ve seen also, as I said, private channels really demonize Islamists, call them terrorists, and, in a way, incite violence in their own way, and have no compassion whatsoever for the dozens of deaths that took place on Monday. So, there’s a real polarization in the media. And, you know, we hardly are—with the voices and the channels of the pro-Morsi camp really being silenced, we’re only getting ones that completely support the military, and it’s a very vicious dialogue that’s happening right now over the airwaves.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, Sharif, finally, the Al Jazeera Arabic reporter who was kicked out of the government news conference by other reporters, who later applauded the spokesman—we’re just going to play a clip.
[clip]
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the sound and scene at a news conference when they were throwing out the Al Jazeera Arabic reporter. Final comment, Sharif?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right, Amy, this was a shameful display of so-called journalists, who completely support the military and who forced out this Al Jazeera crew out of the press conference by the army, chanting "Out! Out! Out!" before the press conference started and refusing to allow it to begin before they were kicked out. So, you know, these are a lot of so-called journalists who completely toe the government line, who report blithely what the military says, and, in fact, after the army spokesman finished his press conference, loudly applauded his statements, which completely denied any wrongdoing of the killing of more than 50 people on the streets of Cairo. So, again, that’s the kind of polarized media landscape we have, and, frankly, very terrible coverage from almost any side of what’s happening in Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have 30 seconds, Sharif, but the significance of the appointment of the prime minister, Beblawi, and the vice president, who originally they were going to say was prime minister, the Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Beblawi is a liberal economist with an academic background. He’s a founding member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party after Mubarak’s ouster. He served as finance minister in 2011 under the first army-led transition. He’s been somewhat critical of the military. He wrote a book criticizing their heavy-handed approach of the first Cabinet that he served in. He also submitted his resignation in October 2011 following the killing of 27 protesters at Maspero by the military, which is interesting given that he accepted this position a day after the military killed nearly double that on the streets of Cairo. But I think it’s important to remember, ideologically, he won’t be around for very long, and his position is really to be seen as a consensus candidate. And the important thing is how much political consensus he can build around him to form this new government. He’s already reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has firmly rejected any participation in the new transition.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, I want to thank you for being with us again. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent in Cairo. His most recent piece for The Nation, we’ll link to at democracynow.org; it’s called "What Led to Morsi’s Fall—and What Comes Next?" This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2013
Exclusive: Ecuador’s Foreign Minister on Snowden, Assange & Latin American Resistance to U.S. Spying
Amidst new revelations of U.S. spying in Latin America and ongoing diplomatic tensions over the asylum efforts of Edward Snowden, we are joined by Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño. Speaking from Quito, Patiño addresses the confusion over Ecuador’s ties to Snowden’s asylum bid after initially granting him a temporary travel document but later calling the action a "mistake." Patiño also comments on the diplomatic fallout over the forced landing in Austria of a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales following rumors that Snowden was on board. And Patiño gives an update on Ecuador’s efforts to resolve the standoff over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who remains holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy as the British government refuses to allow his departure to Ecuador after receiving political asylum. [Click here to watch/read this interview in Spanish]
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
Editors’ Note: Due to technical problems, the translation during the show was not complete/correct. A corrected version will be posted soon.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to one of the countries where NSA leaker Edward Snowden is seeking asylum: Ecuador. The country’s president, Rafael Correa, said Ecuador cannot process Snowden’s request until he reaches Ecuadorean soil or one of its embassies. Correa recently reported he received a call from Vice President Joe Biden urging him to reject Snowden’s asylum bid.
PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] What a difference between Vice President Biden and those poorly raised congressmen and senators threatening the country. It was a very friendly, even cordial, conversation. Of course we discussed the topic of Snowden, for which he communicated a very courteous request from the United States that we reject asylum. I told him what the Ecuadorean position is. Vice President, thank you for your call. We very much appreciate the United States. We have not gone in search of this situation. We are not anti-U.S., which is what certain negative-thinking members of the media have said.
AMY GOODMAN: President Correa followed up by saying Russia is now in control of Snowden’s fate. In a public message to Snowden, Correa also urged the whistleblower to "keep your spirits high," adding, quote, "knowing that you acted in accord with your conscience can give you peace," Correa said. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said welcoming Snowden "would severely jeopardize" U.S. relations with Ecuador. Correa’s government followed up with a dig at the Obama administration by offering to donate millions of dollars for human rights training in the United States on matters of "privacy, torture and other actions that are denigrating to humanity," Correa said.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ecuador has already granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent over a year in its London embassy awaiting safe passage. WikiLeaks is assisting NSA leaker Edward Snowden in his asylum bid to over 20 countries, including Ecuador. Earlier this month, Ecuador claimed it had discovered a hidden listening device in its London embassy where Assange is residing. A small microphone was reportedly found in its ambassador’s office during a security sweep in June.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go directly to Quito, Ecuador, where we’re joined by Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño.
Foreign Minister Patiño, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered Edward Snowden political asylum. Will Ecuador also offer him political asylum?
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] We’re very pleased that these countries have granted asylum to this person. We have not issued a statement with regard to the request of Snowden, but certainly we will study it.
AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to the Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Foreign Minister Patiño, your reaction to the bugging devices that were found in your embassy in England?
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] It’s unfortunate that spying is so prevalent throughout the world still. It’s a massive violation of the right to privacy and to communication and freedom of expression and our conversations. The hidden microphone that we found in our embassy in London is certainly a grave occurrence, and we are requesting that the British government collaborate with us in the investigation of what information has been obtained with this hidden microphone.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Foreign Minister Patiño, also, the recent events that occurred with President Evo Morales, when his—when his plane was forced to—was not allowed to pass through the airspace of several European countries, what has been the reaction in your country and in Latin America to this affront to the Bolivian president?
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] There has been a very energetic response. Furthermore, the secretary general of the Organization of American States has also issued a strong statement. So, in addition to global spying and all the violations to international law that this constitutes now, we see yet another grave violation. It’s really a flagrant violation. And so, what we’re seeing is a snowballing of violations of international law, and there has been no explanation of this violation. And the norms of international law are being completely discarded. Of course, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is also being violated. The citizens of the world have the right to enjoy freedom of expression and communication wherever they are in the world.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño. We are having a little problem being able to hear his voice, so we’re doing the best we can right now. Let me ask you, Foreign Minister Patiño, about the case of Julian Assange. You had meetings with Britain’s William Hague about his fate. Can you explain what will happen to Julian Assange? He has—he is in the Ecuadorean embassy for more than a year now in London.
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] Well, the issue is in the hands of the British government. Unfortunately, we have really taken on a role of advocates or lawyers and have provided extensive, substantiated arguments in favor of asylum being granted and respected. We’ve also had to provide the legal arguments that allow and, furthermore, force the British government to provide safe conduct to Julian Assange. So we’ve asked Mr. Hague what he expects. Does he think that Julian Assange will just grow old in our embassy? There are international conventions on asylum and the right of sovereign nations to grant asylum, so we’ve told the United Kingdom that it’s a question of human rights and that persons have a right to request and receive asylum. And the British government needs to acknowledge that individuals have the right to request, receive and enjoy asylum. So, Julian Assange, by no means, is enjoying the right to asylum. He is suffering, and his rights are being violated daily. So this is a grave mistake and constitutes the violation of Julian Assange’s human rights.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Foreign Minister Patiño, to follow up on the Assange matter, could you share with our audience here in the United States the—some of the substance of the conversation between Vice President Joe Biden and President Correa? How did the discussion arise? And what were some of the things that Vice President Biden said?
AMY GOODMAN: About Snowden.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: About Snowden, yes.
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] Well, President Correa has made statements publicly with regard to that exchange. Vice President Biden asked President Correa not to grant asylum, and President Correa pointed out that the U.S. has not complied with its obligations to extradite corrupt bankers to Ecuador, and that caused a very grave financial crisis. So President Correa reminded Vice President Biden that that was the case. Sometimes it’s important to remind each other of such matters.
And, secondly, of course, we respect the opinions of the United States with regard to the asylum request of Snowden, but Ecuador will exercise its sovereignty in evaluating the asylum request. Suffice to say that it was a cordial exchange, and President Correa highlighted the cordial nature of the call, but did table the fact that Ecuador has been requesting the extradition of these bankers for a number of years, and that Ecuador is happy to hear the opinions of the United States on a variety of issues, but will make its own decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, President Correa said giving the travel document to Edward Snowden that allowed him to leave Hong Kong was a mistake on the part of the consul in London. Does he still feel that way? And why is it that Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia have outright offered asylum, but Ecuador hasn’t, which I think has surprised many, since it did grant political asylum to Julian Assange?
FOREIGN MINISTER RICARDO PATIÑO: [translated] Can you hear me? I did hear the question. There was—the line isn’t very good. I can answer the question.
President Correa said that it was a mistake of an official to have provided a safe conduct without requesting his higher-ups permission to do so, but he didn’t say that it was a mistake to do it, in and of itself. It was just a question of procedure that was mistaken. When a person is persecuted politically and their security is at risk, we need to give priority to saving the life of the person that’s being persecuted. And we know that the CIA—there were people in Chile and the Southern Cone countries that were in danger, who didn’t have passports or travel documents, and whose lives were at risk and in danger, and these people were taken to other countries to protect their life. And that is well known. That’s happened in grave situations in the course of the world’s history, and we know that there are solutions that can be offered by countries that are willing to save the life of those that are being persecuted.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, the latest revelation that’s come from the NSA documents released by Snowden on spying on Latin America, not only on military matters, but on energy and oil matters, your response?
CASSANDRA SMITHIES: We’re having trouble with the line.
AMY GOODMAN: I think he’s having trouble hearing us, and we’ll have to end the interview because we’ve come to the end of the hour. But we want to thank Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño for joining us from Quito, Ecuador.
Our interview with Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent in Cairo, we’ll conduct after this broadcast, and we’ll post it at democracynow.org. Special thanks to our translator, Cassandra Smithies.
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