creative unity collective alternating friday nights midnight to three wba i 99.5 fm in new
york
once upon a time when we were colored stolen from the mother 400 years later mr charlie's on some
other take this as an affirmative act to slap back the whack catch brothers sisters who are
falling through the cracks creativity and unity the keys to maintain our humanity and our sanity
no vanity materialism big willy crap just progressive elevation can i get a soul clap
keep it going on see you see keep it going on keep it going on creative unity keep it going on
and you're listening to radio station wbai in new york time for off the hook
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall i cut myself while shaving now i can't make
a call we couldn't get much worse but if they could they would for the best expect the worst
i hope that's understood
so
so
And a very good evening to everybody, the program is off the hook, Emanuel Goldstein
here with you on this Wednesday night. And we have a lot to cover tonight, a lot to cover,
oh boy, international news, national news, local news, all kinds of fun things like that.
And Jeff, welcome.
Thank you.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Good to know, that's good to know. We've got things to talk about tonight, serious things
to talk about. Anything new on your end, anything you've been following, particular news items
or anything like that?
I don't have, I've got nothing.
Okay, we've been covering war things a lot in the last few weeks, and of course we're
going to continue doing that as well. But there's a lot going on on the home front that
we also have to pay attention to. You know, things are winding down over there a bit,
but it's not going to be for long, I don't think, before something else happens. Of course,
we went down to Yellow today, everybody happy about that? We're at Yellow. Jim, you're ecstatic,
aren't you?
Yeah, well, yeah, except not in the city.
We're still orange in the city, aren't we?
We're orange in the city.
Wow.
Great song title, but no song.
Yeah. Wow. And look, Red Hacket's here, he's got an orange shirt on. How you doing?
Hey, what's up?
You have an interesting story. Actually, I should point out, our usual team isn't here
tonight. Serif and Mike are off doing religious things. They're going to kill me for saying
that, but we have the B team in, and yes, we didn't know we had one. And Red Hack, you
just turned 18 today, didn't you?
Correct.
You had a run-in with a computer already, didn't you?
Actually, what happened was I went out just to celebrate my 18th birthday, you know. Oh,
I can buy tobacco products now. Someone tried to buy a cigar.
Wait, you can buy tobacco when you're 18?
Yeah.
But you can't buy alcohol until you're 21?
Correct.
I thought you could do something at 17?
Drive.
No, you could drive at 16.
NC rated our movies.
Okay, NC 17. No, you can fight and die for your country. That's what it is. Yeah. Okay,
but you turned 18 today. Did you register with Selective Service?
Not yet.
Okay, we have the counter out front where we answer phones doubles as a Selective Service
registration station. So on your way out, we will make sure that you sign up.
Of course.
Okay, tell us what happened.
So I went out and attempted to buy a cigar just for the hell of it. And I went to the
store. It's 12.30 on my birthday.
12.30 in the morning.
12.30 in the morning, right. So technically, legally, I'm 18. And I go and I hand the guy
my ID and he scans it and it comes up 17.
Wait, he scans what and it comes up 17?
My ID. They have a barcode on the back.
And the barcode tells them what it says?
The barcode tells them my birthday.
But they can read that, can't they? On the thing?
It's to verify.
All right, all right. So they read the magnetic strip. On what, your license?
My license.
Okay.
And it said 17. And I said, well, look at the birthday, look at today's date. I'm 18.
And he said, I can't do it until the computer.
What time were you born?
It had nothing to do with that, actually.
The magnetic strip may know what time you were born.
It might. That's interesting.
Yeah. It tells all kinds of things.
He could still be 17.
You don't know, you know.
Who knows?
Yeah. So what happened?
Well, so basically, I went to, I said, you know, look, buddy, it's 12.30 in the morning.
It's my birthday. I can do this. And he said, I can't do it until the machine tells me I can.
So I walk outside, and I'm just standing there saying, this is stupid, you know, it should work.
And he comes out, and he offers me a cigarette.
Another day in America.
Yeah.
Well, that's great. Well, welcome to the world of adulthood and all that.
You'll see how much fun it is.
Bernie, yes, you know firsthand, don't you?
Oh, I do.
Bernie, is this you making this horrible noise?
No, it just started this second.
Well, it only starts when I bring your thing up.
How about if I turn the music off?
Bring my thing up?
Well, that's interesting.
All right, Jim, calm down.
That's interesting, the music.
All right, it's not doing it now.
All right. So, Bernie, anything on your end?
Anything happening down in the city of Philadelphia?
Well, along the lines of what you were just talking about, there's something interesting here in Pennsylvania,
which many of our listeners may or may not know controls the distribution and sales of alcoholic beverages.
You must buy your alcoholic beverages in Pennsylvania from a state store owned by the state of Pennsylvania.
Right.
And it's been found out recently that these scanners that are used to scan your driver's license in both bars and in state-owned liquor stores
transmit that information to a state database.
And the Pennsylvania State Police has been using that information in conjunction with prosecutors
to dredge up what alcohol you purchased, when, how much, and cross-referencing that with criminal charges.
Say you were charged with driving under the influence or basically any crime at all.
They can say, well, you purchased this much alcohol two hours before and so forth.
So this is pretty interesting.
I called a couple stores this week just to find out whether this applies for all states' licenses.
And one manager and one clerk in two different state-owned stores told me that they can do this with almost any state driver's license.
It wasn't limited to Pennsylvania.
Some states use a magnetic stripe.
Some have a magnetic stripe and a barcode.
And some just have a barcode.
California has its own kind of barcode format because they want to be different out there.
But these machines apparently can read Californians as well.
What I couldn't find out, and I'm going to find out later tonight, is whether a U.S. passport can be scanned into one of these things.
The clerk told me he thought it could, but he wasn't sure.
And the manager wasn't sure either.
So I'm going to buy some alcohol tonight with my passport in a state-owned liquor store and find out if that information is read and transmitted to Harrisburg.
And you guys wonder why Bernie S. keeps getting into trouble all the time.
And that the Jersey licenses don't have the mag stripe.
Why do the Jersey licenses look so utterly awful?
They look like temporary fake licenses.
They really do.
No offense, but they really do.
None taken, thank you.
Well, the Jersey license does seem to have something on the back.
What is that?
That's me.
That's me too.
That's why it looks like this.
On the back, that's not you.
No, that's just a wallet.
Is that the bar that goes across?
No, no, here.
They don't work as Frisbees, folks.
It was actually interesting.
The reason the guy wouldn't sell me anything but then would offer me a cigarette when he came out of the store was because he said it was tied to the police.
And they'd come and they'd check the records.
And they'd verify that, you know, I don't know how they checked, but made sure they didn't sell it to anyone who was a mob.
Databases.
Well, the police have ways.
This is interesting too.
This comes out of Singapore.
Surveillance cameras have been installed.
Have you heard about this?
In the homes of people placed under quarantine after they've come in contact with the SARS virus.
Yes.
But that's because people were leaving.
But this is incredible.
They actually have surveillance cameras inside their homes.
Now, those ordered to be quarantined must report in front of the camera several times a day.
If they are not at home when health care workers check, they will then be forced to wear an electronic tag on their wrist until the latest restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Those tags are linked to a telephone line.
They alert the authorities if the quarantine person leaves their house or tries to break the tag.
The government had to resort to such measures because several people ordered to stay at home did not.
So think about that, you people with ankle bracelets.
And I know that makes up a large part of our listening audience.
If you abuse that little device that's given to you, you will soon have a camera in your house.
That's how it goes.
That's how it happens.
So that's something that's happening overseas.
We all saw the pictures of statues being torn down and all that kind of thing.
There's a very interesting couple of websites.
Actually, I want to read you a story from the Independent, which is a newspaper in England.
It was by any measure an astonishing coincidence as the biggest statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down spontaneously.
And they put that in quotes in front of the world's media.
The Stars and Stripes, which flew on the Pentagon on September 11th, was at hand to be draped over the face.
You guys see this?
It was amazing.
They threw the flag over Saddam Hussein's face.
And it was the same flag that was over the Pentagon.
The U.S. Army denied that the toppling of the 20-foot edifice by a tank tower was stage managed.
It was a coincidence, they said, that Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin, the keeper of that flag, happened to be present.
And it has to be noted, the commander of the U.S. Marines who completed the capture of Baghdad did express concern at the time
that the use of the Stars and Stripes smacked of triumphalism.
It was later changed to an Iraqi flag, but not before acres of TV footage had been shot.
And more recently, the U.S. Army banned any display of the flag on vehicles, buildings, statues, and command posts,
halting its display almost everywhere but the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
I wonder what happens if an Iraqi citizen displays it.
Maybe they get in trouble.
There was some suspicion that the crowd that jumped up and down on the metal carcass had been bussed in from the Shia suburb of Saddam's city.
That was not the case.
They were mostly local, according to reports.
But they were the same people who chanted,
My blood, my spirit, I shall die for you, oh, Saddam, until the last day of the regime.
Flushed with victory, the Marines one spoke to had no doubts about the war's justice.
But when asked whether they had seen any proof of a link between al-Qaeda and the defeated Iraqi regime,
there was general puzzlement when one of the few remaining human shields in Baghdad,
Uzma Bashir from Rickmansworth, which is in England, baited the troops with shouts of Yankee murderers.
Corporal Ibrahim Rahim exploded.
I scooped up the brains of two young Marines.
They died fighting to liberate Iraq.
And you stand here insulting them with, oh, you can say that word in English papers.
Wow. I almost made a big mistake.
You can do that over there.
You can print four-letter words in mainstream papers.
And you stand here insulting them with this stuff.
He added, I'm a Muslim, and I know this region.
That woman is seriously abusing her right of speech.
And that's one view from the Independent over there in England.
If you go to the site, though, www.informationclearinghouse.info,
and just rummage about a bit, you'll see a picture, a picture of the scene.
Is that the one with the tanks?
That's the one. Yeah, there are tanks in this.
It shows the scene of where the statue was torn down.
And basically they describe it, and they circle it in red.
They say that's the area where U.S. Marines, the press, and a small number of Iraqis gathered to pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein.
No more than 150 people were involved.
The plaza was empty, and it was sealed off by the Marines.
And if you look at the picture, you see there's a huge fence around that area, and it was sealed off by the Marines.
So how did those people get in in the first place?
It all occurred just opposite the Palestine Hotel where the international media were based.
This was a carefully staged media event.
The pro-American Iraqis involved were members of Ahmad Chalabi's Free Iraqi Forces militia,
who had recently flown into Iraq by the Pentagon.
I don't know, that sounds kind of nuts, but the picture is interesting, though.
The picture does show a gate around it.
It didn't print very well if you have to look at the site, so go ahead, Jim.
But I imagine with all the journalists over there, somebody had to have a long shot of that whole scene.
So if they could pull back a little bit and see if the rest of the area was empty while all those people were cheering, that would certainly tell us a lot.
Also interesting, we were talking last week about how long it would be before the honeymoon was over.
It turned out to be about a day.
That's when the looting and pillaging started, and priceless artifacts destroyed in museums and libraries.
It's unbelievable how basically American troops stood by and let it happen.
They weren't interested in protecting that ancient history.
So we've screwed up the present, the past, and the future, apparently.
But what was interesting was seeing Donald Rumsfeld comment on it, saying,
I saw the same vase stolen a hundred times.
How many of them can there possibly be?
He was basically just saying this looting is exaggerated.
Well, the answer now is that there are no ancient vases left in Iraq.
That's certainly true, but if I was there, I would have said to him,
how many statues could there possibly be?
How many times have we seen the same damn statue being pulled down?
How is that being used for propaganda purposes?
Okay, well, that's pretty much it as far as war stuff.
There's plenty more going on here on the home front.
Now, Bernie, you had basically been looking into the story about,
well, this actually appeared in 2600 last spring, spring of 2002.
It was an article about something called Campus Wide.
The article was called Campus Wide, Wide Open.
Did you happen to see that?
Can you refresh my memory?
Okay, this was about basically...
These are the cards?
Yeah, the cards on campus.
You can buy sodas, you can get into your room.
It's a card access system.
Okay, and it's your student ID card?
Yeah, yeah, basically.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
So this was an article that appeared last year,
and some interesting events happened in the last few days.
Right, Bernie?
This is news to me, Emanuel.
Someone's using your e-mail account and sending us mail in your name saying,
check this out.
Okay, well, then I'll tell the story.
Basically what happened was the same people who wrote the article
were making a presentation at a conference called InterZone,
and they were issued a cease and desist order
saying that they could not talk about this.
It was amazing.
It was absolutely unbelievable.
Let's see if I can find a story about this.
There were all kinds of mirrors and things floating around.
Well, I was asked to tell about one particular mirror.
It's www.socialfreedom.net, socialfreedom.net.
And there's also a mirror of the original web page at www.msstate.edu,
squiggle mc235.
And there is a call to duplicate this in as many places as possible.
And basically we're seeing again a repeat of what happened
when information was put up concerning the ECSS,
and we're seeing a repeat of the whole Dimitri situation.
The saddest part of the whole thing is that even if someone were to try to
go and file a suit against them for false advertising
about how secure this whole thing is,
at the court case when you go to describe where the flaws are,
that's where you get arrested for violating the DMCA.
Right, right.
Now, this court order says,
it's hereby ordered that the defendants,
two of them, Billy Hoffman and Virgil Griffith,
are hereby temporarily enjoined from revealing or discussing
any signals to or from any Blackboard reader
or any Blackboard transaction processing system
that may have been captured,
revealing or discussing information about how any information is stored
on any Blackboard card or reader
or on any Blackboard transaction processing system,
number three, providing to others or revealing
or discussing any information relating to
or any drop-in compatible reader
that will work with an existing RS-185 network,
releasing code to make a computer emulate any Blackboard reader
or any Blackboard transaction processing system,
as well as the hardware designs to make a drop-in replacement
for any Blackboard reader
or any Blackboard transaction processing system,
and number five, claiming that either of them,
this is funny, claiming that either of them has any right,
either explicitly or implicitly,
to provide products or services that can legitimately be used
or interfaced with a Blackboard product.
So, it's amazing.
They're not allowed to talk about this?
They're not allowed to write about this?
No, no, no, no. Read that last line again.
They can't present that they can legitimately talk about it.
They can say that they can hack it.
They can say that they can steal from it,
but they can't say that they have any legitimate claim on it.
Well, can they say they have the right to talk about it?
I'm not sure about that.
If they can't say that they don't have the right to talk about it,
do you really think they have the right to talk about it?
If they're not even allowed to say they have the right to talk about it?
They can't say that they have the right
to present legitimate products or software
in that last fifth article.
The whole thing is crazy.
But anyway, the panel was supposed to take place
at a conference.
Where was this? In New Orleans, I think?
And it was stopped.
It was stopped.
Now, this is the kind of thing we're going to be following.
Oh, it was in Atlanta.
The InterZone conference was in Atlanta, April 11th through 13th.
If you look at www.se2600.org
slash Acidus, A-C-I-D-U-S
slash splash.html
I think that'll get you there.
You'll see all the updates in this story.
We're going to be following this in the weeks ahead.
And hopefully getting to the bottom of it.
And of course, if you have the spring 2002 edition of 2600,
you can see pretty much what this is about.
That was a year ago.
It's the one with the giant Ben Franklin
off the $100 bill on the cover.
Yeah, Ben Franklin is there as well.
Also, this other news.
A U.S. man found guilty of selling modchips on his website
in breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
has been sentenced to five months' imprisonment
and a $28,500 fine.
David Rockey, who sold the Enigma modchips for the Xbox
from the site ISOnews.com,
the one that was seized by the U.S. Department of Justice last month.
Actually, it was before then, I think.
It was late last year, I think it was seized.
He pleaded guilty to breaching the DMCA
by selling illegal copyright circumvention devices last December.
I understand why people have to plead guilty to these things.
It's ridiculous, though.
When you consider what it is, they're pleading guilty, too.
Isn't it only a circumvention device when it's attached to an Xbox?
Of course.
So by itself, it's really nothing.
By itself, it's nothing. Exactly.
It's like a red box.
It's ironic that Bernie is on the line
when you're saying it's only when it's attached.
Well, his full sentence is five months in prison,
five months of home detention,
three years of probation,
and a $28,500 fine.
So this guy did not get off easy.
And of course, if you go to www.isonews.com,
you get redirected to the Justice Department.
What was the domain he got?
I remember there being a nice little page
saying what he'd done wrong.
It's interesting.
I used to go to that site,
but I don't remember seeing anything about modchips.
There may have been.
It used to be.
It was kind of like a listing
of different rips of CDs and things like that.
According to the register,
while we certainly don't approve of helping people
with the pirate software,
we see this as a massively harsh
and disproportionate punishment
for a man whose crime is selling devices
that allow people to modify their own equipment.
And that's really what it is.
That's all it is.
And finally, this cheery bit of news.
Congressional Republicans working with the Bush administration
are maneuvering to make permanent
the sweeping anti-terrorism powers
granted to federal law enforcement agents
after the attacks of September 11th.
Officials said that on Tuesday.
The move is likely to touch off strong objections
from any Democrats who will later cave in and accept it.
A little bait and switch.
Yeah.
So is anybody surprised by this?
I'm not surprised by this.
No.
No one here is.
Bernie, are you surprised?
No.
When I realized they had conceded to a...
or compromised with this five-year limitation,
I thought, well,
we'll find some reason to get rid of that in the future.
And apparently they have.
There were some people that came out and said
that they voted for it because of the Sunset Law on it.
Yeah, well, let's see where those people are now.
Well, one of them was Hillary Clinton.
As long as there's another country out there,
there's always another potential for the axis of evil.
So we gotta keep these laws the way they are
forever and ever and ever until we take over...
Until all the countries are gone, yes.
Well, we're getting there.
Okay, so now we have the main feature of tonight's show,
which centers around yet another tale of injustice.
And this one kind of ties into the computer world
and what's going on, you know,
in the fight against terrorism and all that.
If you go to a site called www.freemikehawash,
that's spelled H-A-W-A-S-H dot org,
you will see an amazing story about a man
who has been imprisoned
for reasons that are mysterious, to say the very least.
We have on the phone with us Stephen McGeady,
who is the person running that site,
one of the people running that site,
and who has been following this case.
Stephen, are you there, first of all?
Yes, I am. Thank you.
Okay.
How do you know Mike, to start with?
Well, I was vice president at Intel from 1985 to 2000,
and Mike came to work for me in my,
what was then called the Multimedia Software Technology Group in 1992.
And he worked for me in different organizations on and off
until I left Intel in the year 2000.
So now, what is it that happened,
and when did this occur with Mike?
Well, it will be about a month,
it will be a month tomorrow.
On March 20th, at 6.30 in the morning,
Mike was surrounded by agents of the FBI
and the Joint Federal Terrorism Task Force,
as we understand it,
as he got out of his car in the Intel parking lot here outside of Portland, Oregon,
and arrested, or detained, I believe is the word,
because he hasn't been charged.
He's being held as a material witness.
We'll come back to that.
They then drove over to the house, his home,
where his wife and three children were sleeping.
Went in there, knocked on the door, woke them up,
came in there and searched their house for the next four hours,
taking away his computers and financial records
and kids' videotapes and a number of other things,
and presenting his wife with a grand jury subpoena on their way out the door.
So I heard about it the following day
and started trying to inquire to find out what had happened
and just met with a brick wall.
I couldn't find out the name of the...
I couldn't find out why Mike was being held.
I couldn't get anyone to verify he was being held.
Couldn't find out whether, at that time,
whether he had been charged or was going to be charged.
Couldn't find out the name of the U.S. attorney, the name of the judge.
Couldn't find out anything.
It's a familiar story for us here in the hacker world,
for that kind of thing to happen.
In fact, Bernie, who's on the line with us,
had almost the same thing happen to him.
The difference, though, here, and it's a pretty big difference,
is that you haven't been told anything.
No.
You know, I spent...
That was a Friday that I first learned of this,
and so I spent the weekend and the subsequent Monday
working my network,
and I'm a reasonably well-connected guy,
working my network to try to find out anything,
and all I could finally discover was that
the entire case, every aspect of it,
was placed under a court seal.
So not only was he being held, not under charge,
but under this 1984 material witness statute.
But every detail, up to and including the fact of his detainment,
was under this court seal,
and nobody could talk about it.
I called our Democratic Oregon senator,
Senator Ron Wyden,
on his office on that following week,
and he sent a letter to the Justice Department inquiring,
and I'm sort of paraphrasing it here,
but it was,
Dear Senator Wyden,
Get stuffed.
Actually, U.S. Attorney Michael Mossman
replied in writing that
he could not verify that Mike Hiwash was detained,
although he could say that he was not being held
as an unlawful enemy combatant in Guantanamo.
That's a relief, isn't it?
That's a real relief, yeah.
But other than that,
he would have nothing to say to the senator until May.
May?
And this letter transpired a couple weeks ago now.
As I said, Mike's been in jail for almost four weeks.
Now, has anyone been able to see him?
Yeah, after an initial period of four days or so,
when there was a fair amount of uncertainty
as to where he was and so forth,
he did get a call through to his wife,
and subsequent to that,
his wife and his attorneys have been able to meet with him
on a regulated basis.
So he's not being held.
You know, and we're trying to be accurate here.
He's not being held, as some Arab American men
or Arab immigrants are,
without access to counsel.
He's not being held completely without access to his wife.
But I should point out that
the Sheridan Federal Correctional Institute,
the Sheridan Penitentiary,
is an hour and a half south of Portland,
so there are a number of practical considerations
of people's ability to see him
during the very brief one-hour visitations he's allowed.
Now, you mentioned he was Arab American.
Obviously, this shouldn't have to matter,
but out of curiosity, is he a full citizen?
Yeah, Mike went to the University of Texas in 1984.
He became a U.S. citizen in 1988
between his bachelor BS double E and his MS double E
from UTexas.
So he's been a resident of the U.S. for almost 20 years.
He's been a citizen for 15 years,
lived here in Oregon since 1992.
And as I said, he's got a wife and a family.
His wife was born and raised in Roseburg, Oregon,
and all three of his children are raised here.
So he's got pretty deep roots in the community.
But Mike was originally born in the Palestinian territories
in the West Bank town of Nablus,
where some of his family still live.
He was raised in Kuwait until he was 18 and came to the States.
Now, you've probably talked to a lot of people.
For how many people, when you mention that,
is that the turning point where they say,
oh, he must have been doing something then
since he comes from that area?
Certainly there are people who say that,
and I've seen that more as commentary on the blogs and elsewhere.
Fortunately, we've largely gotten just supportive email.
But there are people whose first response is,
well, you know, hey, if the government picked him up
and a judge agreed to hold him in this material witness detention,
then they must know something.
And so, you know, the population does cleave here.
And people who, despite all evidence to the contrary,
continue to trust the government and the law enforcement
to conduct these matters in secret.
And those of us for whom this,
whether other things in the past have crossed the line,
this crosses the line.
And, you know, I think I fall into the category of people
who've been deeply concerned by growing governmental powers,
but probably not into the category,
I haven't until now been in the category of people
who've kind of gotten off my butt to do something about it.
This really crossed the line for me.
You know, this is a guy who is about as apolitical and peaceful
as anybody I know, which doesn't, of course, make him innocent,
but it does mean that he is entitled, like anyone else,
to the rights and freedoms that we all assume we have.
And this completely punctured my bubble
about what those rights and freedoms really were.
You know, a close reading of this 1984 material witness statute,
combined with the court seals and other things,
basically say that the government can hold people and U.S. citizens
indefinitely, you know, more or less at their whim.
That makes you wonder how many other cases like this
are going on right now that we don't know about.
That's right.
There was an article in the Washington Post last November
that surveyed defense attorneys around the country
and identified probably less than the totality of the cases,
but identified at least 44 cases as of last November
where Arab American men were being held in this material witness status,
which is to say held indefinitely without charge.
But nobody really knows the full number.
The ACLU is in litigation right now to get a disclosure on that,
but at this point the government won't say who they're holding
or how long they've held them or what they might be suspected of.
That's pretty unbelievable.
Now, you've known Mike for, how long did you say you knew him for?
He started working for me in 1992,
and I don't want to position myself as his best friend in the world,
but he was a great guy.
He did excellent work for us in development of the Indio Video,
one of the early digital video codecs, compressor-decompressors,
and surrounding software.
He later was co-author of a book on the MMX multimedia extensions
and some software we developed in our lab at Intel called RDX,
the Realistic Display Mixer.
And when this happened to him on March 20,
was it you who spearheaded the movement to get this known?
There's certainly been several of us,
but I got the domain name and put up a website
and organized, we've gotten some donations for his legal defense fund in the mail,
and, you know, since a number of people know me
and I have reasonably good press contacts,
I've been sort of the lead guy on talking to the press on this.
And how many other employees have signed on for this?
Well, there's quite a few.
As I said, I'm a former Intel employee.
There's several other former Intel employees,
some of, in fact, my current colleagues.
There's a woman named Debbie Burke,
who was Mike's human resources manager when he was at Intel.
She's participating here,
as well as some people that don't know him and don't have Intel backgrounds.
So, but I'd say, you know, in terms of people with active involvements here,
there's, you know, eight or ten.
And then, you know, that goes to the other end of the spectrum,
people who came to the rally that we held on the steps of the U.S. courthouse,
there were probably 30 Intel employees there
and 50 or 60 people from the high-tech community,
as well as another 100 or 120 people from elsewhere in the community here in Portland.
That's really good.
That's more than we got at the Kevin Mitnick rally.
We were very gratified about that
because we really only had about 36 hours to publicize it on the net.
And we had, as I said, between 150 and 200 people there
at 8.30 on a drizzly, 45-degree morning in Portland.
Now, have you gotten support from groups like EFF, ACLU, that kind of thing?
Yeah, the ACLU here in Oregon has been very supportive.
Dave Fedanky, who's the executive director,
they have made a couple of press releases about Mike's case
and about the illegitimacy or the objections to this use of the material witness statute.
I haven't actually had any contact with EFF.
I don't know whether this, other than the fact that Mike is a worker with a long history
in the high-tech domain and the information technology business,
I'm not sure whether this is in any way distinctively an electronic freedom issue or not.
No, so I haven't contacted EFF.
We have had information that Amnesty International is having a look at the case,
but their ability to influence the Justice Department,
with all due respect to them, I have a very high regard for Amnesty International.
Their ability to influence the Justice Department is probably not very high.
No, but their way of getting the word out to the rest of the world is pretty high.
Yes, and that's why we have absolutely made them aware of what's going on.
So, yes.
Okay, well, we want to take phone calls.
Actually, should we do something about the static?
Should we try to do something about the static?
Steve, do you think this is coming from your end?
I can't actually hear it.
Oh, you don't hear it at all.
Bernie, how about you?
I'm hoping that it's not coming from my end.
Maybe I'll stop moving around.
That might help things.
Well, it started just now.
Bernie, are you still there?
Yes, I can hear the static.
You hear the static.
It didn't happen while I was on hold until you brought me in on the conversation.
Okay, I'm going to try isolating the two of you and see if we can pin down where it's coming from.
There's a little scientific experiment here, and hopefully I won't lose anybody.
So I'm just going to put you guys on hold and then come back to you one by one.
Okay, and who is on this line?
Who's here?
I'm here.
Okay, Steve, you've got the static, it looks like.
Let me just make sure Bernie doesn't have the static.
Hold on.
And Bernie, are you there?
Bernie?
I'm here, and I hear no static at all.
No static.
Okay, so the static is definitely coming from that other line, whether it's our line or Steve's line, I'm not sure.
So we're going to try to call him again.
Okay.
Steve, what we're going to do is we're going to call you again.
That way we can hopefully have another chance of not having static.
Sure.
I'll hang up.
You can call me back.
We'll do that.
Thank you.
All right.
All right, so that's how we solve problems here at the radio station.
First, let's make sure that there's no static on that actual phone line.
Listen to a dial tone.
Let's hit a digit.
That sounds nice and clean, doesn't it?
Sounds good, yeah.
Okay.
You know, wait for static to kick in.
No, no, there's no static.
All right, all right.
So I guess that means that this line is usable.
So let's give him a call.
And, well, Jeff, why don't you banter on about something while I dial this number.
I'm trying to hit all the buttons.
I'm just curious, does he have brother, relatives?
I mean, I'm trying to understand why they've chosen to pick on this gentleman.
Does he read 2600?
Hear that?
There's static again.
That's it?
I hear it again.
That's coming from us.
You're right.
Hmm, okay.
This is what we're going to do.
Bernie, are you still there?
Bernie?
I'm still here.
I'm wondering if it's the channel on the board that you have this gentleman on.
Well, it all comes up in the same channel, but it might be the phone line.
So what we're going to do is we're going to call him on your crystal clear phone line.
Then we're going to try to call you back on that phone line and see if we can't get rid of it that way.
All right, bye.
All right.
What I didn't tell Bernie is that if we still have static, he's going to have to go
Obviously, we have to talk to our guest of the week.
All right.
Hopefully, these technical problems can be ironed out.
Wait for our little special tone.
Okay.
Oh, that's no good.
It rejected my access code.
Boy, this is turning into a real farce, isn't it?
All right, let's try again.
The thing about being a hacker is not doing things perfectly, but able to do what you want with what you've got.
Yeah, well, I'm doing it perfectly.
It's just the machine is so imperfect that
I was speaking for the listeners.
I was trying to drum up, you know, a groundswell of support.
Yeah, if there still are any listeners.
Listen to that.
Do you hear that?
No, I don't see.
All right.
Well, you know, there's only so much we can deal with here.
That's unbelievable.
So it's our phone system, apparently.
I guess.
But only going out on that number before it even connects.
Hello.
Steven, are you there?
Okay.
We still have static, but we don't know why.
And we're not going to let it bother us.
Okay.
I'll get you another phone, which makes for good science or bad science.
Yeah.
Nobody knows what's going on here.
But we have to try to get Bernie back.
So I'm going to put you on hold while we do that.
Okay.
Sorry for all this, but that's the way it works here.
Okay.
Now we're going to try and get Bernie back in.
And your phone calls are welcome at 212-209-2900.
Entry code 1 if you're out of the United States.
I see Bernie's still crystal clear.
How does it know?
Maybe it's using a different...
Trunk or something, yeah.
Yeah.
But before it even connects, the static gets sent to us.
Maybe it's Portland.
Yeah, maybe it's Portland.
I don't think it's his phone, because the static started before he answered.
The static started before I entered the access code.
Yeah.
Is that weird?
B-A-I.
B-A-I, but in a way that I've never seen before.
It's like it's intelligently picking numbers to put static on.
It's unbelievable.
Okay, Stephen, sorry for all the technical snafus there,
but this is the best we can do.
We're going to have to live with the static.
For the FBI listening in.
Yeah, you know, they can never tap in without making noise.
So clumsy.
Yeah.
Anyway, our phone number, 212-209-2900.
We're speaking about the Mike Haywash.
How do you pronounce his name?
Haywash.
Haywash.
Mike Haywash Case, he was an employee.
He was an employee of Intel up until the time he was abducted, right?
Yeah, well, he was a full-time employee through 2001
and a contract employee most recently.
Uh-huh.
Now, he was taken from Intel?
Was he in the office?
Yeah, he was on his way to work when he was arrested by the FBI.
And we're speaking with former co-worker Stephen McGeady,
who is spearheading the free MikeHaywash.org website,
and I guess you're getting a lot of traffic to that site, right?
Yeah, I haven't.
Yeah, I haven't tallied it up very recently,
but we were slash-dotted last week,
and I think the high point was somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 distinct visits in a 24-hour period.
Not bad.
Total distinct visits is top to 100,000 by this point.
Well, I'll tell you, you know, getting the pressure on
and getting people to know about this is key in having things done.
We saw that happen with the Bernie S. case.
We saw that happen with the Kevin Mitnick case.
And hopefully, you know, judging from the strong reaction that you've gotten so far,
this nonsense won't be going on for very much longer.
Yeah, well, I certainly hope so.
Whether we are able to exert any influence remains to be seen,
but we do want to keep this in the public eye,
not only to make sure that he's not forgotten and doesn't feel that way,
but also because he and his wife are now facing between $150,000 and $250,000 in legal fees.
While he's an Intel engineer, he's not a rich man.
Uh-huh.
Okay, let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Yeah, I have a question for Jim,
but I just want to mention to your guest that I think this is a case of racism
because this is a guy who works for Intel, a big company,
and they're just picking on him because, you know, whatever.
But anyway, Jim, a question for you.
Yeah.
Since when? Do you know why the transit fares are going up?
Because they have people cleaning just the flags on the trains.
Since when, you know, do they just hire people to clean flags on the trains?
I have no idea.
Rebel, you know, you're always off topic.
It's nice that you're so consistent, but please, not tonight.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hi, I'm intrigued by the Saddam statue and Pentagon flag story.
How did the independents dig that up?
How would they know that that flag was from the Pentagon?
I imagine it's been publicized.
I think that was part of the whole flying it there in the first place.
Somebody said in the military this is the same flag that was flying over the Pentagon.
I've heard it in different sources as well.
So it was the Americans who publicized this?
I believe so.
I believe they publicized that, not realizing that it would make us look very bad.
Very interesting.
This is the first I've heard of it.
Yeah, I know.
A lot of things you don't hear about unless you explore a little bit.
Well, it certainly casts a different light on much of the events.
I just want to see a live long shot of that area where they were tearing down the statue
so we can see was it full of people
or was it actually just a very small section in a fenced off area?
I'll search for the tape.
All right, good luck.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
No, you're not.
Okay, let's go over here.
And good evening, you're on the air.
You know, I think these calls are moving faster than I can get to them.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi.
I think as far as this thing with the Palestinian getting arrested from Intel is concerned,
some way or the other I've been following this war scene since 1991 with Joe Lieberman and stuff.
I just feel that this has been a very Zionist move
and I think they're really interested in just kind of culminating the anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S.
So all these things are coming up, which really doesn't have any grounds whatsoever,
but it works out in the best interest of Israel because that's exactly what they want to do.
And it's like a psychological warfare that they want to present to the Arab,
you know, just kind of weaken them to say, oh, look, you know, we got this grandiose power in our favor.
And this is what's going on with the Palestinians and all these people.
And it's really a pathetic move by the Zionist people.
And I just don't think they understand that it can really backfire on them
because I see it in the peace movements all around how people are now really voicing exactly what they think about Israel.
So that's my feel of it.
OK, well, thanks for not holding back.
We somehow lost Steve.
Bernie, you're still there, right?
I'm still here.
OK, I don't know what's going on here.
Somehow we lost Steve.
He should have been on there.
I'm going to have to put you on hold again and hang up on this person.
I'm sorry about that, but it had to be done.
Got to get this line back.
And we have a dial tone.
And now I'm going to start dialing the number and wait for the static to come back.
Should have known when the static disappeared that he must have disappeared too.
OK, wait for the static.
No static.
Oh, that's a good sign.
Of course, because we were going to get that because we had no static.
This is what happens when you use Zionist phone services.
OK, let's not dial this number out in the clear.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Please, if anyone out there has a phone system that works.
All right.
OK.
No static so far.
Stephen, are you there?
I still am.
I'm so sorry.
I don't know how we lost you, but we did somehow.
OK.
So I'm going to hit these magic buttons again.
Hopefully they won't malfunction a second time.
Bring Bernie S. back into the mix.
Bernie, are you there now?
I'm back.
OK, good.
Well, you never left, but we're going to take some more phone calls and hopefully we can do this.
All right.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, hi.
Love the show.
Thank you.
You guys are great.
I just heard the last call or comment on the fact that we seem to be doing the bidding of the Zionists that seem to be running this.
I should point out Stephen didn't get to hear that phone call.
Maybe you could paraphrase your comment.
If you want to recap it, go right ahead.
Basically, the lady said that this is a move that we seem to be doing the bidding of the Zionists
and that the Israelis inside Israel seem to be very happy to show how the U.S. is supporting them.
Kind of like saying, look, look who I've got in my corner.
So, you know, I find it appalling how few people in this country know, hey, what Zionism is really all about.
Even Jews in this country don't seem to have very much information on, you know, publicly stated Zionist goals.
And it scares me that we as the only superpower in the country are doing the bidding of a few people,
and I say few as a percentage term, a very small percentage of the people here in this country,
and the rest of us are being reflected in the world, almost rightly so, I hate to say it, as crazed bullies in these conflicts.
Well, can you tie it into this case, this particular case?
Honestly, I caught a little bit about the fact that somebody working for Intel who happens to be Palestinian, is that right?
Palestinian-American.
Either way, I don't know anything about that case, but I think that lady might have touched on something,
that there seems to be a will or an effort on the part of almost every U.S. agency to bend over backwards
to make sure they don't, A, offend Israel, but more importantly, B, do the bidding.
And when you tie it, when you look at the congressional race in Atlanta that just happened,
where, you know, someone had the absolute goal, and I use that sarcastically,
but they had the absolute goal to state the truth in the House,
and the Israeli lobby came and did everything they could to get this woman out of Congress.
I think it's a shame, I think it points to...
Who is this person you're referring to?
It was a congresswoman in Atlanta.
Just recently, in the midterm elections, she was...
She lost because she stated...
She stood up in Congress and said that she thought that Israel was acting badly
and breaking international law with their treatment of the Palestinians in Palestine,
in the occupied territories.
Okay, listen, thanks for your opinion. I want to get some more phone calls in.
Thank you.
Okay.
Stephen, any comments on...
Well, I'll try to be brief.
You know, Mike was born in Palestine.
His mother and sister continue to live there.
But, you know, he was very interested in peace and not in inflaming the situation.
Mike worked at Intel's plant in Israel,
and one of the first calls and the later emails I got
was from his Israeli Jewish manager there,
a wonderful man named Benny Eitan,
expressing his concern for this situation.
So I think there's a lot of people who might want to make this into something that it, I think, isn't.
Our concern is primarily that a U.S. citizen, an Arab American, get his civil liberties here.
I think international politics, those are good discussions,
but probably not really all that relevant to Mike's plight.
Okay. Let's take another phone call then.
And good evening, you're on the air.
Hello.
I wanted to ask a question of the 44 Arab American citizens who have been detained.
Has anyone ever been released and been interviewed?
Yes, there have been a number of them who have been released.
One of the most celebrated stories was written about by Deborah Sontag in the New York Times,
perhaps about a year or a little bit more ago.
There was an Arab American medical student, or excuse me,
it was an Arab immigrant medical student in Texas
who had been detained under this material witness statute for two weeks or more
and finally released because the whole thing was just a mistake,
just they had the right name, wrong guy.
One of the most chilling lines from that, and I'll only paraphrase it,
was a statement that this journalist, Deborah Sontag, got from an FBI spokesperson,
and that was that this medical student, quote,
brought it on himself as soon as he lawyered up.
Well, we had to ship him out of there, and that really made the process take much longer.
I found that a really chilling idea that
an attorney would end up spending three weeks in prison.
Okay. Again, I've got to apologize for the ridiculous state of our phone system.
You guys still there?
I'm still here.
Okay. Sorry about that.
Occasionally that happens where we just get feedback for no reason.
Did you finish your point?
Yes, I did.
Okay. Let's take another phone call then.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Yeah. Hi. This ties obliquely into what you're speaking of.
On Channel 21, there was a premium that they were giving away called
Children of Abraham or Sons of Abraham,
and it was a video of comparisons between Judaism and Christianity.
Now, I don't see anything bad in doing that, but in this day and age,
I mean, there are three what could be called Abrahamic religions,
and Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
So to leave Islam out in a time like this,
I don't know whether it was an omission to just create people into saying,
well, they don't count or what's going on.
But it seemed at this stage of the game of whatever it could be called,
I mean, it's always good to promote a common ground among people,
but to leave out a larger common ground seemed like a sin of omission
that ties into a kind of general anti-Muslim atmosphere.
Okay. Thanks for your opinion.
Okay. Thank you, Baba.
Let's move on to another phone call.
And good evening. You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Good evening, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
You know, I'm sorry to bring this up,
but it's amazing to me that this conspiratorialism is allowed to just go on like this.
Well, it's allowed because, you know, it's free airwaves.
So state your opinion.
I realize it's freedom of speech, but let me tell you something.
You know, and I don't know this particular case of the gentleman you have on the phone.
He sounds like a nice enough guy, and I don't know anything about this guy.
But I got to tell you,
you hear all these callers call up and accuse the U.S. and Israel of Zionism
and to accuse the rest of us of being the evil ones.
How come there's no talk about how evil Iraq and evil Palestine is
with the suicide bombings and terrorism and all this?
Where is that at?
Well, if you can tie it into the conversation somehow, go right ahead.
But we're trying to talk about this guy that was pretty much abducted by U.S. authorities,
and we really haven't given a reason for it yet, and he's been held for almost a month.
So, you know, I could see why people might be criticizing the U.S. government
because of something like that.
I could see why people might be criticizing the Israeli government
because he's from the Palestinian area.
I don't know how much it has to do with his particular case,
but, you know, what we're talking about is this one person's plight right now.
I understand what you're saying, Emmanuel, but I'm just saying that this is...
Why is everyone calling up and saying, you know, the Zionist government...
Do people even know what the term Zionism means?
Well, go ahead. Tell us.
Well, I'm asking you because it's obvious that everybody just thinks
that the United States is the evil one here
and that the guy is just being held without any explanation.
Well, I mean, he wasn't abducted by another country.
He was abducted by our country.
So, in that particular light, I think, yes, the United States is the evil one
as far as this particular case goes, you know, because they have the explaining to do.
The authorities there have the explaining to do.
Jim, you have a point.
Well, I'd like to just point out, I agree with the caller,
but what we're doing here is not discussing the forest.
We're discussing one tree.
And this caller, as well as two of the previous callers,
are, in my humble opinion, a bit out of line.
We should be discussing Mike Hawass and his current problems,
not whether the U.S. is the axis of evil,
whether it's Iraq, who is the axis of evil, or whatever.
That's immaterial.
There's a guy in jail for what appears to be no good reason so far.
Either give us a good reason or do something about it.
That's what we're discussing.
Yeah, I have to agree.
Any problems with that on that?
If I can add, you know, I do know Mike because I knew this guy personally.
First of all, he's an American.
He's a U.S. citizen.
He's lived in this country more than half his life.
He deplores terrorism, whether it's in Palestine or in New York City or in Iraq,
as much as anyone I know.
I think the issue here is why is he being held indefinitely and without charge,
despite the fact that he's a U.S. citizen?
It's hard for us to ignore the fact that one of the reasons he's probably being held, again,
indefinitely without charge is that he is an Arab American
and not a rich middle-class white guy like me and maybe some others.
Steven, we're out of time.
Can you quickly give information on what people can do who want to show support?
By all means, go to the website, which is www.freemikehawash.org.
That's freemikehawash.org.
And on there you will find some pointers to how to write your congressman.
You have senators, U.S. representatives.
You'll find a number of addresses and methods that you can donate to his legal defense fund.
As I pointed out, he faces absolutely bankrupting legal fees on this.
You can join a mailing list online to keep apprised of the rallies
and other things that we're doing in his defense.
And there are, of course, links to legal opinions and other kinds of things for your information.
Is there anything people can do who don't have Internet access?
People can send me an e-mail.
No.
Then, yes, you can send a donation to Freemikehawash.
Care of First Initial S, Mickegady, M-C-G-E-A-D-Y, 2229 Northeast Thompson Street, T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N,
Portland, Oregon, 97212.
We will receive that with our thanks, and it will go to nothing other than Mike's legal defense.
Okay, Stephen Mickegady, thank you so much for joining us.
Sorry about all the technical problems.
Thank you.
Everything updated on this story in weeks ahead.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein for Off The Hook.
Good night.
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