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I'm Hugh Hamilton. Join me as we explore the issues and events making news across the nation
and around the world with expert guests, insightful analysis, and of course,
your comments, questions, and observations. Let's talk back right here on WBAI New York.
Or you could say it another way, you're listening to WBAI New York,
and it's seven o'clock time once again for Off The Hook.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
I hope that's understood.
So,
and good to hear by the program is Off The Hook. Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this
Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike. Hi.
Dot Rett. Howdy.
Voltaire. Hello.
Rob T. Firefly. Good evening.
Jim. Hi.
Bernie S. Down in Philadelphia. Greetings from Philadelphia.
All right. Well, as many of you know, there's been all kinds of headlines and consternation
and things like that. I just want to start off by asking you guys, what gives already? I mean,
I send an email to Mike, all right, and I'm saying some things about Bernie that are kind
of nasty, I suppose. But then here it is on the front page of the New York Times, and I think,
you know, Mike, you should die for this because that's something that was not meant to be released
and you went and released it. Or somebody got access and released it.
Bernie S. deserves to know the truth about what you said about him.
Does he really? Does he really deserve to know the truth?
I think so.
What is the truth? What is the truth anyway? I think the truth is what I want it to be,
not necessarily what I say.
Well, Jim.
How do we fix this? How do we take it back? How do we-
Arrest Mike. There we go.
Well, there is an international arrest going out for Mike right now, in fact.
We can't figure out where he is.
Actually, we were just talking with Jim and, you know, they were saying,
you know, we should execute him as a spy. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to all that. But it's a serious matter.
Should I leave before you people kill me? Because I deserve to know.
Well, you are in some kind of glass enclosed chamber already.
I believe in open, you know, openness. I think I should know if people are going to kill me or not.
Openness sounds awfully like socialist to me.
And I think that's something that we need to fend off with every fiber of our beings.
Yeah. So there is this story that is appearing everywhere.
The story does not die. WikiLeaks does not die because
there are so many things out there to leak and to spread around.
And the latest, this is my favorite, actually. This latest release is something that I think
is the most fun for everybody because it's not so much just military intelligence.
It's diplomatic gossip. It's what people are saying about other people.
And it's kind of embarrassing. In fact, it's very embarrassing for some people,
for the things they say. But it's very entertaining. And also, it's not just something
that is aimed at one particular government. It's aimed at everybody.
China is talking smack about North Korea. And Saudi Arabia is saying things about Iran that
they really didn't want to have come out. And everybody is kind of having to deal with that.
The truth hurts. But it's out there now.
You know, it reminds me of a lot like when we were back in high school and we would get caught
passing notes in class. And then the teacher would punish us by reading the note aloud in
front of the whole class. And now I know that we should have called for the teacher's execution.
Well, I was going to say so WikiLeaks is the teacher then. I think that's when I get out of
this. But OK, so here's the interesting thing about all this. We've heard the headlines. I
imagine we have a few highlights of things that have been said. China saying that North Korea is
acting like a spoiled child. Is that what they said? That's awesome. But are there any others
that spring to mind? In England, there's actually a huge like political storm brewing where the head
of the bank, which is supposed to be like a non-political player, it turned out to be like
lobbying on behalf of the conservatives before they got elected. So he's like everybody.
That was in one of these diplomatic cables. Yeah, and now they're asking him to step down
as a result of the leak. Bernie, anything that you can recollect?
I got a kick out of the one where, well, there was a whole series of
U.S. State Department cables with our alleged allies or what we're trying to pawn off. Our
government is trying to pawn off Guantanamo detainees, the ones that were finally releasing
after they realized that they didn't really do much wrong.
Yeah, they tried to send some to Kiribati. And Kiribati rings a bell for me because that's
where the crew of the freighter that I took from Japan to California were from.
Yeah, and they're offering the millions of dollars to locate some Chinese Muslims. But you know...
Wait, wait, wait, it gets better. It gets better. Our government's trying to pawn off all these
detainees and trying to bribe other countries to take them. Well, Saudi Arabia doesn't need
our money. They got tons of money. But the king, Saudi King Abdullah, in talks with U.S. officials,
in one of these cables he floated the idea of implanting RFID chips inside the Guantanamo Bay
inmates so they could be tracked after the release. And he said, quote,
it worked with us for horses.
Okay, you know, that's just funny. And that deserves to be heard. I think everything that
I've read so far deserves to be heard. And it's not the kind of thing that...
Our politicians say things like that all the time now, and nobody seems to berate them.
So yeah, I don't really see any harm in this. Daughterette?
Um, I was just thinking, first of all, that if we're supposed to have representatives in a,
you know, what we call a democracy, do our, you know, the state, does the State Department have
any right to say, oh, no, no, no, these are private conversations. You're not supposed to
know about what we're doing. It seems strange. Well, the people should know what's going on
in their name. I agree with that. But they certainly have the ability to keep things
secret if they want to. They haven't done a very good job with that.
Here's the thing. This set of documents was available to three million people.
Yeah. And only, as far as we know,
anyway, only one leaked it. And that's kind of not enough.
Now, if one of these three million people told me on the phone what was said in one of those,
are they guilty too? I imagine they probably are. But I mean...
Are you saying someone did?
I'm just saying if they did.
We could make a test case.
And how many secrets? That's a lot of secrets. That's a lot of secrets of being kept
with a lot of people. Three million people having to keep however many million secrets.
Too many secrets. I think that's been said once.
And that brings us to the point of why are certain things being kept secret? The whole
idea behind classified information was to protect information that could result in,
you know, the wrong things falling into our enemies' hands. Things like troop movements
and weapons data, you know, in times of war and that sort of thing. Are we really legally
supposed to be protected from people gossiping on our behalf as our representatives?
Well, if you listen to the Secretary of State, then apparently all the stuff that is released
threatens lives and the United States is now under attack.
But it's really easy to say that for everything that you don't want to have out there. It's a
security risk. You just keep leaning on security risk for everything and it's an abuse of that
power. As you can see from what's been released this week, it's mostly comedy. And I think in
the case of the United States, some people might disagree, but I think the United States didn't
come off looking that bad overall. I mean, they basically did a few things that, you know,
said a few things like, why don't you write down the frequent flyer numbers of ambassadors and
things like that. That's what spies do, I guess, but no evidence of secret torturing and all kinds
of other things that they wouldn't want to have revealed. Of course, that means they haven't
said it in those particular communiques, but there's nothing here that I see that's
fatally damaging.
There are some embarrassing stuff.
Embarrassing, yes.
No, damaging for the U.S. They showed them pressuring Spanish judges and German judges
not to prosecute the CIA people for kidnapping their citizens.
Well, they say that publicly, don't they? That they don't want them to prosecute.
No, but this is the first time we have evidence that they actually interfered.
But of course they did. I mean, are you really surprised by this?
We know this. This is the kind of thing that happens. Nothing here surprises me.
It's still useful to have it in record. Otherwise, people would just be like,
oh, he just interferes.
What I'm saying is there's no smoking gun saying that, oh, look, the United States is
actually doing this. They're sending arms, say, to Iran in exchange for funding the Contras or
something like that. Nothing like that. Nothing that goes counter to anything that we already
expected. Some surprises, some embarrassment. Well, anyway, here's the other part of the story.
This happened yesterday, didn't it?
Interpol has put the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, on their most wanted list
after Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a drawn out rape investigation.
Now, say what you will about that. And of course, we don't know the facts about the actual charges
against him in Sweden. But the fact that they suddenly put this on their site, he's one of
the most wanted people in the world as a result of this. And I don't know how many people are
wanted for questioning in similar cases, but they're all in the Interpol website.
If you're trying to make it seem like there's a connection, I don't think you could do a better
job than to do this now. And I think that's been the case with this whole investigation from the
start. They basically do something. They make a move at the most inopportune moment so that it
appears that there is some kind of a conspiracy, even if you don't believe there's a conspiracy.
And I found the actual wanted page. Basically, it gives his information, says when he was born,
where he's from, and there's no picture. As if it's hard for Interpol to get a picture of
Julian Assange. There are pictures everywhere. And here it just says not available. How could
the picture not be available? Are they worried about copyright infringement or something like
that? Interpol? There are freely licensed pictures of Julian Assange on the internet.
Maybe they don't really want to catch him. Maybe they want somebody else to catch him first.
Maybe. There's all kinds of ways to read this. But when you listen to what people are saying,
and this is the part that really was riveting to me. Who should we start with? We'll get to
him last because he's the best. All right, how about this? The incoming chairman of the House
Homeland Security Committee. What does that mean? Homeland Security Committee? Well, I'll tell you,
it means God help us because when I say the name of who it's going to be, you'll probably,
I don't want to think. The incoming chairman wants the Obama administration to aggressively
pursue Julian Assange, Representative Peter King. And I have to apologize to everybody for Peter
King because he's from Long Island. I'm from Long Island. And this guy is the biggest meathead I
think I have ever heard utter words inside the House of Representatives. And that includes
everybody who's visited the House of Representatives and shouted out all kinds of things in the gallery.
Some of the things he has said, he's spoken out against Michael Jackson after he died. He's
said all kinds of outlandish things against people he doesn't agree with. But anyway,
I digress. But he says here, he's asked Attorney General Eric Holder to take quick action.
I am calling on the Attorney General supporting his efforts to fully prosecute WikiLeaks and its
founder for violating the Espionage Act. Yeah, he's now the ranking Republican on the Homeland
Security panel. He asked Hillary Clinton if it's possible to determine if WikiLeaks could be
labeled as a foreign terrorist organization. Doing that, he said, would give the U.S. government
authority to, quote, seize their funds and go after anyone who provides them with any help
or contributions or assistance whatsoever. Yeah. And he doesn't stop there. I'm confident you'll
find many people in the Congress, the House and the Senate who will support my demand for the
prosecution and also the declaring of WikiLeaks to be a foreign terrorist organization. He also,
he goes on, he does not shut up this guy. He says that the latest document dump from WikiLeaks,
as opposed to the dump from his mouth, has put American lives at risk all over the world. This
is worse even than a physical attack on Americans. It's worse than a military attack. Tell that to
people who survived 9-11, that this is worse somehow than a physical attack, you know?
Or tell that to people who are victims of U.S. bombings, which are actual military attacks,
which he doesn't seem to have a problem with. Well, he says a physical attack on Americans.
Well, physical attack by Americans is just as bad or worse if you're not an American.
Yeah, you're changing his quote. I don't want to change his quote. He says it's worse than a
physical attack on Americans. He says this is worse than Pearl Harbor. That's what he's saying.
Peter King says this is worse than Pearl Harbor. Shame on you, Peter King. And I call on you to
refute your own remarks here because you obviously don't know what you're talking about.
How can releasing some embarrassing documents be even considered anything close to a physical
attack on anybody? Now, Joe Lieberman, Senator Joe Lieberman, the independent, yes, I put that
in quotes, from Connecticut, used to be a Democrat, is a bit more measured in his speech.
While it's true that what WikiLeaks did may result in damage to some people, it's not al-Qaeda.
Normally, we reserve that designation for groups that fit the traditional definition of terrorism,
which is, Mr. King, that they are using violence to achieve a political end. Lieberman said,
I want to talk to Pete and figure out what he's got in mind before ruling anything out.
I'd like to talk to him and figure out what's actually in his mind, if anything.
Well, Lieberman also deserves a good talking to.
Well, there is some new developments. Mike, you have some information on something that
happened today involving Lieberman. Oh, yeah. Lieberman did this?
Well, Lieberman was behind it. Oh, yeah. Lieberman did this.
Yeah. So WikiLeaks, at least part of their website,
was hosted by Amazon.com, which has a server service that you can rent servers.
I didn't know you could do that, really. Yeah. It's pretty popular among certain people.
We'll get to this later. But basically, they're there. They went to Amazon because their other
site that they had a couple of days before was kicked off the net by a denial of service attack.
We'll get to that in just a little bit. But what happened today?
The Amazon story? Yes.
Okay. So what happened was that Amazon pulled the plug, the virtual plug, so that the server
is no longer online. And Joe Lieberman, until they had pulled the plug, Joe Lieberman called
for a boycott of Amazon. And so now they're calling for a boycott of WikiLeaks. He says,
that Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the
standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.
I call on any other- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They seized the material? WikiLeaks
seized the material? That's what Joe Lieberman says.
How does WikiLeaks seize the material? That doesn't make any sense.
So you're expecting Joe Lieberman to make sense?
Well, I expect him to make more sense than Peter King. It sounded like he's... All right,
continue. I'm sorry.
I think he's making more sense than Peter King, if that's your standard.
He continues to call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks
to immediately terminate its relationship with them.
Okay. Let me just step in here. That's actually something that seems not acceptable. What's a
level below acceptable? It's not unreasonable to ask people to do something like that, to say,
okay, just boycott them then. Don't give them access, but to mandate it, to use force of any
sort. This seems like an effective attack, but of course, it's going to be a counterattack. Of
course, you can simply put it someplace else as a result, right? This won't be hard to get around.
Yeah. So WikiLeaks twittered that now they'll just host their stuff on servers in Europe,
which is nice, but there's only, I don't know, whatever, 30 countries in Europe.
If he makes enough people angry, he's going to have to stop hosting altogether. And that
censorship, clearly. True. But he can't make everybody angry. There's got to be some country
someplace. Volterra, then Bernie. There really should be a standard, though, for what Joe
Lieberman did. Imagine if he called up a newspaper and said, I don't like what you're publishing,
that's really unacceptable. So I don't think we should be anything near defending his actions.
Yeah. Well, I mean, he can spout his opinion, he can put pressure, but it's up to a company.
If a company says we don't want to do business with you, they do have that right. But if everybody
feels afraid, and that they can't do business, or they'll get some kind of retribution, that's
where you really get into some dangerous areas. Bernie? Well, you know, I'm really trying to wrap
my mind around Joe Lieberman's mindset here. Newspapers like the New York Times have for
many decades published stories and information that were classified. And, you know, that was,
you could arguably say it was the same sort of illegally obtained information. So why doesn't
Lieberman just, you know, be true to his own words and call for the suspension of the New York Times
web hosting company? But what he's saying about... Hang on, hang on, I'm texting. I'm texting him
suggesting that. Well, continue, continue. But all these people that are claiming that these
documents being released are threatening people's lives, it really brings hollow, I think, because
we all remember a couple, three months ago when Wikileaks released a whole bunch of military
documents. And all this, you know, gnashing of teeth and wailing about this is going to
result in people being killed, whatever. It didn't happen. No, there's no evidence of that.
No, in fact, the Pentagon even backpedaled and said, well, the Pentagon admitted that that wasn't
really a big deal after all. And this stuff doesn't even rise to the possible danger level
that the military stuff that was released. So this is just gossip information primarily. So,
you know, the claims that this information, this latest release of documents is going to harm,
you know, put people's lives at risk, it really brings hollow. Well, I'd like to know if there's
a way to measure how many lives weren't put at risk by these documents being released, by all
documents being released. How do we measure that? How do we say that because this came out,
less people died? I mean, I'm making that claim right now, and I'm going to offer just as much
proof to back it up as anybody else has to back up a counterclaim. Dot-Ret. Well, I was just going to
make a comment to Bernie, which is that this is actually very interesting. The response to the
military documents released versus this most recent dump is very interesting because the people who
are affected aren't, you know, a couple of people in the military. Now it's all the politicians,
not just people from our State Department, but also politicians all around the world,
and their embarrassing conversations are coming out. So what we're seeing is people basically
just being upset that their gossip is coming out, and they're reframing the issue into saying
lives are at risk, and, you know, we can't allow this. And, you know, this organization,
they aren't journalists, they're doing something illegal, and no one should be allowed to do this.
Well, a lot of journalists have taken a very keen interest in this, and I think we're learning,
especially through this latest release, so much about how government and diplomacy and subterfuge
works, and I think that's something that's valuable, invaluable even. Now, moving on to some
more of our favorite people. Sarah Palin, who is widely tipped as a possible Republican candidate
for president in 2012. God, help us again. First Peter King, and now Sarah Palin with bright
futures. Did you just say there are people in this country who want Sarah Palin to be president?
Oh, there are. I've met some of them. I really have. They speak English, and it's amazing. You
know, you can actually carry on a conversation with them, and you hear all the words, and they
even, like, follow a certain order. They just don't make any sense. It's really weird. Anyway,
so Sarah Palin has said that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be hunted down in the way
that armed forces are targeting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Her outburst comes during a week when
the WikiLeaks founder faced troubling accusations with the Interpol International Police Organization
putting him on red notice. Red notice? That's worse than detention for alleged offenses. I'm
not trying to mock Interpol. I don't want to get them angry either. The notice does not amount to
an arrest warrant, but is aimed at locating Assange, whose whereabouts have been unknown
for quite some time. Assange denies the allegations, and basically what she wrote,
what she said on Facebook, that's how we quote people these days. We say, we repeat what they
say on Facebook. She said that he is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
She wrote, Assange is not a journalist any more than the editor of al-Qaeda's new English language
magazine Inspire is a journalist. Actually, you know what, if al-Qaeda really does have a magazine
called Inspire, I've seen this magazine, I think it might be a joke, but if you print the magazine,
even, you can be a terrorist and a journalist at the same time. You can be a journalist in all
sorts of things at the same time, but if you actually put something out, but it's a bad
example. Continuing here though, in a 2008 U.S. television interview with our presenter Katie
Couric, Palin herself appeared unable to name the newspapers she reads, but she continued here,
his past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to
the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?
She claimed WikiLeaks financial assets should be frozen just as we do to individuals who provide
material support for terrorist organizations. She said cyber tools should be used to permanently
dismantle WikiLeaks. In an interview with Forbes, Assange was asked for a response to rumors
that the famous hacker known as Mudge, who's been on this program, used to be in the loft back up in
Boston, rumors that he was working with the Pentagon to develop technology that can stop
such data leaks. Assange declined to comment directly, but he asserted that new forms of
communications were always a step ahead of technology aimed at stopping them. Now I think
that's interesting right there. That's the way to approach the situation. If the administration's
really interested in stopping this, you approach it from a technological view. You don't hunt
somebody down like Sarah Palin is insisting. You don't label like Peter King is insisting
organizations you don't like as terrorists. You figure out a technical way to deal with it and
see if that's a good solution. Or they could just not bother dealing with it at all and put
everything in the public domain. That's what I would like, but obviously we don't agree with
them. But it's so true. If you have a problem, deal with it properly and in a sane manner. What
really disturbs me here is that instead we have people like Sarah Palin basically saying,
if I don't agree with you, then you're not a journalist. That's not how free speech and
journalism is supposed to work. Yeah, yeah. And then we get to our final contestant tonight.
Mike Huckabee. Oh yeah. This comes from theatlanticwire.com. Everyone has an opinion
about Bradley Manning, the man who may or may not have enabled WikiLeaks to unleash a torrent
of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. The whistleblower's actions, which have been
hailed as heroic and decried as terroristic, have prompted at least one ex-governor to call
for the perpetrator's execution. Yes. Mike Huckabee says, whoever in our government leaked
that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less of execution is too kind a penalty.
He basically pivoted from the whistleblower to point the finger at another villain in the latest
WikiLeaks episode, The New York Times. He's not calling for their execution, not yet anyway.
In publishing the findings, the ex-governor argued that the paper showed an utter reckless
disregard for any responsible journalism by printing something that they know they obtained
in a way that is not appropriate. You know, after reading these reactions from people on
their particular corner of the spectrum, it just really bothers me. I was basically kind of trying
to be balanced about all this throughout the entire course of the story and try to understand
why some people are upset by this and some people feel compelled to turn other people in and things
like that. But when you see the reaction here, when you see what people are calling for, the
violence that they're calling for, the just irrational response to all this, it becomes
clear that this is a case of good versus bad and this side is on the bad side. And I think we really
we really need to start becoming a lot more aggressive and loud in how we respond to this
as far as supporting people who have the guts to stand up to this kind of nonsense. These guys are
showing their true colors. The people who are calling for executions and CIA hunting down and
labeling everybody that they don't like as terrorists, that is not the side to be on.
That's the side of irrational behavior. And I think everybody needs to go over to
bradleymanning.org, read some of the facts about what that guy's going through, what may have
motivated him and whatever it was he was involved in. And of course, wikileaks.org if you can get
there. But boy, those comments really kind of spooked me out a bit. What do you think, Bernie?
I think that the bradleymanning.org site ought to sort of bite its tongue in some respects,
because it's saying that Bradley released these documents. We don't even know that that happened.
Well, he's being accused of it, that's for sure.
That's true. But that particular website is not giving him the benefit of the doubt that he might
not have released these documents. So personally, I didn't see him release these documents.
Well, he says he did. And so if they are taking him at his word,
they might just be putting it because he says so.
Well, you know, this is what Adrian Lammer has said that he said.
Yeah, okay. So maybe the chat logs are forged and all that. But you know what? I think
we're sort of missing the point if we get into these courtroom antics of, well, he confessed or
didn't confess. He's being accused of this. He's being held in prison for this. He's facing all
kinds of penalties. And I think we're better served if we simply respond to what's being
thrown at him right now, whether he's innocent or guilty of whatever it is he's being accused of.
We need to respond to that and get the facts out. Go ahead, Rob.
I think we need to look at the bigger picture too, beyond Assange, beyond Manning, beyond any
one leak. Because the bigger picture is that we're now at a stage where anybody can sort of get
access to this information and then disseminate it. So if WikiLeaks dropped off the face of the
internet today, if we never heard another word from Assange or anyone else, someone else would
step up, get some free software together and make the next WikiLeaks.
Well, that's what kind of bothers me is that we're not seeing a whole lot of other
names and sites out there doing justice. There should be thousands of them. There should be
hundreds of thousands of them all over the world. And I hope that that's part of the problem of
what Julian is going through right now. He's being labeled as the person, the problem. And
all of us should be the problem. All of us should be the ones standing up to this kind of nonsense.
Because information should be out there. And if it already is out there, 3 million people
have access to it. That information is out there to an elite group that's keeping it secret from
us, the people who are paying for it all. And I think we have every right to know what's being
done in our name and what people are saying. And if they really feel strongly about keeping
it secret, well, they really should keep a better lid on it, which they certainly did not.
And I would also recommend to agencies, diplomatic agencies and private corporations and everyone
else who's worried that the bad things you do might get leaked, don't do bad things.
Yeah, the truth hurts. It does hurt. And if you're going to do bad things,
don't send an email about it. Don't write it down and post it someplace, post it on a
bulletin board that's only for government use. How many times have you said something about
somebody that's gotten back to them? It happens, happens all the time. And you know, it should
happen. You shouldn't be talking about people behind their backs. They should know what you're
saying about them. One thing Julian has said in interviews was that WikiLeaks makes it very easy
to do good things and very difficult to do bad things. And I don't think that's such a bad world
to live in. No. One thing though that particularly troubles me with the arrest warrant issued for
Julian, I mean, I think that if you're accused of a crime, you should answer to it. You should
defend yourself. But I'm looking for some kind of a guarantee that if he were to do that,
that nobody from the United States would try to grab him, try to interrogate him, anything like
that. I'm not seeing that. I'm not seeing any kind of guarantee. I'm seeing this as a thinly
veiled attempt to simply get a hold of him. And then once they do that, all manner of enforcement
from around the world will descend upon him. And that's why you don't show your face when that kind
of thing is surrounding you. Yeah, we have the Australian government threatening to take away
his passport and the United States government threatening to find some loophole to prosecute
him with. Well, the United States is able to extradite everybody they feel like. The Russians
arms dealer, people who sell pot in Amsterdam. It seems like everybody can be get a free trip
to the United States. You just have to commit a crime and be accused of it by the United States.
That English hacker. Yeah, the English hacker who is looking for UFO information.
He's got a free trip to the United States apparently. Now here's a piece. And by the way,
I'd like to take a lot of phone calls on this because I know this is a subject that many of
our listeners are really into. So let's try and take a lot of phone calls tonight. No long speeches.
I want to hear questions or comments. And of course, let's stay on topic because we're not
going to go off topic. We'll just say in advance that Cuba is very nice and I'd like to go back
there someday. So there's no need to call about that. Yes, that would be just fine. 212-209-2900
is our phone number. This is a piece that ran in the Christian Science Monitor a couple of days ago.
It's basically an opinion piece by Sheldon Richmond. Many are condemning Bradley Manning
for allegedly providing WikiLeaks with sensitive reports about U.S. foreign policy. But a government
that can make war while keeping essential information about its justification and conduct
secret is neither open nor fit for free people. First, it was a video of a helicopter gunship
killing and injuring unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two children and two newsmen as they
walked down a street in Baghdad. Then in two separate document dumps, hundreds of thousands
of classified military field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan were released to the public.
Now more than a quarter million State Department cables, more than 15,000 of them, of which are
classified secret and or no foreign, not to be shared with foreign governments. I didn't know
that term. No foreign. Wow. Have been released without authorization. The U.S. government's
problems with WikiLeaks continues and the Obama administration condemned in the strongest terms
the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security
information. The White House said the release of stolen cables was reckless and dangerous.
It attributes the leaks to private first class Bradley Manning, who has been in custody since
the release of the Baghdad video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder. In July, Mr. Manning was
charged with transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized
software to a classified computer system and communicating, transmitting and delivering
national defense information to an unauthorized source. He faces up to 52 years in prison.
Naturally, WikiLeaks refuses to confirm that Manning was the source of the documents, but
assuming he was, what are we to make of him? Is he a hero or a villain? I say hero. When a government
secretly engages in such consequential activities as aggressive wars justified by at best questionable
and at worst fabricated intelligence, covert bombings and assassinations and diplomatic
maneuvering designed to support such global meddling, the people in whose name that government
acts, and who could suffer retaliation, have a right to know. How can the American system be
regarded as participatory if the most potentially explosive government conduct is hidden? Are we the
people really in charge or not? Or is government of the people, by the people, for the people,
so much pablum to keep us contentedly ignorant? The same Obama administration that condemns leaks
has said transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what
their government is doing. But if the government decides what constitutes transparency, how can it
achieve either objective? There's more to this at the Christian Science Monitor, but I thought it
really got the point as to what this is all about. And assuming that Bradley Manning is the person
behind this, that's something to consider and to think about. And again, that website, bradleymanning.org,
get information there, learn more, and figure out ways you might be able to help. All right,
212-209-2900 is our phone number. Any questions or comments from any of you here first?
I think if we wait too much longer, we'll have an angry mob. Half of our board is lit up.
Okay, only half.
More than half, actually.
I remember the days when the full board would light up immediately.
Well, I'm not sure we have actually as many lines as we have lights, so.
Oh, okay. So some of the lights might be burned out. Okay, let me take all this tape off because
half our lines are covered by tape. I'm going to pick a number over here and welcome you to the
air. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hi. I just wanted to say in agreement with one of you that if the United States wanted to maintain
the high moral ground that it claims it wants to when it tries to tell everybody else what to do,
a policeman of the world, if it wanted to have the high moral ground,
people in the government should not do things that they're not willing to let the people know about.
Sort of like the way we live our lives, you know? You don't do things you don't want to be called on.
Well, I don't know that people in their private lives do the same kind of thing.
Yeah, but this isn't private. We're not talking about private lives. We're talking about
public policy and we're talking about things that affect the entire planet.
True.
Yeah. All right. Thanks for your call. 212-209-2900. Let's take another one.
We have a full switchboard now. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hello?
Yes. You're calling from a cell phone. Speak up.
Hey, sorry about that. I just want to say that, you know, nothing's black and white,
but I do think he's a hero because I think the world is changing. And, you know, the media used
to do stuff like that. Like the news used to blow up spots. But now, since news isn't blowing up
spots, we have to look for someone else to tell the people what's going on. And then, you know,
I mean, when Vietnam was going on, the news showed the horror of that war every day.
Yes, yes.
People lost.
Absolutely.
But now that doesn't happen. So, you know, we need more people to do stuff like that.
That has to be the new form of getting the word out.
OK. Thanks. Thanks for that call. And did you guys notice the ring current that was
going through there? That was bizarre. Wow. That was like back in the old days.
I thought he was calling us from a modem or something.
I don't think that was him. I think that was something in our instrument there.
Let's take another call. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Speak up.
All right. You got to speak up, folks. You got to speak up. Good evening. You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, good evening, folks. The world has to know that Americans are bloodthirsty killers.
All right. Well, you've just told them and now the world knows that. Thanks. It must feel good.
You know, one thing we haven't discussed yet. We're going to take more phone calls in just a
moment. 212-209-2900. There was this denial of service attack that took place earlier in the
week, which is what led WikiLeaks to be moved on to the Amazon hosting site. I've gotten a few
calls from journalists wanting to know the hacker connection here. You had one hacker that turned in
Bradley Manning, speaking about Adrian Lamo. And you have this other quote-unquote hacker who
knocked WikiLeaks off the net by sending a barrage of data and a denial of service attack.
Is this really anything to do with hacking, or are these people simply want attention?
Voltaire first, then Dottred. These are people that seem to be
in the tradition of hacktivists, but they kind of have anti-hacktivist view.
Well, I mean, hacktivism can go both ways. They can be fascist hacktivists, I suppose.
And that's how I describe them as fascist. Well, yeah, it's true. The answer is very simply,
no, that doesn't have anything to do with hacking. They are people. People all have
their own points of view. Some people are conservative. Some people are liberal. Some
people are for this. Some people are against this. And various groups of them are themselves hackers.
Well, yeah, that's true. It doesn't take much ability, though, to be able to knock somebody
off the internet. It really doesn't. It's remarkably simple. And just because somebody
says they can do it doesn't mean that they actually did it. Just because somebody says
they're a hacker doesn't mean they're a hacker. I recognize there are lots of people in the hacker
community and outside the hacker community who don't agree with a lot of the things we're saying
tonight. And that's fine. But we can't simply say that everybody who gets involved in this,
one way or another, because they use a computer, has anything to do with hacking.
It's important to note that hacking as a philosophy is very internationalist. It's
anarchistic. It's more to the left or to libertarian than anything. And the people
that are attacking WikiLeaks are certainly at the right and not following the hacker ethic.
Well, first of all, I'd question why the libertarian is to the left. I think that's
a bit to the right. Well, I said left or libertarian. Oh, OK. Or anarchist. And I
think there are many people on the right who are also hackers and consider themselves hackers. I
don't think there's really any political ideology we can say defines a hacker better. But I just
know there are people on both sides of the issue here. And I'd like to hear what other ones have
to say. But if we have any updates on that other story as far as the denial of service attack.
And like I said, we were attacked, too, when we announced that Adrian Lama was going to be at
the conference. We were booted off the net by somebody who was angry at that. So you get it
from both sides. People get angry with you, and they hit a few buttons. And all of a sudden,
you can't get mail anymore. You can't have your website go up anymore. It's relatively simple.
But what I tend to tell people is that this is treated as just a disruption in the net,
like some kind of congestion. And you're right around it. You're right around a denial of
service. You're right around censorship. You're right around any kind of oppression that keeps
you from saying what you want to say. Yeah, I just would like to throw in there. I think it
would be a really bad idea to start politicizing our definitions of hackers. Hacking is exploring,
saying that you must be liberal or you must be something to be a hacker is silly. At best,
you can say philosophy-wise, hackers maybe value freedom of information.
Yes, freedom of speech, freedom of information. I don't think either political or any political
ideology lays claim to that. I think people on the right can be just as into free information
as people on the left. Because if the people here in this room start, say, going down that
very path, then it's the same as the conservatives saying that, like Palin, for instance, saying that
WikiLeaks, they are not journalists because they're posting stuff that they don't like.
All right, let's take some more phone calls. Last comment from Murph.
But the guy that did the DDoS attack, I don't think he can be considered a hacker because
he was doing the attack because he was saying that the WikiLeaks shouldn't have
released the information. He was basically against the free flow of information because
he said it was damaging his country. Well, he could be a hacker. He could
be a plumber, too. It doesn't really matter. He basically had access to something that was
remarkably simple to do. He could be a hacker and a plumber.
He could be all three. Yes, that's true. Two and two. A hacker, a plumber, and somebody who
knows how to run a program, which I don't think there's a name for. All right.
Bernie, you have a name for that? It could have been Joe the Plumber.
You know, I haven't heard from him lately, so it's entirely possible.
Let's take another phone call. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Yeah, go to camera! Okay, all right. Advice taken.
We already addressed that. Yeah, we did. Good evening. You're on off
the hook. Speak up, please. Oh, hi. I'm wondering if you know of any
information about these rumors about internal strife within Wikileaks.
Well, there's internal strife within any organization. I don't know
if I want to talk about rumors. If there is internal strife, it doesn't change what's been
released, and I think that's where the main story is now, is what's being released and how
governments and people around the world are reacting to it. I think there's plenty of time
to deal with internal strife after this storm passes, and I'd like to learn more at that time.
Well, I should say right now, the site is up from my house, anyway.
It is up, okay. But they have disabled submissions.
Okay, well— They say that they're working on upgrades
or something, but— I can imagine they've got their hands full.
I can imagine there's quite a bit of— Rob? I read an interview with Assange, which I think
was conducted a few days ago, or at least published a few days ago, in which he said
that the submit feature has been down because they've got such a backlog of material that they
can't accept more at the moment. Yeah, I'd like to see what else has
WikiLeaks been releasing. There must be other documents that are coming out as well because
they sure get a lot of submissions. Voltaire? Back to the internal strife, I forget what
position he had, but one of the main guys there, Peter Schmidt, I think his name was,
quit, and he said he's starting another project. But I think that that's actually a good thing
because WikiLeaks comes out of the hacker tradition, and like in free software projects,
splitting is actually good. There is a site. People hate me for saying this,
but there is a site called wikileaksleaks.org, which basically prints all manner of things
about WikiLeaks that are leaked. It's a funny site, but there are lots and lots of sites.
There's cryptdome.org that releases information that's leaked to them. They've been doing it for
a long time, and I hope there are many, many more that happen because, yeah, you know what?
WikiLeaks can be taken down. Julian Assange can be imprisoned and hunted down. All the
things that these evil people are saying can happen, and we don't want this to disappear
if and when that does happen, and that's why it can't be made about one person or one organization
because that makes it so much more fragile, and it involves stepping up. It involves actually
taking a risk and voicing what you believe in, even though a lot of people want you to just shut
up. All right. So we take some more phone calls. Good evening. You're on Off the Hook.
Speak up, please. Hey, good evening. I just want to say that Bradley Manning and Julian Assange
are heroes. They did what Walter Cronkite did during the Vietnam War when he spoke up
about there was no chance in winning the war in Vietnam.
Okay. Well, thanks for your opinion. And as far as Sarah Palin and Huckabee,
they got no right talking about anybody being executed.
Yeah. Well, I think it just shows their true colors when they say things like that.
They're lowlifes.
Yeah. And hopefully this is one other thing that WikiLeaks has revealed, what lowlifes they are,
and they did that without having to leak any documents.
I don't think that's much of a scoop.
Yeah, but to get them to actually say it in their own words,
that's always a bonus when you can do that, Rob.
I just love the context, though, because Walter Cronkite did that, and he went on to become one
of the most distinguished figures in his field. And Julian Assange does that, and he's on the run.
Are you thinking that maybe Julian Assange will one day anchor the CBS Evening News?
That would be awesome.
That would be something. You know, I'm really worried about him, though, because he's very
easy to spot in a crowd. And he's got an international arrest warrant out for him right
now. I hope at least he's wearing a wig.
I don't know. Interpol doesn't know what he looks like.
Yeah, they don't have a photo. I still don't understand that.
All right. Let's take another phone call. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Oh, you're in a car. That's great. What's on your mind?
All right. Have a pleasant drive. Please pay attention when you call us.
Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Yeah. I wanted to just say, am I the only one that sees the irony that
I get the argument when I go to the airport that if I got nothing to hide, I shouldn't
mind being checked? These same people are going crazy about releases of government documents.
Yeah. Yeah. Quote Edwin Mies. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of.
Keep up the good work, guys.
Thanks. Thanks for your call. 212-209-2900. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Hi. Just looking to get on the radio.
Well, you've succeeded. You're on the radio right now.
All right. Is that all?
Yes, yes, yes. Okay.
I just wanted to say that I believe that Julian Assange is definitely a hero.
I remember the days when people, you had writers like William Cooper that wrote Behold the Pale
Horse, would put out information. And we all know what happened to him. He was basically
crucified for that. I mean, one could argue that that was a conspiracy theories. But as far as
WikiLeaks is concerned, at one point, people might have thought these were conspiracies. But
these are things that are going on in the world that need to be put out there. And with technology
and the Internet, there's no way to hide these things anymore. Before, people didn't know about
Tuskegee Airmen being used as a science experiment and being given syphilis and just all the different
things that are going on in the world. And the U.S. is a superpower, abusing their powers
and trying to cover it up. But I do want to play devil's advocate and say on the flip side of this,
this is something that we should, you know, for everybody to think about.
For the United States to stay on top, for anyone to stay on top,
do you have the ability to stay on top? Is it feasible that you can do that without doing some
of the things that the United States is doing? Can you defeat your enemy without intimidating them,
without, you know, killing them, et cetera, et cetera, kicking them when they're down?
Right. To stay on top, to stay on top, to be the ruler of the world, to be number one. Yeah,
you got to cheat quite a bit. And maybe that's what makes it not so good to be number one.
To be on top all the time. Exactly. Exactly. So it's kind of tough,
you know, because you know what they're doing is wrong. But at the same time, you ask yourself,
I mean, if you play, if you play, you try to play fair too much, then what happens? You know,
you get taken down by somebody else. You know what I mean? To be the biggest and the baddest,
sometimes you got to do what you got to do. I've just been brought up to believe that a
little truth is a good thing. And maybe that was a complete case of something bad being instilled
in me. But I think when you reveal something, it generally leads to better understanding
than keeping a whole lot of secrets. But thanks for your call. Mike?
I just want to show our challenge to our listeners. We have about 10 minutes left,
and we've had a lot of good calls, but I want someone to call us and present the opposing
point of view. Yes. I was just going to say that. It's not a requirement that you agree with us. In
fact, I'd like to hear other people who don't agree with us and see, you know, we can certainly
discuss this in a very rational way. One point I want to bring up though, and assuming that Bradley
Manning is the person behind all this, what would we be saying now if Bradley Manning had instead
of releasing this to WikiLeaks, had simply approached Al-Qaeda with all this information,
given it to them and nobody else? Doesn't it sort of put him in a different light when you realize
that he's releasing this information to everybody in the world so that they can deal with the
information on an equal footing? And it's very different than accusing somebody of being a spy
or a terrorist or somebody working against the interests of your country. If you believe that
to open this, as the Obama administration says, is a good thing, it seems like not that irrational
move. I think we wouldn't know. I mean... No, we wouldn't know. Of course not. Unless he had the
poor sense to also tell Adrian Lamo about it. Or if he sent it to that Al-Qaeda magazine,
maybe they would print it or something. Well, they could print it, but they wouldn't know
how they got it. Putting this information in the public domain is really the only way that
we know that the information is out there at all. For all we know, one of these three million people
is leaking the information to Al-Qaeda or whatever foreign government or anything,
and we'd never know about it. What if they've known about this all along and now we're just
catching up to them? What if the enemies already knew about this? We have no way of knowing because
people who leak... Well, we do have enemies. The country does have enemies. It's kind of
naive to think we don't. But we would never know if they had this information. And this,
at least, was something that was done in public, in front of everybody. And I think that's always
a good thing. Voltaire, then we're going back to the phones. That's why openness is so much
better than security through obscurity. Yeah. Or security through openness. You can have that.
You can keep things secret. There are ways of doing that. This was not the best way.
Security was awful. And I think somebody needs to say that as well. Good evening. You're on
off the hook. Speak up. I'm sorry. You got to move faster than that, folks. Good evening. You're
on off the hook. Hey, how are you? Hi. What's on your mind? I'm glad I'm on. I've said it many
times. I'm happy your show's on our airwaves. And I think in the future, hackers are going to become
more and more prominent. And we have a leader now. He's done what he's done, Assange. And I hope that
more hackers create more truth to come out. Did you just call Julian Assange the leader of the
hackers? No, no. I meant he's a leader. Basically, a leader has stepped forward in creating
dissension or whatever or truth and whatever. I just kind of like the sound of it, Julian
Assange, leader of the hackers. I'm going to be as bold as say that they're very afraid of people
who are very talented in computer and electronics. And I hope that one of my dreams is I hope that
some of this stuff one day appears on the screen in Times Square or on TV. Yeah, well, it can.
That's up to us. But I think one thing that has come out of this, the world has changed as a
result of this. We report on the WikiLeaks story way back earlier this year. It's all happened in
one year. And it just keeps happening. Something keeps happening after one after the other. And
it's amazing how much a little truth will affect the world and affect a lot of people. It's a big
deal. And that's got to tell you something. And that's why they're so scared. Yeah. Yeah. Look
with suspicion at the people who are afraid of the truth being revealed. Good evening. You're
on off the hook. Speak up. Hello. Yes, go ahead. Okay, well, thanks for that opinion. We really
have to move faster, folks. We only have a couple minutes. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Yes. Good evening. First of all, these documents were not that highly classified. So really,
I don't know why they really getting that upset. I would like to know what's in the
highly classified ones. But presumably, they're keeping those under lock and key at least.
This was a little diversion tactic for us to concentrate on things which are really not
important while they still do the important things in secret, really. And during the Bush
administration, they spied on everybody in the world. And no one said nothing about that, really.
You know, I really think that democracy as we know it is at an end. I think that
Assange is much more of an American than we here in this country are, because we're just laying
back and taking this and not doing anything. We're not preserving our democracy at all.
Without democracy, we have nothing here to fight for. So what's the war about? Why are we
bitching and complaining? Excuse my language. Because we're not standing up for the principles
that we really have in our heart. Thank you. Thanks for that. And it's a good thing Julian
isn't an American, because if he was, he'd probably be in prison now. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Okay. Good evening. You're on off the hook.
Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yes. Go ahead. You're on the air. Go ahead. Excellent. Yeah. I just
want to make this real quick because I know some people want to call in. Quickly. Okay. Let's go
down the line. Bush, Cheney, Powell. All right. That was fun. Now what do we do? Bush, Cheney,
Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz. Okay. You want to talk about trying people for treason?
Let's do some serious justice in there. And let's try these guys. Okay. Invite them. Okay.
And prosecute them for treason. And then we can work it, you know, in order for us to
just reestablish our respect. Well, they've certainly done more against the Constitution
than Julian Assange or anybody affiliated with WikiLeaks ever did. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So
there's no justice. There's not going to be any peace. All right. Thanks for that. I want to point
out, yes, as far as Lieberman, okay, and this Peter King guy, they both need to take a hot
shower. Okay. They're washups. Okay. Thanks for that too. Anything people say about Peter King,
I welcome. Good Lord, that guy is unbelievable. 212. I'm not giving the phone number. We only
have time for one more call. Good evening. You're on off the hook. You can't be calling
from a shower. Let's try this one. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Speak up. Yeah. Hi. I just
want to say a couple of things real quick. Very quick. You have one minute. I think we're in a
new age of enlightenment that has vaporized our sense of privacy. And that is very scary to a lot
of people. And now we see the flip side of that, where nothing remains private for very long.
Absolutely. Some people are going to be really scared of that, and some people aren't,
and they welcome it. And I think that's going to make a big difference in the coming years.
Thanks. I really love your show. Thanks. Thanks. I guess we have time for one more really quick
call. Good evening. You're on off the hook. Yes, quickly. Yes. I just think that the Republicans
should put out a WikiLeaks type thing. But I urge you to have women as part of the hosting
group. All right. All right. This is one of our usual callers. Good evening. You're on off the
hook. Quickly. Hi. So much for the prediction that the internet killed reading. Bye. That's a good
way to end it. I want to invite people to write to us at oth at 2600.com with all kinds of comments
and information. And hey, maybe even leaks. Who knows? 2600 meetings are coming up this Friday.
Go to www.2600.com slash meetings to find that information about meetings in your area. It's
assuming we're not being denial of service off the internet for talking about what we talk about.
Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for the personal computer show coming up next.
It's Emmanuel for off the hook. Good night.
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