Democracy Now! Daily Digest ~ A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González ~ Monday, 28 October 2013
STORIES:
The spat over U.S. spying on Germany grew over the weekend following reports the National Security Agency has monitored the phone calls of Chancellor Angela Merkel since as early as 2002, before she even came to office. The NSA also spied on Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, after he refused to support the Iraq War. NSA staffers working out of the U.S. embassy in Berlin reportedly sent their findings directly to the White House. The German tabloid Bild also reports President Obama was made aware of Merkel’s phone tap in 2010, contradicting his apparent claim to her last week that he would have stopped the spying had he known. In another new disclosure, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports today the NSA tracked some 60 million calls in Spain over the course of a month last year. A delegation of German and French lawmakers are now in Washington to press for answers on the allegations of U.S. spying in their home countries. We discuss the latest revelations with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first reported Edward Snowden’s leaks.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the latest National Security Agency revelations, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden. Earlier today, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo published an article co-written by Greenwald revealing the NSA recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month. For the past year, he’s been a columnist at The Guardian newspaper. He is leaving the paper this week to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder, multibillionaire Pierre Omidyar. Glenn Greenwald joins us by Democracy Now! video stream from his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Glenn. Let’s start off with the latest news from Spain to Germany.
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, there’s a series of reports that have appeared in several different European countries over the past two weeks or so. As you indicated, there is a report this morning in El Mundo, which I co-authored, reporting that the NSA in one month, December of 2012, collected the data on 60 million telephone calls made to and from people in Spain. There was an article similar to that one in Le Monde, the Paris daily, the week before, that I also co-authored, indicating that the NSA had collected 70 million telephone calls and stored them in their system to be monitored and analyzed. And there have been a series of reports, of course, in Germany, really over the last three months, mostly co-authored by Laura Poitras, the American filmmaker with whom I’ve been working on the Snowden story from the start, about systematic and bulk spying on the people of Germany, and, more recently, targeting the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that has caused a very significant political controversy and underscoring the principal point—is what these stories do—which is that it really is the goal of the NSA, as I’ve said many times before, to eliminate privacy worldwide by ensuring that all forms of human electronic communication are subject to its ever-growing surveillance net.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how the German spying worked. I mean, for Germans, Angela Merkel’s phone is very famous. Can you explain why? I mean her cellphone that she uses through all sessions of Parliament. There have been pieces, whole pieces, just written about her phone, well before this information came out.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, the NSA uses different techniques. One of the main techniques that it uses, as Der Spiegel in its cover story reported this week, is, through a consulate in Berlin, the NSA sends people who pretend to be diplomats, who are actually there to engage in mass surveillance on the German population, as well as to target the individual cellphone calls of prominent German politicians such as its chancellor. We did a similar report here in Brazil on the targeting of President Dilma Rousseff. And the same has happened in Mexico, where both the current and former Mexican presidents were targeted with similar forms of surveillance. And often the way that this is done is through people who pretend to be diplomats stationed at what pretends to be a consulate, but which is really an NSA outpost that exploits its positioning in the nation’s capital under diplomatic treaties to target the population and the leading democratically elected leaders with very invasive surveillance.
AMY GOODMAN: And the embassy itself, its placement, this massive embassy building that the United States moved into in 2008?
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. The Der Spiegel report is using a document that demonstrates that that embassy is essentially the outpost for NSA spying. And this is quite common for the NSA to do in capitals in the allies most closely aligned with the United States. And obviously what this does is it undermines trust between these allies and the American government. It also makes a mockery out of diplomatic treaties, which really do bar the exploitation of diplomatic relations, diplomatic buildings and other forms of diplomacy as a means to engage in surveillance, both on citizens indiscriminately and democratically elected leaders, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded the United States strike a no-spying agreement with Berlin and Paris by the end of the year, saying alleged espionage against two of Washington’s closest EU allies had to be stopped.
CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL: [translated] I think the most important thing is to find a basis for the future on which we can operate. And as I said today, trust needs to be rebuilt, which implies that trust has been severely shaken. And the members of the European Union shared those concerns today. But we all know that we have such important tasks in the world that we can only master together and that we are responsible for our mutual security, that we simply need to look into the future. Obviously, words will not be sufficient. True change is necessary.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Glenn Greenwald, you mentioned, you know, the spying on democratically elected leaders. She was being spied on even before she was chancellor.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right, exactly. And the current Mexican president was, as well, prior to his being elected. The United States government has created a spying system—and this is the picture that really emerges from all of the documents—that is obsessed, institutionally, with identifying any kinds of communications that it cannot intrude and then developing technologies in order to invade them, without really any thought as to the underlying rationale, a weighing of benefits and costs. It really is a spying system that exists simply to spy for its own sake, to augment the power of the United States government, to make sure that it has full understanding of what everyone in the world is thinking and doing and choosing and deciding. And that is really a very consequential—and, I think, menacing—development for the world and for the idea of individual privacy on the Internet and through telephones. And it’s up to the world, I think, to decide what should be done in light of these revelations.
AMY GOODMAN: During Friday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was questioned about NSA spying of the German chancellor.
NEDRA PICKLER: Thanks, Jay. I want to follow up on your comment in yesterday’s briefing about how the United States is not and will not monitor German Chancellor Merkel’s communications. Lawmakers in Berlin have objected to that answer because you didn’t say whether her communications were monitored in the past. So I want to ask you: Has the United States monitored the chancellor’s phone calls in the past?
PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: Nedra, we are not going to comment publicly on every specified alleged intelligence activity. And as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. As I mentioned yesterday, the president spoke with Chancellor Merkel, reassured her that the United States is not and will not monitor the chancellor’s communications.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, your response?
GLENN GREENWALD: Remember, all of the stories that we are reporting are based on the NSA’s own internal documents, the claims that the NSA has made to itself and to its four closest allies when it comes to surveillance programs, which is the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. And so, I think at this point there’s really nobody rational who doubts the veracity of any of these reports. They’ve proven to be true in every single case. So when the documents prove or when other evidence proves that Chancellor Merkel was targeted with this kind of surveillance, it’s obviously the case that she was. And Jay Carney’s refusal to deny that she was such a target, after making a point to say she no longer will be in the future and is not right at this very second, I think, obviously, demonstrates that. That is the difficulty for the U.S. government, is there’s no way for them to demonize or to discredit the reporting that we’re doing, precisely because the reporting that we’re doing is based very faithfully on the claims that the NSA itself makes in their own documents.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, this is Congressman Peter King, chair of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press. He defended the NSA’s spying.
REP. PETER KING: I think the president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive. The reality is, the NSA has saved thousands of lives, not just in the United States, but also in France and Germany and throughout Europe. And, you know, the French are some ones to talk, when the fact is, they’ve carried out spying operations against the United States, both the government and industry. As far as Germany, that’s where the Hamburg plot began, which led to 9/11. They’ve had dealings with Iran and Iraq, North Korea—the French and the Germans and other European countries. We’re not doing this for the fun of it. This is to gather valuable intelligence, which helps not just us, but also helps the Europeans.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Congressmember Peter King, who may well be running for president of the United States. Glenn Greenwald?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, are Democratic partisans at all embarrassed by the fact that the most vocal proponents of these NSA spying programs, aside from people like Dianne Feinstein, are the very Republicans whom they spent years deriding as these radicals and extremists, people like Peter King or John Boehner or Michele Bachmann, all of whom have very vigorously defended President Obama’s spying program? Does that give Democrats any pause at all about what the real value or purpose of these spying programs are?
What Peter King is essentially telling the French and telling the world is that they ought to be grateful that the United States government is invading the privacy of their citizens by the millions and intercepting their communications data. And I think that message is resonating really quite poorly around the world. This is not 1982, where the United States can simply dictate imperialistically to the rest of the world what it ought to be grateful for and have the rest of the world necessarily accept it with reverence. It’s a much different world. And I think Peter King lives in that age that no longer really exists.
But look, this is the claim that every power faction uses whenever they engage in mass surveillance, which is they try to tell the population, "Don’t worry. We’re doing this because we love you. We want to protect you. This is for your own good." And in every single case when powerful factions are permitted to engage in surveillance in the dark without really any accountability—not often, but inevitably, always—it is radically abused. And that’s what makes this so dangerous.
And it’s not surprising that people like Peter King are finding common cause with people like Dianne Feinstein or even Nancy Pelosi, the sort of establishment leaders of both political parties, to defend these systems, because these systems do vest those in power with extreme amounts of authority to do all sorts of things that people in power always want to do.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is introducing legislation that would codify the NSA spying, that would grant the NSA explicit authority to gather records, listing the numbers, duration and time of all U.S. telephone calls, Glenn.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, is there anything more indicative of just how broken Washington is, that the person who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is a committee that was created in the wake of the findings of the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, that was intended to serve as a restraint and a check on what the Intelligence Committee does, is the greatest loyalist and the most servile devotee of protecting and shielding the authority of that community, named Dianne Feinstein? I mean, it just shows how—what a complete joke and a travesty the idea of congressional oversight has actually become.
And what the Dianne Feinsteins and the John Boehners of the world are doing right this very minute is they know that the public is outraged by these revelations, that they need to be placated symbolically. And so, what they’re trying to do is to devise legislation that, with this very Orwellian tactic, will slap the word "reform" on it and say that it’s designed to reel in some of the abuses of the NSA, but which are really—in title, are designed to let the NSA continue to do exactly what they’ve been doing, and in many cases, as you just suggested, even strengthen the NSA further. Remember, these are the people who defended, who joined together—the Republican and Democratic party leadership defended, with the White House, the ability of the NSA to continue to bulk spy on American citizens, to collect all of our phone bills, showing all of the telephone calls we make and receive. And there’s a coalition of outsiders in Washington, both on the right and the left, who are working to undermine that. But the tactics of the NSA loyalists, like Dianne Feinstein, is to produce legislation that they can deceive people into believing is reform, when in reality it does the opposite.
AMY GOODMAN: In an interview on Thursday, the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, called for newspapers to stop reporting on its secret surveillance.
GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I think it’s wrong that—that newspaper reporters have all these documents, 50,000 or whatever they have, and are selling them and giving them out as if these—you know, it just doesn’t make sense. We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policymakers. But from my perspective, it’s wrong, and to allow this go on is wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, that was Keith Alexander.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. First of all, what General Alexander said there—and remember, he’s probably the most powerful military official in the United States. I think everybody, more or less, agrees on that. He didn’t actually say that newspapers should stop publishing. He said something far more pernicious. He said, "We," namely the government, "should come up with ways to stop them from continuing to report." And he then said, "I’m not really sure exactly what ways there are, but the courts and the Congress should try and figure that out." Now, I can’t imagine, in a minimally free country, how courts and Congress could get together and stop journalists from reporting on newsworthy stories, the way that General Alexander is calling for something to be done. I mean, if that isn’t an extraordinarily creepy and authoritarian expression of sentiment, I don’t really know what is. And to think that this is the person who Democratic loyalists and Republican authoritarians argue should be entrusted with this massive, suspicionless spying system and to control it and operate it in the dark is stunning. Who would ever trust anyone, let alone somebody who has that instinct for the government to silence journalists, with running that kind of a system?
I also noticed that he said something very interesting and disturbing, which is, he sees journalists as, quote, "selling" documents. Now, selling top-secret documents, which was what he accused journalists of, is espionage. It’s treason. It’s what people like Aldrich Ames and other people are in prison for life for having done. So is that what the government, the United States government—is that the official view of the U.S. government about what this reporting is, that we are "selling" top-secret documents? That didn’t just come out of the air, that phraseology. That must be lingering somewhere. And I think it’s an extremely disturbing interview that he gave that requires a lot more attention.
AMY GOODMAN: Should security officials, like James Clapper, head of national intelligence, who lied before Congress when they asked if he was spying on Americans and said, "No," and afterward said he doesn’t know what possessed him to lie—he didn’t use the word "lie" there, to not tell, you know, the full truth—should they be charged with perjury?
GLENN GREENWALD: Of course. I mean, it’s not technically perjury, because I believe that the committee chairman, before which he appeared, did not actually swear him and force him to take an oath. This is an informal practice that’s very bad in Washington. When top officials testify before the Senate, they don’t require them often to take an oath, because it’s somehow insulting to their integrity or something to ask them to do it. But whether you take an oath or not, it’s a felony under the United States code to mislead and lie to the American Congress. There were officials prosecuted under that statute as part of the Iran-Contra scandal, although many of them were ultimately pardoned and otherwise shielded. Baseball players were prosecuted under this statute for going before Congress and falsely denying steroid use.
So, for the top national security official in the United States to go to the Senate and lie to their faces and deny that the NSA is doing exactly that which our reporting proved that the NSA was in fact doing is plainly a crime, and of course he should be prosecuted, and would be prosecuted if we lived under anything resembling the rule of law, where everybody is held and treated equally under the law, regardless of position or prestige. Of course, we don’t have that kind of system, which is why no Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, no top-level Bush officials were prosecuted for torture or warrantless eavesdropping, and why James Clapper hasn’t been prosecuted despite telling an overt lie to Congress. And what’s even more amazing, though, Amy, is that not only has James Clapper not been prosecuted, he hasn’t even lost his job. He’s still the director of national intelligence many months after his lie was revealed, because there is no accountability for the top-level people in Washington.
And the final thing to say about that is, there’s all kinds of American journalists who love to go on television and accuse Edward Snowden of committing all these grave and horrible crimes. They’re so brave when it comes to declaring Edward Snowden to be a criminal and calling for [inaudible]. Not one of them has ever gone on television and said, "James Clapper committed crimes, and he ought to be prosecuted." The question that you just asked journalistically is such an important and obvious one, yet not—none of the David Gregorys or Jeffrey Toobins or all these American journalists who fancy themselves as aggressive, tough reporters, would ever dare utter the idea that James Clapper ought to be arrested or prosecuted for the crimes that he committed, because they’re there to serve those interests and not to challenge or be adversarial to them.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, opinions are changing, meaning the pundits and writers are changing their views, like Richard Cohen of The Washington Post_, whose latest piecestory.html says, "What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but 'ridiculously cinematic' and 'narcissistic' as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong," he says. And I want you to respond to that and also the significance of this weekend’s protest, because I dare say what has changed is the massive grassroots response, whether it’s in the streets or just people being horrified at what’s taking place. But the significance of the rally that took place on Saturday that Edward Snowden sent a message to?
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. I mean, you know, look, Richard Cohen is—has long been one of the most, I would say, trite and dishonest American columnists. He has his job because these positions have always been life-tenure positions. Once you get a job as a Washington Post columist, you keep it forever. That said, the facts that have emerged are so completely contrary to the script from which these Washington journalists were reading, all in unison at the very beginning, that he just couldn’t any longer maintain that with a straight face. Literally—I went back when I was writing my book, and I looked at all this—within 24 to 48 hours of Edward Snowden’s identity being revealed by our article on June 10th in The Guardian, countless pundits and reporters and Democratic Party loyalists were—who didn’t know the first thing about Snowden—were all singing the same song, which is that he was a fame-seeking narcissist—this was the cliché they all invoked—and wanted to damage the United States. And the facts were always so completely contrary to that. He refused every single television interview once he revealed himself, because he wanted to make sure that the focus stayed away from him personally and stayed on the substance of the NSA revelations. And as Richard Cohen finally realized and pointed out, he could have done all sorts of things with the material that he possessed, if he wanted to harm the United States or was interested in enriching himself. He could have sold it to foreign intelligence services for millions of dollars. He could have passed it to enemy governments. He did none of that. He sacrificed his entire life, unraveled his life, sacrificed his liberty, in order to inform the world about what was being done to their privacy. And so, the script, the clichés that they were all given and which they all mindlessly recited, that he was a fame-seeking narcissist, couldn’t have been further from the truth. And kudos to Richard Cohen for finally acknowledging and admitting that.
As far as the rally is concerned, you know, I think there was an attempt early on to say that people in general don’t really care about privacy, don’t care about civil liberties. I’ve been hearing this for the last seven or eight years as I’ve made that my principal focus. And the fact that here we are five months later, and these revelations are every bit as consequential and are riveting people around the world as they were five months ago, just proves how true that is. The fact that there is a rally of people who are disregarding the sort of standard partisan divisions or ideological conflicts coming together—right, left, center—and realizing that their enemies are the people in government from both political parties who believe that their powers should be exercised in secret and with no accountability, really is a testament to how much privacy is valued around the world. Human beings understand instinctively why the private realm is so crucial. Edward Snowden is considered a hero in countless nations around the world. And it is true, of course, that there’s an authoritarian strain in American political culture that says that has anybody who defies government authority and dictate, who exposes things that government officials shall—have decreed shall be kept secret, is an evil and bad person, but this is really a fringe and increasingly marginalized view. And I think you see people use the Internet increasingly for everything that they do more, coming to see these—this surveillance system over which they have no control and didn’t know about until four months ago as being really dangerous and threatening.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, it isn’t—something that isn’t not talked about as much or written about as much, extremely threatening to these governments—for example, what you exposed in Brazil working with Globo, the newspaper, the spying, the—most of the media has focused on Dilma Rousseff, the president, and she refused to come to a state dinner in protest this month. But the spying on Petrobras goes to bigger point, that—since the Cold War is over, that a lot of U.S. intelligence is used to spy for corporations. And the significance of this, of what the NSA is doing?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, it’s a really important point, Amy. I mean, the spying on the individual leaders gets a lot of attention, in part because those individual leaders seem not to get truly angry until it’s revealed that not just millions of their citizens, but actually they themselves, are being spied on. That’s just the nature of political leaders.
But the bulk of the reporting has been about two things in these other countries: number one, the mass indiscriminate spying on the populations, millions and millions of calls and emails every single day; and then, secondly, what you just referenced, which is the clearly economic espionage. That’s significant for two reasons. Number one, the U.S. government has gone around telling the world, from President Obama on down, from the beginning of these stories, that this spying is necessary and justified to protect the American people from terrorism and to preserve national security. And yet, so much of the reporting we’ve done has proven that to be an utter lie. I mean, they’re spying on Petrobras, as you just said. They are spying on the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy in conjunction with the Canadian intelligence service, which just happens to oversee the industry in Brazil in which Canadian companies have the greatest interest. We’ve reported on extreme levels of surveillance at the Organization of American States or at economic conferences in Latin America designed to negotiate economic accords between countries. And so, what it’s really doing is it’s making it clear that the United States government’s claims to the world cannot be trusted, that when President Obama opens his mouth and justifies these programs, everyone now knows that what comes out of his mouth is false. And I think that’s the job of journalists in—to hold people accountable that way, but it also has serious repercussions for how American politicians are perceived in the world and what the role of the United States government is in the world.
But the other aspect to it is, is that the United States government has been very vocally running around for years accusing China of engaging in espionage and surveillance for economic advantage and industrial advantage. And these revelations prove that the United States is doing exactly the same thing. And if you reveal to populations around the world that their calls are being spied on by the millions, they’ll first wonder, "Why are my calls of interest to the U.S. government?" But when it becomes apparent that the United States government is doing this for economic advantage, they start to feel personally implicated, like they’re being actually robbed. Petrobras is an incredibly important company for Brazil. It funds a lot of their social programs, and it’s state-owned. It’s a source of national pride. And people understand that the reason they’re spying on Petrobras or on the Ministry of Mines and Energy or economic conferences isn’t because they think there are terrorists or other bad people inside those institutions; it’s because the United States government wants undue economic advantage—exactly what they denied they do and what they claim only China does.
AMY GOODMAN: Pretty interesting that after you testified in the Brazilian Senate, the members of the Senate put on Edward Snowden masks.
~~~
As new revelations of National Security Agency spying stoke the ire of Germany, France and Spain, thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a rally against government surveillance. Organizers say the protest was the largest to date against NSA monitoring since Edward Snowden’s disclosures became public in June. We hear from Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer who now works for the Government Accountability Project, reading a message from Edward Snowden; NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was charged with espionage after he was suspected of revealing information about the agency’s warrantless wiretapping program; and New Mexico’s former Republican governor, Gary Johnson.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Spain has become the latest country to be the target of widespread U.S. surveillance. According to an article published today in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the National Security Agency recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month.
The disclosure comes as a delegation of German and French lawmakers are in Washington today to press senior U.S. government and intelligence officials for answers on allegations of widespread spying by the United States in their home countries. The German newspaper Der Spiegel has revealed the NSA was using the U.S. embassy in Berlin to spy on Germans, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the magazine, Merkel’s mobile number had been listed by the NSA’s Special Collection Service since 2002.
All of these reports have been based on leaks by Edward Snowden. In a moment, we’ll be joined by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first broke the Snowden story, but first we turn to Saturday’s protest in Washington organized by the Stop Watching Us coalition. At the rally, Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department lawyer who now works for the Government Accountability Project, read a message from Edward Snowden himself.
JESSELYN RADACK: [reading] "We are here to remind our government officials that they are public servants, not private investigators.
“This is about the unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral actions of the modern-day surveillance state and how we all must work together to remind the government to stop them. It’s about our right to know, our right to associate freely, and to live in a free and open democratic society.
“We are witnessing an American moment in which ordinary people from high schools to high office stand up to oppose a dangerous trend in government.
“We are told that what is unconstitutional is not illegal, but we will not be fooled. We have not forgotten that the Fourth Amendment in our Bill of Rights prohibits government not only from searching our personal effects without a warrant, but from seizing them in the first place, and doing so in secret.
“Holding to this principle, we declare that mass surveillance has no place in this country.
"It is time for reform. Elections are coming and we are watching you."
Thank you, from Edward Snowden.
AMY GOODMAN: Jesselyn Radack, reading a message from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden at Saturday’s Stop Watching Us rally in Washington, D.C. National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake also spoke. He was charged with espionage after he was suspected of revealing information about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
THOMAS DRAKE: Due to the material evidence disclosed by Edward Snowden, we now know in great detail—and, I will add, with much more to come—that the NSA does not have an honorable track record of telling the truth—
CROWD MEMBER: Duh!
THOMAS DRAKE: —while keeping track of us without our consent, hiding behind secret laws, secret opinions and secret interpretations in the shadowlands of surveillance.
CROWD MEMBER: Unacceptable!
THOMAS DRAKE: I agree, unacceptable. And we only know—we only know of government spying, illegality, wrongdoings and violations due to the disclosures of whistleblowers, the public’s eyes and ears exposing abuse of government power in the public interest. But without adequate protections, employees are more likely to turn a blind eye to the privacy violations of innocent Americans than risk professional and career suicide.
It is the constant possibility of observation without our consent as the governed by those in power that stultifies society, renders creativity mute, engenders fear and erodes our freedom, with the acid served up by the potent brew of secrecy combined with surveillance for the sake of security, while forsaking our liberties as a price we must pay to make us feel safe. I don’t think so.
I was fortunate that I did not end up in actual prison, having lived a virtual version for a number of years, for coming out of the system and speaking truth to and of power—clearly a dangerous act of civil disobedience and individuality, for sure, in these times, and now defined as a criminal act by the national security state, aided and abetted by journalists and reporters—expressing one’s fundamental and inalienable right to individual sovereignty in the face of a government bent on destroying it.
The last thing a free and open society needs is a digital fence around us creating a virtual turnkey tyranny with the barb-wire surveillance not only keeping track of our comings and goings, but now increasingly wanting to know what we think and feel, the very essence of who we are and share as human beings. I fundamentally reject this dystopian premise—
CROWD MEMBER: So do we!
CROWD MEMBER: So do we!
THOMAS DRAKE: —and the siren call of security if we just give up our essential liberties, given what happened to me and other whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. And so, it is time to roll back the surveillance state. It is time to restore the Fourth Amendment. It is time to repeal the PATRIOT Act. It is time to repeal the FISA Amendments Act. It is time that the United States government stops watching us.
AMY GOODMAN: Former National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake, speaking Saturday at the Stop Watching Us rally. He was charged with espionage after he was suspected of revealing information about the agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. All 10 original charges against him were dropped. Former Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, also addressed the crowd.
GARY JOHNSON: The government has granted itself power that it does not have. We have to stand against this. Angela Merkel, thank you for bringing the attention to the world that the U.S. is monitoring the cellphones of 35 world leaders. Thank you for allowing us to recognize that 70 million cellphone conversations in France every month are being monitored. Edward Snowden, thank you. Thank you for bringing to the attention of the world the fact that the U.S. government, the NSA, is engaged in massive information gathering—125 billion cellphone conversations a month, judges granting legal authority for the NSA to monitor 113 million Verizon users. This is not due process!
AMY GOODMAN: Former Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, at the Stop Watching Us rally on Saturday. When we come back, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who originally reported the leaks of Edward Snowden. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back with Glenn in a moment.
~~~
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first reported Edward Snowden’s leaks, is leaving The Guardian this week to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder and multi-billionaire Pierre Omidyar. "Usually [dissenting journalists] are on the outside of institutional power, and what this is really about is being able to create a very well-funded, powerful, well-fortified institution that’s designed not to just tolerate that kind of journalism, but to enable it and protect it, strengthen it and empower it," Greenwald says. "The people who we’re going to select are all going to be people who take the same view of adversarial journalism, that it’s about holding the most powerful factions accountable, fearlessly, without regard to threats from the government or corporate factions. I think it’s going to be a very formidable force in shaping how journalism is understood and how it’s practiced."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: But we don’t have much time, and I want to turn, Glenn Greenwald, to your latest venture. You’re leaving The Guardian this week, the newspaper and the website where you have been a columnist and a blogger, and you are beginning to start a new venture with the eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar. Tell us what you’re doing.
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I mean, the venture is still something that we’re shaping and figuring out how it’s going to work. But, obviously, the choice for him to work with us and for us to work with him—and by "us," I mean Jeremy Scahill, who started with Democracy Now! and has been a longtime national security correspondent for The Nation, and Laura Poitras, the documentarian and great journalist in Berlin—I think gives people a strong sense of the kind of journalism that we intend to embolden and to strengthen. It’s very unusual, I think, for people who are dissenting political figures or journalists. Usually people like that have—are on the outside of institutional power. And what this is really about is being able to create a very well-funded, powerful, well-fortified institution that’s designed not to just tolerate that kind of journalism, but to enable it and protect it and strengthen it and empower it. And the people who we’re going to select are all going to be people who take the same view of adversarial journalism, that it’s about holding the most powerful factions accountable, fearlessly, and without regard to threats or repercussions from the government or corporate factions. And I think that it’s going to be a very formidable force in shaping how journalism is understood and how it’s practiced.
AMY GOODMAN: Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, has said he’s going to put something like $250 million into your venture. He, at first, was possibly going to buy The Washington Post. Have you talked to Pierre Omidyar? Are you concerned about issues like—well, you know, he’s a founder of eBay. EBay cut off—eBay owns PayPal, which cut off support for WikiLeaks. What kind of discussions have you had around that, which certainly would be relevant to what you want to do and your deep concerns about control?
GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. In the very first conversation or second conversation I had with Pierre, I asked him about that exact issue. And what he told me was that, at the time—and this is absolutely true—he was not the CEO of eBay, he was not involved in its management or PayPal, and that he actually disagreed with that decision. And a newspaper that he owned in Honolulu, that he created and helped out and at which he was working, editorialized against the government’s attacks on WikiLeaks’s funding.
You know, I’ve moved several times now in my career, from being an independent blogger on my own to being at Salon and to go on to The Guardian and now to this. And each time I do it, I have people say, "Look, the institution that you’re going to go to, the people who are running it are going to force you into their [inaudible]. They’re going to restrict what it is that you can do." And I always say the same thing, which is I would never go anywhere or stay anywhere that in any way tried to interfere with my editorial independence and freedom. And that’s absolutely true of this venture.
You know, if you look at Pierre’s record of advocacy over the last several years, and especially of the past five months, he’s been incredibly supportive of the NSA reporting we’ve been doing, of the notion of press freedom. He would not start a new business in order to make money. He would only start a new business for some goal, some civic-minded goal. And that goal, not to replicate what other journalistic outlets are doing or to restrict the independence of journalists, it’s to enable independent journalists to be even more independent, to be even more adversarial and aggressive in how they do their reporting. And I am completely convinced of the passion that he has behind that vision and his willingness to adhere to it. And at the end of the day, I think neither Jeremy nor myself would ever allow anybody to restrict what we do in any way, and that certainly includes him. But we have zero worries if that’s an intention; quite the opposite, we think he wants to enable us and others to do the kind of journalism that the United States people want more of.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank people for bearing with us; the audio is not so great today in this video stream. But lastly, you’ve engaged in this very interesting conversation with Bill Keller of The New York Times, this debate between the two of you, the former executive editor of the Times. Keller began the debate by writing, "We come at journalism from different traditions. I’ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion." He ended, saying, quote, "Embedded in The New York Times's institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less ’activist,' subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns." Can you comment on that and where you’re going with your new venture?
GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. And this came out of a New Yorker piece on the reporting that we did at The Guardian that quoted Bill Keller as saying he never would have allowed me, when he was the editor of The New York Times, to take the lead in reporting on these NSA stories, because I had expressed opinions about these topics previously. And so, he and I then had an email exchange about that, and he then offered, quite generously, to have a debate and publish it in his column. And I think it really reflects two very competing and different but strong frames in how journalism is understood: the kind of traditional New York Times model that I think has neutered and, in a lot of ways, helped to kill journalism as a potent force for checking power, and the kind of journalism that I think we intend to do, where it is much more passionate and [inaudible] and intended to be overtly adversarial to those in power. And I think you see the two competing visions in that exchange. And part of what I wanted to do was lay out for people why I think our vision produces better journalism, and to point to some of the really bad journalism that The New York Times has produced over the years—alongside some good stuff—which I think is a byproduct of this sort of obsolete way of thinking.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Glenn, for being with us. Glenn Greewald, columnist on civil liberties and U.S. national security issues, is leaving The Guardian this week and is going to start his new venture with Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, a new news organization, with Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. This is Democracy Now! We’ll link to all your latest articles, Glenn, at democracynow.org. When we come back, the biggest deal, settlement, with the largest bank. Stay with us.
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In the largest banking settlement in U.S. history, the banking giant JPMorgan Chase is set to pay a record $13 billion fine to settle investigations into its mortgage-backed securities. Five years ago, the bank’s risky behavior helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. JPMorgan’s preliminary settlement with the U.S. government may end up costing much less after taxes — closer to $9 billion because the majority of the deal is expected to be tax-deductible. The deal is expected to be followed by a larger agreement with the Justice Department still in the works. Many in the media have portrayed the deal as unfair to the bank. The Wall Street Journal describes it as the government "confiscating" half of JPMorgan’s annual earnings to "appease … left-wing populist allies" of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the New York Post portrayed it as a kind of bank robbery, running a headline that read: "UNCLE SCAM: U.S. Robs Bank of $13 Billion." We are joined by Yves Smith, financial analyst and founder of the popular finance blog "Naked Capitalism." Smith is the author of the book, "ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism."
Click here to watch Part 2 of this interview.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to what’s being touted as the biggest banking settlement in U.S. history. The banking giant JPMorgan is set to pay a record $13 billion fine to settle investigations into its mortgage-backed securities. Five years ago, the bank’s risky behavior helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure.
In a statement Friday night, JPMorgan called its latest settlement an "important step." However, many in the media have portrayed the deal as unfair to the bank. The Wall Street Journal describes it as the government "confiscating" half of JPMorgan’s annual earnings to, quote, "appease ... left-wing populist allies" of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the New York Post portrayed it as a kind of bank robbery, running a headline that read, "UNCLE [SCAM]: U.S. Robs Bank of $13 Billion."
Well, to find out more, we’re joined by Yves Smith, financial analyst who founded the popular finance blog Naked Capitalism. She’s the author of the book, ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.
Yves Smith, welcome to Democracy Now! What’s your assessment of this settlement?
YVES SMITH: I’ve seldom seen a financial story where there’s been so much misreporting. For instance, the amount that’s going to be paid is still a bit in flux, but only $3 billion of that is actually going to be a fine. The overwhelming majority is for contract violations where the various banks, both JPMorgan itself and the two banks it acquired, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, did what amounted to promise investors that they were going to get steak, and instead it sold them hamburger—and, in fact, many times hamburger that was beginning to turn green. So, these claims are actually contract claims that are the liability something in the range of $200—or, sorry, $100 billion to $200 billion they’ll be getting rid of. That portion of the settlement is only going to be around $10 or 11 billion. So they’re getting out of that part at under 10 cents on the dollar. This is actually a screaming bargain.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamie Dimon called Eric Holder?
YVES SMITH: Yes. That was because—apparently, that’s because there was a—there is still in play that there may still be a criminal prosecution of the bank, not of individuals. There was a—the Department of Justice in California had been developing a case since 2007, and they—it was released in Reuters on—it was Monday, that they might be filing the criminal case as soon as Tuesday. And apparently Dimon called almost immediately, and they had a meeting on that Thursday. So it looks like it was the criminal suit that suddenly led to the desire to have some—
AMY GOODMAN: Should Jamie Dimon be indicted?
YVES SMITH: We don’t know enough to know anything. I personally think he should be indicted on the London Whale. I’ve said that a long time ago. So we just don’t know enough in this case what the facts are. And if—we may not know, if he manages to settle that one.
AMY GOODMAN: Where will the money come from? Shareholders? CEO bonuses? Will Jamie Dimon lose his job? This is the biggest settlement in U.S. history.
YVES SMITH: Right. Well, that’s another interesting part. First of this, so we’ve got, of this—now the numbers crept up, because the Federal Housing Finance Agency, they’ve actually been negotiating separately. Their deal went from $4 billion to $5.1 billion. But in any event, of that total, $4 billion of that isn’t even going to be in cash; $4 billion of the total settlement is in the form, homeowner relief. That can include things like short sales on securities that they sold, things the bank doesn’t even own. So—and we saw in the national mortgage settlement, the big one we had at the beginning of last year, that most of that has been things that really haven’t involved any real damage to the banks. The portion that’s paying for the hamburger instead of steak part is going to be tax-deductible. And it looks like there’s another fight that’s going on between the Department of Justice and JPMorgan, that they may be able to put $1.1 billion of that total amount to the FDIC. So the actual number that JPMorgan is going to wind up paying is vastly smaller than this number that’s being bandied about.
AMY GOODMAN: Yves Smith, we have to stop this conversation here for the end of the show, but we’ll continue it online, and we’ll post it at democracynow.org. Yves Smith, financial analyst who founded the popular finance blog, Naked Capitalism, author of ECONned.
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HEADLINES:
Reports: NSA Spying on Germany Began in 2002; Obama Was Briefed in 2010
The spat over U.S. spying on Germany grew over the weekend following reports the National Security Agency has been monitoring the phone calls of Chancellor Angela Merkel since as early as 2002, before she even came to office. The NSA also spied on Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, after he refused to support the Iraq War. NSA staffers working out of the U.S. embassy in Berlin reportedly sent their findings directly to the White House. The German tabloid Bild also reports President Obama was made aware of Merkel’s phone tap in 2010, contradicting his apparent claim to her last week that he would have stopped the spying had he known. The White House initially refused to comment on the report, but later in the day the NSA denied the claim Obama had been briefed.
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Report: NSA Tracked Millions of Phone Calls in Spain
In another new disclosure, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports today the National Security Agency tracked more than 60 million calls in Spain over the course of a month last year. The U.S. ambassador to Spain, James Costos, has been summoned to the Spanish Foreign Ministry today in response. A delegation of German and French lawmakers are now in Washington to press for answers on the allegations of U.S. spying in their home countries. On Friday, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki acknowledged U.S. surveillance has damaged foreign relations and is now under review.
Jen Psaki: "The president has directed us to review, directed the government to review our surveillance capabilities, including with respect to our foreign partners. We want to ensure we’re collecting information because we need it and not just because we can. There is no question that — that the disclosure of classified information has become — has posed a moment of tension with some of our allies. We’re having discussions with those allies."
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Thousands March Against NSA Surveillance in D.C.
Thousands of people marched in Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a protest against government surveillance. "Stop Watching Us: Rally Against Mass Surveillance" was organized by a coalition of more than 100 groups, companies and public figures. Organizers say the protest was the largest to date against government surveillance since Edward Snowden’s disclosures became public in June.
Michael Greene: "I’m outraged, like most people here, at the mass surveillance that’s going on, and people just don’t seem to be upset about it. It’s blatantly unconstitutional."
Jennifer Wynne: "Over the past several months, we the people have learned so much about the abuses going on and the complete lack of oversight and the mass surveillance into every detail of our lives. And we need to tell Congress that they have to act, and we need to demand it."
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Syria Submits Inventory of Chemical Stockpile
Syria has submitted a formal declaration of its chemical weapons arsenal and the plans it has in place to destroy it. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it received the briefing three days ahead of schedule and will respond next month. Syria faces a deadline to abolish its chemical stockpile by the middle of next year.
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Armed Syrian Rebels Reject Geneva Peace Talks
In other Syria news, armed rebel groups are refusing to attend the upcoming peace summit in Geneva. In a joint statement, 19 opposition factions said negotiating with the regime of Bashar al-Assad would amount to an act of "treason." The U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is visiting Damascus today in a bid to drum up support for the Geneva talks. In an interview ahead of his trip, Brahimi called for the inclusion of Iran in negotiations.
Lakhdar Brahimi: "The U.N. secretary-general, as well as the Arab League secretary-general and also me, we all believe that the participation of Iran in the Geneva conference is natural and is necessary, as well as fruitful. So we are hopeful that this invitation is made to Iran."
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66 Killed in Over a Dozen Iraq Bombings
At least 66 people were killed Sunday in more than a dozen bombings across Iraq. The latest violence comes ahead of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s visit to Washington this week. Maliki is seeking speedier delivery of U.S. weaponry, including drones and F-16 jets.
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Obama Admin Seeks Delay of New Iran Sanctions
The Obama administration is asking Congress to hold off on new sanctions against Iran. At a White House meeting, top officials asked for the continued delay of a Senate Banking Committee measure targeting Iranian oil. The administration wants to stall the new sanctions pending the outcome of ongoing talks over Iran’s nuclear program. In an interview with Voice of America, the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said she expects Congress to back a sanctions pause.
Wendy Sherman: "We think that this is a time for a pause, to see if these negotiations can gain traction. The Congress has its prerogatives. We don’t get to control Congress, but we are having very serious discussions. We work as partners with Congress. I think they have been very effective partners as we’ve tried to approach this negotiation. We need them to continue to be effective partners to reach a successful conclusion, and I have trust that they will be."
A new round of talks is set for next month in Geneva. Despite the White House call, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed support for holding a sanctions vote by the end of the week.
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Saudi Women Defy Driving Ban
Women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia took to the road over the weekend in defiance of the nation’s ban on female drivers. It was the latest action in a multi-year campaign in which Saudi women openly flout the ban and upload video of themselves behind the wheel. Organizers say some participants were intimidated into staying home after warnings from the Saudi Interior Ministry.
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Thousands March for Jailed Opposition Activists in Moscow
Thousands of people marched in Moscow on Sunday in a call for the release of activists detained in an opposition rally last year. More than two dozen critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin have been kept behind bars over their roles in a protest that turned violent on the eve of Putin’s inauguration.
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Colombian Rebels Free Kidnapped Ex-Marine
The Colombian rebel group FARC has freed a former U.S. marine held in captivity since June. Kevin Scott Sutay was seized while trekking through the Colombian jungle on a solo backpacking trip.
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Demolition of Sandy Hook Elementary Underway
Demolition has begun of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, site of last year’s gun rampage that left 20 children and six adults dead. Newtown officials say they intend to complete the demolition before the massacre’s first anniversary in December.
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Gunman Kills 4, Self in Phoenix Shooting
In one of the latest deadly shootings nationwide, five people died in Phoenix over the weekend after a gunman shot four members of his family and then turned the gun on himself.
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Obama Touts Education Spending in Brooklyn Speech
President Obama appeared at a high school in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday to promote federal spending on education. Obama called funding for schools and infrastructure an obvious priority for the next budget.
President Obama: "A budget that cuts what we don’t need closes wasteful tax loopholes that don’t create jobs, freeing up resources to invest in the things that actually do help us grow, things like education and scientific research and infrastructure — roads, bridges, airports. This should not be an ideological exercise. We should use some common sense. What’s going to help us grow? What’s going to create jobs? What is going to expand our middle class? What’s going to give more opportunity to young people? Those are the things we should be putting money into."
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Report: North Dakota Failed to Disclose Nearly 300 Oil Spills
Internal records show North Dakota has kept silent on scores of oil spills over the past two years. According to the Associated Press, North Dakota has recorded nearly 300 oil spills since January 2012, but none have been publicly disclosed. It took 11 days before North Dakota just recently announced the Tesoro oil spill that dumped more than 20,000 barrels of crude. North Dakota is the nation’s second largest oil producer, with more than 17,500 miles of pipelines.
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Rock Legend Lou Reed Dies at 71
The musician Lou Reed has died. A legend of the New York rock scene, Reed co-founded The Velvet Underground before going on to a prolific solo career. In his later years, he took part in civil rights and environmental activism along with his wife, the musician and artist Laurie Anderson. In one of his final public appearances last month, Reed discussed the power of music to effect change.
Lou Reed: "There’s only one great occupation that can change the world, that’s real rock 'n' roll. I believe to the bottom of my heart, the last cell, that rock 'n' roll can change everything. And I’m a graduate of Warhol University, and I believe in the power of punk. To this day, I want to blow it up. Thank you."
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