 Welcome to CN Live, Season 3, Episode 11, Assange. Malingura or Martyr? I'm Joe Laurier, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News. I'm Elizabeth Voss. United States appeal hearing against a British judge's decision not to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher. Julian Assange begins at the High Court in London tomorrow with prosecutors for the U.S. seeking to prove Assange's faking psychological disorders and urges to kill himself. The U.S. wants the High Court to overturn the order of magistrate Vanessa Braitzer on January 4 not to extradite Assange to the U.S., to face charges of espionage and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion because of Assange's high risk of suicide and the inhumane conditions of U.S. prisons. The U.S. is to argue over the next two days that Assange is a malingerer mentally fit to be extradited and that testimony that says otherwise should be thrown out. An assessment of Assange's mental state is now the key issue on whether he'll be freed or sent to the U.S. United States is fighting to dismiss the testimony of Assange witness Michael Koppelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience Kings College London. Koppelman testified under oath at the September 2020 extradition hearing that Assange has had a history of clinical depression and said his risk of suicide would increase if extradition were about to happen. He said he is as confident as a psychologist can be that Assange would kill himself. Joining us today to discuss the issues surrounding the U.S. appeal are whistleblower and former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is imprisoned for outing the agency's illegal torture program, Andrew Fowler, an Australian journalist who has interviewed Assange numerous times and is the author of the most dangerous man in the world, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Fight for Freedom and by Dr. Bill Hogan, he's director of biomedical informatics for the clinical and translational science institute at the University of Florida and he's also part of the Doctors for Assange. Gentlemen, all lead to you. Thank you and welcome to the show. I want to begin with a broad question. What is at stake tomorrow in these two days at Inside Court Room 4 at the Warrior Courts of Justice? Let me start with you, Andrew. Thanks Joe. I think what's at stake tomorrow in the High Court in London is really, without being melodramatic about this, is the life of Julian Assange. He's come down to that. That if he loses in this case and he ends up in the United States, there's no doubt that his life is at risk. But what's worse than that is that the case could go on and on and on because even if he wins, the Department of Justice can appeal. You can go to the Supreme Court. You may end up in the European Court of Human Rights and even then he may end up in the United States. So it could drag on for months and months and months. Quite frankly, I just don't know how Julian Assange has managed to hold up for so long. But it's extraordinary that he's managed to hold himself together over all those years, over a decade of being handed by the United States. So as I say, what's at stake tomorrow and the day after is really whether or not Julian Assange survives. John, do you concur with that or broaden it to even larger issues than just Julian's life? I do. I agree with that. And I would add that from an American perspective, I think that the viability of the US Constitution is at stake here, too. If Julian Assange is extradited, in my view, that's the death knell for freedom of the press. We like to think that we're an example for the rest of the world for press freedoms and transparency in media. And this would put literally every national security journalist in danger of an espionage charge of a life in prison if Julian is extradited and convicted. Bill, from a medical point of view, and I guess a political one, too, from what I know of you, what is at stake tomorrow and Wednesday and Thursday? So I agree with Andrew and John that it's Julian's life and freedom of the press, the First Amendment at stake. Medically, I would add that there's a full frontal attack on the medical expert testimony of the witnesses. And so the whole system of medical expert testimony and how it works and how that holds up in district courts and it appeals at stake, because there's definitely a full-on attack against Dr. Kaplanman's testimony and a lot of deception around it. Right. Of course, the big story in the last month has been what has been revealed in greater detail was the plot by the Central Intelligence Agency to actually kidnap or kill, assassinate Julian Sange. On the southern territory of Ecuador in the heart of London, steps from Harrod's CIA actually seriously talked about that. We knew first about this at the testimony last in September 2020 when two employees, an employee and a former partner of UC Global, the security firm in Spain that was hired by the CIA to spy with Livestream 24-7 on everything that went on inside that embassy. We heard an anonymous witness testify that that was discussed, the CIA discussed that with UC Global. So we already knew about that, but then of course the Yahoo story came last September 29th and fleshed that out with many, many officers of former intelligence, White House lawyers in the Trump administration, national security officials who came out and confirmed all of that. John, I want to ask you since you worked in the agency, you've been through the court systems yourself and been imprisoned. How unusual is it for a bunch of former CIA officials to come out and talk to reporters? So many of them with such great detail and what do you think motivated them to do that? The motivation I think was easy. They were appalled that this happened or that there was even discussion that an operation like this would happen. Frankly, in all the years of watching the agency, and I mean going back to the late 1980s, I've never seen any article, any story that could claim to, quote, 30 different CIA intelligence officers and White House national security officials. That was incredible to me. Even more incredible was the fact that everybody but Yahoo News ignored the story. I thought that it was a huge story. And as I wrote in consortium news, everything that was in this article rang true. And I know that because I worked with the covert action people. The CIA is a big lumbering bureaucracy, a big heavy government bureaucracy. And so there's a huge trail of paperwork when you want to do a covert action operation like this. Now it's one thing to say, you know what? I think we should kill this Libyan tribal leader or we should take out this Pakistani terrorist. But to say that you want to kidnap or kill an Australian national, an international figure who has not had his day in a court of law, who has not been convicted of any crime is just, it's beyond the pale. Now what would happen in a case like this? And I think that this was well spelled out in the Yahoo News piece. Somebody comes up with an idea. Let's kidnap or kill Julian Assange. It appears that that idea was Mike Pompeo's or at least people very closely associated. It was actually interrupted, John, but there's a line in that Yahoo story that didn't get any attention, which was these ideas to kill or kidnap him predated him coming to Langley. That means they started under the Obama administration. Which would make sense then because it was the Obama administration that went after so many whistleblowers. So what happens is somebody goes to the covert action people and says, I have this idea to kill or kidnap Julian Assange. They say it like clerks and they type it all up and make sure it's in the right format. And then they send it to the office of the general counsel. The general counsel makes sure that it's legal by their reading of the law and they send it to the justice department's office of legal counsel. And we know what OLC has done in the past. They were the ones that claimed that the torture program was legal or that international renditions are legal or the secret prison system was legal. They put their stamp on it and send it to the national security counsel's general counsel. They make their word changes and stylistic changes and they send it to the national security advisor for a signature. Once the national security advisor signs it, it goes to the president for his signature on what by then is called a presidential finding. It didn't make its way to Trump, apparently, which tells me that HR McMaster, who was the national security counsel, the national security advisor at the time, must have killed it because I think Trump would have signed it, frankly. And so at least there was an adult in the room who said, this is nuts and we're not going to do it. Go ahead, John. I was going to say the fact that there were 30 people who felt compelled to discuss this with journalists tells me that not all is lost over there, that at least there were some people who thought this is a bridge too far, it's a chance that the agency shouldn't take, it's crazy, it's probably illegal, and we shouldn't do it. I'm sickened that it made its way as far as it did. You say you're shocked, but if you look at the history of the CIA, going back to the first coup in 1949 and all the way through into what we learned in the 1975 Church Committee and the Catholic Commission and the Pied Committee and all of that, we've seen an out of control agency that has did many assassinations until it was outlawed and we don't know whether they continued after that or not. I want to bring up this article by Arthur Crock in The New York Times, one in November 1963 in which he wrote that John Kennedy better get control of the CIA, otherwise if there's a coup in Washington, it would be led by the CIA not by the Pentagon and he has to get it under control because they were doing whatever they wanted in Vietnam, they were disagreeing with the ambassador in Saigon and they were just doing whatever they want. Of course, a month later, Kennedy was killed. Then there was the Safari Club under George H. W. Bush when he was the director, which was completely off the books. Intelligent. So is this plot really so out of the ordinary of the CIA in their history? Pre-1975, I'd say no, of course not. Post-1975, even post-911, I would say yes for two reasons. Number one, because there's supposed to be congressional oversight. I complain about congressional oversight all the time in the pages of consortium news, but there really is at least some congressional oversight. But the second reason is because we're not talking about some third world dictator or someone without broad appeal in the United States. We're talking about an Australian citizen, a Five Eyes National. And so the risk of blowback to me would be such that to carry out an operation like this in central London, in Knightsbridge, it's like taking out a person walking down Fifth Avenue in New York. The chances of failure are too high. It's clearly illegal. And I think that the international community wouldn't stand for it. I want to bring in Elizabeth, but first I want, yes, Andrew. What I find really intriguing about this is that you get 30, as you say, national security people explaining this idea which made its way up through the bureaucracy. And it's possible that the CIA or Pompeo could say, this is nonsense. This is absolutely no. Where's the evidence of this? Who's going to come forward? He doesn't say that. He says, I want to prosecute them. In other words, he validates the very story. So you've now got Pompeo validating it, and you got witness one out of Madrid that we know about who said he was told the CIA wanted to leave the door open and kidnap Assange and maybe kill him. So I mean, what's the Australian government's response to this? Well, I can tell you right now, absolutely nothing, zero, no response. I mean, that's just, you talk about the problems in the United States. We have our fair share here as well. I mean, maybe not on such a grand scale, but we do have a step towards authoritarianism and intelligence agencies that have their own way and do their own things. And we've now got a guy who's facing a lifetime in prison who will burn a Caleri. You may have followed his case, and he suffers from this authoritarian and intelligence link that's hardening up in this country and is very problematic. Anyway, my point was that Pompeo really confirmed the story, which is, I think, quite extraordinary. Yeah, we also know that there was discussion of killing other journalists or, you know, attacking other journalists in Europe who collaborated with WikiLeaks and Assange. So I mean, it's not just Assange that was basically under attack in this horrendous and unusual way. Any comments on that? Billy, you haven't spoken yet. So that's right. And I just want to point out too that there were two attempted breakings reported by you all to the Ecuadorian Embassy one in 2016, one in 2018, you know, both predating Pompeo and Trump and postating them. So you start to wonder to what extent some of these plans might have, you know, dry runs been done or, you know, casing of the joint as the expression goes actually took place. The CIA has a large and skilled team of people experienced in breakings. It wouldn't at all surprise me that they had tried, even tried multiple times to break into the embassy. And I'm sure that that's after practically begging or brow-beating the Ecuadorians to just let them in with a key in the first place. So how would that have worked, John? What would they, I mean, they get in the embassy and what they abduct Assange and take him out of the country, they rendition him, is that what you're saying? Apparently, that was the plan. The plan was that they didn't want to necessarily go through this long drawn out extradition process in the British courts, that with the assistance of MI6, or I guess it would have to be MI5 and MI6, because it would be a domestic operation, they could snatch him and render him just like they would snatch and render someone off the streets of Karachi or Kabul or someplace like that. They said in the article that they were working closely with the British, and the British would be the ones to do the shooting if it were to devolve into a shootout in the streets of Knightsbridge, which was just insane to me. I can't even imagine such a thing. I couldn't understand that. I mean, I know the embassy, I know the area quite well. I mean, who are they shooting against? What is this? Who are the other side? I mean, Assange is not armed. It's kind of fabricated that they've got some opposition there. Yeah, go ahead. The other news story said that they were going to shoot the tires out of the plane that would take off with Assange on his way to wherever Russia supposedly. Well, that story is a fantasy. According to Stella Marse, that was a fantasy that was debunked by the UC global witnesses in the trial in Madrid. There was never any plan for Russians to go in and get it. They did discuss possibly him going to Russia if he got a diplomatic passport, which he never got because the British stopped it. But and Assange said, no, I'm not going to Russia. And for obvious reasons, it was not a politically smart move. So that was all just a fantasy to shoot out the streets. We've got a lot of headlines. Andrew, Stella Marse said, yesterday, this is a game changer. The issue is whether they can get this evidence into the courtroom tomorrow and on Thursday, because in an appeal hearing, it's very hard to get new evidence in. Now, there is the evidence of the UC global. It's already in the trial that we knew basically there was this discussion of poisoning or kidnapping, but not all the details of the of the Yahoo story. Do you agree? And what do you see about that as being part of this case tomorrow? Could it change? Could it have such an impact on these judges that they would agree that it would be too dangerous to send to a country that literally plotted? Yeah, look, I think the the issue raises is really important. I mean, here you're going to actually be sending somebody to a country whose intelligence agency has, according to 30, 30 witnesses and confirmed by the ex director of the agency, plan to kidnap and or kill. So if you thought his life might have been at risk of being sent to a supermax prison under certain managerial handling, imagine if you put him in the hands of the CIA. I mean, he's not exactly going to be cared for in a reasonable, I think, sustainable way. So you could bolt it onto the argument. But look, I'm a journalist and I'm not a lawyer. And I think that that would might be a hard ask to bolt that onto the argument. It might be that you come back and cross petition on on other issues if you get sent back to the High Court by the Supreme Court is my understanding of the way it may work. Well, all this goes back to that central point, which is that more and more months, more and more months in jail, and Assange is still holding up. I think it's, I think it's a miracle he's holding up. I think this has got a long, long way to go, months and months and months more for Assange. And in the end, I would think that that case about the CIA being involved in a thinking, even thinking of killing him would be a big argument. But whether or not they can run it at the moment, I'm not across that detail. John, we discussed this by email before. If Assange's lawyers want to get testimony from some of these 30 to testify anonymously, as those UC Global Witnesses did, and if y'all who allowed connect contacts with those sources to the lawyers and some of those lawyers agree, yes, two or three agree, I will testify anonymously to back this story up. Would the US government allow them to do that? If this happened in the US, what would be different than it happens in a foreign court? They'd be able to use what's called state secrets privilege to cut off their testimony saying was classified as Pompeo said, this is classified. But what about in a foreign and a British court for the American government? How would they handle that? I'm not 100% sure, but I can speculate. And I think that the way they would handle it would be to allow the testimony, but then also to allow the Justice Department to object. And I think that's for two reasons. Number one, it's not permissible in the United States. Let me rephrase that. It's illegal in the United States to classify a crime, right? You can't classify something for the purpose, for the sole purpose of keeping it from the American people. If it's a crime, by definition, it can't be classified. That would be that would be an argument that I would make before a British court is this whole operation was criminal in nature. It was not an intelligence collection operation. It wasn't in support of US law. It was a kidnapping or worse. It was an assassination. So by definition, it can't be classified. But if I were the Justice Department and I knew that these people were going to testify to something, I would ask the British courts to invoke something akin to the SIPA laws here, the Classified Information Protection Act. And what that is, some of it is silly and some of it's serious. But when the Justice Department invokes SIPA, what happens is the courtroom is cleared of everybody but the judge, the clerk, the attorneys, the defendant, the jury, and the bailiff. And then the courtroom is literally sealed where they'll duct tape plastic over the windows. They'll duct tape the gaps around the doors. They'll play white noise, very loud white noise as a matter of fact. So that nothing can be heard outside the courtroom, that nothing can be recorded, and then they'll make their arguments. So I could see I could see the US objecting, but then conceding that these these former intelligence officers are going to be heard in some way. But at least their testimony might remain secret if everybody were to be expelled from the courtroom. That includes Assange's lawyers? They couldn't stay? No. Assange's lawyers would have to stay in the courtroom. They could. They would be, yes, even without clearance. Even without clearance. Even without clearance. Because the objection is going to be whether or not to even allow people to say what it is they want to say. The objection is before the testimony is actually given. And then what happens to if you know what the testimony is going to be, if the government knows what the testimony is going to be, they will present the court with a list of either words or phrases or both, frankly, that are that are banned. In the case of Tom Drake here, the NSA whistleblower here in the United States, it was it was ridiculous. He said, for example, I don't know what the word was, but the word he used with me was the phrase was swimming pool. Let's say the phrase swimming pool is classified for some reason. Instead of saying swimming pool, you say garbanzo bean. And so every time somebody testifies and needs to use the word swimming pool, they'll look at their little cheat sheet and replace it with garbanzo bean. It makes the testimony nonsensical. And frankly, it angers a lot of judges when the Justice Department insists on doing something like this. But I could see that happening in a case like this. I think Pompeo is going to be called garbanzo beans. Elizabeth, I'd carry on if you'd like, please. You have more questions on the assassination issue? Absolutely. Yeah, I was wondering, especially Bill, your opinion on how this impacts. I mean, obviously to state the obvious, the confirmation of this plot to assassinate Assange does seem to have been obviously very applicable to Assange's mental health status and his mental health reaction if he were to be extradited and the likelihood that he might commit suicide. We don't know whether that will be allowed to be discussed tomorrow. But could you comment on that on the mental health obstacles that Assange faces in relationship to this obvious assassination plot against him? That up until this point, as far as the mainstream media was concerned, was described as like a paranoid narcissistic delusion. I mean, there are articles in The Guardian that describe Assange as a narcissist because he believed that the US was out to get him. Right. And the lead prosecutor for the United States during the extradition hearing was very dismissive of the claims relative to assassination and abduction. Calling it palpable nonsense was the exact quote by the prosecutor. So the relationship to the medical issues, first of all, is exactly what you say. It's highly explanatory as to why Assange showed signs of torture for the special rapporteur. It's why he's, according to all the psychiatric experts, prosecution and defense, at least moderately depressed and according to some of them, much more than moderately depressed. And so if you have the full counterintelligence powers of the world's most powerful intelligence agency unleashed against you and your small journalistic organization and you don't have counterintelligence capabilities of an ancient state, that's a tremendous amount of pressure and surveillance and stalking and intrusion that an average person can't stand up against and you're going to break. And so the other thing it does is it highly justifies compliment keeping Stella Morris's identity secret in the preliminary filing for the court that the judge never read. So it, you know, Barrett's are said, compliment's response was an understandable human response to not fully reveal Stella right away. And I think it throws that comment into stark relief. It's an incredibly human response when you have the CIA out there to looking to abduct or assassinate. And what's the status of your significant other and your children now fiance, you know, planning a wedding. Bill, let me set the context that you're talking in that the United States specifically wants the testimony of Michael Koppelman to be a renowned witness in many, many cases, even James Lewis, the prosecutor called on him at the last minute, he was desperate to be an expert witness said to one of his own extradition trials. Tell us what, who Koppelman is, what his testimony is and why the USO held bent on getting his testimony out and they're using trying to use the excuse of the fact he didn't reveal the existence of Morris and the children. I think it's just a way to get him out. Why is Koppelman such a focus tomorrow is going to be for the United States? Sure. So Professor Michael Koppelman, he testified that Assange had severe depression with psychotic features that he was at high risk for suicide and that if there was a decision to extradite, he would almost certainly as sure as a psychiatrist can ever be commit suicide. And the judge in the extradition hearing found Koppelman to be quite credible, if not the most credible medical expert witness, although there were one or two others she found credible. And so the Turner test in the UK court system again, I'm deviating into law a little bit, but the suicide has to be not a rational decision. It has to be almost compulsive in nature and assessing that psychiatrically you of course need the medical experts and Koppelman was pretty clear that this suicide impulse would be out of Assange's rational control. And so because the judge relied so heavily on that, the prosecution of course is desperate and we've seen multiple desperation attempts and desperation passes to try and get this thrown out. Right. Yes, go on Andrew. Yeah, on the issue of Assange being concerned about being assassinated, I mean, back in 2010, I interviewed him in Melbourne and he had just talked to Daniel Ellsberg and Ellsberg was warning him about what might happen, he'd be very careful. And to that extent, when I drove Julian through the streets of Melbourne late at night after we had a long chat, he asked to be dropped off on the corner away from where he was going. And he just said, just keep driving and don't look back. He went down a side street. So he was already taking those countermeasures. So for 10 years, he's been concerned about assassination. And what's kind of infuriating about Assange which can be infuriating is that he says things like that. You think, Julian, you're being a little bit paranoid here. What I didn't know was at that time he had in his backpack, he had most of the Afghan war logs and the cables and things like that. He had those. So he was way ahead of the game. And I think that what that did was that each time when Massange says something like that, you think, hang on, Julian, I know the Americans are after you, but really, and each time he's right. And each time it goes on and history proves him infuriating at times right for those who might have doubted him. So right back then, as I say, he was very concerned about assassination. I'm glad you told that story, Andrew, because we dug up a tweet from November 2010 from Wikileaks, still up there in Twitter. And it says that asking whether the United, complaining that the CIA wouldn't answer a four-year request about whether there was a plan to assassinate Wikileaks editor. And he goes on to blame Obama saying this is Obama-era justice. So even back in 2010, they wanted to find out whether the CIA had a plan and the CIA wouldn't need to confirm or deny that four-year request. Elizabeth, before we move on to another subject. Sure. I just wanted to comment on the press conference done yesterday by Stella Morris and Kristen Hapnison. And I thought it was very interesting the way in which Stella basically said was asked. She was asked, were you shocked? Was this a surprise, this revelation? And she was very clear that no, this is confirmation of what we already knew was happening. And she described being in the embassy and basically being in the embassy with mercenaries, which is what the security company UC Global became in the Ecuadorian embassy. If any of you would like to just comment on that situation, the fact that they lived with this for so long. And now that years later, it's finally being really revealed in more of a full light of day. But just how extensive this was while he was in the embassy, especially in that last year or so when he was cut off and it was basically solitary confinement. John, I don't know if you wanted to comment on that at all. Sure. People really don't have a complete idea, I think, of what solitary confinement is. What Julian experienced in the embassy was not only solitary confinement. In many ways, it was worse than prison solitary confinement in that it was indefinite. In that even in prison solitary confinement, you at least have some access to sunlight every once in a while. And most importantly, I think you don't have every Tom, Dick, and Harry around you spying on you and reporting every one of your activities, every one of your conversations back to Big Brother. And so it's not like Julian ran into the embassy and was on vacation for seven years. That was punishment. That was imprisonment. Not even to say how the Ecuadorians turned on him, which I think is just scandalous. I think we probably all think is scandalous. You know, right before I went to prison, I gave an interview to the BBC and the interviewer asked me a very strange question. It was strange to me, but it was something of a learning experience. I told him that my judge had ordered that I go to a minimum security work camp. And so things could have been so much worse for me. I ended up going to a low security prison. And he said, that's not how we do it in the UK. The way we do it in the UK is regardless of the length of your sentence, you start off at the highest security prison, which is either maximum or medium. And then as you get closer to your release date, you're moved down in severity to medium and then to low and then to minimum. And that way you sort of integrate back into society. That's not been the case with Julian. Julian, who's been held on the grave crime of bail jumping has been in maximum security for the very beginning. Well, much of that time has been in solitary confinement, coupled that with seven years of solitary confinement in the Ecuadorian Embassy. I don't see how anybody is able to maintain his mental health under conditions like that. I know myself. I know my body. I like to think that I'm a strong person. I couldn't survive something like that. I'm not sure that I know many people who can. Now, besides all that, we've got a system of solitary confinement in the United States that is acknowledged at the United Nations to be a form of torture. Niels Melzer has been very, very vocal about the US practice of solitary confinement. We've all talked about your one hour a day. And in many cases, it's not one hour a day. It's three hours a week. So almost every other day, your so-called exercise is just being led into a cage the same size as your six-by-ten foot cell that happens to be outside. And you can walk in circles for an hour like a dog. That's not exercise. That's still solitary confinement. You sleep on a steel bunk with a wafer-thin mattress. You've got a steel toilet and a steel sink. And that's it. You have no human interaction other than somebody opening a steel slat in your door and pushing a meal in three times a day. Who wouldn't go crazy under conditions like that? And guess who gets to decide whether Julian would go into those special administrative measures? And that's an important point, Joe. I'm glad you brought it up because it slipped my mind for a moment. Judges can say until they're blue in the face, I want this person to go to this facility or that person to go to that facility. It's the Bureau of Prisons that makes the final determination. Judges have no say so where you go. Judge Liam O'Grady on July 29th said that Daniel Hale should go to the low-security prison hospital at Butler, North Carolina. Two weeks ago, Sunday, he showed up at the Supermax Communications Management Unit at Marion, Illinois. Just yesterday, a former member of the Black Panthers got out of prison after spending 40 years in prison the last 22 years of which were in solitary confinement. And this man is supposed to just reintegrate into society if nothing can happen. There's another agency that gets a say in whether Julian would go into that. And that was from the testimony of Maureen Baird, who was a SAMS administrator for the Bureau of Prisons. And she said that with the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, because who would consider national security or the FBI, but in this case, it would be the CIA. We may be able to decide whether to throw him in jail. I think that's a very important point that the defense brought up in the September 2020 hearing. They drew that out of her several times. Would it be the CIA? And she said, yes, that's on the record right now. And I think that's terrible. It would be the CIA. And the CIA does this a lot. Well, it's not just the CIA. It can be the FBI. It can be the State Department even. Stephen Kim was a State Department employee who was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and got a whopping year and a day in a minimum security camp for apparently committing espionage by giving an interview to Fox News. And the State Department had no problem with him going to the Cumberland, Maryland, minimum security camp. When I got to the low security prison, after having been told I was going to minimum security, I did a FOIA request on myself just to see what happened. And I got a lot of documents back, 220 pages of documents. And among those documents were memos saying that the CIA had objected to my designation as a minimum security prisoner. And then there was a memo from the warden to all staff in font, this big saying caution inmate has access to the media. And so I was put in what's called a modified CMU, not worthy of maximum or super maximum, but my mail was intercepted, both incoming and outgoing. My phone calls were listened to and recorded in real time. I had no freedom in prison, none at all. Now imagine that for Julian, but at the maximum or supermax level. That's not living. Bill, before I go back to you about the medical issue, which is really at the heart of this, I want to bring up the issue of the judges. And Andrew, I know you were in London as a correspondent. I don't know if you have covered British courts, but I learned some, for me, arcane things about how they work. For example, in a high court case, I would have thought, as a lot of people do anyway, a lot of Americans anyway, that there would be three judges or at least an odd number of judges. But no, the high court in London could have two or more. And it's very often two. So in this case, Julian's going to have two judges. Now what happens if they disagree? Well, I asked our legal analyst, Alexander McCouris, who worked 12 years in that building where Julian's going to be tomorrow, the Records of Justice. He said, well, they get together beforehand and they try to see before the hearing direction they're going to go in and they more or less have around the same page. And then they'll have two. But if they really disagree from the start, they could bring in a third judge at that point. And if they go ahead and at the end they disagree, it could end in a deadlock. And they'd have to have a new hearing with new judges and start this whole thing over again with two judges who more or less might agree. Andrew, I don't know if you had any experience in London with that. I mean, I reported on the high court and the Old Bailey, but that kind of detail is quite extraordinary to learn that they can actually bring in the extra person. So it actually slows the whole process down again. You go back. No, but the whole, see, I thought this meant that it would be like an understudy and a play, you know, would have to follow the process but not be, no, it would be in before it began. When they said, no, we're not, we may not agree on this. Let's bring in a third person. So there could be a third person tomorrow showing up is what I found out. But let's talk about the two people we know about. We know about the Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett. He's the most powerful judge in England and Wales. Absolute talk. He is going to be on the bench. And the other one is Lord Justice Timothy Holroyd. Okay, Holroyd. Now, Holroyd was the judge who dominated the two judge hearing on August 11th when the US was first denied the right to appeal the health issue. And they appealed the grounds for appeal. And they had a hearing on August 11th and they were, was reversed. The previous high court decision was reversed. And Holroyd was the man who decided that that the US can appeal this medical issue that I want to ask Bill about later when we get again to this very important point. So Holroyd did not look like a really good person for Julian. He looked like he was biased towards the US. In fact, I asked in August our legal analyst, Alexander McRuskin, will he wind up on the panel on October? He said, absolutely not. There's no way. And if he does, it's a serious development. Well, he is. Now, I don't know what happened. Maybe Julian's lawyer is objected because they can challenge it. But we then got Ian Burnett. Now, Burnett is important because he was on the high court that overturned an extradition order for Laurie Love because of his suicidal nature and that it will be oppressive to send him to the US. So this, Laurie Love was on a panel earlier today in St. Pancras in London and he spoke and he said he hopes to get in the courtroom and look at that judge and see if he recognizes him to remind him that you let me go free because I was suicidal to do the right thing with Julian. But let me ask you, Jumps, since you've been through all this in the courts, how important is it to the judge that you get? Oh, it's the most important thing that there is. When I was a kid, I just always assumed that grownups were so wise and so fair and their life experiences made them good and it didn't get any better than the judiciary because they were in these positions because of their fairness. And I've come to realize how ridiculous that is. I'll recount to you something that one of my attorneys told me when I decided to turn down the Justice Department's best and final offer of 30 months in prison. He got right in my face and he said, you know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice, it's about mitigating damage, take the deal. And I took the deal because I realized that he was right. You know, in sentencing when the judge sentenced me to 30 months, it was as part of something called an 11C1C plea. That means that the deal is written in stone, that the prosecution and the defense agree on it and the judge can't change it. The judge said that she had been a federal judge since 1986 and this was the first time in her career that she had an 11C1C plea before her. And she looked at me and she said, Mr. Kiriakou, I wish I could send you to prison for 10 years, but my hands are tied. Well then there was Daniel Hale on January the 29th where the Justice Department was asking for 14 years in prison just on the first count and they wanted to go to trial on the remaining four counts of espionage and that wise judge, Liam O'Grady, wouldn't even consider 14 years. He sentenced Daniel to 45 months and then dismissed all the remaining charges with prejudice so they couldn't be brought against him again. If that isn't an indication of how these sentences depend on which judge you get, I don't know what is. And you know, on the day of my sentencing, because my case was newsworthy at the time, I was the last person to be sentenced. So I was with another 20 or 25 people all waiting for sentencing and at the end of every sentence, well I sat there and I watched this judge ruin families. Minor drug charges, she was sending people away for five years at a time. In many cases followed by deportation because people were here undocumented and the wives and the children were crying and at the end of each sentence she said that sentence was fair and appropriate. I listened to her say it 25 times and in my mind none of those sentences were fair and appropriate. You can send somebody to jail for a time but there's no point in ruining the family and she seemed to take pleasure in that. Well, Judge O'Grady was different. It's been my experience in the Eastern District of Virginia that Judge Hilton is different. It really, really depends which judge you get and what kind of mood that judge happens to be in. May I add one other thought, Joe? I read a study in ProPublica recently that said that 92% of judges were prosecutors in an earlier life and that's an ongoing problem in the United States. Especially at the federal level, we've got presidents who just do not choose federal judges from among defense attorneys or even better yet public defenders. They choose them almost exclusively from the roles of prosecutors and that's just plain wrong. I'm going to move on unless Elizabeth has some. Yes, go ahead. No, it's fine to move on. There's not any agreement. Bill, the medical issue is at the center of this. I mean, there are major, major issues here with the Espionage Act, with the future of the press and again, as Andrew said at the beginning, it's really not hyperbole. You can over dramatize this. This issue is so damn important and it's so shocking that the mainstream media doesn't see it that way. It's not covering it. The way we're trying to do that consortium news with the minimal resources that we have, we throw everything we have at it when we get to that because we understand how important this is. We had a piece that showed, for example, about the medical issue that the Claire Dobbin, one of the prosecutors at that August 11 hearing, she was basically lying by saying that the defense and the prosecution expert witnesses had disagreed about whether Julian was autistic or not on the autistic syndrome. When, in fact, two of them more agreed, and even one Nigel Blackwood, who was the most anti-Assange guy up there, even he said, well, if he is, he's on the low end. But she's trying to tell the court and she did on August 11 that they didn't agree with each other. That is not the truth. How, Bill, do they have a chance? Let's put aside the political side of this. I know it's impossible to do, but just if you looked at the medical evidence and what Baraita wrote in her judgment, and she was no fan of Julian Assange, it's clear, and yet she could not herself deny that this man was seriously ill. In fact, in the ruling, in her ruling, she writes how Julian walked up and down his cell till he was exhausted, and he also was banging his head against the cell wall and punching himself in the face. This is the man the US says is a malingerer and does not really want to commit suicide and is pretending. Is there any way just on the medical evidence that the US could win this argument this week? No, if you look at the medical evidence objectively, it's clear that Baraita was correct to favor Koppelman and Sondra Crosby testified as well. We don't talk much about Sondra Crosby, but she might have known Assange the longest and the most comprehensively, although Koppelman did a phenomenal job. If you look at the medical evidence, Koppelman saw Julian at over a longer period of time than Blackwood or the other defense or prosecution witness Fazzel, if I'm saying that right, interviewed the family, interviewed psychiatrist who had seen Julian in Australia when he was young, talked about some psychiatric issues from his youth, did a phenomenal job of scouring the notes of the psychiatrist in Belmarsh prison. In fact, I think Blackwood really discredited himself on this issue of the transfer to the medical wing, which your article brought up, where it's pretty clear that a major reason at least, and probably the major reason, probably the only reason that he was transferred to the medical wing was he was in crisis, in a mental crisis. The best that the prosecution could come up with was no, he was really sent there to be punished because there was a video that another prisoner took and uploaded. The best they could do to try and paper over the mental crisis was to say they used healthcare as punishment. That doesn't speak well with the prosecution, but Blackwood, Barrett said in her ruling, Blackwood was not familiar enough with the medical notes to realize that Julian was transferred to the medical wing because of serious mental issues. So their attempt to try and paper over the real reason led to Blackwood really being discredited in the judge's side. And even self-harm, he was expressing desires of self-harm that very day, that's why they put him. Exactly. That was the reason they transferred him. And the best the judge could do for Blackwood was say, well, he just didn't read enough of the notes and wasn't familiar enough with the notes. And it's probably true. I don't think Blackwood spent a lot of time on this case, honestly. He only interviewed Julian twice for two hours each. Koppelman was there three or four times for multiple hours. And then the autism spectrum disorder diagnosis is rock solid. I mean, Dr. Dealey is the only autism expert at the National Autism Center at Bethlehem Hospital in the UK, has written about it. He has a PhD in neurodevelopmental disorders. He does research as well as his medical training. He does research into these issues. And he did the standard diagnostic protocol for autism spectrum disorders and found that Assange met the criteria. A lot of Koppelman, to his credit, said that's beyond my expertise. I find autism spectrum traits, but he was relatively silent on whether a definitive autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, the only other psychiatric expert to say way in definitively was Blackwood who said, oh, no, he's not autism spectrum, but Blackwood's not an expert. And so again, the preponderance, the medical evidence objectively is just rock solid. That Assange is severely depressed. He has PTSD. He has had psychotic features with hallucinations and psychotic features with this depression. And Dealey and Koppelman both said that this would be compulsive and beyond this control to commit suicide. And the risk is substantial. Yeah. And Koppelman said that people on the autistic spectrum are nine times more likely to commit suicide than someone who isn't. So on the strength of the medical evidence, it's an open and shut case in your view. There's no way the US could win this appeal tomorrow. If it's objective and politics does not control it. Yes. All right. Let's ask Andrew, will politics have a role in this hearing? Look, I think politics has a role in, I mean, in everything, including in the way that judges make the determinations. Also in obviously the judges that are appointed. And if you go back to Barasta and go back to the magistrates courts when Julian first came through, you look at the hierarchy of the chief magistrate that controls this whole area, Westminster and the central London area, of course, and the relationship that she had with the military establishment. I mean, it's very tough, I think, for a state. It's very difficult for a state dealing with the national security issue that it sees as being important and the United States as an important ally of the UK to not do what that country wants is there, the more powerful of the two countries. And clearly in this case, this is the relationship with the United States. So how do you actually get a fair trial at a level of national security when the state itself sees its self benefiting by doing what the other state requires? I mean, I think that is clearly a conflict of interest and difficult to separate. I mean, it's, I suppose it's really incumbent upon the judges themselves to decide whether or not they're prepared to go against the medical advice and say, we'll trash the medical advice, we'll trash our legal reputations, because this may be better for Britain. But on the other hand, if I can say this, I think that what we saw was the 17 charges against Assange on the basis of the espionage, the evidence that Barasta accepted as being acceptable, that he was basically a spy and a journalist, was such a lot of hogwash, a lot of nonsense, but it gave the Americans what they wanted. What she didn't do was give them really what they wanted, which was Assange. And I think that's the point, that's the sticking point. So maybe the British are playing it this way. Maybe they're saying, we've given you what you wanted, you got all the wins there, for all that case history, all those arguments you can put up to control the media in your country, frightened life out of them, and in the UK. But we're not going to give you during Assange. Because it would not only be on the conscience of the judges, it would also cause tremendous damage to the American, as John said at the beginning, to the American Fourth Estate, they would be, it would be catastrophic to go through this argument in the United States. The place is already split asunder. Imagine if you put a sergeant in the middle of that, and you have the New York Times argument being played out, the constitutional arguments. So the best thing for all concerned is for Julian to be bound to be in danger of suicide, he remains in the United Kingdom, and the Americans can just slip off into the sunset. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I don't understand why they're pursuing it, the way they are, except that Biden's got enough problems on his hands without worrying about giving Julian Assange a free reign and being accused of being weak on national security, is the way I see it. I think Biden in 2010, in an interview when he was Vice President, I meet the press said, we can only charge Julian Assange if we find him red-handed, stealing government doctors. He has to participate in the theft of the classified material. If it's just handed to him and his role as journalist, then we can go after him. That's what Biden said then. I think, I have no idea, but I would assume he thinks the same thing now, but something happened between 2010 and now, the 2016 election. And the Democratic Party, he's the head of the Democratic Party. I don't think the Democrats will ever forgive him if he let Julian Assange go. I think it's purely political calculation on his part. I see you're not in your head, John. I agree. I agree because so many Democrats, mainstream Democrats, DNC-type Democrats, blame Julian for giving us Donald Trump. They just can't see or refuse to acknowledge the fact that Hillary Clinton was the only Democrat in America who couldn't beat Donald Trump in 2016. They need somebody to blame and they don't want to blame Hillary. So they blame Julian. Hillary who, by the way, said, let's drone him and people thought she was laughing and I thought it was a joke. But then I actually read the WikiLeaks, the father of the WikiLeaks got from the State Department and other people said they looked around the room and they didn't think she was joking. And then we hear that these ideas to kill him predated the Trump administration. When he arrived in Langley, they had already been discussed that. So you have to wonder about that. Ultimately, Julian Assange is a man who did the job that the mainstream media does not do. The mainstream media job gives cover to the establishment in Britain and in the U.S. to go around and basically have an enormously great game going with power and they can commit whatever atrocities they want. And they're going to be somehow, they depend on the mainstream media more or less to support them. And here's this guy who did the job the media is not doing and blew it all open. Of course they want to get him. Of course they want revenge on him. And I think the British establishment wants revenge on him. And I think there's a lot of pressure on these judges. But as Andrew just said, they found a way to give them the legal justifications that they want. But they want Julian Assange to be punished, don't they? Well, I think he's already been punished quite a bit more. Yeah, this is hardly what you call a calling card for excellence in journalism. You want to be a journalist or you want to be Julian Assange. I mean, it's already done its damage in many ways, the attacks. And I think that's weakened. I mean, one of the reasons that Assange is so detested by a lot of mainstream journalists is because the point you made, Joe, he showed them up. He showed them up and he introduced a system of saying what he calls scientific journalism, which was don't trust me. Here's the document. You read it. Journalists don't like being confronted. Many journalists don't like being confronted with that kind of, I think, rigorous authority, which is what Assange brought to this argument and his great intellect. Anyway, look, I mean, I just hope that it's my hope that the judges will not give the Americans everything they want. They've got 50%. They've got the win on the board in the court, but they just haven't got the guy over to America because it would be a catastrophe for Assange. And it would be a catastrophe for journalism, as John, I think, quite rightly pointed out at the beginning. He did indeed expose them as the collaborated or the accommodationists that they are to power. I think that that was something. So let's, before we wrap up, is anyone optimistic on this panel that this will be a good outcome for Julian Assange? Don't speak all at once. I'll start. So I've been overly pessimistic in the past. I was surprised by Barrett's ruling, especially because it came at the end. So everything she was saying for 45, 50 minutes was against Assange. And then at the very end, but I'm denying extradition because it would be oppressive by reason of mental health. And I think the reputational damage, the United States foreign policy influence really relies on at least a fig leaf of respect for human rights and international law. And they are just trampling it asunder over and over and over again in the Assange case. I don't know how much more they can take. We already have the president of Azerbaijan raising Assange. There's numerous Chinese officials raising Assange. And it's just going to get worse. Imagine Assange in the detention center in Virginia. He's now in the US legal system in the eastern district of Virginia. And now we're going to go over the constitutional issues. Ellsberg is going to get a lot more attention. The precedent of the Pentagon papers is going to get more attention. I just don't see how they can withstand the onslaught that's coming if they don't let this go soon. And so maybe they're just dragging this out as long as they can in sort of a backhanded, the whole thing's been addictive and retributional. And you can sort of feel the white, tense, hot hatred for Assange and Langley. But eventually, how much are they willing to risk to get Assange? They've lost a lot already. Very good point about the diplomatic damage that this could cause. Anyone else want to weigh in what they, whether they feel optimistic or not? Or if you don't want to say, I can understand that because nobody can predict. Actually, I feel a little bit optimistic because there is a precedent in the European Court of Human Rights to refuse extradition to the United States on the grounds that solitary confinement is a form of torture. And so this wouldn't be precedent setting. It would respect previous rulings. And so I think he's got an honest to God shot. Excuse me. The other point to remember, of course, is that the extradition treaties that the UK has, as far as I understand with most countries, includes the political consideration that you cannot extradite for political crimes. And this is clearly a political crime. But according to a reading by Barasta of that extradition treaty with the United States, it doesn't include that provision. So in fact, that whole issue of the relationship, the extradition relationship with the United States is seen even by Boris Johnson, who called it many years ago as being one-sided. And it's generally accepted to be a one-sided extradition treaty. So you've got this special consideration where you can extradite people to the United States for political crimes, but nowhere else in the world. So there's that to weigh into the balance as well. That, you know, as you say, how much more damage, how much more reputational damage to the judicial system, to the foreign relationships that the United States and the UK have around the world? I mean, there are even, believe it or not, MPs in this country that have joined a cross-party coalition to call for Assange to be returned to Australia. And that includes people that are now a Deputy Prime Minister who's joined this group. There are independence and there are liberal party people who have come together to say, enough is enough. So as you rightly point out, the pressure is building up. The question I ask myself is, how much longer can Julian Assange cope with this? I mean, it's the human question. I know about the legal fallout on the fourth estate problems in the United States and the rest of it, constitutional issues. But this is a guy who's done a really good job for journalism and a really good job and explained a lot to the world about the way the world works and the way journalism works. And we're, you know, he's slowly being tortured to death. And that's, I suppose, really where I come from. But I am, if I can just say my last words, my hope not my last words, but I think that there's a chance, I'm with you, John. I think there's a chance that they may say, enough is enough. And he can be free. But then again, then of course it'll be an appeal to the Supreme Court by the DOJ, maybe. That's the problem. He showed people how the world works and they don't want people to know how the world works. With that, I want to thank all the guests here. There was a pretty good discussion, Bill Hogan in Florida, John Kiryako in Northern Virginia, Andrew here in Sydney, Elizabeth and a little, not little rock, sorry, Fayetteville, Arkansas. And here's my, I have to beg a little bit. We're doing a fund drive. This is our full fund drive. We're spending everything we've got to cover this hearing tomorrow. So hopefully you'll be able to contribute to our fund and keep CN Live on the air. So for everyone here at CN Live, I want to thank our producer, Kathy Wogan, and our viewers. Thank you for watching CN Live. Until next time, this is Joe Lauria.