 I want to welcome everyone to this Zoom meeting on Julian Assange, Separating Fact from Fiction. We have our wonderful speakers all here ready to go. And because John and Gabriel Shipton, Julian's father and brother, have very limited time, I'm just gonna let them start. And then we can maybe backtrack and do a little bit of introductions. Our other panelists here today are John Kiriakou, Fidel Navaz and Ray McGovern. Welcome, John and Gabriel. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. So we keep up? Yeah, yeah. Do you want, we'll just update you where we are. We're sort of, I think we're three, four stops into our 17 stop tour across the U.S. We're in Washington DC today and then tomorrow we're off to Columbus, Ohio. You know, it's been pretty amazing, the turnouts that we've been getting. I guess whoever's been following it can see that it's really a sort of momentum building as we travel from place to place. Yeah, so the media's paying more attention. We're getting, it's just really incredible to see the amount of support and momentum that is sort of coming together as we move forward. And yeah, can't wait to see what it's like towards the end when we finish up in Washington DC on the 30th of June. So hopefully, you know, I think we'll be coming maybe to visit you, Ray, after that with a pair of scissors. To take away your solidarity bead. I hope we're, hopefully we can take that back to Australia with us in a plat. I don't think it's worth a billion, yeah, that would be nice. Well, and John, I saw you and Gabriel's interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, and that was wonderful. And you really provided all kinds of evidence for the effectiveness of WikiLeaks and providing justice for humanity. And do you wanna add any comments about that here? Oh, it's just some amusing, well, more or less amusing oddities that here we are, two Australians wondering the US defending the First Amendment and shaking our fist at the powers that be that this is a civilizational goal that you guys have got. And the rest of the world or in particular Australia, I know, envies it in every election we have in Australia, we all shake our fists and say we want a First Amendment and we want a Bill of Rights. And we sort of saying that, you know, don't let it go. It's just the most valuable goal of civilizatio and a fine example to the rest of the world to have such an amendment to the Constitution. That's one thing. The other thing is, of course, getting access to people who can influence. I mean, our meetings with parliamentarians and politicians are always private meetings. We don't do public meetings in order to build support and build trust. Also, we're also pointing out that we're ordinary people of quite middle class, middle of the road and our affections or Julian's affections have always been with the West, you know, we like to see it behave better. Behave yourself. Yes, that is in general our approach. Sorry, that in general is what has emerged as our approach in the United States. Wonderful, wonderful. So do you find that American people need to have an education about who Julian is? I mean, do you have any anecdotes to relate in your conversations about maybe misconceptions Americans have about Julian? Not really in the audiences so far. The matter now is moving into its 13th year. So you can't expect in the deluge of change that's happened over the last 13 years, it would be unfair to expect the American people to be up to date on Julian Assange's matter when there's ceaseless change and the grinding of geopolitical tectonic plates and climate change and those sort of concerns overwhelming people's consciousness with vast movements of history. So it would be a little unfair. However, we've found the audiences willing, open and in quite a few cases erudite. Wonderful, how about you Gabriel? Yeah, I think it's always worth reminding people why Julian's charged for the work that he did and I think that's something that we commonly do as part of the panels and things that we're doing is reminding everyone of the work WikiLeaks did and exactly what Julian is charged for. So I think that's part of why we're here is just to sort of bring that all up again and just help people remember the work that Julian did. A derivative of what we do is also to point out the value of what are called leaks but I like to call them revelations of government behavior. These, you know, John Kriaku, Chelsea Manning, many others have brought us knowledge and with that knowledge we can participate in our government and modify the government's approach and also to contribute to the formulation of policy. These are really important things, vital things that the leaks provide to us. Without the leaks and without a vigorous press, the government, the governments tend to be a little bit blind because they're self-concerned and it is blindness, wander off the track and embark upon wars. Well, I don't need to rest it. I think there's seven or eight of them over the last 20 years and bringing about the reduction of the capacity to the United States to care for its own people because of the squandering of trillions of dollars on these. Stupid watch. Yeah, yeah. So really, two things. First of all, it's the free press, the grandeur of the Second Amendment and the beauty of feeding into those structures the leaks from Chelsea and John and many others who contributed to our understanding of the world. Well, that's very profound. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And we're both of you at the extradition trial. I know you were there, John, sitting with the family sitting. Can you, Gabriel, were you there as well? I was there, but I wasn't there for the whole time. I was there for the final day. I see. I see. So would either of you like to tell us some of your firsthand experience sitting in that trial and watching what was going on in Judge Beretser's court? Yeah, I just can add one thing, which is fairly important, is that the rules require each side to be equally armed. So the defense equally armed to the prosecution. And that way, somehow or other, the truth will emerge and a judge can make a proper decision. And Julia, in the prosecution circumstances, these instructing solicitors from the Department of Justice sat alongside the prosecutor, James. In Julian's circumstance, he was in a glass box up the back for terrorists. And the glist glass box had a raised floor and also a slot about 30, about an inch and a half wide now and again. In order to instruct his solicitor and his barristers, Julian had to sit on his knees and put his lips to this slot. And on the other side, as a consequence of the raised floor, the solicitor had to stand on a tip's toes and put an ear to the slot. Any instructions were thereby heard by the prosecutor and the prosecutor's instructing staff. That describes one of the circumstances. A bail application was put, sorry, an application was put to the judge to move Julian into the body of the court. And the judge in her wisdom said, oh, this will require a bail application. So a legal argument ensued over whether it required a bail application to move Julian from the circumstance where he couldn't instruct his solicitors into the body of the court to be able to sit there alongside the barristers. That just illustrates to you the quality of a, I guess you'd say, a show trial. Craig Murray, who is a diarist and historian sitting alongside us, said that the quality of it was a manifestation of evil intent. So it seemed that there were so many aspects of that trial that were very Kafkaesque and Americans got information from computer weekly. I think computer weekly was our savior and actually publishing information beyond, as Glenn Greenwald said, Kevin Gostela and some bloggers. And of course, Craig's literary epistles daily were wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Gabriel or John, does either of you want to talk anymore about kind of the Kafka? I mean, it was just such an amazing trial. Are there parts of it that stuck out for you that you would like to relate to the people here? I think, you know, when there was the testimony from a, as part of the trial, they were condensing all the witness statements into written statements. So, you know, as part of, you know, that was sort of an effort to sort of stop having the witnesses appear and read out their statements and sort of, you know, before like squash the reporting on the witness statements. So they went through, you know, a bunch of witness, so all the witness statements were all being submitted and agreed in writing towards the end of the trial. One, I think one, you know, incredible moment was there was a, you know, a torture victim. I can't recall his name at the moment, but... Al-Masri? Yeah, and Julian, you know, they wanted the court, they were having some computer issues and some technical issues and the court wanted to have his statement changed to a written statement and Julian spoke up in the court and said that he would not, you know, he would not sit by the silencing, you know, of a torture victim. I think that was really showed, you know, what this trial was all about in that one moment is that, you know, Julian standing up for against injustice. Right, and do you recall the testimony of Dean Yates or was that in person or was that submitted as written testimony? Submitted as written, yes. Dean has written a book with a considerable amount of that book on the collateral murder video and the circumstances of dispatching the Reuters journalists to be out this week. Yeah. Yeah, that was something actually that Computer Weekly covered, I think prior to the trial. You know, given that you only have about four minutes left with us, I'm going to see are there people in the call who would like to ask a question and I, I'm not sure. Yeah, I see Jim from Milwaukee has raised his hand. Let me see if I can unmute him. Yeah, I'm going to ask there. Oh, Jim, Jim Carpenter, wonderful activist. And now he's action. Yes, thank you for visiting our city. I just wanted to know if you have thought about the parallel between what Julian has done and what the person who videotaped the George Floyd murder did and how we celebrate the videotaping of George Floyd, but are prosecuting a Julian for doing basically the same thing. I haven't until this moment given it any thought and also the circumstances, the social circumstances in the United States since the Trump administration have changed so much that it's illegible to us to make those sort of parallels. Julian's circumstances was to bring to us the means whereby we can evaluate and analyze government actions based upon the leaks that we excited to Julian by Chelsea Manning and others. This is really important because that ledger, that library is still available to us to enable us to go and do further research. Not so long ago in Canberra, which is a capital of Australia, I had lunch with a retired diplomat who revealed to me that occasionally, or on occasion rather, on occasion they used WikiLeaks a library of cables themselves to bring themselves up to date and evaluate where they stand in a particular issue. So you can see from that description I've given you that a profound understanding of the Internet, of the capacity to do searches, of the capacity for the mass of us to contribute to analysis and in forums privately at home or on the Internet to bring forth an understanding of what is being done and how and suggest to each other how to go about changing things. Thank you. So do you know if Julian is getting his mail? Someone in chat has asked that question. Let me see, that's Carolyn. Someone named Carolyn in chat has asked that question. And I see we, James has a hand raised. He could be getting his mail if you do, if you follow the instructions on rightjulian.com. Yeah. He is, he is getting a mail and rightjulian.com is a great way of, the thing with being in jail by yourself for a year on end, having in contact with the outside strengthens the heart because the aim of that sort of jailing system is to separate you from your society and consequently reeducate you into another circumstances because, you know, human organisms respond to their immediate circumstance. So having the heart to go on and having the circumstance of people on the outside, strangers writing to you and saying, you know, good on you and so on is just strengthening, really strengthening. Wonderful. So I think someone named James has his hand raised. Yes. Thank you. You're unmuted. Yes, thank you. Good. And thank you for, for, for being, being here and John and Ray, who I have met numerous times. I'm actually in Cambridge. I apologize for my image. I can't really figure out how to replace it. It's a local battle over that has some, an environmental dimension to it here and in North Cambridge actually. So I have two questions. One is, and thank you again for, for doing this and for being here. I missed you at the community church of Boston, where you were awarded the Sacco and Benzetti Award. The first is if you're able to talk about any contact you may have or may be anticipating with American elected officials. I know you said you're, you're not entirely comfortable talking about it in any detail, but is there anything you can say about anybody you have been in touch with any support that is being expressed by any elected officials in the United States and what, if anything, any of them are doing or say they're going to do. And the other question is, it's sort of a, it's kind of, it's the question that really occurs to me more than any other. I think there may be some sensitivity around it. So I want to acknowledge that. I think a lot of damage was done to Julian by the early accusations, allegations around which he was first detained. And I think it's something that government do to smear people. It's one of the easiest ways to smear someone's reputation is with allegations of sexual misconduct of one sort or another. It's what was used against Scott Ritter, if many of you remember that, to take down somebody who's telling important truths about very important issues and like bring out something in either an allegation or whatever it may be. So I wonder if you might be willing to speak a little about the impact of that and how that has been put to rest, how it ended up being, those charges ended up being dropped. If you could speak to that at all, because I think it's something that... There weren't charges. There was no charges, just allegations. So I think we've got to jump off, but we can quickly talk about... Oh, okay. Sorry. Merrick Garland today has... Next week is going to meet with the New York Times, Washington Post and the CNN to discuss what they're calling Trump era attacks on journalism from the DOJ. So that's one very interesting point that's going on here at the moment. We're trying to call out to the New York Times and the Washington Post, encouraging people to get in on their comments section saying that they should be raising Julian's case, because it's the biggest press freedom case in the last 50 years. So it should be part of that conversation. Thank you. I want to say I hope to meet John Kuryako and dear friend Fidel there and Ray. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you both so much for being with us. We appreciate your taking the time and I understand you have an event at five o'clock in D.C. Yes. Yeah. Busboy and poets, Ryan Grims joining us, Marianne Williamson and Chip Gibbons. So you're really looking forward to that. Another... I mean, it's just crazy. Everywhere we go, we're having these great turnouts. Who would have thought that this would have been possible a couple of months ago, but here we are. We're really looking forward to your visit to Milwaukee on June 19th. Yeah, great. We are too. An outdoor event rally for people to come and speak with you at the... just north of the Sunburst sculpture in Milwaukee on Wisconsin Avenue. So anyway, we look forward to actually meeting you in person. Thank you so much for being here. Your host at Busboys and Poets is the great Andy Chalal, a wonderful restaurant tour in Washington, D.C. He's a wonderful guy. Thanks. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I put an article in the chat with... from Nils... the UN Special Repertour and Torture Nils Meltzer called Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange. And I think that one addresses the sexual allegations and the nine years of an investigation that never rose above an investigation and allegations never charges. Thank you, Ann. And if someone could put in the Republic... I was actually looking for the Republic article. I think people here may know that. I'll look for it later as well. Okay, well... And may I add one thing about the sexual allegations? Absolutely. Please just jump in. I think that this is a well-thought-out strategy on the part of the Justice Department. And it's because they've seen over the years that people have tended to rally around those accused of making whistleblower revelations. You know, you look at people like... like Matt DeHart, for example, or the Vault 7 whistleblower, or Scott Ritter. The Justice Department will throw these accusations of sexual impropriety, sometimes even involving children, and immediately supporters walk away because no one wants to support a pedophile or a rapist or a sex predator. And then they never offer up any kind of proof or evidence that any such crime ever occurred. Right. Well, by the time they're called to account, which happens, the whole case has been wrecked from the perspective of the accused. His supporters have walked away from him. And then there's this whiff still of impropriety. This is an insidious thing that the Justice Department does. And we all have to stand up to it. Is it just the Justice Department? Do you think it's, you know, like, CIA? My guess is that it comes from CIA, from NSA, from FBI. Sure. Right. Thanks. Yeah, it's an imprint. It's an imprint. It's hard to shake once that imprint is there from the very first encounter that many people have with a public personality. I think most people don't ever read the WikiLeaks as good and important as they are. Agreed. Most people don't ever read that stuff. They see a cursory media report about it. But what grabs a lot of people more are salacious stories about personalities. And that's what sticks in people's heads. And I think if we want to support Julian and the work of people like Julian, we have to find ways of reckoning with that. And so I appreciate Pamela and placing some things in the chat and really appreciate your speaking to it, John. Oh, thank you. Because I think it's how they took down Scott Ritter. And in his case, there may have been some evidence of something, but, man, they took him out, you know, you know the story. Anyway, thank you. Matt DeHart is the same way. And I'll keep this very short. Matt DeHart was accused of having child pornography on his computer. And he denied and denied and denied and finally was granted a hearing on the contents of the computer. And not only was there no child pornography, there was no pornography period of any kind. There was nothing sexual of any kind. The judge told the Justice Department, they should be ashamed of themselves. And they just said, oh, well, we're sorry. It was an administrative error of some sort. Well, Matt DeHart was already ruined by that. And you can't recover from something like that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that discussion. I think perhaps we should hear now from Fidel Navez, who, whose tour as console, and I think the secretariat at one point in the Ecuadorian embassy, overlapped Julian's, in fact, he helped, I think to Julian to get asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. It overlapped until July of 2018 when Lynn and Moreno was determined to remove anyone who was friendly toward Julian from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Fidel, do you want to take it from here? And, you know, let us know. Thank you. And thank you everybody for gathering together to support Julian. Let me take it from exactly the point we were talking before you gave me the floor, which is the Swedish case. Why do I do that? Because according to the title of the session, this, we need to separate facts from fiction. Yeah. And if Julian spent so many years, seven years, under the political asylum protection of Ecuador, it was not related to Sweden at all. Many people withdraw the support they had for Julian, precisely because they said, well, if somebody has been charged with rape, they need to face the music. And that's, that going and hiding an embassy is not something that we can support. From the day one, political asylum was granted regarding the political persecution from the United States, regarding journalistic activities of Julian Assange. Nothing to do with Sweden. But the UK, from day one also said that there is no political persecution. There's nothing to do with journalistic activities. That the only reason why they have surrendered the embassy, they have launched a huge, huge siege operation that lasted seven years, basically, was the request from Sweden. So that case, as it was mentioned here, never got charges. It was always a preliminary investigation. That case was open and closed several times. And it is not true that the case expired while Julian was in the embassy. The Swedish, in fact, came finally, after five years of diplomatic dispute with Ecuador, they finally came and interviewed Julian in the embassy. Of course, they didn't have anything to bring charges and they closed the case. The UK that always said that it was a Swedish case, when the case was closed, then said, oh, okay, this is not about political persecution. This is not about journalistic activities. This is about jumping bail. Jumping bail for a case that was closed. So another thing that we need to realize is that no country will launch such a manhunt that costs millions, millions of pounds to surveil the embassy, to spy on the embassy. And you can even threaten with storming the embassy for a man who jumped the bail. So jumping a bail is not even a crime in the UK. It's something that many people do and you get either a fine or you get a couple of weeks in prison for doing that or you get community services. So that's regarding the Swedish case. It's also not true that Julian Assange had some kind of agreement, he's in agreement with Ecuadorian government in exchange of political asylum. His case was always about human rights. There was not anything else on the table like many people speculate. Julian Assange maybe knew something about the government that the government didn't want to be published and that's why he was protecting Julian. It was never the case. And it was not the case that Julian Assange stayed. In the embassy was some kind turbulent or wild and that Julian was some kind ungrateful and rude and clean. All that is fiction. I was there for six years and to be said, we need to differentiate two periods during those seven years of Julian in the embassy. The first five years under the government who granted asylum when he was truly protected, always under difficult conditions, small apartment, a siege by the police and everything. But it was a respectful relationship from him towards us, from us towards him. We were protecting him. He was able to work. He was able to publish. He was able to have visitors. And then the second period, especially the last year under the new government was learning more. When everything changed, obviously protection stopped. It was obvious that the new government was surrounding under the pressure of the United States and all of these allegations of misbehavior, of violence, of even uncleanness is made up in order to try to justify what they finally did, which handing Julian over to its persecutors. So basically I will start with that and give the floor to somebody else. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. So before you go, Fidel, before your time, I want to actually ask you another question about the UC global surveillance. If you could eliminate people. And I will be looking at Thomas feeding me the chat questions. And I will be looking at that so that we can answer the questions in the chat. Yeah, for sure. Yes. Listen. Before Julian arrived to the embassy. Your sound is fading out a little. I will get closer to the computer. Before Julian arrived to our embassy in 2012, the embassy did not have any security guards, even no security cameras, not anything. Having Julian inside 24 hours, seven days a week, we needed to have security. So what the government did is to contract a private security company, an European private security company that could work in the UK. And I don't know how they came up with a UC global. That was not the embassy doing the contract. It was always coming from Keto. And Julian was never happy with the company and many of us, the diplomats inside were not feeling happy with the company. We always thought that was quite unprofessional. That was very invasive. But we didn't know. We didn't know that, in fact, they had a hidden agenda. We didn't know that they will end up at some point. They started to spy for third parties. Most likely, most likely because all of this is already under investigation in Spain for the United States for the intelligence agencies in the United States. So the company produced daily reports about Julian, about his visitors, about what was happening in the embassy. Those reports were directed directly to Keto. The embassy didn't even know about them. And they were the base for later accused Julian of being violent, rude, and having misbehaved. They were obviously made up allegations by the company in order to secure their employment. Basically a corrupt company. At the moment, the Spanish investigation has not finished yet, but the man in charge of UC global is under home arrest. And I think there's no other outcome from that. I am part of the investigation. I am witness and victim in that case. He's going to be sentenced for spying. There's no, there's no other outcome on that one. Let's hope not. Thank you. I, I see you would like to launch into your remarks during this exploration. I would appreciate it. My pleasure. I'm going to keep it short. And I'm also going to apologize in advance for repeating myself. I've, I've spoken about this issue. Wow. At least a half a dozen times. But, you know, I think it's so important that it bears repeating. So Julian has been charged in the Eastern district of Virginia, the federal court in the Eastern district of Virginia. That's where I was charged. That's where Jeffrey Sterling was charged. That's where Ed Snowden has been charged. It's where Daniel Hale is charged. And they call the Eastern district of Virginia. The espionage court for a couple of reasons. One, it's where the CIA is based, of course, and the Pentagon. And two, because no national security has ever won. Sorry, national security defendant has ever won a case there ever. One of the reasons why the justice department seeks to charge people in the Eastern district is because they're virtually guaranteed a conviction. But beyond that, they're also guaranteed a long sentence. Right. This is the national security court. It's the most popular venue for national security cases. They do something called, well, there are two things called one is, is venue shopping in which case they charge you in the Eastern district. Unless you're one of the swells like former CIA director, David Petraeus, he was accused of leaking classified information, including the identities of 10 covert CIA operatives to his adulterous girlfriend. But he was not charged in the Eastern district of Virginia. He was charged in the Western district of North Carolina. And when he was finally sentenced to 18 months of unsupervised probation. They really threw the book at him. Yeah. Then the judge came down from the bench to shake his hand and to thank him for his service to the country. You can bet your bottom dollar. Julian's not going to be thanked for his service to anybody. So Eastern district of Virginia. They're going to in the event that Julian is extradited to the United States. And I both hope and pray that he is not. They would. They would carry out this, this trial as a, as a national security trial under something called the SIPA act, the classified information protection act. This is one of the most ridiculous, one of the most ridiculous acts related to, to trials that you can imagine. In my case, SIPA was invoked. And what that means is there are some words, individual words that the justice department will argue should remain classified. So just for sake of argument, let's say the word CIA is classified. Or the acronym CIA is classified. In court, you're not allowed to say CIA. You have to replace it with a word that the justice department gives you. Let's say swimming pool. Right. I'm totally serious. And so in a sentence, if you're speaking or your attorney is speaking, he has to say, Mr. Kiriaku worked at the swimming pool for 15 years before resigning from the swimming pool. And, and then the, the jury is given this list of words and word replacements and they have to constantly refer back to the list to see what stupid word can't be uttered. Another thing they do, and I thought this was really overkill. And I think it's really overkill is in one of my hearings where they had invoked SIPA. They made everybody leave the courtroom, except of course the judge, the clerk, the bailiff, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys and me, everybody else was expelled. And then it took them an hour to unwrap plastic sheeting. And then it took them a week to cover the windows and the doors with a plastic sheeting so that the Russians couldn't shoot a laser beam at the window to detect the vibrations to hear what it was that we were saying. I can tell you what we were saying. We were saying that we needed a two week delay because we hadn't yet received discovery from the justice department. But this is what they're going to do. Now the point isn't really to prevent the Russians from hitting the laser beam at the window because the Russians don't give a shit about the, you know, the hearing. It's to intimidate the jury and to make them think, my God, if the justice department is willing to go to these lengths to protect this information, then he must be guilty. Right? Otherwise, why would they spend tens of thousands, hundreds of dollars in the American taxpayers money to protect the information? This must be a really bad guy. That's what they do. I'll give you another example of what they do in the eastern district of Virginia. And this is something that, again, in the event that Julian is extradited here, he's going to have to deal with. And that is the inability to see or to speak with your attorneys. I had 11 attorneys in my case. And I mean a list, you know, the best, and in some cases most famous attorneys in Washington, DC, I was not permitted to meet with them in their offices. Why? Because I might say something that was classified. And even though I was cleared for the information and they were cleared for the information, their office was not tempested. And so the Russians could shoot a laser beam at the window and hear the vibration of what we were saying in the office. And so you can't meet with them in the office. Where can you meet with them? In the Justice Department's classified conference room. Now, can you imagine the only place that you can talk to your defense attorney is in the enemy camp's conference room? And they'll say, well, we promise we're not spying on you. Okay, I'm supposed to believe that. But that's what we had to do. Now in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, Jeffrey was staying with people in rest in Virginia during his case. His attorney, Ed McMahon, was in Warrington, Virginia, which is quite far away. It's about an hour's drive. And the courthouse is in Alexandria, Virginia. So what the Justice Department did is they took a supply closet at the courthouse. And they spent $150,000 to make it soundproof. So Jeffrey and his attorney could go into the supply closet and have a classified conversation. All right, that sounds great. But in my case, he had more than 50,000 pages of classified documents we needed to go through. Jeffrey had more. I was charged with five felonies. Jeffrey was charged with nine. He had even more classified information he had to go through thanks to discovery. You can't do that in a broom closet. And so what they do is they make it as hard as they possibly can for you to get a fair trial. You're exhausted, you're cut off, you're depressed. In the case of Julian, he's going to be incarcerated. I mean, look at poor Daniel Hale right now. Daniel Hale was out on bail meeting with his attorneys preparing for his own defense. And then the Justice Department said, you know what, he's depressed. And because he's depressed, he's probably suicidal. So in order to save him, we should lock him up in solitary confinement indefinitely. And that way he won't be able to kill himself. Well, he called me after about a week in solitary confinement. And he said, I wasn't suicidal. I am now. Can you explain to people who? Yes. Daniel Hale is a courageous young whistleblower. Who went to the intercept and blew the whistle on the US military's use of drones in the murder of civilians. And when I say courageous, I mean, he, he said consequences be damned. This is a crime. I'm going to report it. And, and he went public. And, and just took those consequences. It's, it's funny. Daniel. Daniel is one of those very typical whistleblowers in that he doesn't consider himself to be a whistleblower. And he doesn't think that he did anything that was particularly brave. And, and he's a young guy. He's with 30 31 years old. He looks like he's 18. And I look up to this guy. Because he's so brave. And he's another one that's, you know, just facing the, the wrath of the justice department in the Eastern district. And, and he says, bring it on. Well, those of us who have gone through it have these stories. With the exception of Daniel. We didn't have to defend ourselves from, from a cage in, in the federal detention center. And with the way everybody is overreacted to Julian, purposely, of course, I can't even imagine what it would be like to have to defend myself while incarcerated. Where you're not allowed to meet with your attorneys, you're not allowed to have classified conversations. Your phone calls are monitored, your visitors are monitored, your incoming and outgoing mail is both monitored. That's not justice. That's not what the system was set up to be. And so, you know, my bottom line is and has always been that it is just simply not possible for Julian to receive anything akin to a fair trial in the Eastern district of Virginia. I'll add one other little short anecdote. As you might imagine, I was, I was desperate as I was approaching trial. You know, when you're looking at 45 years or in the case of Dan Ellsberg, a hundred years, you, you consider some extreme actions. And so a friend of mine is married to a woman whose uncle was OJ Simpson's jury consultant. Okay. Not just OJ Simpson, but William Kennedy Smith and George Zimmerman. And, you know, the biggest criminal cases in America in the last 25 years, he's been the jury consultant and he never ever loses. So my friend called him and said, Hey, I've got this friend. He's in big trouble in the Eastern district of Virginia. Do you mind helping out? And I didn't have any money. And I mean, we were on food stamps. That's how little money that I had. So he did it as a favor and he flew up to Washington. From Texas. And we got him a top secret security clearance as part of my legal team and he went through all of the documents. We ended up using 15,000 pages of classified documents in my defense. And then we had a meeting with all the attorneys around the Justice Department's conference room table in their classified conference room. And he said to me, if we were in any other district in America, I would say, let's go for it. We're going to win this thing. But the Eastern district of Virginia. He said, you don't have a prayer. Your jury is going to be made up of people who either work for or have relatives who work for the CIA, the Defense Department, the FBI intelligence community contractors. He said, you don't have a chance. If I were you, I would take the deal. And I slaved over that decision for a long time. And then finally the Justice Department came back with what they called their best and final offer. And it was for two and a half years in prison. My wife and I stayed up all night long, literally all night long. We were trying to come to a final decision. And there was no case law we could refer to because I had been charged with violating the intelligence identities protection act of 1981. And no one had ever gone to trial. Only one other person was ever accused of that. And she was a spy for a foreign government. So I decided I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not pleading guilty. I'm going to go to trial. Naively thinking that once I get in front of a jury, they'll realize how ridiculous these charges are. And I'll be found not guilty. So I emailed my attorneys at six o'clock in the morning. And I told them this, we've been up all night. I'm going to, I'm going to turn the deal down. I'm going to go to trial. One of them wrote back immediately. He was the oldest, the most senior, and arguably the most famous of the attorneys. He said to me, you stupid son of a bitch, take the deal. That's all he said in the email. Another attorney wrote and said, put on a pot of coffee. We're coming over to the house. So around seven o'clock in the morning, this was a Saturday morning. They arrived at the house and the attorney that. Who I liked and trusted the most. He was kind of the, the toughest and the meanest of the group. Pulled me aside. And he said, this can be a blip in your life, or it can be the defining event of your life. Let it be the blip. He said, if you were my brother, I would beg you to take this deal. You will never get a fair trial in the eastern district of Virginia. And so I took the deal. You know, that's a decision really that nobody should have to make. We should all be confident that we'll get a fair trial. This is the United States of America. We're supposed to be the greatest country in the, in the world. We're supposed to be a country founded on, yeah, exactly. Founded on the rule of law and transparency and honesty and all that other nonsense that we're taught in, in school. And that's just not the case. And that's why Julian, if he is forced to come here, cannot possibly receive a fair trial. No part of it will be fair. The deck is stacked. Thank you so much. Could you briefly explain the precipitating event for all of this in your case? Yeah. Sure. In 2002, January of 2002, I was named chief of the CIA's counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. It was a big job immediately after 9 11. And in that capacity, I led a series of raids on March 22nd, 2002 that resulted in the capture of dozens and dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, including several leaders. And I sat with Abu Zubaydah, who we thought was the number three in al-Qaeda at the time. He wasn't, but we captured him. He was sort of their safe housekeeper, their logistics guy. And we captured several of their camp commanders. And, you know, I, I sat with Abu Zubaydah. He had been severely wounded during the capture of Pakistani policemen shot him three times with an AK 47. And so I sat at his bedside literally for 56 consecutive hours. I was ordered not to leave his bedside. And, um, and I urged him to cooperate. I told him, I am the nicest guy that you are going to meet in this experience. My colleagues are not nice like I am. So if there's one thing you do, it's that you have to cooperate. And he said, you seem like a nice man, but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate. So, you know, eventually we, we carried him out to an unmarked jet and loaded him onto the, onto the luggage rack in the back and tied him down. And he squeezed my hand. He was very upset. He was crying. He had no idea where he was going to go. And I whispered to him, remember, you have to cooperate. And, uh, and he took off. Well, that was, that was March 26th, 2002. On August 1st, the CIA began torturing him and they tortured him mercilessly. You know, there were, there were very clear rules about how to carry out these torture techniques. The rules were disregarded immediately. And so, um, he was tortured to the point where, where his heart stopped beating and he was revived only so he could be tortured more. And he was the guinea pig with which the CIA practiced torture techniques that they could then use against other prisoners that we were subsequently catching, mostly around Pakistan. And, uh, you know, I'm reading these cables coming back to headquarters from the site of a secret prison. And, uh, and I'm, I'm thinking to myself, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's illegal. First of all, it's immoral. It's unethical. Somebody has to say something. And I just assumed somebody would. I waited and waited and waited. Nobody said anything. Finally, I resigned from the CIA two years later, still waiting for somebody to say something to make a long story short. Finally, in December of 2007, I decided to say something. And so I gave a nationally televised interview on ABC news with Brian Ross. In which I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. I said that torture was official U. S. Government policy. It was not the result of a rogue CIA officer that President Bush had said. And I said that the torture policy had been personally approved by the president himself. Uh, within 24 hours, the CIA had filed a, what's called a crimes report against me with the, with the justice department. And the FBI began investigating me, but they investigating me for a year from December of 2007 to December of 08. And then they sent my attorney a declination letter declining to prosecute me because they said that they had concluded that I hadn't, uh, violated the law. Uh, three weeks later, Barack Obama became president and he named John Brennan as his deputy national security advisor. John and I have always hated each other. And I've been very public about that. He was in over his head intellectually. Uh, and he was, uh, a torture apologist quite simply. I had no idea that John asked this, the justice department to secretly reopen the case against me. And so for the next three years, my phone, uh, was tapped. My emails were intercepted and teams of FBI agents, uh, surveilled my, my family and me three years. And finally in January of 2012, I was arrested and charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, uh, coming out of that ABC news interview. Thank you very much, John. I'm, I'm going to, uh, ask Ray to, uh, speak. Uh, we're at about 208 and, um, um, Ray, uh, you can get your comments in. And then I think we, uh, may have just a few minutes for question, but thank you so much, John. Your story is so compelling. And I want to get your book, how to survive prison like a spy. I haven't, I've, I've, it's on my list. I haven't gotten it yet. Thank you. I'll, I'll, I'll say that I'm, of all the books I've written, I'm the most proud of that one, but my wife told me that I make myself look like a real asshole. So be warned. Uh, another reason to read it. My ex-wife. Oh boy. Ray, uh, Ray, would you like for me to share my screen and bring up your slides? Sure. Uh, let me, uh, suggest that we try to put a little human face on Julian. Uh, the people he loves most and, uh, what's happened to him and what happened to them. Um, So the first slide there, I think it, uh, it shows Julian and happier days. Yep. Uh, there we are. Uh, this was eight years ago. Uh, these are Sam Adams associates for, integrity and intelligence from left to right in rice. Julian myself. Uh, Elizabeth Murray. And Colin Rowley. Uh, we were visiting Julian. You put on a big spread for us. It was a glorious occasion. We were there to honor yet another recipient of the Sam Adams award. Next, next slide, please. Now, no American. Very few Americans have seen this. Uh, this is Julian with, uh, little Gabrielle. Now we saw a big Gabrielle before. Uh, it's a no secret that little Gabrielle is named after Julian's brother. And that's shortly after he was born. And of course they're still in the Ecuadorian embassy. Next slide, please. There's Gabrielle and Stella. Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Next slide, please. There's Gabrielle and Stella. Um, and there is little, uh, mocks. Uh, Max is the youngest. Uh, you can tell that they're very close and, uh, I imagine they're very much missing their father and their husband or their, uh, fiance. Next slide, please. Now this is my favorite. Uh, there's Gabrielle. Uh, there's, uh, there's, uh, there's a little Gabrielle with a look on his face. You know, and, and we, I wish would say, well, he's, he's the spit of his father. I, he's a spitting image of his father. Look at him there. And what is he saying? He says, he's saying, are you trying to tell me to stop pursuing justice? Is that what you're saying now? Next slide, please. Okay. in 2019 unceremoniously dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in a very disheveled state and that is a pure and simple way. I decided on that day to look or try to look as disheveled as Julian and so it's been over two years and I think I've over fulfilled the norm actually but as long as my wife tolerates it it'll come off when Julian is free please God that's one day soon. Can you tell why he looks that way? Well you know they deprived him of a razor blade and they wanted him to look exactly the way he looked. I imagine the rationale was he might commit suicide or something like that but they hadn't done that before and they just wanted to prepare this unruly fellow to look disheveled and and they succeeded. Now let me say just a couple other things here. I was hoping that John Shipton and Gabriel his brother would be around to hear this but just you know I look at my friend Julian as a classic okay and if you you think classic you can go back to Socrates who said there's no greater favor a man can have than to have the finest of sons. Well I think John Shipton got that twice we're thinking mostly of Julian today. There is that John knows Greek so let me trade on my on my Homer here this is the first couple of lines of the Odyssey. Tell me of a very resourceful man who suffered so much. We had a lot of a lot of fun in high school and college studying classical Greek and we learned all kinds of words. One was when Odysseus came home from exile he met his old swine herd Eumaeus and his first the first words out of his mouth that they looked over at the at the big pile over here he said Eumae. Eumae hei malothauman ko'oon had a kei tunicoporo which means Eumaeus surely this is a great wonder to see a dog such as this lying on the on the dung pile okay. Now the glory of that of course that we learned the the word for dung we learned the word for head we knew that kefalle you know cephalic and so we could go around calling our friends capris kefalle and they would know what though we're calling them but that we would we the honors honors classical students. That's an aside the last thing I'll say is Aeneas the Aeneid he was distinguished by what they called the adeptive was Pius Aeneas it wasn't pious it wasn't pious at all it was faithful faithful to his beliefs faithful to his integrity and faithful first and foremost to his father and kaisies we carried around on his back that you ought to read the Aeneid if you haven't already done so and to finish off so fast forwarding to modern times we have death of a salesman and I'll I'll finish on that because it applies so much to my friend Julian and I think you'll understand why I put it here so I wouldn't trade it forget it now here it is this comes out of the mouth of woolly loman's wife okay uh she's feeling it for her her her husband woolly and she says this in death of a salesman he's a human being and a terrible thing is happening to him think of Julian now he's a human being and something terrible a terrible thing is happening to him so attention must be paid he's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog attention attention must be paid to such a person end quote now I know that Anne always has good ideas with respect to how in practical terms we can pay attention and now's the time to pay attention so I'll end here because we need a little time to do the q&a and also to hear Anne's and others recommendations as to what we can do for Julian right now without further delay thanks for the floor thank you very so much I don't Tom I don't see any additional questions um related to uh you know that weren't just part of a thread um are there if anyone would like to ask questions of uh John Fidel or Ray um could you raise your hand or somehow indicate in the chat that you want to ask questions and and obviously we'll we'll look for people who have not spoken yet um what about the question about striking jurors for cause oh I didn't see that okay thank you Tom yeah that's that's a good question um and it was one of the first questions that I asked my attorneys and they said that um in previous cases uh striking jurors for cause in uh national security cases had come up but the fact that they had relatives working for national security organizations wasn't enough it wasn't cause enough and so that I would I would largely have been stuck just like others before me had been stuck thank you thank you that's a good question I think I saw in the chat too a question of what is Julian actually charged with would anyone like to address that why is he still in Belmarsh prison well as I understand it uh the judge has refused extradition on grounds that he wouldn't survive U.S. prisons how's that for an indictment of U.S. prisons okay and U.S. uh the justice department so-called uh has appealed that and the appeal is going to the high court in London uh months ago it would have said that it'd probably be in June now people are talking well maybe September the name of the game here is to keep Julian confined keep him moving around from court to court from cell to cell hoping maybe he'll catch COVID or just so that they can wash their hands of him I'm sure I'm not sure but I think probably everyone would be delighted on the British and the American official side if just Julian would go away and they will have made their point that if you criticize a government if you show a government actively engaged in war crimes this is what happens to you all right no this is we're going to get you you live in Antarctica you live in Australia or Chile you're going to get you it doesn't matter we're all around the world we're the United States we're exceptional people and we're going to get you and what a damper that has had already already on the ability of people to report misadventures or crimes of government uh there have been lots of crimes of government that have not been exposed because well it's too difficult to do people like James Risen you know take him for example he used to have a lot of sources in the intelligence community why has he not had one story in the last five years why why I think the the question answered itself and what does he do instead we criticize his us for conspiracy theories he criticizes us for saying hey Russia gate was a force Trump is right about that one thing and one thing only and so Ryzen falls in with the crowd that says oh we're governing many of those folks they're conspiracy theorists well it's going to come out it may come out at the summit that the real conspiracy was to keep the information down as to the the um unseriousness so the the hopes that had become Russia gate and uh just as a ancillary point there if uh if president Biden goes in uh with flaming arrows and saying you better stop meddling you better stop hacking like you did in 2016 Putin is going to say oh let me show you something uh president Biden here's the testimony of the head of crowd strike he says there was no there was no exfiltration of information from the dnc what what information what was your evidence otherwise it's going to go with the buzz saw so uh that's the that's the kind of thing that can come to light but for the nonce julian is suffering and we should all suffer with him that's what's that's what what uh sympathy means and um we need to do action as well and and i'm i'm depending on you to give us some good suggestions so thank you ray um i think we do have one question from mark taylor and uh and then we'll go to those suggestions um i'm looking for mark taylor to see if i can there's a couple additional questions mark yeah thank you i was just wondering if somebody could give a quick outline or agenda what happens next with julian's trial in a rough timeline what what should we be expecting in the coming coming weeks or months the only thing that i i know and that is that uh his brother gabriel told me that they're hoping something will happen in the fall okay that's just typical there are no nothing certain here they just keep people hanging will the high court take it will the high court do so that's that's that or that's where it stands now someone else might know more john do perhaps know or anyone else um i know that on the uh assange defense dot org uh site uh there are there is information about what's going on and it's just as you say it's uh there's no deadline and and then there are options you know if that's exhausted then what happens um remember um pinotchet who was uh wanted to be we wanted to extradite him um he was kept in a villa and and uh julian is being kept essentially isolated in a very coveted infested prison so i'm uh if with that if you don't mind i'm going to um let me see if i can get to share my screen hmm some reason i i don't see let's see if i can get to share my there it is okay i'm going to share my screen and i would like to talk about um some things that people can do um to help julian so i think the first order of business is to contact a general marik garland and um he actually should be sympathetic but so far has not been but asked that the extradition request be dropped describe how silencing julian will destroy national security journalism and your right to know and indicate that for democracy to work properly properly citizens must know what their government is doing of course julian's releases have given us a panoramic view of wars that were in progress the afghan war logs and the iraqi war logs and uh in terms of revealing uh 15 000 more citizens uh killed then were actually documented documenting other abuses so secondly call the justice department comment line the number is here i'm going to put all of this in the chat uh call your u.s senators and representatives and again the number this is a general number uh attend an event during the homerun for julian tour this is the website um contribute to the tour nathan sent me last night uh the you know the best places to contribute to the tour to contribute to julian's legal defense and to sign a petition to free julian so this came from nathan fuller of the courage foundation and the sun's defense uh learn about the importance of wiki leaks releases and you can do that uh at the asanche defense site learn more from testimony at the extradition hearing i think this is really important given the blackout on news from the testimony and and asanche defense has organized this in a very nice way um but you can um you can get lots of information there amy goodman uh interviewed john and gabriel uh just a few days ago and that's a wonderful interview um join asanche defense at asanche defense dot org or write to julian now i have a different address here than was given earlier for writing to julian but all those are things that that one can do and i'm just going to copy that now and put it in the chat and maybe one of you uh one of our panelists would like to add some words of your own may i say one more thing sure you know sometimes we sometimes we think that that whatever little actions we could take are inconsequential and um you know what how far is 20 gonna go or what's julian gonna care if i send him a postcard i can tell you as someone who spent two years in a federal prison and responded to every one of the 7 000 letters and cards that i received that those postcards and letters uh can can save a person it can save julian from a depression that is debilitating crippling um you know 20 to spend on phone calls uh can be a lifesaver just a kind word uh can be a lifesaver there was a woman who i had never met in wringold georgia who sent me a card on the very day that i arrived in prison and all it was was um a picture of some roses in her garden and a few kind words and i can't tell you what that meant to me now julian has been effectively he's been in prison effectively really he's been in solitary confinement for 10 years that's really what it comes down to he he doesn't get out to see roses or birds or blue skies and so something that we may take for granted is just you know as i said inconsequential could save this poor guy so if you think that that your little action is really not a big enough deal to to to bother julian with you're wrong i'm sure he's going to be forever indebted for that kind word well thank you john that's a wonderful note to go out on and i want to thank peace action wisconsin who um and and tom rodman from peace action wisconsin who's provided all of our technical support here i want to thank assange defense which is sponsoring gabriel and john's tour of the united states and i really want to thank john and gabriel for joining us uh even though they're very busy in dc today and i want to thank our wonderful wonderful panelists rama govern john kiriyaku and the inevitable the anyway and fidel fidel narvez it is so wonderful to finally meet you and um so and john i'm meeting john for the first time so uh thank you all fantastic audience thank you audience for being here and uh for all of your wonderful questions