 We now welcome you to a CN Live special, a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Consortium News. I'm Joe Laurier, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Loss. On this day in 1995, Robert Parry, one of the country's leading investigative reporters, started a website on something called the Internet that was like no other that had existed before. A quarter of a century later, it is still going. For the Associated Press and Newsweek, Bob had uncovered major stories. He blew the cover on Iran Contra, one of the greatest scandals in US history. He first reported on the CIA's relationship with the Nicaraguan Contras and their narcotics shipments to the United States. And he put the spotlight on the first October surprise in the 1980 presidential election. By revealing crimes and malfeasance by the US government, that did not sit well with his mainstream editors. They tried spiking his stories. They set up absurd demands like asking Oliver North to confess. And at one point told him to stop asking too many questions for the good of the country. After working on an October surprise documentary for PBS's frontline, Bob left established from journalism behind so that he could simply do his job unhindered. He found a like-minded consortium of journalists whose stories had also been suppressed to begin Consortium News. It started on paper as a newsletter mailed to subscribers' homes. But on November 15, 1995, 25 years ago today, Bob launched the world's first independent news site. He beat salon.com online by five days and established outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal by several weeks. More importantly though, Bob Perry was at the forefront of alternative online news that questioned establishment narratives and Washington congressional wisdom. He covered stories the mainstream media wouldn't and took angles on stories that were being ignored with virtually no staff besides the help of his sons and longtime assistant Chelsea Gilmore. Bob built a following and enough readers to fund the operation. Thousands came to depend on Bob's take from the news. A TV presenter once told Joe that he would wait to see what Bob had written that day before deciding what his show should be about. While Consortium News has never come close to being mass media, its audience attracted influential people in Washington and elsewhere. Bob wrote, quote, the point of Consortium News, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e. a place to pursue important facts and give everyone a fair shake. But he added, more and more, I would encounter policy makers, activists, and yes, journalists who cared less about a careful evaluation of the facts and logic and more about achieving a preordained geopolitical result. And this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious holes of American media. This perversion of principles, twisting information to fit a desired conclusion he went on, became the modus favendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and even-handedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the right and among near-conservatives, but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well. Everything became information warfare. Bob continued to break stories about the Reagan era into the 1990s, including the existence of a secret perception management program run by the CIA from within the White House. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, consortium news became the home of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals Facility, a consortium of former intel officers who exposed the faulty intelligence leading to the war. Like honest reporters just trying to do their jobs, Bob said, there were also honest intelligence officers trying to do the same. Bob wrote that Republicans started this downward trend in politics and in journalism by first weaponizing information to de-legitimize their opponents. He wrote, quote, rather than accept the reality of Nixon's guilt, many Republicans simply built up their capability to wage informational warfare. He continued, the idea had developed that the way to defeat your political opponent was not just to make a better argument or rouse popular support or to dredge up some crime that could be pinned on him or her. Soon the Democrats would be using the same tactics. He wrote, the trend of using journalism as just another front, and no holds barred political warfare continued with Democrats and liberals adapting to the successful techniques pioneered mostly by Republicans. Thus Bob in just trying to do his job as a reporter became increasingly critical of the Democrats too. He wrote groundbreaking stories on the Obama administration's wards in Syria and Libya and especially on the US engineered coup in Ukraine. He was especially fierce about Democrats who lost their skepticism and embraced the intelligence agencies. He wrote, quote, ironically many liberals who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications to the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the US intelligence community feeds us even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith. Perhaps consortium news and Bob's biggest story in 25 years was being in the forefront of skepticism on the now thoroughly debunked Russia Gate story which was taken on faith from unnamed intelligence sources. Bob also defended Julian Assange's earliest 2010 against government designs to arrest and imprison him which did not please many Democrats especially after the 2016 election. For taking an independent stand based on where the facts led him, Bob upset both Republican and Democratic partisans. That's because he left a legacy of strict non-partisan journalism, really the only kind of journalism that there is which this site has endeavored to continue. It led to personal attacks on Bob from Republicans and Democrats, oblivious to the fact he was critiquing their political enemies too. The attacks on this site for the same reasons have continued. So joining us today to help celebrate Bob Perry's and consortium news is 25 years of achievement are Diane Dustin, Bob's wife who lived through it all, filmmaker and journalist John Pilger, Ray McGovern a former CIA analyst, a close associate of Bob and an important contributor to the website. Nat Perry, one of Bob's sons who made major contributions to the development of the site. Spence Oliver, one of Bob's anonymous sources on the Iran Contra story and Gareth Porter a long time contributed to consortium news. To start the program, we will hear from a supporter and friend of consortium news and to Bob film director, Oliver Stone. And we'll have Oliver chat about consortium news with his co-author of the untold history of the United States American University historian, Peter Kuznick, Oliver and Peter, welcome. Oliver, before we drill down to the questions, why don't you just briefly say how you met Bob and how you first got introduced to consortium news? Yeah, I meant your dinner party, Peter, when we hadn't started until history was just as a guest and we talked about what was going on in Washington in the 90s, which seems like such ancient history now. But I got to know Bob basically through consortium news because I started to read it. And the stories were, I heard of him with Newsweek and I knew Maynard Parker who was his boss. He criticized Maynard Parker among others at Newsweek for being chicken and not going with his stories. And I know those people. I sense what kind of propriety exists around them. So I know where this Washington sense of you don't cross this line. And I felt that my whole life and all my work, it's gotten worse. As you know, I went through the JFK case and it's impossible sometimes to argue with these people. Bob, I never discussed JFK with him but it was clear that he was onto something with this Iran Contra because we were talking to some of the same people. And it's a dirty, dirty story. It went deeper than ever got out and Bob knew that. And I mean, obviously it seems to me that Reagan was impeachable for treason at that point. And certainly George H.W. Bush, the father should have gone down that road and been prosecuted or at least accused and brought into this thing because Bob makes a big deal about how he found evidence later after the case was closed and they weren't let off but he made the point that the CIA brought out a IG report and it was clear that the Russian documents had not been examined. And the Russians knew quite a bit about the case. So it gets very complicated that Bob was always with that case. He never gave it up. He was like a Sherlock Holmes and nothing could stop him. I admired that tenacity and that's when I got involved with him and I contributed to the organization, continue to love this, love the writers for this consortium news. He started something that should continue in the tradition of, from my, from one of my knowledges of I.F. Stone, I'd say early in the 50s. And although I was a conservative I certainly read some of his stuff and was shocked. And later Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson who that you may criticize them for certain things but they did a hell of a job of waking me up. And we need those journalists without the John Pilger who's sitting here today is another one. We need these people to wake, to go in, to go in and people don't do that. And it's stunning to me that's, well, I guess I have to understand why it's scary. I mean, we know a lot of investigative reporters who do get lost, who really get lost. I mean, I know a guy, and I respect him, Tom O'Neill. Some people say he's crazy, but he's been going after the Manson case since the 1980s, 90s and he's still in there. It's a rabbit hole and that happens. Bob, thank God, got out of the rabbit hole. And as angry as he was, he was, he never gave up insisting that he had the truth. And I'd like, even he went back to Iran, Contra as late as a few weeks before he died. Oliver, you started with talking about Bob's work in Central America and exposing what was happening with the Contras and the drug running. It's interesting to me that in so many of your films, you also are very critical of mainstream media. Beginning with your first major feature film, Salvador, the Valerie Wildman character, you really pillory there. But we go through some of your other movies like Wall Street, JFK, Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers and especially Snowden. And you've got this ongoing critique of the media and the lies that the media keeps foisting upon us. On the other hand, you talked about the truth tellers. And you and I both consider Bob in the tradition of the truth tellers that also runs throughout all your movies, whether it's Garrison or maybe we can go through all these characters who ended with Snowden. And you and I talk about Henry Wallace and others who speak truth to power. And but, and it's interesting to me that you began that critique of the mainstream media before JFK came out. Because you got attacked viciously for JFK, but you were going after these folks as early as Salvador and movies before JFK came out, also to some extent in Born on the Fourth of July. So how do you see Bob in that tradition of truth tellers, people who stand up to the power establishment and are willing to risk and actually pay a huge price often as you did for speaking truth to power? That's a big question. I mean, Bob was at the forefront. He's one of the best I would consider him right up there with, you know, with Pearson, as I said, Stone Anderson. I mean, he sacrificed a lot. He was never into the money. He never was into the position when I met him in Washington. He was quite, he was quite content to have a subscription service supporting his work and his, a base of people who read his stuff. There was no bigger ambition than to tell the truth is what I think of Bob. And in that regard, you have to respect him enormously. He's a treasure. He was a national treasure. The bear in mind that I was against the establishment with Salvador, what I saw in Central America in those countries was, I felt very strongly that Ronald Reagan's was intending to go into Nicaragua and actually get rid of him. I mean, destabilize a place completely, try to, but if necessary, send troops because I saw a lot of troops in Honduras and in Salvador they were devoting themselves to the Honduras, to the Nicaragua situation. So it was clear that I thought that we were into another early Vietnam. It felt like, it just felt like the best thing that ever happened for that cause, of course, was the crash. The CIA as usual screwed up, screwed up in a big way because this fellow, the contractor who got shot down over Nicaragua spilled the beans and he was working for the CIA. And that was somehow, that snap, that was enough. And Bob covered that case too. And the thing unraveled and Reagan's last two years from 88 to, from 86 to 88 were lame and he couldn't get things, he couldn't get legislation through. Very important that that happened. So truth tellers do work even if they don't understand their position in the big picture. Certainly, we know that case is so crucial now. I mean, what's going on with not only Snowden but more importantly, Assange. Assange is at the key of this, all this mess that's been going on for two years it seems to me, and he's never been allowed to, he doesn't wanna talk or whatever. I don't know the details like maybe John Pilger could tell us but he knows things that are invaluable about this and I'm surprised that one or more candidates doesn't take an advantage of it by seeking to pardon him but that would cause a fewer. I understand, but it's an interesting, crucial case. I wish Bob were around to explain it in great detail like he would. I'm not anti-media, I was anti-establishment and then when I did the JFK case I did it out of anti very strong feelings that we had been assassinated for political purposes and he was a very dangerous man to them because he would be reelected and after him came Bobby and after him possibly Teddy. It was a dynasty in the making, it was serious they had to end this thing. But that came out, that is what brought the press down on me. It was not before that, they were not attacking me. Yeah, Salvador they ignored but still it got out and then the other films did well, Wall Street was respected so was born on the 4th of July but then and the doors too but then JFK was the end of that honeymoon or whatever the parole that I had it never changed after 1992. It was really ugly and I was always discounted as a lone nut, I know what that feels like but thank God people like you and many others have supported me all the way down to Snowden, which was my last film. Oliver, Bob spent much of the last five years of his life exposing the demonization of Russia and Putin talking about Russophobia and Russiagate and a different perspective on what happened in Ukraine and he saw that as so crucial. You've also been very much involved in that. You got attacked again for your four part interview with Putin, one of the things that Bob understood was the importance of seeing how the world looks explain how the world looks through the eyes of our adversaries which you've made an attempt to do also but now beginning in January, 2018 Secretary of Defense Mattis said that international terrorism is no longer the main threat to American national security. It's Russia and China. I was hearing on the television today for Ezekaria talking again about Russia's effort to discredit American democracy. That's what they're trying to do to sow seeds of dissent in America. Talk about a little bit about Russia and how that played such an important part in your thinking in recent years. First of all, I just wanna say Bob got it right away. He saw the Nazi, the neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine and he filled in the history of Ukraine back to World War II, which is you have to go there. You have to understand the tensions in Ukrainian society that came out in 2014. And it's heartbreaking story. It's a heartbreaking story because I've never seen the new, it feels like 1946 Cold War again. It's just, the Russians never did anything good in their life. They didn't even talk about the space shuttle anymore. But nothing, and I'm talking mainstream, like New York Times to me has completely lost its credibility. I never, maybe I was wrong to believe in them anyway. Yeah, a lot of people say that because they did support the Vietnam War for a long time. But what they said about Ukraine was always, it wasn't even journalism. It was editorial writing in the first paragraph. The Russians being described in an objective story as sinister or it's always about Putin. It's who Putin is, he's always Russia. I don't know how you can conflate it to, but they never used to call Khrushchev Russia. They'd say Russia with Putin, it's Putin's Russia. Putin's Russia, like he has complete control of this gigantic place. It's not that simple. And I'm glad I was able to go to the source several times and get my four hours with Mr. I had four hours, about 20 hours with Mr. Putin. And he just got a lot, nobody watches it, except you can see it on Amazon, thank God. Thank God for Amazon, even though much criticized, but you can at least see what he is saying. And he speaks in his own voice, not with some dubbed Thug translator, which the American News Networks always put on his case. The Putin speaks for himself. He's a quiet, brilliant thinking man. He's not at all the picture that is presented to the American public. I've been attacked by that for that interview as a stooge, as an apologist, as a commie and all that. It goes on and on and on and it'll never go away. I love dictators. I bow down to dictators, Chavez, Castro. You know, all these three people I admire because they stood up to a sovereign empire of our own, our American empire, which is trying to end their sovereignty. And they just won't go along with it. And they're independent, very independent. They bristle when you talk to them about would you have observers look at this because they feel the observers will never be straight and they're gonna be crooked. But it's just, the reason I admire them is they were rebels and they're all strong men. And Castro was perhaps one of the strongest men I've ever met in my life, Chavez was too. It's a lonely road to travel and some of you know that road. And I guess I've always looked rooted for the underdog as a movie maker. And that's what the movies used to be. It used to be the underdog, right? The guy you never expected would come through. Matt Perry wrote, quote, ultimately Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions in hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over. I think those powerful words apply to you or me. And I just, would you reflect on that and talk about how Bob saw his purpose in life and how you see yours in that same vein? Well, Bob was very upset, I think, because this Cold War that we've created is even more dangerous. And it's useless, it's unnecessary because there's been no significant threat from any other source than us. Most of the conflict and the tension in the world comes from us because we like to create things to a boil, it's to our advantage. We take advantage of color revolutions that we often are very deeply involved with to change governments regimes that we don't like all around the world. The power of the United States is extraordinary. I'm still amazed that we're able to finance this thing although we're in debt and all that, but it seems like an impossible grasp that we have to keep our fingers everywhere, everywhere literally, whether it's Burkina Faso or Ukraine, the North Pole, all the countries, all the space surrounding China and Russia. It's an enormous empire and it's without precedent in the world because of communications and because of cyber warfare, which we've wholly used again, we've used cyber warfare on the offensive again and again, starting as far as I know with the Israelis back in 2007, eight and nine when we were attacking Israel, I mean attacking Iran. So cyber warfare plus all the money, all the propaganda, the advertising, it's a huge proposition Peter, it's a monster beyond belief. It's a prize, I think that the best summation of it was given actually by Harold Tinter back in his Nobel Peace Prize, his Nobel Writers Prize in 2007 or so, just before he died, he said, it's a miracle, it's a miracle this thing happened. It's an act of hypnotism that has never been seen in the world before, that you have convinced the world, America has convinced the world that they are the good guys. Tinter and a lot of people see it, but not enough. So the job of journalism is to spread that truth, like the ancient Christian missionaries spread the truth about their religion. That's one of the things that you and I go after in our untold history books and documentaries is this notion of American exceptionalism. Bob, we reread his articles, he always understood the importance of putting things in historical context. It made him present to the historical background over and over again for the different topics that he was writing about. And you and I appreciate that importance of history. And you probably more than anybody else in Hollywood have done historical films on historical topics and realizing that Americans have very little understanding of history and much of what they do think they know is wrong. Much of what you've done in terms of truth telling what Bob did in terms of truth telling is based on a certain faith that the public will appreciate the truth and see the light, understand and act differently to change things and make a better world, which is what our goal has been. But there's some things that have happened recently that make that more questionable. The fact that half of Trump's supporters believe the QAnon conspiracy theory, half of them, the fact that where 35% of Republican voters before the election believe the election was fixed, 70% after the election believe the election was fixed, we've run into this problem with the public having no critical analytical capabilities or at least part of the public having that. And we're in a situation now where you look at the Republican party is a multi-part question. But Gorvidal was asked a few years back why Obama when he was being so viciously attacked by the Republicans did not respond in kind with an equal outrage. And Gorvidal said, Obama believes the Republican party is a political party when in fact it's a mindset like Hitler Youth based on hatred, religious hatred, racial hatred, when you foreigners hear the word conservative, you think of kindly old men hunting foxes, they're not, they're fascists. So we're up against the Republican party that's turned into a fascist death cult of sorts where the public goes along with some of this and so how do you see our role collectively, all of us, John and Ray and Joe and everybody as truth tellers up against a world in which people are not really, and some people at least that aren't open to or capable of understanding differentiating between truth and falsehood. This is a question I also would like you to take up after I leave because I think I would love to hear the recorded answers of all these gentlemen and participants. I don't quite agree with you, Peter, you know that I came from a Republican background, strong one, and you have come from the FDR side and you converted me in many ways to your thinking. I understand it. On the other hand, I don't think the Republicans are all that bad as you call them a fascist party or a Nazi party. I think that's going a little bit too far. Sure there's people like that in it and they make themselves very loud and generally speaking they can't spell and they write horrible letters to people and all make a lot of noise but there's a lot of intelligent people and I think they can be reached. And I think you're barking after the wrong issue to suddenly declare that the election count is absolutely correct because all the mainstream media says it is, it doesn't work that way. I think it's very strange that the 2016 election is so quickly forgotten and where the Russians manipulated the vote. Always will. So what happened to the Russians? Didn't they manipulate some voting? I mean, it's apparently dismissed as an issue right away. It's very convenient for them. And I think a lot of Republicans doubt that and they doubt the, they wonder about the mail-in balloting because it's an old technique that's been used for a century. I mean, people would do that. They stuffed the ballot box back in the 1870s in New York and who knows what's there. I mean, I believe that Biden won because of the numerics but again, I was surprised that Trump came so close, you see? So I think that's not an issue that you can easily pinpoint. Don't forget that in Bob's case, one of the great things Bob did was for me, he revised the 1968 election completely. I had to rethink it because when I did my Nixon movie, I was thinking that the Bay of Pigs had something. I really was what Nixon was hiding in his, in those tapes, that 19 and a half minute missing gap. I do believe after reading Bob and seriously thinking about how Nixon pulled off that Vietnamese withdrawal from the peace process. And that was very effective. And I think that might have made the difference against Hubert Humphrey. So in that case, I do think that was what was Nixon may well have been hiding during Watergate was his involvement in that call it conspiracy or call it, it was really a pernicious. It was treason. It was what Reagan did in the 1980 election. If indeed, I do believe the October surprise that was reported on. I think Bob did too, that Reagan held the hostages back through by talking directly to the Iranians and then paying them off with arms to fight the Iraqi war. And the Iranians paying them in cash of half of which he gave to the Contras. So I think there's a dirty deal around the 1980 election and the 1968 election. I think our country has been back and forth. I think the 2000 election was stolen. I do. I think that's the Supreme court did a very bad thing. Said a terrible precedent and we're in a hole ever since that moment, certainly because of the policies of George W. Bush. So there's been a lot of chicanery through all these elections except maybe I think Obama was pretty clean in 2008. I think so. And so forth and so on. Let me just follow up a little. We talked about all of those incidents in untold history in some depth as Bob did a lot of his writings. But when we look at this election, Oliver, you probably spend more time with Vladimir Putin than any other American. Yeah. And we look at this election and there's been very little discussion about Russian interference. There's a lot of warning in the beginning that it was gonna happen. Then there's been nothing about that, basically. And I, but I saw opportunities where Putin really wanted to help Trump. He could have done so. He could have accepted American terms on the New START Treaty, which Putin rejected. And that would have given Trump his ability to brag about a big foreign policy victory. He could have supported Trump when it came to Hunter Biden, but he didn't contradict the Trump on Hunter Biden. I mean, I'll just look at the fact that I was on mainstream Russian television a couple of times a day for the past several weeks during the election and they knew that I was so strongly anti-Trump and accepting of Biden, even though he's not my kind of guy. But so how do you see Russia positioning itself now in terms of the United States and the possibility of a Biden presidency or the reality of a Biden presidency and the kind of tense world we have in which U.S.-Russian relations are at a very, very dangerous point now with the hands of the doomsday clock at a hundred seconds before midnight? You know, I will simply, I know I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, what do they call it, the idiot clown or whatever they believe are. A useful idea. What, what do they call it? A useful idea. Usefully, I know I'm a useful idiot, but I will repeat what Mr. Putin said in his interview, very clearly, time and again. And I asked him time and again, it is not in Russia's interest to go into the American presidential election. First of all, it would be a disaster if something were found out and it would be a major issue, which it didn't become, thank God, but almost. But he said, we don't, that our problem with the United States, we try to deal with every president, but Democrat or Republican, we're willing to negotiate. And, but we have a problem. There is a system in America that is heavier than any president. And whether it's Obama in the White House or Trump or Bush or Clinton, it doesn't matter to the Russians at this point. They see where the, they see the writing on the wall, as they say. And Clinton who had no beef with Russia, suddenly he loves Yeltsin. And of course he helps him, he helps him fraudulently to win that election in 96. But even Clinton, I mean, it doesn't make a difference. So they have to deal with, they know the United States is hostile. They know there's, now they have 13 NATO countries around the, in the proximity to Russia against them. And probably, and who knows what's coming up in Belarus, who knows what's gonna happen in Ukraine. It's not easy, but they're on their guard and they keep, for a very little amount of money, they build a huge nuclear force that is equivalent to our trillion dollar, our trillion dollar effort every year if you prepare for war. The Russians have a what, $60 billion budget. I mean, think about, they're very smart. And thank God, because if not, there'd be even more problems. If we could run over them, as we think some people think, we'd really be in the, into a hot spot, I think. I would never underestimate the Russians. I never, never, never. They're as strong against the Nazis. They were strong against the French. And they're gonna be strong against anybody trying to take over or to beat them or to take something from them. I think we're very lucky that Mr. Putin is a very sensible man and he listens. And at the same time, he's not hotheaded enough to get upset that he's been called a thug by this guy, Mr. Biden, the latest man to trash Russia. Every, I guess he thinks every American resident has to trash us. He once said to me, you know, I probably sound outrageous, but we feel like Jews in World War II. Always Russia. Yeah, you would think that Biden is making such an effort to reach out to the Republicans, who have been so vicious toward him. He could make an effort to reach out to Putin now and try to have a real reset and ease some of these problems and work together on some of the problems that confront us. He's offered again and again, listen, I do have to run now, but please sound, I'd love to get the rest of this tape, whenever it's, I'd love to see what the panel is. We'll make it available to you, Oliver. Thank you so much. I'm sure everyone else has a question for you, but you don't have time, if like John Poser wants to ask you something. Thank you, John. Thank you, Ray. Thank you, Oliver. And Gary. I'm going to just leave. I'll learn now, there's a badge of honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.