Episode 272 – Assange: In Defense of Journalists & Whistleblowers with Kevin Gosztola

Assange is being targeted by the US government because he doesn’t conform to the dominant culture of the US prestige media. He’s not going to be invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He’s not going to be given a Pulitzer. He’s not going to be treated as one of them.” 

Steve’s guest is journalist Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. Kevin has been advocating for freedom of the press since the George W. Bush administration and the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Steve and Kevin discuss the lack of available unbiased information, particularly regarding events like the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the presidential election. They look at the collusion between mainstream media outlets and the government, the demonization of individuals who counter the mainstream narrative, and the targeting of journalists and newsrooms. 

They highlight the efforts of the US empire to prevent information from reaching the public and discuss the significance of the documents published by WikiLeaks. They also discuss Assange’s current situation and the deterioration of his health. 

Kevin Gosztola is a journalist, press freedom advocate, and the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange from Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. He publishes The Dissenter Newsletter at TheDissenter.org and has spent the past 10-15 years reporting on Assange, WikiLeaks, the war on whistleblowers, press freedom, and government secrecy. 

@kgosztola on Twitter 

Macro N Cheese – Episode 272
Assange: In Defense of Journalists & Whistleblowers with Kevin Gosztola
April 13, 2024

[00:00:00] Geoff Ginter [Intro/Music]: Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:00:45] Steven Grumbine: All right. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. My guest today is Kevin Gosztola. Let me tell you real quickly a little bit about Kevin, before we dive into this. Kevin is a guy, who I was able to really get to know his work, after having worked with Jordan Chariton [of the podcast, Status Coup] on an interview regarding the state of Julian Assange.

And it’s quite a sad and awful tale of US empire and the vassals that support it and the levels at which they will go to prevent information from making it out to the public. And so, I’ve been really frustrated. There’s a genocide in Gaza right now, and we can’t even get legitimate information about that!

We’ve got a presidential election, where people are trying to tell us to not pay attention to this genocide, but divert our eyes elsewhere. And Julian Assange, they’re trying to send him to the United States to stand trial, where the US is barely willing to even consider saying they won’t give him the death penalty.

So, this podcast- to me- is going to be far more than Julian Assange. It’s going to be about what is happening to us as a society in terms of what we can say, the freedom of the press and the levels at which the state- which is supposed to represent “we the people,” but clearly does not- will go to keep us from understanding the world around us.

So let me introduce Kevin. Kevin is a journalist. He’s a press freedom advocate and the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange from Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. He publishes “The Dissenter Newsletter” at dissenter.org, and has spent the past 10 to 15 years reporting on Assange, WikiLeaks, the war on whistleblowers, press freedom, and government secrecy.

We’ve also talked to Bill Black, who took on the Keating Five during the savings and loan crisis. And we’ve talked to John Kiriakou and we’ve discussed whistleblowers with him. We have talked to so many whistleblowers, and this is tying that all together for us, because it’s really bad. And I don’t know that we have agency to fix it.

And so I wanted Kevin to come on and tell us a little bit about that. Kevin, thank you so much for agreeing to join me today, sir.

[00:03:17] Kevin Gosztola: Hello, Steve. It’s good to be talking with you.

[00:03:19] Grumbine: Absolutely. You have done an incredible amount of work, detailing and documenting all the WikiLeaks releases and the information that came from it. And also, the horrific abuse that Julian Assange has had to go through to get the truth out to us all. Tell us about your work and what you’ve uncovered.

[00:03:43] Gosztola: Yeah, that’s a good place to begin. My background- for people who perhaps need to know a little bit about me, in order to believe that I’m an authentic voice- I started doing this work when I was in college, and I actually thought that I wanted to be a filmmaker. So, I was going to school, learning about documentary primarily.

And in the meantime- as a backdrop- we had President George W. Bush’s administration, and I joined protests against the war in Iraq. I was appalled and opposed to torture that we were learning about. We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which involved US military officers- as well as contractors- that were working in that prison.

And we were learning details about CIA torture, and all of this led up to- eventually- when the documents came out from WikiLeaks, I took interest. And to refresh everyone’s memory- and also for those who maybe don’t have an idea of what WikiLeaks published- in 2010 and 2011, we saw documents on the Afghanistan War and Iraq War.

These were military incident reports. They showed the transactions- or small acts- that take place on a daily basis in war zones. Things like friendly fire incidents, when you have reported incidents of human rights abuses, when there are people who blow through military checkpoints and you have incidents.

So, it was very minutely focused. These were historical documents. They did not reveal troop movements. They were all historical records and they showed what we were doing in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, in war crimes that were happening on a daily basis. And with Iraq, the documents uncovered 15,000 civilian deaths that were not previously known.

And a project called Iraq Body Count has done some fantastic data journalism with these documents, and they continue to do this for a number of wars. Then, you have the over 250,000 diplomatic cables that get published at the end of 2010, and all the way through 2011. And at that point, when I saw this cache of documents- this database- as they were being posted, I recognized that not all of the documents were being reported on.

We were not getting all the scoops that we could get, that you could squeeze out of these documents. And so, I started writing my own articles, I generated my own following, I was having people engage with my coverage of WikiLeaks. I was an intern at The Nation magazine, I got some very good newsroom experience for six months from January to June of 2011.

And during that period, the world events of that time were remarkable. And not only did you have the protests that were happening in Wisconsin- against Scott Walker, but you also had the Arab Spring- as it was dubbed. These uprisings happening in Middle East and Northern Africa. And some of these cables are said to have helped fuel the uprisings, as we learned about the corruption of Ben Ali in Tunisia- that the United States knew very well, but did nothing to challenge.

So, as I am covering these documents, I recognize that I am benefiting from publishing these stories. So, naturally I should take an interest in the source of the documents. The source of the documents was a private named Chelsea Manning- US Army whistleblower- and she provided these documents. We also got documents later on in that year- in around April, I believe in 2011- that showed us all of the false intelligence- that has been made up or collected about- the nearly 800 people in Guantanamo that were detained by President George W. Bush, as part of the global war on terrorism. So, we come to see how there’s just a handful of men- and these false confessions from them- have contributed to the justification for keeping these people in a military prison. There’s basically a US gulag on Cuba, on territory that the United States has claimed and refuses to return to Cuba. So, all of this information. I take an interest in how Chelsea Manning is being abused, where we hear reporting that she’s being inhumanely treated at this Quantico Marine brig, it becomes a scandal.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendes, takes an interest in her mistreatment. And then from there, I dedicated myself to covering her court martial, which unfolds from December 2011, through August of 2013. When she is convicted, she was charged with violating the Espionage Act.

These charges are very similar to the charges that Julian Assange is facing. And then she received an extraordinary sentence of 35 years in military prison. And from that point forward, I took an interest in the ‘war on whistleblowers’ that President Barack Obama was presiding over. During his time in office, he prosecuted more people with the Espionage Act, for leaking information to the press, than all previous presidents combined. And so, that’s when I was introduced to people like John Kiriakou- as you mentioned in the intro to our discussion- and Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower. And mind you, when we do the trial- when the trial unfolds- that’s when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden comes forward.

So now, we have all these documents about NSA mass surveillance, to go along with the hundreds of thousands of documents from WikiLeaks that Chelsea Manning provided. This is how I really became engaged with this issue.

[00:10:21] Grumbine: It’s incredible. You’re making me have flashbacks, bringing up some of these names. I was on a panel discussion with Chelsea Manning, ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting here with Chelsea Manning.’ It was just one of those weird things, because what she did was so important, it was so vital and so often forgotten, the absolute risk that people take, in blowing that whistle.

The other person I mentioned, Bill Black, calls himself a “serial whistleblower.” John Kiriakou went through the ringer the hard way coming out of the CIA. Tell me, what is it- in your mind- that we really should focus on in this period? Bringing it all together, it seems like there’s a common theme going on.

[00:11:10] Gosztola: Let me begin, just because you mentioned to me that you spend a lot of time on economic issues. So, I think sometimes while we need to focus on what Julian Assange is doing, we also should realize that whistleblowers- or in this case- Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. Sometimes I think he- inappropriately- is described as a whistleblower, because of- I don’t know, we can get into it if you would like, but he performed the role of a publisher or he is a journalist. He didn’t have access to the information. The person who’s the whistleblower is Chelsea Manning. I think it confuses our understanding of the events that unfolded, if we describe him as a whistleblower. Although I recognize that some people might be using that label in a way that is, because they see him as a heroic figure who informed us of corruption, that the United States was engaged in, which was being hidden behind closed doors. But with that said, at the end of my book, Guilty of Journalism, I collected 30 documents from WikiLeaks that I say the government doesn’t want you to read. And I included several that, the umbrella that I put them under, was corporate power.

And so, I’ll just give you, for example, there was a cable that revealed that the US government had backed US corporations, in an effort to stop Haiti from raising the minimum wage to $5 per day. That was in 2009. This was a story that we saw reported out by The Nation, actually. This was done by a newspaper in Haiti called “Haiti Liberté.”

And the US embassy aided Levi’s, Hanes contractors to block a minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers. The Haitian parliament was willing- according to this report- to give workers a $0.09 per hour pay increase to 0.31 per hour, to make t- shirts, bras, and underwear, for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But that was something that diplomats wound up helping these corporations oppose. Obviously, we can come back and talk about any of these if you would like. I also have Pfizer was found to have hired investigators in Nigeria to blackmail the Nigerian Attorney General, so that he would drop lawsuits against the corporation’s drug testing on children.

We also find in these documents, evidence that the US government was planning a trade war against Europe, for refusing to adopt agricultural biotechnology from Monsanto. So, genetically modified crops, the GMOs. And then- I’ll close with this one- this is very topical- because we’ve seen recently even, a whistleblower who mysteriously was found dead from Boeing under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances. So a Saudi Arabian King requested that the US government make his plane like Air Force One, if they wanted him to purchase a fleet of Boeing aircraft. US authorized the upgrade.

So we see in these cables that US diplomats are acting as salespeople for Boeing. And not only that, they are also trying to help Boeing beat their competitor- Airbus, by securing contracts with foreign governments.

[00:14:54] Grumbine: Wow, that is what you call a very cozy relationship. I think corporatism is the cousin of fascism. That is terrifying. You made a great distinction. You were making the distinction between a publisher and a whistleblower, and I instantly saw my error. But I think it’s worth exploring, because we’re dealing with two things, freedom of the press and actual whistleblowers- people taking the courageous step of exposing corruption and lies that the public should be aware of.

And both of them are public services. Can you break down that difference a little bit better? I think it’s worth discussing.

[00:15:36] Gosztola: Right. So, journalism can be courageous, but I don’t think you would disagree with me that if you are working inside of a government agency or a corporation and you reveal information, you’re taking on more risk than the journalist, who would publish that information and reveal these truths to the public.

But the reason why Julian Assange often gets described as a whistleblower and why I am leery of allowing that to happen, and why I begin my book by saying, ‘Julian Assange is a journalist”, I think it is so important. I can somewhat understand where press freedom groups are coming from. I’m glad that they have spoken up in defense of Julian Assange, but I do not fully agree with them that it doesn’t matter whether you think Julian Assange is a journalist or not. The fact is, he engaged in the acts of journalism and those are supposed to be protected under the FirstAmendment. The problem with that is, the Justice Department and their prosecutors, and those who attack Julian Assange- or believe that he should be prosecuted- are denying him this journalist label deliberately to make it harder for his legal team and all of us who recognize this injustice, to stand up for him. Because if he’s not a journalist, then why should he be protected from this prosecution? It opens the door to debate about the allegations that are being leveled against him.

But, if you see what he’s being accused of doing, as standard news gathering activities- as I do- then it becomes more difficult for the Justice Department to defend their case, their political case. And so, part of the history, and part of what has dogged Julian Assange and made it difficult for WikiLeaks to do their work, is that media partners that were granted access to information turned against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, because of something they didn’t like between them and the relationship.

And also the New York Times very deliberately presented itself as ‘above’ Julian Assange and they refused to see Julian Assange as a partner on the documents. They treated him more like a information broker or a source. They actually say that “he’s a source, he’s not someone we’re working with.” So, he’s never seen as an equal.

And that’s apparent too. When we look at one of the more shameful pieces that were published, during the time that WikiLeaks were publishing these documents from Chelsea Manning, we had executive editor, Bill Keller, going on about all of the quirks of Julian Assange. Like ‘he has smelly socks.’ He’s describing Julian Assange, like he’s some kind of a bag lady.

It was extraordinarily disrespectful and it fed into the demonization of Assange and WikiLeaks, at a time when the US was ramping up an investigation and mounting this war on WikiLeaks, that has unfolded over the last 10 to 15 years, at this point. And so, by doing this dance- where the New York Times says that Julian Assange is a “source”, and not a journalist or a media organization, like the New York Times- they believe that they are somehow protecting themselves, but they’re actually not doing anything that would stop a Justice Department from prosecuting them, for publishing this kind of information. Which is just to say that- look forward to 2025- if Donald Trump is in office again, and the Justice Department has different people; just because they went to the trouble to make a distinction about Julian Assange, doesn’t mean that the Justice Department isn’t going to look at precedents that have been set, and target them… because those people in the Justice Department are opposed, and see the New York Times as enemies of the state.

So, there’s a lot of complexity here and I might’ve lost a few people who are listening to me, but it’s a swirl going around and around. The most important thing is that Julian Assange performed journalism, is a journalist, and those who deny that reality are actually making it easier for the US government to target journalists.

[00:20:29] Grumbine: So with that in mind, when I read the news, the stories are almost all the same, and they’re almost always told from the position of glorifying the government. I’m not anti-government, I’m anti-this-government, but I’m not anti-government in general. So there’s some clear collusion going on. There’s some manufactured story and everybody repeats the same story.

I’m sure part of that is laziness. Not everybody can research every story, but there’s just way too much cohesion. And then when someone comes out with something that counters that story, they’re instantly treated like an enemy. In this case, we’ve gotten so far away from actual freedom of the press that I don’t think we’d know what to do with freedom of the press. What is your take on the state of the freedom of the press right now?

[00:21:28] Gosztola: I would say to you that we have reached a dangerous moment where the Justice Department is taking it upon themselves to decide who is and who is not a journalist, or who is and who is not deserving of protection under the First Amendment. After they make that arbitrary calculus, they then proceed to go forward with prosecuting these individuals.

And I’ll give you an example. It’s not just limited to Julian Assange. There is an individual in Florida, who was recently indicted during the past two months. His name is Timothy Burke, and he is being prosecuted by the economic crimes division of the Justice Department. And they say in the indictment against him that he was “scouring the internet”, which by the way, stands out to me as something remarkable because that’s what I do all the time.

Anybody who does this work that is online journalism sits around on the internet and scours it looking for interesting developments or something that people didn’t see, a document, maybe it’s a video clip that has been hiding that hasn’t gotten a lot of views. And if I see something that I can get access to, whatever it is, it’s a video feed, audio or whatever, and share it with people and it makes news and garners a lot of attention, I feel like I’ve done my job. So Timothy Burke was able to, through access that he was granted, he didn’t do any hacking, although that’s what he’s been accused of. He was able to find an unencrypted feed that contained an unedited interview between Tucker Carlson and Kanye West. And this interview was seen by tens of millions of people because these clips that got posted by Timothy Burke.

We find that Fox News and Tucker Carlson were trying to help Kanye not seem like he has a lot of mental illness and also that he’s an anti Semite. And it was incredible to see these clips. Fox News got angry. They turned to the Justice Department and it wasn’t long after that the FBI raided this individual’s [Burke’s] home, raided this journalist’s home.

Timothy Burke is now facing serious charges. And also the possibility that all of the equipment from his newsroom, his home newsroom, these laptops that he had, he has computers, hard drives, anything on it, all of the reporter’s notes or any databases or archives of material that he has collected from, let’s say sources or the videos that he’s done.

He’s a video guy. Timothy Burke worked at Deadspin. He was with Gawker. He collected videos for these publications. So if the US Justice Department wins their case, all of these pieces of equipment can be seized and confiscated. They become the property of the US government. Back to your original question, how does this feed into the general state of freedom of the press?

We are seeing this from the federal government on down to the county or city level. We had a very disturbing episode happen in Kansas. It was towards the end of last year, there was a 97-98 year old, founder/co-founder of a newspaper called the Marion County Record. Their newsroom was raided by some cops who were upset by, I believe it was a story that the publication was working on.

She wound up dying the next day, even though she was in perfect health, because she was so traumatized by this raid. And in both of these examples, and then let’s add in Julian Assange, you have authorities that are making an arbitrary decision that all of a sudden, that person no longer is a journalist, no longer deserves protection, and so we can go in and we can target them.

[00:25:52] Intermission: You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. We are a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible. Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon, Substack, or our website realprogressives.org. Now back to the podcast.

[00:26:15] Grumbine: With that in mind, get us up to speed on Julian Assange. I think a lot of people probably really didn’t understand what he actually published. I know you brought up Chelsea Manning and the findings that came from that, but there were multiple dumps of DNC lies that were told during the Bernie Sanders campaign.

There was tons of information that WikiLeaks thankfully brought to our attention. I think the world will never be the same after a lot of the revelations that came from that. But can you take us through that timeline?

[00:26:49] Gosztola: Yeah, so the documents that Julian Assange has been charged for publishing, are only documents that Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks. However, there are other disclosures that are other publications that are of note, and I’ll get to them, but the most remarkable one, is probably a set of documents that people know very little about. And that set is known as Vault 7, and they were published in 2017, and these were documents about the CIA’s Cyber warfare or their hacking capabilities.

This is a power that we never had a democratic debate about. I never saw a congressional hearing where there was a discussion about whether the CIA should be going around targeting different governments or groups with malware and planting bugs in devices. We learned from these documents that Samsung TVs had devices that were planted in them. So when you turn them on, they might just be activated and they could be used to snoop on targets. We learn about vulnerabilities in Apples, their operating system, and also the way that they’re able to break into the Signal or WhatsApp messages that we believe that those were being safely encrypted, but that they’ve developed ways in order to violate the privacy that users think they have through those apps. And this is a set of documents that sets off the chain of events that I believe has led us to this case against Julian Assange. Because I very quickly just say that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, there was no indictment against Julian Assange.

What they struggled with was the fact that if they were to indict Julian Assange and make allegations against him that they believe were criminal, then they would have to accept there were New York Times editors and reporters, also people at the Washington Post, people at the Guardian, that had engaged in that exact same conduct.

And they would, if they were going to apply fair justice, have to prosecute those people as well. And they weren’t going to put those people on trial. So they decided to pass on prosecuting Julian Assange. Donald Trump comes into power and he appoints as Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who has a different view about leaks, has a different view about protecting freedom of the press.

He also picks Mike Pompeo to run the CIA. And Mike Pompeo is embarrassed when these Vault 7 materials get published. And they’re all over and he can’t even bear to go face Donald Trump. There’s an article that was published by Yahoo News in September of 2021. And it’s an amazing article if people have not read it.

There were over 30 sources from the Trump administration and US intelligence agencies that Michael Isikoff and Zach Dorfman and Sean Naylor, all national security reporters talked to. They worked on this reporting, I think over a long period, and they came up with some incredible information about the CIA’s war on WikiLeaks.

And part of what we learned is that Pompeo didn’t want to go face Donald Trump, and say that WikiLeaks had just happened to the CIA because that was something that he’d have to take responsibility for happening on his watch. And in the end he becomes this obsessed person who is seeking revenge against Assange.

His first public speech that Pompeo gives is directed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. And they decide to designate WikiLeaks as a non state hostile intelligence service so that they can go after it and spy on Julian Assange while he is in the [Ecuadoran] embassy. There’s evidence that they worked indirectly, at least, if not actually directly with a Spanish private contractor called UC Global, which had the contract for security for Ecuador’s London embassy, where Julian Assange lived under diplomatic asylum from July, 2012, until he was expelled and arrested on April 11th, 2019.

So this set of documents [Vault 7] is really important because it sets off this campaign, their allegations that the CIA sketched out plans to kidnap, poison, or kill Julian Assange while he was in the embassy. There was a fear in the Justice Department that he would be put on a plane, a rendition flight. Much like war on terrorism suspects had been subject to, they had been taken to black sites. And so the Justice Department panicked.

They didn’t have an indictment against Julian Assange and these actions by the CIA spur the Justice Department to quickly charge Julian Assange with something, anything, because they’re fearful that he might arrive in the United States and they would need to arraign him. They would need to go before a judge and produce an indictment against Julian Assange.

So there’s that, but the different documents that we have are usually sets of emails that they’ve uncovered. Sometimes they’re about security firms that have spying capabilities who are deploying spyware. There’s emails from Syria. There’s emails, as you mentioned from the Clinton campaign. There’s Democratic National Committee emails that show how the Democratic presidential primary is greased in such a way to favor the person that the Democrats most want to end up as their nominee.

And then you have other documents that go along with the Chelsea Manning documents. And before that, they were working on publishing information from a few African countries like Kenya, that they had actually helped out by publicizing some corruption within their governments.

[00:33:41] Grumbine: Over the last several months, he’s been in Belmarsh [prison] and UK for years. He has been in horrible conditions, inhumane conditions that we wouldn’t do to a serial killer, quite frankly. And have we gotten to where he’s been extradited? Are they still trying to have that two week window of figuring out whether or not the US will guarantee he’s not going to be killed? Where are we at with that extradition? And can you tell us a little bit about where he’s been, in Belmarsh in prison.

[00:34:11] Gosztola: That’s a That’s good question. And just to tell you, it’s hard for reporters to follow. And if it’s hard for reporters to follow, it’s almost impossible for the general public to keep up with all the legal machinery and what is happening on a daily basis. But Julian Assange has not been extradited. Julian Assange is unlikely to be extradited in the next few months.

He could be extradited before the year is over. However, he still has the ability to pursue an appeal. As of the moment, as I talked to you, he was most recently granted an opportunity to have an appeal hearing. But the problem is that the appeals court in the United Kingdom looked at the United States government and said, if you can make us a few promises about how he won’t face the death penalty and about his free speech rights while he is on trial, then we will let you avoid an appeal.

We won’t have a full appeal hearing. And so if that happens and it’s very likely that it would happen, the last place that Julian Assange can go to to prevent extradition is the European Court of Human Rights, and he can petition them, and then if they agree to take up his review, they’ll hear his case.

But, beneath all of this, the thing that is most troubling is that Julian Assange remains in prison and he is not allowed to be out on bail. And a case before the European Court of Human Rights, even if that is a positive development, because he is not extradited to the US for a trial, that could take a couple of years. And his health condition has deteriorated tremendously due to the way that he has had to live due to this campaign against him that he has so far survived, but it has meant that he has not had access to sunlight.

It has meant that he has not had access to, when he was in the Ecuador embassy, he couldn’t get dental care. He didn’t have the kind of healthcare that he needed. He’s getting better medical treatment in Belmarsh. And I think it’s better than what he would receive in US detention or in a US prison, but still recently at the end of 2023, he had a bad cold.

And he was coughing. And when he was coughing, he broke a rib and he broke a rib because he has osteoporosis. And he’s a 52 year old man, but 52 year old people don’t usually have this kind of trouble, but they would if they were not being allowed access to sunlight, if they were not able to go outdoors and get recreation, if they were kept indoors, they would suffer this way and Julian Assange has suffered immensely.

[00:37:17] Grumbine: This is in no way indicative of how I feel about Donald Trump, but I find it interesting that the guy who turned up the screws on Julian Assange and the conditions by which Julian Assange is not even allowed out of the jail for sunlight, while Donald Trump, who is facing all these charges, no matter how politically driven they are and the fact that he quote unquote, led the insurrection on January 6th. This concept of fair and equal treatment under the law. I know this isn’t in the US but the idea that Julian Assange for simply publishing the works of other whistleblowers is dealing with this. While a guy who supposedly tried to overthrow the US government, he could stay out as long as he comes up with half a billion dollars in bond money, which he’ll come up with it, I’m sure. Because that’s the way justice works in the world.

Rich people are always above the law, but I do find it quite the contradiction that we can with a straight face, watch the guy who turned up the screws on Assange walking scot free and running for President while Julian Assange rots in the cell and waiting to find out if he’s going to come back to a US where Donald Trump re emerges as President to take him on once again.

The irony, the sheer absurdity of it is mind blowing.

[00:38:51] Gosztola: It is tragedy and farce. And when you ask people who have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, who believe they were making conscientious decisions when they come forward, they look at what’s happening with Donald Trump and they look at what happened with Joe Biden. We saw a special counsel decide and determine that he was not deserving of any criminal charges because he mishandled classified documents. He took and he took sensitive information about the Afghanistan war with him that if anybody else that was lower ranked had taken that kind of information, the hammer would have been brought down upon them very quickly. He even said, even though it’s admirable in the special counsel’s report, it says that he objected to Obama having a surge during the Afghanistan war.

And even though he took those documents so that he could, I suppose, memorialize that history, have that in his private collection, so he could always show that he was on the right side of history. That doesn’t exonerate him. The Justice Department doesn’t do that for anybody else. There are whistleblowers like Daniel Hale, a drone whistleblower who just got out of prison.

He was subjected to the harshest conditions that someone who leaked information to the press, he gave these documents to Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept. He was put in a communications management unit, which is basically like a little Gitmo. And we have two of these in Terre Haute, Indiana, and then Marion County, Illinois.

And they’re primarily used to go after Muslims. That’s what George W. Bush intended them for when they were created. But he went through harsh treatment. And then you have Reality Winner who received the longest sentence for anybody convicted of an unauthorized disclosure to the press, it was 60 months, basically.

And she served her sentence in a women’s prison in Texas. Terry Albury is an FBI whistleblower. Recently he was prosecuted while Donald Trump was president. And he revealed that the FBI was coercing again, primarily Muslims, people with brown skin into becoming informants. If they don’t become informants, they were being threatened.

They were being put on the no fly list or other watch lists. It would make it impossible for them to travel, impair their freedom of movement. Meanwhile, you have people like David Petraeus, who take all kinds of sensitive documents from their briefings with Presidents and high ranking intelligence officials, share them with his biographer that he’s having an affair with, and then they get published in this fawning biography.

Or you have someone like Leon Panetta, who does a banquet event, and the director or the writer for Zero Dark Thirty is in the audience while he’s, you know, exposing the identities of SEAL Team Six that raided Osama Bin Laden’s compound. And he’s not supposed to reveal their names, but nothing ever happens to these people.

It’s the lower ranked people. And then in this particular instance, as we’ve been discussing, it’s Julian Assange, because he does not subscribe to the dominant culture of the US prestige media, as I refer to them, he is singled out and attacked by the US government.

[00:42:27] Grumbine: I want to make sure that you are given the opportunity to give our listeners the most important stuff that they need to hear about this right now. I guess we can bring this back to Julian Assange or any other issue in this space that you feel somebody trying to get up to speed and know about what’s going on would be most beneficial in knowing. Every day, I wake up asking myself, what new lie I’m going to find out. I don’t wake up with excitement and enthusiasm for a new day. I wake up feeling like I’ve been gaslit and lied to. And that goes from watching Genocide Joe still maintain lesser evil status as he funds in the face of all kinds of resistance, the genocide in Gaza and a proxy war in Ukraine, and also trying to use Israel as a proxy to Iran.

We’ve got so much going on now that I just feel like ‘who’s got our back?’ And there’s no journalism to speak of. So you coming on here has been a huge deal for me. With that in mind, what is important? What do we need to know?

[00:43:43] Gosztola: I think the passage of time is an asset for the US government. The more that this drags on, there’s more information. There are more developments. It’s impossible for me to keep track of them all. It’s harder and harder when I do hour long shows like yours to fit in all the essential information, all the essential details that people need to know to fully understand this.

For those people who have never heard of Julian Assange, it becomes more of a challenge to fully and comprehensively share his story and what he has survived. Well, I think that’s intentional. I think that the passage of time is its own injustice. He has been under some form of arbitrary detention since the end of 2010.

And that was recognized by a United Nations working group on arbitrary detention. At that point in 2016, he had been in Wandsworth prison in London. He had done 550 days of house arrest in the UK. And then he lived for four and a half years of asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy. And he faced extensive surveillance during that time.

So what I would leave people with is if there’s anything about what you’ve heard on this show that makes you care about doing something to try and stop this government from blowing a hole in our first amendment, because that’s what will happen if Julian Assange is put on trial, it will mean that the US government has this authority to use these laws the way that they have done to Julian Assange.

And that’s what makes it a presidential case. That’s what makes it something that you have civil liberties, human rights, press freedom organizations from around the world, parliamentarians in European countries. You have the whole country of Australia who have stood up for Julian Assange because he’s an Australian citizen, and they are aghast that the US, an ally, one of these Five Eyes countries that have access to all this US intelligence that is shared because Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States as well as Australia are supposed to be this grouping. I guess they’re supposed to see themselves as stewards of US empire. And so they are aghast that the US government is doing that. That this is happening under Joe Biden, and it has not stopped.

So I’m going to leave you with what the Assange Defense Committee is doing. What [his wife] Stella Assange and his brother Gabriel Shipton are trying to do, which is to get more people on Capitol Hill engaged with this topic, with this issue, with this injustice. Because he’s one of the best known political prisoners in the world right now, and every time Joe Biden opens his mouth or one of the officials open their mouths and say that journalism is not a crime because they’re talking about Evan Gershkovich, who is detained by Vladimir Putin in Russia right now.

I think they need to be reminded that they are the reason why a journalist is being kept in prison in the UK and that they are making freedom of the press or journalism more unsafe around the world. And there’s a resolution. There’s a House resolution, 934, that people can go find. I’ll give you a link to it so that you can share it with your listeners and you should see who signed on to it.

Who are the people who support freedom of the press in Congress? And who doesn’t? Because this is a very basic resolution. It says, if you support freedom of the press, then you have to demand that the Justice Department drop the charges against Julian Assange. So you’ll see a handful of Democrats, you’ll actually see a handful of Republicans who are doing the right thing. But missing are hundreds of people in the House of Representatives who need to sign on to this, who need to get with the program and recognize that if anything they say is supposed to have meaning when they talk about rights under the Constitution, they need to stand against this case that has been leveled against Julian Assange.

[00:48:27] Grumbine: Let me ask you one final question. Who are some of the other people that we might want to tell our listeners to check out, because there’s a lot more than just Julian Assange going on. And there’s a lot of people doing really good work. I know a few of them, but I’m interested in who you would recommend as good sources for good information about these things.

[00:48:50] Gosztola: So that’s always a difficult question because what I do is time consuming work. And admittedly, I probably don’t have that great of a diet when it comes to going from news source to news source. But I can tell you people that I trust and the shows that I feel are doing a pretty good job of collecting information.

You mentioned that you were introduced to me through Status Coup and I’m a fan of what Jordan [Chariton] does day in and day out. I have a colleague named Rania Khalek, who co-hosts a show called the Freedom Side on Breakthrough News with Eugene Puryear that has a global focus. And they are constantly bringing in voices from conflict zones and areas in which capitalism is basically destroying the societies of those countries from within.

And they have very good interviews on their shows. And I see good reporting from The Lever. I see good reporting from, I think The Intercept does pretty good work. I think The American Prospect does pretty good work. And these are places that I turn to when it comes to whistleblowing in particular and press freedom. I try to stay up on the advocacy work that Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing.

This is a collective of people that launched this organization a few years after WikiLeaks, they first were trying to help WikiLeaks get around a blockade that PayPal had imposed. So they were making it possible for donations to get to WikiLeaks. And then as they move further along and Daniel Ellsberg, the great Pentagon Papers whistleblower was part of this organization.

They went on and have continued to do work. Edward Snowden’s on the board of this organization. They do tracking, they track state by state in the United States. They have a whole project called the US Press Freedom Tracker, so you can see where raids are happening, when journalists are subpoenaed, when there are attacks on the press, those are being documented.

That’s what I would say.

[00:51:13] Grumbine: I really appreciate it. Everybody’s got a source and my expert is better than your expert. And there’s a lot of zero sum thinking out there. But people are just thirsty for truth. And with that, let me just ask you, where can we find more of your work? I know that you’ve got a podcast you host, I know you do other journalism, but where can we find more of your work?

[00:51:35] Gosztola: So if you go to the dissenter.org, that’s my newsletter that I post for people and I’m regularly covering not just whistleblower and press freedom stories, but what I think are underreported whistleblower and press freedom stories. Because oftentimes we are told to support a whistleblower or we are told that this is an attack on freedom of the press.

And the US government is telling us that and I’m not saying that we should be skeptical all the time when we’re given that message, but it may not be my role to play to focus on that case. I want to go find the people like Chelsea Manning. Like Terry Albury, Reality Winner and others who are being ignored, horribly ignored and deserve to have their story told, deserve to not have their sacrifice go unnoticed.

And so that’s what I do with the Dissenter Newsletter to cover government secrecy there as well. And I do have a podcast and it’s at the newsletter. I co-host the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast and I’ve been doing that for over 10 years. Primarily using it as a space to dig into issues that are not just the focus of my newsletter.

[00:52:53] Grumbine: Fair enough. We recently had Mickey Huff of Project Censored come on here and talk about the state of the free press in 2024 and all the crazy stories that were just ignored. I don’t think they ignored it. I think that’s intentional. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it, Kevin. My name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of Macro N Cheese. Real Progressive’s is a 501c3 non for profit. All donations that we receive are tax deductible and no donations too small and no donations too large. We survive by your support. If you feel like the information we’re putting out there is worth your time, we would love to have you support us either by sharing our content on social media, which we simply just do not have enough help with, or a donation, which helps us keep the lights on. Thank you so much to my guests, Kevin. Thank you again to you for listening. This is Macro N Cheese, and we are out of here.

[00:54:06] End Credits: Production, transcripts, graphics, sound engineering, extras, and show notes for Macro N Cheese are done by the fantastic team of volunteers at Real Progressives, serving in solidarity with the working class since 2015. To support our work, please go to patreon.com/realprogressives, realprogressives.substack.com, or realprogressives.org.

GUEST BIO

Kevin Gosztola is a journalist, press freedom advocate, and the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange from Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. He publishes The Dissenter Newsletter at TheDissenter.org and has spent the past 10-15 years reporting on Assange, WikiLeaks, the war on whistleblowers, press freedom, and government secrecy. 

Follow him on X (twitter)- @kgosztola. 

From this episode: 

“… he (Julian Assange) didn’t have access to the information.  

The person who’s the whistleblower is Chelsea Manning. I think it, I think it twists or, or, or, confuses our understanding of the events that unfolded if we describe him as a whistleblower. Although I recognize that some people might be using that label in a way that, is because they see him as a, as a heroic figure who informed us of, corruption that the United States was engaged in, which was being hidden behind closed doors.” 

PEOPLE MENTIONED 

Jordan Chariton (0:18) 

Jordan Daniel Chariton (born September 20, 1986) is an American investigative reporter. Chariton is the CEO of Status Coup, a progressive media outlet that features investigative and on-the-ground reporting on politics, corruption, the working class, social justice, and the environment. 

Jordan Chariton – Wikipedia 

Julian Assange (0:22) 

Julian Paul Assange (né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to wide international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning:^[4] footage of a US airstrike in Baghdad, US military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and US diplomatic cables. Assange has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism. 

Julian Assange – Wikipedia 

Bill Black (2:09) 

William K. Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics. He covers markets and regulation with his speech “Unsound Theories and Policies Produce Epidemics of Fraud and Regulatory and Market Failures.” 

https://billmoyers.com/content/william-k-black-on-u-s-financial-fraud/ 

https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/profile.html 

John Kiriakou (2:17).  John Chris Kiriakou (born August 9, 1964) is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News^[2] and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio. He was formerly an analyst and case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, counterterrorism and a consultant for ABC News. He was the first U.S. government official to confirm in December 2007 that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, which he described as torture.                                                                                                                      John Kiriakou – Wikipedia 

George W. Bush (3:50) 

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. 

George W. Bush – Wikipedia 

Scott Walker (6:58) 

(born November 2, 1967) is an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as Milwaukee County executive from 2002 to 2010. 

Scott Walker (politician) – Wikipedia 

Ben Ali (7:13) 

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Arabic: زين العابدين بن علي,  September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali (بن علي) or Ezzine (الزين), was a Tunisian politician who served as the second president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he was overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia. 

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – Wikipedia 

Chelsea Manning (7:35) 

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. A trans woman, Manning said in 2013 that she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning. 

Chelsea Manning – Wikipedia 

John Mendez (8:47) 

John Anthony Mendez (born September 4, 1955) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. 

John Mendez – Wikipedia 

Barack Obama (9:23) 

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in U.S. history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and as a civil rights lawyer and university lecturer. 

Barack Obama – Wikipedia 

Thomas Drake (9:44) 

Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake’s defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award. 

Thomas A. Drake – Wikipedia 

Edward Snowden (9:52) 

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian citizen who was a computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy. 

Edward Snowden – Wikipedia 

Bill Keller (19:15) 

(born January 18, 1949) is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the United States. Previously, he was a columnist for The New York Times, and served as the paper’s executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, he announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer. Jill Abramson replaced him as executive editor. 

Bill Keller – Wikipedia 

Timothy Burke (23:24) 

American sports journalist and media consultant who is known for his video and GIF clips. He was a staffer for Deadspin from 2011 to 2018 and runs a consulting firm based out of Tampa, Florida. Burke was arrested and indicted on federal charges of conspiracy in February 2024 following the publication of unaired footage from Fox News talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight, which prompted an FBI search of his home. 

Tim Burke (journalist) – Wikipedia 

Tucker Carlson  

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on X. An advocate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Carlson has been described as “perhaps the highest-profile proponent of Trumpism”, and as “the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second.” 

Tucker Carlson – Wikipedia 

Kanye West (24:38) 

Ye (born Kanye Omari West on June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. A subject of widespread controversy and public interest, West is a central figure in contemporary music culture. 

Kanye West – Wikipedia 

Eric Holder (29:50) 

Eric Himpton Holder Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd United States attorney general from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, Holder was the first African American to hold the position. 

Eric Holder – Wikipedia 

Donald Trump (30:33) 

(born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. 

Donald Trump – Wikipedia 

Jeff Sessions (30:38) 

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (born December 24, 1946) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 84th United States attorney general from 2017 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as United States senator from Alabama from 1997 to 2017 before resigning that position to serve as attorney general in the administration of President Donald Trump. 

Jeff Sessions – Wikipedia 

Mike Pompeo (30:51) 

Michael Richard Pompeo (born December 30, 1963) is an American politician who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. He also served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017. 

Mike Pompeo – Wikipedia 

Michael Isikoff (31:21) 

(born June 16, 1952) is an American investigative journalist who used to be the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Yahoo! News. He is the co-author with David Corn of the book titled Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, published on March 13, 2018. 

Michael Isikoff – Wikipedia 

Zach Dorfman (31:24) 

Zach Dorfman is a former Senior Staff Writer at the Aspen Institute’s Cyber and Technology program and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. 

Zach Dorfman (yahoo.com) 

Sean Naylor (31:27) 

Canadian journalist, & National Security Correspondent for Yahoo News. He previously covered intelligence and counterterrorism for Foreign Policy and spent over 20 years at Army Times, with stints as an embedded reporter with troops in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Naylor has freelanced for The New York Times and Newsweek and is the author of two books, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda and Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command. 

Sean Naylor – Wikipedia 

Joe Biden (40:48) 

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009. 

Joe Biden – Wikipedia 

Daniel Hale (41:44) 

Daniel Everette Hale (born August 1, 1987) is an American whistleblower and former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who sent classified information about drone warfare to the press. Hale served in the United States Air Force 2009–2013 before joining the National Security Agency and leaking classified documents to The Intercept. In 2021, he pled guilty to retaining and transmitting national defense information and was sentenced to 45 months in prison. As of October 2021, he was incarcerated at United States Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois, with a scheduled release date of July 5, 2024. 

Daniel Hale – Wikipedia 

Jeremy Scahill (41:50) 

(born 1974) is an American investigative journalist, writer, a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept, and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield was published by Nation Books on April 23, 2013. On June 8, 2013, the documentary film of the same name, produced, narrated and co-written by Scahill, was released. It premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. 

Jeremy Scahill – Wikipedia 

Reality Winner (42:23) 

Reality Leigh Winner (born December 4, 1991) is an American U.S. Air Force veteran and former NSA translator. In 2018, she was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for an unauthorized release of government information to the media after she leaked an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. She was sentenced to five years and three months in federal prison. 

Reality Winner – Wikipedia 

Terry Albury (42:37) 

Terry J. Albury is an American former FBI agent convicted of leaking documents to news site The Intercept detailing secret guidelines for the FBI’s use of informants and the surveillance of journalists and religious and ethnic minority and immigrant communities. The documents formed the basis for a series of articles in The Intercept called “The FBI’s Secret Rules”. 

Terry J. Albury – Wikipedia 

David Patraeus (43:09) 

(born November 7, 1952) is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from July 4, 2010, to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th commander, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) from October 13, 2008, to June 30, 2010, and as commanding general, Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) from February 10, 2007, to September 16, 2008. As commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq. 

David Petraeus – Wikipedia 

Leon Panetta (43:27) 

(born June 28, 1938) is an American retired politician and government official who has served under several Democratic administrations as Secretary of Defense (2011–2013), director of the CIA (2009–2011), White House Chief of Staff (1994–1997), director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–1994), and as a U.S. Representative from California (1977–1993). 

Leon Panetta – Wikipedia 

Osama Bin Laden (43:40) 

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن,  March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born Islamic dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he participated in the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Bin Laden is most widely known as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks in the United States. 

Osama bin Laden – Wikipedia 

Stella Assange (48:49) 

Stella Assange (née Sara González Devant; born 1983) is a lawyer and human rights defender. She was known as Sara Devant before changing her name: first to Stella Moris in 2012, later to Stella Moris-Smith Robertson, and to Stella Assange on marrying Julian Assange in 2022. She was born in South Africa, but holds dual Swedish and Spanish citizenship. Throughout her career, she has been an international advocate for human rights, most prominently in the case of her husband. 

Stella Assange – Wikipedia 

Gabriel Shipton (48:52) 

Gabriel Shipton is a film producer and the brother of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. He has been involved in productions ranging from low budget feature films and quality television drama series, through to major studio pictures for more than 15 years. His first project as a producer, Emu Runner ( directed by Imogen Thomas), made its worldwide premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2018 and was nominated for an Australian AACTA award in 2019. He has also been a Production Accountant on several films and TV series, including Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Peter Rabbit (2018), Lion (2016), Glitch (2015) and Jack Irish (2016). 

His feature-length documentary entitled Ithaka, premiered at the Sydney Film Festival and opens for general release in January 2022. It follows the work of his father, John Shipton, fighting for Julian’s release.  

Gabriel Shipton | ACMI: Your museum of screen culture 

Evan Gershkovich (49:18) 

(born October 26, 1991) is an American journalist and reporter at The Wall Street Journal covering Russia. He was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service on charges of espionage in March 2023, marking the first time a journalist working for an American outlet had been arrested on charges of spying in Russia since the Cold War. The White House and media advocacy groups have condemned the arrest. 

Evan Gershkovich – Wikipedia 

Vladimir Putin (49:20) 

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia. Putin has held continuous positions as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012. He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin. 

Vladimir Putin – Wikipedia 

Rania Khalek (51:37) 

a Middle East-based journalist for Breakthrough News. Her work has also appeared at The Grayzone, The intercept, Truthout, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Al Jazeera, The Nation, Salon, AlterNet, Vice and more.                                                                                                           

About | Rania Khalek 

Eugene Puryear (51:42) 

(born February 28, 1986) is an American journalist, writer, activist, politician, and host on BreakThrough News. In the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections, Puryear was the vice presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). 

Eugene Puryear – Wikipedia 

Daniel Ellsberg (52:58) 

(April 7, 1931 – June 16, 2023) was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers. 

Daniel Ellsberg – Wikipedia 

Mickey Huff (55:17) 

the third director of Project Censored, founded in 1976, and the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Since 2009, he has coedited the annual volume of the Censored book series for Seven Stories Press in New York, now in partnership with The Censored Press, the Project’s new publishing imprint. He has contributed numerous chapters to these works since 2008. His most recent books include United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), co-authored with Nolan Higdon, published by City Lights Books in San Francisco (2019) and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2021, co-edited with Andy Lee Roth (2020). In 2019, he was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, for their annual James Madison Freedom of Information, Beverly Kees Educator Award. He continues to co-author articles on media and propaganda for several scholarly journals and news publications, as well as book chapters. He co-directed Project Censored’s latest documentary on fake news and critical media literacy, “United States of Distraction: Fighting the Fake News Invasion,” edited and narrated by Abby Martin (2020).  

Who We Are – Project Censored 

INSTITUTIONS / ORGANIZATIONS  

dissent.org {DissentMagazine.org} (1:53) 

Dissent is a magazine of politics and ideas published in print three times a year. Founded by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser in 1954, it quickly established itself as one of America’s leading intellectual journals and a mainstay of the democratic left. 

About Dissent Magazine 

wikileaks.org (3:03) 

WikiLeaks is a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses. 

WikiLeaks – What is WikiLeaks 

CIA (4:20) 

The Central Intelligence Agency known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. 

Central Intelligence Agency – Wikipedia 

Iraq Body Count (5:52) 

Iraq Body Count (IBC) records the violent deaths that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. Its detailed public database includes civilian deaths caused by US-led coalition and Iraqi government forces and paramilitary or criminal attacks by others. 

About IBC :: Iraq Body Count 

Guantanamo Bay (8:01) 

(Spanish: Bahía de Guantánamo) is a bay in Guantánamo Province at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the largest harbor on the south side of the island and it is surrounded by steep hills which create an enclave that is cut off from its immediate hinterland. The United States exercises jurisdiction and control over this territory as the home of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, while recognizing that Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty. 

Guantánamo Bay – Wikipedia 

Quantico (8:42) 

(formerly Potomac) is a town in Prince William County, Virginia, United States. The population was 480 at the 2010 census. Quantico is approximately 35 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., bordered by the Potomac River to the east and the Quantico Creek to the north. 

Quantico, Virginia – Wikipedia 

UN Special Rappoteur on Torture (8:46) 

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in resolution 1985/33, decided to appoint an expert for one year, a special rapporteur, to examine questions relevant to torture. Since 1985, the mandate has been renewed regularly and extended to 3 years, most recently by Human Rights Council resolution 52/7 in April 2023. 

Special Rapporteur on torture | OHCHR 

Court Martial (8:56) 

a court consisting of commissioned officers and in some instances enlisted personnel for the trial of members of the armed forces or others within its jurisdiction 

Court-martial Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Espionage Act (9:06) 

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson pushed for new laws that criminalized core First Amendment speech.  Congress passed the Espionage Act shortly after the U.S. entered the war. The Act made it a crime to convey information intended to interfere with the war effort.    

Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 (1917-1918) | Constitution Center 

NSA (9:51) 

intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT).   

National Security Agency – Wikipedia 

Pfizer (13:36) 

Pfizer, Inc. is one of the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical and biomedical companies, known for developing, manufacturing, and marketing medications and vaccines for humans and animals. 

Pfizer, Inc. | Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines & Company History | Britannica Money 

Monsanto (14:04) 

Monsanto, American corporation that was a leading producer of chemical, agricultural, and biochemical products. After being acquired by Bayer in 2018, it ceased to exist as an entity. 

Monsanto | History, Products, Acquisition, & Facts | Britannica Money 

Boeing (14:21) 

Boeing Company, American aerospace company—the world’s largest—that is the foremost manufacturer of commercial jet transports. It is also a leading producer of military aircraft, helicopters, space vehicles, and missiles, a standing significantly enhanced with the company’s acquisition of the aerospace and defense units of Rockwell International Corporation in 1996 and its merger with McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1997.   

Boeing Company | Description, History, & Aircraft | Britannica Money 

Airbus (14:52) 

Airbus S.A.S., European aircraft manufacturer that is the world’s second largest maker of commercial aircraft (after Boeing Co.). It is co-owned by the German-French-Spanish European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), with an 80% interest, and Britain’s BAE Systems, with 20%. Airbus was formed as a consortium in 1970 by French and German aerospace firms (later joined by Spanish and British companies) to fill a market niche for short- to medium-range, high-capacity jetliners and to compete with long-established American manufacturers.   

History of Airbus S.A.S. | Britannica 

Justice Department (17:20) 

Under the leadership of the Attorney General of the United States, the Justice Department is composed of more than 40 separate component organizations and more than 115,000 employees. 

Department of Justice | About DOJ | United States Department of Justice 

New York Times (18:38) 

an American daily newspaper based in New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and comprises opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. 

The New York Times – Wikipedia 

Washington Post (21:28) 

locally known as the Post and, informally, WaPo or WP, is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and has a national audience. 

The Washington Post – Wikipedia 

FOXNews (24:50) 

The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City. 

Fox News – Wikipedia 

FBI (25:11) 

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), principal investigative agency of the federal government of the United States.   

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) | Definition & History | Britannica 

Deadspin (25:45) 

a sports blog founded by Will Leitch in 2005 and based in Chicago. Previously owned by Gawker Media, Univision Communications and G/O Media, it was sold to Lineup Publishing in March 2024. 

Deadspin – Wikipedia 

Gawker (25:46) 

an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton’s Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku. 

Gawker – Wikipedia 

Marion County Record {Kansas} (26:29) 

a weekly newspaper published in Marion, Kansas, United States, and the newspaper of record for the city and Marion County. In 1874. It was purchased by the Hoch family, which sold it in 1998 to the Meyer family, who had been involved since 1948 and continue to own it.        Marion County Record – Wikipedia 

{2023 Death of co-owner Joan Meyer}: 

UPDATED: Illegal raids contribute to d6 | Marion County Record | Aug. 13, 2023 () (marionrecord.com) 

The Guardian (30:17) 

a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, before it changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. 

The Guardian – Wikipedia 

Yahoo News (31:09) 

a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by Yahoo! software engineer Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox News, Al Jazeera, ABC News, USA Today, CNN and BBC News. 

Yahoo! News – Wikipedia 

Non-State Hostile Intelligence Service (32:16) 

(From Voice of America, April 13, 2017) 

“…The new U.S. spy chief blasted the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in his first public comments, labeling it a hostile intelligence organization out to damage the United States as much as any terrorist organization. “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is — a nonstate, hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”            New CIA Director Labels WikiLeaks ‘Non-State Hostile Intelligence Service’ (voanews.com) 

UC Global (32:36) 

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researchers  partners with governments, local agencies, non-government organizations and US government agencies in other countries to address health issues from the HIV epidemic, malaria and TB to surgery, orthopedics, and maternal and child health.                                                                    UC Global Programs | UC Global Programs 

Rendition Flight {extraordinary rendition} (33:13) 

the seizure and transfer of a person suspected of involvement with a terrorist group to another country for imprisonment and interrogation without legal process (such as the naming of charges, legal representation, or trial) 

Extraordinary rendition Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Clinton Campaign (34:14) 

The staff and advisors for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign were a mixture of longtime Clinton advisors and newer staffers—like LaDavia Drane and Maya Harris—who came to the campaign after working on social justice issues. 

Hillary Clinton presidential campaign key staff and advisors, 2016 – Ballotpedia 

Belmarsh Prison (35:02) 

Belmarsh is a high security prisoner’s prison in southeast London. 

Belmarsh Prison – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 

European Court of Human Rights (36:41) 

judicial organ established in 1959 that is charged with supervising the enforcement of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950; commonly known as the European Convention on Human Rights), which was drawn up by the Council of Europe.   

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) | History, Headquarters, & Facts | Britannica 

Osteoporosis (38:00) 

Osteoporosis causes bones to become weak and brittle — so brittle that a fall or even mild stresses such as bending over or coughing can cause a break. Osteoporosis-related breaks most commonly occur in the hip, wrist or spine. 

Osteoporosis – Symptoms and causes – Mayo Clinic 

January 6^th (39:05) 

On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. 

January 6 United States Capitol attack – Wikipedia 

Special Counsel (40:49) 

A special counsel is an attorney appointed to investigate, and possibly prosecute, a case in which the Justice Department perceives itself as having a conflict or where it’s deemed to be in the public interest to have someone outside the government come in and take responsibility for a matter. 

EXPLAINER: What are special counsels and what do they do? | AP News 

The Intercept (41:56) 

The Intercept is committed to rigorous, adversarial journalism in the public interest, and transparency around our operations to allow readers to hold us accountable to that mission.  “We investigate powerful individuals and institutions to expose corruption and injustice. We see journalism as an instrument of civic action. We’re here to change the world, not just describe it.” 

About – The Intercept 

Zero Dark Thirty (43:33) 

A 2012 film, chronicling the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011. 

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – IMDb 

Seal Team 6 (43:38) 

common name for an elite U.S. military special missions unit consisting of Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land forces). SEAL Team 6 is best known for the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. 

SEAL Team 6 | Missions, Facts, & Description | Britannica 

Wandsworth Prison {London} (46:57) 

Wandsworth is a men’s prison in the London Borough of Wandsworth, South West London. 

Wandsworth Prison – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 

1^st Amendment (47:30)  Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.                                                                             

First Amendment | U.S. Constitution | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu) 

Five Eyes Countries (48:16) 

The Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence network established post-World War II between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Its genesis lies in the post-war 1946 UKUSA Agreement, intended as a cooperative arrangement for sharing signals intelligence (SIGINT). Over time, this partnership has extended its reach, becoming an integral part of global intelligence and security operations. 

What Is The Five Eyes Alliance? – Forbes Advisor 

House Resolution 934 (49:41) 

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.118th Congress (2023-2024)                                                                                                        Text – H.Res.934 – 118th Congress (2023-2024): Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange. | Congress.gov | Library of Congress 

Status Coup (51:30) 

An in-field & investigative journalism site that focuses on the stories & voices that the corporate media won’t touch: injustices and exploitation toward working people; environmental injustice and calamities; toxic water across America;  government corruption from the White House all the way down to city council; economic terrorism (i.e. gentrification); systemic racism & police brutality, progressive movements & politics; & the human interest stories that don’t neatly fit into a mass media category, but are vitally important for the public to know.   

About – Status Coup News (substack.com) 

Freedom Side On Breakthrough News (51:41) 

The Freedom Side provides news and information for self-determination, covering U.S. and global politics.  

BreakThrough News – Free Speech TV 

The Lever (52:14) 

The Lever is a nonpartisan, reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds accountable the people and corporations manipulating the levers of power. The organization was founded in 2020 by David Sirota, an award-winning journalist and Oscar-nominated writer. 

The Lever (levernews.com) 

American Prospect (52:20) 

The American Prospect is a magazine that is published specifically for those who side liberally on politics in the United States. Included in the magazine are articles on a wealth of political topics important to American liberals, as well as informative articles on topics in popular culture in America. 

American Prospect Magazine Subscription | Renewal | Gift (subscriptioncore.com) 

PayPal (52:50) 

an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders.   

PayPal – Wikipedia 

The Pentagon Papers (53:00) 

papers that contain a history of the U.S. role in Indochina from World War II until May 1968 and that were commissioned in 1967 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. They were turned over (without authorization) to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies. 

Pentagon Papers | Summary, Case, Vietnam War, & Facts | Britannica 

US Press Freedom Tracker (53:15) 

A database of press freedom incidents in the United States — everything from arrests of journalists and the seizure of their equipment to assaults and interrogations at the U.S. border. The Press Freedom Tracker documents incidents across the country, involving national, state and local authorities. 

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker – U.S. Press Freedom Tracker 

Unauthorized Disclosure Podcast (55:05) 

a weekly podcast that launched in January 2014—before podcasts were everywhere. Kevin Gosztola co-hosted the show with Rania Khalek, a journalist and host of “Dispatches” on BreakThrough News. 

Unauthorized Disclosure Weekly Podcast (thedissenter.org) 

Project Censored (55:18) 

“Project Censored’s mission is to promote critical media literacy, independent journalism, and democracy. We educate students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. 

Project Censored – Promoting Critical Media Literacy 

CONCEPTS 

Extradition (1:00) 

the surrender of an alleged criminal usually under the provisions of a treaty or statute by one authority (such as a state) to another having jurisdiction to try the charge 

Extradition Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Whistleblowers (2:20) 

one who reveals something covert or who informs against another especially : an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or by other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency.                        Whistleblowers Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Abu Ghraib (4:08) 

Is a large prison complex in Abū Ghurayb, Baghdad governorate, Iraq. During the presidency of Saddam Hussein (1979–2003), it became notorious for the detention of a massive number of political prisoners and the use of torture. It was reopened by the U.S. military in August 2003 after the invasion of Iraq by U.S. and allied forces earlier that year, and in 2004 it became the subject of international outcry when reports—and photographs—surfaced detailing the abuse, torture, and deaths of its prisoners at the hands of members of the United States Army. 

Abu Ghraib prison | What Happened, Location, & Abuses | Britannica 

Military Incident Reports (4:51) 

“All commanders & supervisors who manage individuals with a security clearance are responsible to ensure the timely reporting of information that brings into question an individual’s judgement, trustworthiness, and reliability, to protect classified information, including, but not limited to: financial difficulty, psychological distress, alcohol abuse, illegal substance use, and/or criminal activity.” 

Incident Reporting Requirements and Procedures 120213.pdf (pentagon.mil) 

Arab Spring (7:01) 

wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. 

Arab Spring | History, Revolution, Causes, Effects, & Facts | Britannica 

Mass Surveillance (9:56) 

Mass surveillance can subject a population or significant component thereof to indiscriminate monitoring, involving a systematic interference with people’s right to privacy and all the rights that privacy enables, including the freedom to express yourself and to protest. 

Mass Surveillance | Privacy International 

Haiti Minimum Wage (12:41) 

The current minimum wage in Haiti is 500 gourdes for an 8-hour day, which converts to $4.83 a day, or 60 cents an hour in U.S. currency. 

Haitian workers demand: ‘Triple the minimum wage!’ – International Action Center (iacenter.org) 

Haitian Assembly Zone {Levi’s/Hanes/Dockers/Nautica} (13:08) 

The program, shorthand for the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006, gives garments manufactured on the island duty free access to U.S. markets. Levi Strauss, Haneswear, Nautica, and Dockers are just some of the American companies that benefit from HOPE. Congress passed HOPE II in 2008, extending the program for another 10 years. 

Did the State Department help suppress the minimum wage in Haiti? – Haiti Now (haiti-now.org) 

Haiti Liberte (13:25) 

Haitian News Outlet 

News – Haiti Liberte 

Genetically Modified Crops {GMO’s} (14:08) 

GM is a technology that involves inserting DNA into the genome of an organism. To produce a GM plant, new DNA is transferred into plant cells. Usually, the cells are then grown in tissue culture where they develop into plants. The seeds produced by these plants will inherit the new DNA.   

What are GM crops and how is it done? | Royal Society 

Freedom of the Press (22:36) 

The right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to gather, publish, and distribute information and ideas without government restriction; this right encompasses freedom from prior restraints on publication and freedom from Censorship. 

Freedom of the Press legal definition of Freedom of the Press (thefreedictionary.com) 

DNC (27:24) 

Democratic National Committee 

We are the Democratic Party – Democrats 

Vault 7 (28:19) 

On Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks began its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency. 

Vault7 – Home (wikileaks.org) 

PUBLICATIONS 

https://bookshop.org/shop/realprogressives 

Guilty of Journalism, the Political Case Against Julian Assange by Kevin Gosztola 

https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9781644212721 

Truth and Consequences: The US vs. Bradley Manning 2014 by Greg Mitchell & Kevin Gosztola 

https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/9590225 

The Dissenter Newsletter 

The Dissenter 

Unauthorized Disclosure 

Unauthorized Disclosure Weekly Podcast (thedissenter.org) 

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