 Hey everybody, I just want to thank you, me and Kathy Vogan are doing a prerecorded special for the vigil. We're going to go into a deep dive or one of the articles that she recently put out. But first, just for those of you who may not know, Kathy Vogan is one of the executive producers over at Consortium News. She's done decades worth of incredible work and does an amazing, amazing job covering Julian's case. So I'm super excited. She's probably one of the most knowledgeable people that I know on the subject going back a long time. So how are you today, Kathy? I'm very well, thanks. So you recently released this new article into Consortium News, so I'm going to pull it up on screen here real quick. It's an article specifically looking at the case, Julian's case in perspective of the computer fraud and abuse act charge and what the new revelations about Cigar's testimony reveal, teenager as he's referred to in the court documents. So could you give us a little bit of just a brief outline of what Cigar talked about before we dive in here and what the computer fraud and abuse act charge really tries to frame Julian's case as? Well, actually the article is it's really about the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion part of the case against Assange crumbling for the second time, not just this Cigar door wasn't the first. The first I believe was in court day 14 of last September's hearing with the testimony of Patrick Eller and to some extent also John Goetz, who talks about a very, very rigorous process of redaction, which is very opposite of the image they're trying to paint of Assange. So the thing is that I go into both of those what happened on that day to demolish the US's scenario of what happened in that exchange between Manning and a moniker called Nathaniel Frank, who was assumed to be Julian Assange. First thing that came out in that testimony was that there was no forensic evidence that it was Julian Assange. And he was never even asked to try to prove that that was something that was proven basically a decade ago in Chelsea Nannings case that they have no idea who exactly exactly. I remember seeing that part of the chat back then they did come out towards the end of Manning's court martial this little bit of chat about cracking a password hash or turning a hash back into a plain text password from part of a hash, not even a full one. And I thought, oh, you know, but then I really kept an eye on that for years and and it just seemed you know, it seemed to me that well, there is no there is now a forensic trace and there is on my computer. I have a very new Mac and it's got a fingerprint thing. So when I, you know, instead of typing in my password, I can put my fingerprint on my computer and I can do it on my phone as well. So that's forensic evidence, fingerprints, of course, classical. But before that, there was there was no real conclusive proof that somebody who you think is on a terminal. Even in Manning's trial, there were up to 12 people who had access to Manning's computer, the one that was used for downloading cables and all that material from supernet. But Manning confessed, obviously not wanting other people to be accused of what she had done. But you know, in the case of this other bit of chat, a jabber chat, the address was press association. But the name attached to it was Nathaniel Frank and it may have actually been Manning who put that in herself. But then whether it was Nathaniel Frank or press association, you just don't know who's there and you can't prove it. That's one of the things. So the whole business of like in the indictment, it said that the purpose of cracking a password was to hide Manning's identity and make it harder to find who did it. That whole scenario was shown not to be feasible by the forensic examiner, Patrick Eller. And on that secondary account, it was well established in Chelsea's case that they were trying to access music and video games. And at the same time, wouldn't have had any of the access that Chelsea did to these documents in the first place. Well, that's exactly right. Manning had access to top secret. She had a top secret clearance. And the access was actually pinned on to her user ID, her login. She could only access logged in as herself. And even if she had logged in as somebody else to do that, it would not have granted anonymity because it was the physical address of the terminal, the IP address, that was being recorded regardless of who was logged in. So that was all thrown on his face. It was very technical. So a lot of people didn't get it. And they were still trying to defend Assange. Every journalist protects their sources. Every journalist cajoles their source for more information. But that's really buying into the US scenario, which was that this was the purpose to protect identity. It obviously wasn't. And so now we have to step back from that, even if it is true. And of course, that's the reason that so many other journalists around the world are in danger because they are at the purpose of Joe Biden in December 2010. He said, if he conspired to obtain the information, well, that's a totally different thing from throwing information on your lap. He did actually say that. So there was the playbook written by Biden in December 2010 of how it was going to go. Yeah, you have, there's that video of just all of the people saying horrible things about Julian from back in 2012 that came out. And you have the mission panel. Well, that was all part of it. That was part of it to start portraying him as a hacker. And you have both sides of the US political spectrum, right? The Mitch McConnells and the Joe Bidens of the world coming out and saying that this man is a high tech terrorist. Like verbatim both set that within hours of each other on separate political winged news shows. Illegally shut this out of a bitch. Remember that? The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure. I think the man is a high tech terrorist. He's done enormous damage to our country. And I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, he needs to change the law. The way to deal with this is pretty simple. We've got special law forces. I mean, a dead man can't leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, a treasonous, and he has broken every law in the United States. The guy ought to be, and I'm not for the death penalty, so if I'm not for the death penalty I don't want to do it. Illegally shoot the son of a bitch. Then I go into the story of Ziggatour Fordison, the star witness in a second, a new attempt to portray Julian as a hacker. That sort of collapses as well, because obviously, Ziggy, as he has referred to by others, confessed, I suppose, that he had been lying to the FBI until he produced some evidence that he had been lying. We talked to Stundan, the Stundan journalist, Biatma Alexanderson. And he did explain that there is evidence, that clear evidence. Not only that he was lying to the FBI, but also that the FBI was grooming him. And they offered him immunity in other cases. I don't know what those are, so I can't assume what those cases were, but he was involved in pedophilia. He's a sociopath. He literally laundered $50,000 out of WikiLeaks and fundraising efforts. This is someone whose testimony shouldn't even have been included in the first place, let alone have to be in there to then be redacted, or not redacted, but retracted by that person. In that sting that the FBI initiated, and they had been watching over DDOS attacks by their man before they contacted Iceland with this rubbish story that Iceland needed America's protection, that there was an imminent threat to power infrastructures and whatever. And that wasn't the real purpose of going there. They deceived the Icelandic government. They also deceived the British government because they didn't reveal Thornton's identity. So they called, even though he's pushing 30, he was not far off 30 now, they called him teenager. And so the British court is unaware that they've got a convicted fraudster. The pedophilia of nine underage boys, abusive nine underage boys, it's terrible, but the FBI would have said, well, that's got nothing to do with this case. But it's the fraud thing. Kristen Raffensen said that there were two dozen organizations, individuals and organizations that he had defrauded. He had got the money that he stole from WikiLeaks by forging Julian Assange's signature. I mean, this guy is famous for being a common. So that's the thing that, I mean, in an American court, Thornton would never have been regarded as a credible witness, but then his identity would have been known. But, you know, they were just Ziggy and Sabu or teenager actually. They didn't even use Ziggy because that might have helped identify Jigsaw identification by the court of who the goddamn witnesses. That's funny, because that reminds me of Craig Murray, of course. Yeah. But I will, let me jump into this and please feel free to stop me at any time. So. So we have the Assangex tradition, why the crumbling computer conspiracy case is so vital to the U.S. While most of the talk about Julian Assange's case is about the espionage charges, which are political in nature, the U.S. case hangs on a thread for the second time on a non-political charge, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. There is a reason why the computer charge is so vital to the U.S. case. Charging a journalist with espionage for unauthorized possession and dissemination of defense information has been possible since 1917, but it runs the risk of violating the First Amendment. The tradition has been instead to charge leakers and hackers for breach of an oath, contract or firewall. The legal and public perception of hacking is that much like a burglar, something generally feared and whose punishment by the state is subject not to political debate or opposing laws, but rather welcomed. The intrusion charge shifts public and legal perception. Since the U.S. is on shaky constitutional ground with an espionage indictment, the computer intrusion charge has served as a hook to try to get Assange by portraying him not as a journalist, but as a hacker. Underscoring the differences between the two is fundamental to the U.S. case. That's why the U.S. prosecutor James Lewis QC on the opening day of Assange's extradition hearing in February 2020 turned to the press in the courtroom and told them journalism is not the target of the United States prosecution. He said Assange was not a journalist and instead had participated in the theft of government documents. In other words, he is not a journalist like you, but a hacker. This distinction is spelled out by none other than the current president of the United States. When his vice president in December of 2010, he told television interviewer David Gregory. If he conspired to get these classified documents with a member of the U.S. military, that's fundamentally different than if somebody drops on your lap here, David, you're a press person. Here is classified material. Declined to indict. Unable to come up with that proof, the Obama-Biden administration declined to indict Julian Assange in 2011. The New York Times had published many of the same WikiLeaks documents that Assange had. So logically, the Times would be just as guilty of violating the Espionage Act. Inditing Assange in the Times would be a clear conflict with the First Amendment. But if it could be proven that he was a hacker, not just a journalist, that would have opened the way to indicting Assange, Joe Biden said. Faced with the same dilemma, the United States bolstered its Espionage Act indictment of Assange with separate charges for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. This indictment was marked sealed, but then filed in open court on March 8th, 2018, almost a full year before Assange was arrested April 2019. On that day, the computer intrusion indictment was unveiled to the public. We have known since 2012 of a grand jury investigation into the conspiracy to communicate or transmit national defense information. A former lawyer for Assange, the late Michael Ratner, explained in the middle section of the code marked on the subpoena related to the investigation, 10 is the year it began. G.J. is grand jury, three is the conspiracy statute in the United States, and 793 is the Espionage statute. The grand jury was investigating conspiracy in 2010 as Joe Biden had suggested in December in an effort to portraying Australian journalists not as a passive recipient of classified information he published. The hacking indictment that was issued on the day of his arrest argues an enshrined language that Assange had conspired with his source, Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, to illegally obtain defense information. The indictment, however, admits Manning had security clearances to legally access the material. The charge of conspiracy with Manning hang solely on evidence that appears at Manning's court martial, a chat log between nobody in Manning and someone with the moniker Nathaniel Frank. That Manning was seeking to help with a password hash from Frank has been held up as evidence of conspiracy. In the computer intrusion indictment of Assange, the U.S. claims cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log into the computers under a username that did not belong to her. Such a measure would have made it difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of the disclosed classified information. This argument was seriously undermined on day 14 of the September extradition hearing when forensic examiner Patrick Eller offered his expert testimony for the defense on Manning's conspiracy theory. Do you want to talk to what he had said there and kind of how that pulled in? Because there was a few other witnesses throughout the court trial that also talked to similar things. Essentially, he refuted the scenario that the U.S. had put forth as a probable cause in order to give Manning anonymity and make it more difficult for investigators to find out who had accessed and disclosed the classified information. In fact, Manning only had access, Eller said, Patrick Eller said, to the information logged in on her own user ID. But even if she had have logged in as another user ID, she wouldn't have had access anymore, right? So it was alleged in February last year that the purpose was probably to install video games, films and music videos on the soldiers' computers. This kind of thing was forbidden when they were on active duty. And that makes a lot more sense if you want to install a game or something like that. It's a different kind of permission. It's a permission for the hard drive on the local machine. All of the information was on what they called a T-drive and to access the T-drive and Manning had top secret access. She was permitted to access top secret information. That would not have been an option logged in as something else. So that purpose was regarded as unfeasible. The other really major thing was in cross-examination, Patrick Eller was asked if there was any evidence of who the person, the moniker and Nathaniel Frank was talking to, if that was Julian Assange and he said, no, there's no evidence at all. And also, were you asked? Were you asked to find evidence of who it was? And he said, no, which I found very strange actually that they didn't even ask him to try to prove that the person on the other end was Julian Assange. It was just so assumed. But, you know, what came out there is that this theory is lacking feasibility and forensic evidence. It is extremely weak. And the prosecution realized that back in February, I imagine, when the actual purpose, if that was the actual purpose, and it wasn't said definitively, but that was probably the purpose, the anodine purpose and absolutely nothing to do with the material that was released. You have to remember that the Reykjavik 13, Guantanamo files, the Afghan war diaries and the Iraq war logs were already published before this little bit of jabber chat took place. So it's obvious that Manning didn't need help with a password to access the information and had already downloaded all this a very long time ago and approached various mainstream organizations, including the New York Times, trying to get this material published. And they said, no. And it was only after that that Manning contacted WikiLeaks. So that fell apart. And that's why after, you know, the very first there was three indictments. If I can just screen share that, I'll just show people one, two, three to refresh their memories of the order in which these indictments came out. I do have a bit of a question. And this is sort of procedural about court and the way that it happened. We as the community, the free Assange people were under the impression that the US couldn't change or expand its indictments after I believe it was 60 days after the original charges had been filed. But it seems like they had changed them and they called it expanding on, but they had actually altered the indictments multiple times leading up to, and then ultimately in September when they rearrested Julian on these June, 2020 charges. So I just didn't know procedurally if it was okay, like how that would factor into the whole thing. Well, there were three indictments altogether. And this first one that I've got up, little kid was sealed on March 6th, 2018, right? So that's a long time, that's over a year before Assange was actually arrested. And this is the one that was released first, just after it was unsealed, just after Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian embassy. And if you scroll down on this one, you get that 0.10 there, cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log into the computers under a username that did not belong to her. Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information. So that's the part that Patrick Eller just demolishes, basically it's this process could never have been followed to obtain classified information. And of course, Manning knew to some extent that she was gonna be caught, right? Cause the IP address of the computer, they could figure out which computer and then who was on shift and then Manning just said, well, it was me. Yeah, if you just read line 11, right? Prior to the formation of the password cracking agreement, Manning had already provided WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of classified records that she had downloaded from that apartment and agencies of the United States, including the Afghan related significant activity reports and the Iraq war related significant activity reports. Yeah, well, it's even there in there. Even in their own freaking indictment directly. Yeah, of course, this totally, the way they put it though, I mean, the way I said it before, that sort of seems to imply that Manning didn't have any communications with Nassange at all for the majority of these disclosures. And she wouldn't necessarily need to be talking to Julian because there was a whole team at WikiLeaks that handled different things throughout the whole process. Oh, absolutely. That's right. And we heard that Professor John Sluboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count, he was assigned a particular batch and John Goetz who worked for the Spiegel and he was working on another. He was working on the case of El-Mazri who was accidentally picked up by the CIA, taken to Afghanistan and tortured for five months. And then until they realized they had the wrong guy, took him to Armenia, dumped him up a mountain road and he thought he was going to be killed. But he finally made it back to Germany where he was living and lost his family. And while he was held in the salt pits of Afghanistan, that sounds like a call of duty map, like the salt pits. Like that sounds like a fictional freaking place. And just because the case of Mohamed El-Mazri just really fucking bothers me because this guy was literally just a dad on vacation. He tried to do a hunger strike because he knew he wasn't involved in anything and torture shouldn't happen even if you are someone that opposes a separate state. So he was literally forced, I believe into like rectal feeding. At the most appalling humiliation and there was a lot worse than that going on in these black sites. So if you listen to what Craig Murray said about, blew the whistle on actually when he was ambassador to Uzbekistan, they tortured their children in front of them. They put broken glass up their anus and they boiled them in oil. And people really got out of that one alive and how they had set up all these Uzbek citizens who were Uzbekistan imprisoned citizens. They're not allowed to go across the border into other countries. And all of these people signing confessions that they had been in camps in Afghanistan with bin Laden. And it was just confessions obtained under torture which everybody knows are very unreliable notoriously unreliable. But I just wanna get back to the one, two, three of this. Of course, this is the very first indictment. All that is on it is the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. That's it. That's the hacking conspiracy. Was there in what Biden said, it was the very first word or fourth word, I think he said if he conspired, right? So you've got that word that's in there, that strategy that's in there right from the beginning. Now this is put out on its own to run its course and to have the whole world say, oh my God, he's a hacker. And this is not about anything else. This is what we believed for some time. It's not about espionage, it's about hacking. Number two, which followed this one, that's where it's actually count one now, conspiracy to receive national defense information. So that's incorporated now with all of the espionage charges. When they run into trouble with this password hash when it's shown to be rubbish and they know that in advance, then number three comes out. And that is the second superseding indictment where there are no extra charges laid but what they seek to do desperately in the case of taking a witness like Sigurdorff-Thordeson and even Hector Montsegur, who is Sabu, right? Both of them are convicted felons. It's really scraping the bottom of the barrel. You really feel that they've gotten nothing on this one. But there are other things in there as well, which- If you scroll up number three because the court documents talk specifically in like the evidence section, the parts that are laid out, I think teenagers, Siggy's mentioned like 40 something times. And a big portion of it is outlining the interactions between Thordeson and a group called Nossus and how he was essentially trying to go out and recruit hackers to make it seem like WikiLeaks was this global hacking organization and build this narrative behind the scenes. So that was, I believe, a portion of it that got recanted, essentially, that he wasn't working on behalf of WikiLeaks. He was essentially trying to set up his own operation and just waving the WikiLeaks flag like crazy as he was doing it on behalf of the FBI. Well, Andrew, what Siggy was actually doing was recruiting individuals to hack into computers and or illegally obtain and disclose classified information, right? But the funny thing is that the FBI have given him immunity. He was the one who was doing it, not chewing. But I don't know if they'll withdraw their immunity, they may, but I mean, the thing is that they have granted him immunity. Maybe now that he has recanted his testimony and revealed that it was him who was actually doing this, will they indict him now? I don't know. I don't think that was the purpose. The purpose was obviously revenge, especially for Vault 7. I think that's what tipped the scales. Two things tipped the scales. If you look at that documentary called Hacking Justice, which just came out this year, and I totally recommend it. It came out in the festival of whistleblowing dissent and accountability. The lawyer, Renata Avila, says that once Julian helped Edward Snowden, there was no further possibility of diplomatic negotiations. And that Snowden's freedom came at the price of Julian's. Every aspect of this case is just absolutely heinous when you look at any of it in detail. Like even before these indictments are in existence, right, you have Julian Assange illegally having his Ecuadorian citizenship taken and asylum. The operation between Rick Grinnell to facilitate the removal of Julian's asylum, you have the operation Pelican that was taking place simultaneously to facilitate the UK police forces and being able to negotiate with Len and Moreno to get Julian out of the embassy all before the indictments happen. And that's not even talking about UC Global's observations of his interactions with his attorneys. So it's just, the whole thing is crazy. But the fact that now this portion has fallen apart too, I think is super, super important. The thing is that it is kind of clear from the 4,000 pages, I believe, of chat logs between Sigi and the FBI and Sigi and WikiLeaks that the FBI were grooming him and actually setting up the sting, which was an entrapment, a way of using thoughtism to contact Assange and to try to get him implicated in some kind of illegal activity. The FBI are not looking very good at the moment. So, I mean, the whole purpose was to bolster this charge because given that that is the way in to charging Assange with espionage, that is the thing that drives wedge between him and the mainstream media. The mainstream media are being bullied at the moment because they are basically the state is saying, are you passive or not? When you receive classified information, if it's dropped on your lap, you're gonna be all right. If you can go on the record and just saying, oh, we don't do anything like that. This is just theater because the majority of those mainstream organizations today, they have electronic drop boxes, right? The anonymous drop boxes, that became a norm. WikiLeaks didn't know who they were talking to. I mean, if you don't know who your source is, then that's perfect protection for them because you couldn't even be tortured to give it because you don't know it in the first place. And that's just kind of become the norm. And so what goes on? I mean, and also, you know, you've got PGP, manual PGP encryption, you know, the kind that Edward Snowden has with your very long string that is your encryption pay. And so when you're a serious journalist in national security, you're using these kinds of tools to keep your communications as well as private as possible. And of course, then you still have to take lots of precaution that you don't accidentally click on a link that is pretending that it's something else, but it's not. Like in the spy files, WikiLeaks spy files in 2011, they had revealed that there was a fake iTunes update. Well, with the new release about Project Pegasus, right? It's not like it's new software, but it's a zero click. So all they have to do is send it to you and they're into your phone without you even knowing it anymore. So they don't even have to do the screen share bullshit. They literally just hitch you with Pegasus and they can just get into your device even on the newest iOS platforms. Well, that's right. It's come a long way. You know, that technology was there in 2011 but it required your consent. Do you want me to jump back into the article? Yes, let's do that. And I think maybe that's all I've got to say about this that all of this was bolstering the notion that Assange was a hacker because otherwise, if that charge disappears, well, that's coming up at the end of the article. If we could knock this one out of the water, then he's in exactly the same position as all the other media partners who published the material. So Ellers said US couldn't prove, nor was he asked to prove that the moniker Manning was conversing with was Assange. And Manning's top secret access was only permitted on her login for what she had the password. Logging in as another user meant she would have been locked out, nor would logging in as another user given Manning anonymity as the government alleges since the physical IP address of the terminal was recorded regardless of who was logging in. From the Manning court martial, it emerged that the government knew who was on the shift at the time. In light of Ellers' testimony, the US scenario of Assange's conspiracy with Manning has shown to be unfeasible. The US has heard early from the defense in February 2020 that Manning's purpose was probably to install video games, films, and music videos on the lads, computers, which were forbidden for those on active duty. Ellers testified to the same. By the time of the chat, Manning had already passed the Iraq and Afghan war diaries and the Guantanamo Bay files to WikiLeaks. Further undermining the US case that Assange had anything to do with Manning's actions. At her court martial, she also testified that she had acted completely alone. According to what Biden said in 2011, it is imperative for the US to keep alive the apparently minor computer charge that carries the maximum of five years in prison compared to the 170 years of the Espionage Act charges. But it isn't minor. It is the hook that enables the charges of Espionage. It smears Assange and it drives a wedge between him and the support of an increasingly nervous mainstream media. The second superseding indictment. In June of 2020, the Trump Justice Department apparently unsure of the computer intrusion charges in relation to Manning was strong enough to portray Assange as a hacker. Issued a second superseding indictment that relied on testimony of a WikiLeaks volunteer and later FBI informant who said Assange had directed him to conduct hacking operations. This evidence was apparently obtained by the FBI in 2011 when the witness was one of its informants. But this was not revisited until the Trump DOJ offered the witness immunity sometime in 2019, likely after the April 2019 issuing of the first computer indictment, which did not contain his testimony. It appears in the second superseding indictment in June, 2020. That evidence did not appear in the first superseding indictment might indicate the unreliability because the key witness has now recanted the testimony in an interview last month in an Icelandic publication, Student. The Stigador-Sordanthens testimony mentioned 22 times without question and the magistrates January 4th ruling against extra-diting Assange, which the US is now appealing. The UK court was not made aware of the identity and criminal history of the witness referred to as teenager in the second superseding indictment. Thordanson's chat logs not only negate the points of fact they accord with what the minister of the interior Iceland, Odinagar, and what was that? Well, they were in Iceland to try to frame WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in particular. Now, these are serious allegations, but I choose my words very, very carefully because I knew this from firsthand from within the Icelandic administration. They were told that the idea was to use Sigurdur an Icelandic citizen, Sigurdur Inki Thordanson, as an entrapment to contact Julian Assange and involve him in a criminal case to be used later in the United States. This I know for certain and I have stated this time and again in February 2014 before 2013, I say, before the Icelandic Foreign Affairs Committee and the Icelandic Parliament where this was discussed. And this, in fact, is not disputed. This is what happened. The FBI had resorted to working with Thordanson, a diagnosed sociopath convicted fraudster, thief and pedophile. Student pointed out that his chat logs also revealed the FBI grooming conspiracy and fabrication of false testimony. So that was actually an incredible interview that you did with the Icelandic administration official. Could you talk about what he said in particular and why it's so relevant to Thordanson recanting? Well, he talks about the FBI coming to Iceland and there had been, I mean, if you trace the history back, what actually happened was that the FBI recruited Ziggy and basically offered immunity. And we don't know exactly what the immunity was for. I mean, there was nothing to do with all of this hacking stuff. There was never any investigation, police investigation into WikiLeaks in Iceland, that's for sure. In fact, they had Julian Assange had co-written with Brigitta Jonsdott, a member of Parliament, the Icelandic modern media initiative, whose purpose, so this is supported by government, whose purpose was to create a media haven. In fact, London had become the libel capital of the world. If you had lots and lots of money, you would sue newspapers in London and you were pretty well guaranteed to get a conviction to shut down a media outlet to get information censored that was about you. And this was very bad and journalists were becoming more and more vulnerable. And I think that they could see it coming that there would be an indictment. And we do know from Andrew Fowler's documentary, Sex, Lies and Julian Assange, this was Andrew Fowler's scoop that he had turned up a subpoena for the grand jury. And that's where we get this thing that Michael Ratner is talking about. This is the subpoena that is mentioning the conspiracy statute of the Espionage Act. That was issued in 2011. Andrew Fowler's documentary was in 2012. And so we've just known that this was going to be the way it would happen. So there was going to always be an emphasis on identifying Assange as a hacker and separating from the rest of the world of journalism and somewhat negating all of those over 20 awards including the most prestigious journalism award in Australia and Time Magazine Person of the Year. I mean, that could be controversial in itself but he won Amnesty Awards and all that. But people have short memories. I think this is one thing that really needs to be put forward how many journalism awards Julian has won. But certainly all the advocacy or the majority of the advocacy was to try to portray Julian as a journalist. And in fact, the main line of attack was always to portray him as a hacker. And before that, I was a rapist as well, that whole Swedish thing. So I also cat torture and an unhygienic person. I just went after everything. In the US, he got smeared as being at the same time a Russian agent, right? But a decade before he was somehow a Mossad agent. Like it's literally... So what they've done is they figured out what they have to say to a specific group and they tell them that about Julian to make them not like him. Like in a world that makes sense if we win, right? It'll be studied for decades to come how someone like Julian was allowed to be smeared in these ways in so many different fashions to so many different people. Well, yeah, I mean, that was obviously... All of that was to prepare the public for the very difficult thing that was about to happen. And this was going to set a precedent that would chill investigative journalism into national security forever, basically. It was going to make mainstream media journalists shut up, all right? No, no, no, no, we're not like... Yeah, that's right. We're not like him, you know? The Guardian journalists in particular, they were so much involved. They designed the graphic interface and searchable database for the cables. But then they really took a... And they were the first to publish as well but they took a step back. But the thing is that the legal perception of something that is akin to burglary or break and enter, that is not a political crime, it's pretty black and white. And that part that came out first, they tried to run its courses, he's a hacker and all that, that was really the most essential aspect to the case as far as I'm concerned. It was there from day one, it was there in the subpoena that mentions conspiracy and it was there in the very first indictment of those three indictments that came out. They won the computer fraud and abuse type charge and then there was the first and then the second superseding indictment. But you can see this thread of, it's about Sasha's identity, right? But it's also a breach when I said or firewall, not just oath or contract. And that's something that a lot of the debate has been about, like Manning's oath and but your oath is to protect your country and people get into those tributaries of argument. But the thing is that the legal perception of breaking and entering is such that that is going to open up the door. It is the hook in fact, whereby then they can pass on to the espionage charges because without them, as Sasha's sitting pretty, like all of the other journalists, mainstream journalists and media partners in particular, who are still, I think, fairly strongly protected by the tradition of the First Amendment. I mean, the espionage act has its tradition as well where it has been possible to prosecute journalists after printing, no prior restraint is allowed, but after publication, it was always there but they never went there. The tradition was always just to go for the leakers and whistleblowers because they had breached something and it was kind of easy, right? But you can also talk about breaching a firewall which is like breaking in and entering and then you enter into that fear center of a lot of people, you know, we're frightened of our homes being broken into, particularly if you look at the ocean personality scale or set of scales, you know, you've got the neurotic people who score high which is a large percentage of the population that are very much targeted traditionally by the right in their campaigning, targeting fear. Well, then, you know, you've got that as well as a deep psychological response to this notion of this guy, you know, breaking in and then there were so many distortions. Julie and Assange always and WikiLeaks always advocated transparency for government and privacy for individuals but somehow that got twisted around where a lot of people thought that Assange, I think even in the Simpsons that Assange was going to break in and read their emails and look at the dick pics and that kind of thing, you know that there were no dick pics at the time but that kind of thing was going on where, you know, he was portrayed as somebody who violated people's privacy and so discussions got into privacy. There was other distortions that a lot of people made inadvertently like Russell Brandt just recently, he meant well but he called Julian a hacker, I mean, hello. He was actually trying to describe his nerdy personality but to come out with a word like that it was just some of the other Russell Brandt trying to get you an interview with us. So like... Well, the other thing that it was that Russell was arguing against censorship and he didn't not once did the moral dimension nor the specificity of the particular publications of WikiLeaks. Joe keeps teasing me about this but I keep bringing up executive order 13526 section 1.7. It's Obama's 2009 law about it's illegal to classify information that is going to hide the evidence of crime or simply save embarrassment and Ellsberg would add protect people's jobs. The thing with Russell what he was arguing for was there shouldn't be any censorship at all and in fact, he didn't draw attention to the fact that well, in fact, he got it totally wrong because neither Julian nor WikiLeaks thinks that there should be no secrets. Of course we all do that there should be things that for a certain amount of time the study that Ellsberg when I interviewed him about this he was talking about a study that Steven Aftergood had done and he was working with William F. Florence who had retired now but he was working in the classification system and so he was one of the people that decided what level of classification should go on any particular piece of information. And he found that it was only one half of 1% still needed to be classified today. So 99.5% of what is classified is doesn't even need to be for national security reasons, right? According to the guy who used to do that for most of his life, he did that survey. So that's very telling in a way of how much and that was a point that was made by the defense in the Pentagon papers case for Daniel Ellsberg that far too much was classified anyway but it never really held water that argument but the thing is it is a million billion times worst today but in that little category of things that work illegally classified because they were war crimes because they hid other kinds of crime and also saved embarrassment. You can imagine that in the State Department Cables a lot of them, you really have to talk about just that stuff. Wikileaks always said the method is transparency the goal is justice. John Pilger said that that's truly and nailed his colors to the mass. It was to be about justice. And so this is wrongdoing. He didn't actually, Russell didn't mention that it was wrongdoing that it should be exposed. He presented a much more extreme attitude. Oh yeah, everybody should have the right to know everything that's going on. I'm sorry but he said some very, very good things as well but that was really misrepresentative of what this movement is about. It's about justice. I think that it more represents like when someone starts to peel back the first few layers what they see in Julian's case because we have such a deep view of it and you in particular because you've been involved in it so long. But I think he gives at least in my opinion like almost like a vulgar or un indoctrinated or whatever term you would want to use view of it because from the outside that's the easiest argument to explain to people is that, hey, this is attacking free speech and this is censorship. Because it's in the nuance where you find it's the important part. It's the meat of what's holding all this together, the hook as you call it. But for the layman, for the couch political person, it's really, it's hard to explain that deeper nuance when they haven't even been able to digest the fact that the government's committed these crimes let alone the fact that someone needed to expose them. Well, I think that everybody can understand it in terms of drowning that it's gone down twice. It may go down a third time like Sweden. It may be, you've got to hit them three times to end it. But it's just so much work, so much money and so much time that this poor man has been, it really is like Sam's that he's living through in Belmarsh because Pilter said there's not much difference. There really, it really isn't it. And before that, it was in the Ecuadorian embassy which Pilter called Room 101 coming from 1984, which was the interrogation room, right? That everybody feared. But it's been a terrible life for him while they've been trying to relentlessly portray him as something that he's not to convince the world time and again. And I think that they've left it a bit too long. Actually, they didn't get him in time because we have come full circle. Even the general public have come full circle of going, oh, I hate him, I hate him. And then, oh my God, look what they did to him. Once the UN working group on arbitrary detention made their decision and said he should even get some, he should be released immediately and he should get some compensation. And then Nils Melser came in with doctors that said that he had been suffering from psychological torture. He also needed an MRI. So he had fairly serious health problems as well. He needed a chest x-ray as well because he had a relentless cough which he probably still has. He's not a well man and his bones were like chalk apparently because he even damaged a maybe broke a rib. I don't know if this was widely reported but this was in the hearing in September but he'd broken a rib just from bending over to pick something up. So he's not a well person. They've tortured him for a long time but the thing is that what's, it's now completely turning around because the things that they're accusing Assange of are now being revealed as things that they were doing that the CIA was doing that illegally intruded into the Ecuadorian embassy to spy on privileged legal conversations with the defense. I mean, my God, that is incredible but also in inciting people to hack. I mean, the FBI are inciting Sigi to hack. You see what I mean? That's super predictable behavior by the FBI, right? They've spent the last since they came into existence targeting and finding ways to provoke people to do things they otherwise wouldn't so they can try and stitch them up for it. And you actually see a lot of similarities in the way that Sigi interacted with Julian to the way that say maybe Guccifer 2 interacted with Julian. If you read those chat logs from the, not from the Mueller report but from the release that came out about Roger Stone and his communications with Julian. They also had the Guccifer chat logs and you can literally release the Guccifer 2 chat logs and you can literally see a lot of the same patterns where you have someone trying to essentially ramp Julian up to do something that would get him in violation of some law or publish something that would be otherwise incorrect. It is said that there is a very funny episode where Sigi and Sabu are trying to entrap each other because neither know that the other is an FBI informant at the time, yeah. Yeah, so now we're realizing just how cruel as well the US is barbaric, really. I mean, I suppose the yes minister would call it appalling, absolutely appalling the way that people are tortured in isolation. It is considered in Europe that 14 days and excess of 14 days in solitary is torture. And John Kiriakou told us on our show that there are people the US has in isolation, total isolation for 44 years. I mean, it's just, and what they did to Abu Hamza as well. I think this is the other really scummy part of it that this is the testimony that expert witness Lindsay Lewis brought out right at the very end, basically. And so Lindsay was talking about the case of Abu Hamza and the US wanted Hamza extradited from the UK. Now, he was a terrorist and he had accidentally blown off both of his hands and the UK for humanitarian reasons said, do not put him in solitary, don't put him in an isolation cell. And the US gave that assurance and when he was on US soil, they did, they put him in isolation and he remains there for, well, last year it was eight years, so it might be coming up to nine years now. Not only did they do that, they denied him prosthetics. Well, a horrifying thing that's happening here right now in the United States. The January six protesters, like people that walked into a building on January six in opposition to whatever you think happened on January six. Those people have been held for over 180 days in complete isolation. Pre-trial in Washington DC, there's dozens of them. I think there's at this point a little over 30, but then there's those same cast of people but all across the country. Every state is currently pre-trial detention for tons of January six protesters. Like I remember my local news bragging about it. So the way Julian's being treated in the British court system has come home to roost full scale here in the United States where there's just full on political prosecution. Like if you believe this certain thing, you are getting put in jail indefinitely if you're willing to even vocalize it or go to the street and take action about it. And something that if you pick apart the pieces looks like another FBI operation. Well, I'm not terribly sure about the background of that but it's certainly, what if you think about those people? It's certainly not the place to put a journalist because of their ideas. Absolutely. Do you wanna get back? I think there's like three slides left. Do you wanna get back? Yeah, sure. Cool. Back to Biden. During Assange's hearing last September after numerous defense witnesses piled on evidence that indeed Assange was engaging in journalistic activity prosecutor Lewis changed course and ultimately admitted to the court that yes, he may have been practicing journalism but the espionage act doesn't make a distinction for journalists. Assange had unauthorized possession and dissemination of defense information and that was that. With the recanting of Thornton's testimony and the weakness of the conspiracy allegation with manning the United States is back to what Biden said when he was vice president that Assange is a journalist who was merely doing his job by receiving state secrets pretty much in his lap. If Assange is extradited to stand trial in the United States, what would happen if the computer intrusion charge collapses? It would leave the US with only the political charge and Assange in the same legal state as other publishers of the same material protected by the First Amendment. So that is the article put out by Kathy in its full glory. But yeah, do you have any additional like final thoughts about all this or related information? Well, the first thing I was gonna say while you were reading it was just a little more detail on when the first day of the September hearing when James Lewis QC astonishingly addressed the press instead of the court and told them, this isn't about you. This guy was involved in stealing government documents, not about you. And I think the US predicted that they would bugger off. They've got their story, right? And they did. And in the afternoon, they were all gone. And that's when Lewis actually admitted, yes, every journalist is vulnerable. And they didn't hear it. The second thing that I would like to say as sort of like the looking forward kind of thing is I wonder if the US will try again. It's a little bit late in the game because now, I mean, it's impossible to bring in new evidence in the UK. But the thing is that they may start up the smear campaign again big time. And I was a bit concerned about Lukaard in bringing out the Russiagate thing again because that reminds me of the DNC lawsuit against WikiLeaks where the Trump administration, the Russian government and WikiLeaks were all tied in together as co-conspirators. And that one just got thrown out of court. But I just keep an eye on him and what's going on there. Although, I mean, the thing is that that one too works on fear and fear does tend to work with a large percentage of the population, the Russophobia. And a lot of it's directed towards China now, but I'll just be concerned if they're gonna start the smear again in some other way and try to dig that up. Keep an eye on it, folks. In the judge's actual ruling where she rules against extradition, she introduces a whole heinous amount of other stuff. Right, like she pulls in the official Secrets Act. She introduces a random CNN article from 2016 that said that Julian turned the Ecuadorian embassy into a spy operation. She cited fairness to the United States as to why Julian should remain in prison. So that way, a non-living, non-breathing entity can have whatever legal privileges it wants with this man. But what- Can I just interrupt you for a second? Yeah. Because the whole purpose of that part of, you know, all those other instances, whole purpose of the conspiracy charge was absolutely parallel in England. What needed to be done, what she needed to do was establish whether there was dual criminality in relation to the Official Secrets Act. And so all of these hacking, breaching sort of things would actually find parallels in the Official Secrets Act. So it was also very important. That was a very, very big part of getting all those things in. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you, but- No, no, I appreciate it. I enjoy- We'd go off on a tangent, otherwise. Yeah. Well, the reason I bring it up is because if you look at the global intelligence files that we were talking about them earlier, their plan that they've been working on for the last decade, almost 11 years, if not 11 years at this point, is to drag Julian from legal system to legal system and country to country. So if they're allowed to use the Assange precedent at this point, the UK will get their turn, and then Macron can get his turn, and they can just pass around international jurisdictions. And if that's the course that humanity takes at this point, so that's what I'm afraid of, is we may beat this Espionage Act charge and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charge, but we may not be able to then organize ourselves in a way to be the charge that the government in Turkey puts out about the information or Israel puts out, because all of a sudden it becomes anti-Semitic, right? Well, look, what you're talking about is the other part of the playbook. Right. The plan B, I guess, in a way. So you're talking about what's in the strat for emails on Fred Burton talking about passing him around from country to country, from one charge to the other. And that's really, that really fits with the cable that was sent to various allies, asking to charge him with something. And we even had the Prime Minister of Australia saying it was a criminal act, and she's a lawyer, and it was pushed back from the Australian Federal Police 10 days later, they said, no, it didn't break any crime in this country. So the thing is that there's that, and then they were wrong about, he'll make a nice bride in prison, as that didn't happen. I think there's been a lot of solidarity from the other prisoners in Belmarsh, and they really, I think they got up a petition to get him out of the medical wing. But the thing is, you have to look at it this way, maybe the U.S. knew they had a shitty case right from the beginning and declined to move on it through in 2011. They knew it was never going to work, but they could, through the process itself, and Julian even said this, it became very clear to him back then, and this is also an extract in hacking justice, which everyone should see. It was clear to me that the process itself was going to be the punishment, that they probably knew that, well, Ziggador wasn't a credible witness, they knew that, and it would go down, but they just had to deceive the British to keep it going. The Swedish thing was a piece of shit as well. I'm sorry, but look at Nils Meltzer's 19 page report. He speaks fluent Swedish, he's a professor of law, and he found over 50 violations of Swedish law and due process. Stefan Linskog, who was the chief prosecutor, came to Australia and in the Q&A, he said that there was absolutely no legal reason why the prosecution in Sweden couldn't go to London to interview a science, but then we find the CPS has been telling them not to do that and not to get cold feet and all that kind of thing. So they knew that was just about delaying, delaying, delaying. And this is the biggest travesty of justice because of that, that because they cynically know that they have a case, they can't win, but they can delay it forever until the man drops dead. That would just clean it up nicely and they're not gonna epstein him because there would just be riots, I suppose. He's so much loved throughout the world. You've got doctors for a science coming in in a couple of days on CN Live, they'll be talking about that. It's just awful that they probably want him to die of natural causes. They moved all the COVID cases into his wing. If you look at it, they tried to, in my opinion, kill him with coronavirus in 2020. They moved, I believe it was 60 plus positive COVID patients. 67 COVID cases into his wing. Yeah, and then turn the heat off. Turn the goddamn heat off as well. I work for a heating and air- Wouldn't give him his winter clothes. You can literally buy a $35, $40 light bulb, an LED light called an air scrubber that you put in duct work that does the same sort of thing that water treatment plants do and use UV light to kill bacteria as it passes through the air in real time. That's $40. They spent billions of dollars on war and they can't afford $40 per cell to make sure that the air gets cleaned when it gets moved into someone's room. So they don't have to turn the heat off in the middle of winter. Like that to me is like one of the heinous things that happened is literally Julian had to insulate his window with books to stay warm in the middle of winter, in the middle of a pandemic while they moved a bunch of COVID positive patients into his wing of the prison. Well, I mean, look, the thing is that the bigger picture is that this is all about this right of only a small number of people to have information and all the rest, just whatever we're told. And we're in a bit of trouble since the end of 2012, when there was the update to the National Defense Authorization Act. And that was, Huha was about being able to arrest and detain people indefinitely, anywhere in the world, this universal jurisdiction. But there was also the repealing of the 1948 Propaganda Act. After the Second World War, American was not allowed to propagandize its people, but that was repealed. And so starting 2013, we got the age of narrative, big time, and just getting more blatant in the crazy lies. But the whole thing is about if information is a power, then of course, they know a lot about us and we know very little about them. That's kind of going back to that old British empire, it really is. And of course, the Espionage Act takes its origins and the early version of the Official Secrets Act, it's got much in the same wording. There's differences later, but even the 1914 Crimes Act in Australia is from the same origin as well. It's the British, you know? So this aristocratic view, you know, the upstairs downstairs view of access to information. And we do have to be careful about some information, but we absolutely do. There needs to be a monitoring of what is essential, a control, a stricter control of what is essential to keep private and all the rest that would be better people know so that they can, you know, have make an informed vote, for example. One of the things I found super interesting, if you actually track the history of how we got here and the limitations of free speech in the United States in particular, you can go all the way back to World War I, not necessarily the Espionage Act, but they were arresting journalists for reporting on revolutionary war era crimes that the British government had committed because at the time it was said that Britain was the US's greatest ally and that covering those stories would reduce US war fervor into World War I if you covered British historical, they weren't war crimes then, but crimes against humanity. And then it's been that union of Anglo-American dystopia growing ever since that. And I know there's times before, but that's a really big like crux in history for this terrifying British surveillance state essentially. Well, that's true, but I mean, you have to understand where we are today. And I think that's beautifully summed up by Claire Daly when she said that the US believes that every journalist around the world has a duty to keep America's dirty secrets. And that's basically it. And that's a very, very dangerous state of affairs when you consider, well, the foreign policy of America and their ubiquity throughout this world. There is military power in a couple of hundred countries. The main fear is, you know, if we don't do what they say, and that's very bad if our journalists are not even allowed to disclose wrongdoing. This is a very bad state of affairs for the rest of the 21st century. I think, you know, something's got to give. It would be, you know, in humanity's best interest if we let the truth teller back out of the box, you know? But I think that's the fear. You know, their fear is probably that he's going to reveal more horrible things, you know, that we have not been aware of. But we've been, I've been really missing wiki legs, although they have put out some important legs, I think. OPCW, that was very important, but they're few and far between because unfortunately they are a small organization and they've had to just devote all their attention to keeping Julian alive. Well, I would like to thank you so much. And hopeful. I was gonna say, I would like to thank you so much for joining me, Kathy. I'll put, once we release this video, I'll put the link to your article in the description and I'll try to find, if you send them to me, I'll put them in there, the three separate indictments for people to look at them themselves. But if you could just give us some final thoughts and let everybody know where they can find your incredible work. Well, I am the executive producer of Consortium News's CN Live. But I also now, writing occasionally as well for Consortium News, although I'd express myself best, I think, in images and sounds. That's what I have the most experience. But I mean, I thoroughly recommend that you go to Consortium News for all new news because some of the best writers in the world really very well informed people. And Joe does a terrific job of fact-checking. He really does, behind the scenes. And so does Corina, who's an assistant editor. And then you'll see a link on the website for Watch CN Live. It's a little bit down at the moment because we're doing our summer fund drive. We rely entirely on reader donations and viewer donations now. We have no paywall, which I'm sure a lot of people find really a relief because they're everywhere now. The good, the bad and the ugly are putting up paywalls, but maybe that's kind of a good opportunity for independent media. And there certainly is some really high quality independent media in the US and in the UK and in Australia that I know of as well and in France that I know of and Germany. So this is our time and we just have to work out a strategy to outnumber them. And Jeremy Corbyn came up with that strategy, which I've also been trying to initiate by picking up other similar casting, great events from people who don't really have like a well populated with subscribers YouTube channel that not many people would see it otherwise. Like maybe a hundred people would see Daniel Ellsberg get out of here. So I've been approaching like about a dozen media partners and saying, do you want us to similar cast? And that's been, and we also offer. It's really awesome to see, I would love that. Yeah, well, we offer our streams as well. We've offered our streams to don't extradite a sound jam to WikiLeaks of similar cast material that we have generated. For example, the opening of A Secret Australia, the new WikiLeaks Australian, Australian leaks, the most important ones. So that's a really damn good read. You discover so much about the organization there that didn't come out before. So that kind of thing. But Jeremy Corbyn suggested that just try it with one 24 hour program dedicated to Assange and that you all get together and you all similar cast this one program as you know, you're around the world. So you can take it, you can, I have done this kind of thing before in an arts festival where it was a 25 hour live stream and it went from one country to another. So I managed the Australian one for an hour. So this is really, it was very, very simple to manage. But this is the way he said that if you're all similar casting the same thing, you will outnumber the mainstream media because the numbers aren't so high anymore. Well, that was the whole idea with the vigil, right? Because for only, it was probably like the first six months we were only on our specific YouTube platform. But we grew and we're on Twitch, we're on YouTube, we're on Rockfin, we're on five different YouTube channels on top of all that. So that model, literally my idea was to replicate WikiLeaks because their success came from working with so many other media organizations. So seeing you guys offer that is freaking incredible because that's something that one, it gets independent media creators additional content that they don't have to produce. But at the same time, it gets your guys' message out there in a way that is essentially almost like narrative control, being able to push from so many places at one time to so many different types of people. The thing is when I started looking after the channel, the consortium news channel, I thought that what I tried to do was to follow the model of Bob Parry and form a consortium, right? So it's not just being generated by us, but we can bring in other, like we bring in other journalists onto the written platform that we could do that as well on the channel as well. So it just seemed to me that this is the way it has to go. I mean, people are coming from mainstream media and I'm coming from broadcast as well as an academic background. One of them still have this competitive reflex and in fact, independent media is going to succeed if it is collaborative rather than competitive. I think that's what Corbyn inadvertently said. I mean, I remember thinking, yeah, we're already doing it. Some of us are already doing it. What you're suggesting. Well, we're seeing the very birth of that in US independent media, at least like the left wing because you have for the first time all of these different types of creators with all of these different ideas and audiences coming together to like, sorry, that was terrifying. Coming together to root out the pro-war voices that pretend to be independent media. So I think that that's a really cool development in moving that collaborative bar forward. So I think that that's super impressive to see people independently doing things like this even if they don't realize that that's what they're doing. Yeah, that's right. You know, did we stand or something? Isn't it? But thank you so much, Kathy. All right, mate. Lovely to talk to you.