hello and welcome to cross talk were all things considered i'm peter lavelle the fate of julian assange is unclear washington is determined that he be sent to the u.s. to face criminal charges most likely under the one nine hundred seventy espionage act the british government is more than happy to make this happen even the ecuadorians are in the in the apt but we are watching unfold in front of our eyes is the criminalization of journalism. across talking julian assange which i'm joined by my guest joe lauria in washington

he's editor in chief of consortium news dot com and author of how i lost by hillary clinton with a forward by julian assange also in washington we have gareth porter he's an independent investigative journalist and historian as well as author of manufactured crisis the untold story of the around nucular scare and in plymouth we cross to patrick and he is a journalist writer and founder of the news website twenty first century wired dot com all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it and i to open up by saying thanking all three of you to come here to speak out on the behalf of the profession known as journalism it's a pretty scarce profession at least. acted out in live by professionals so i'm glad that you're here gareth let me go to you first and let's talk about journalism because julian assange is his case his case study as it were is a presser. meant in the making and it really galls me that the

profession cannot see the slippery slope that we're all staring down at once it happens to julian assange as a publisher then who's next go ahead gareth. well i can't agree anymore with what you said it's clear that son is on the block here in a way that is extremely dangerous to the profession of journalism because it would in fact as i think you just suggested it would set a precedent for the u.s. government to go after journalists under a wide range of circumstances. as long as they can portray somebody as somehow connected with the enemy whatever that enemy might happen at the moment.

yeah you know i think that that is indeed the issue that we're staring in the face here joe you did a wonderful interview with chris hedges and i commend everyone. to watch it as i think was absolutely brilliant explain to us how the espionage act could play out these of julian assange because considering the conditions that he's living in in the ecuadorian embassy in london it sounds like it's getting pretty desperate over there they're obviously trying to flush him out without the ecuadorian embassy government being embarrassed we go through the list of things that they've done to him but it's obvious they want to give him the show of here how's the espionage act of one nine hundred seventeen play into this go ahead joe thank you peter yes the espionage act does play a big role in this if in fact he's been indicted as a criminal complaint is very likely under the one nine hundred seventeen espionage act however if he were indicted under the original nine hundred seventeen espionage

act there would not have had to amendments that were made to the act one thousand nine hundred fifty one and one nine hundred sixty one the one thousand nine hundred fifty criminalize possession of stolen documents classified documents in other words before that and it is still pretty much politically the case that. if a publisher or a newspaper receives classified information and publishes it they are not look you considered to be liable only the person who stole the document the whistleblower who gave it to the publication but under the one nine hundred fifty. amendment now anyone who possesses it could in fact be prosecuted so even if doing a songe and we could be x. and not actively take part in the crime of taking the documents because they had them and disseminated them they could be prosecuted however this is never happened yet because here we go clee as we disastrous yeah i mean and because it's a political decision not a legal one but the other other member i want to mention is people keep bringing up he's not an american citizen and this act of publishing took place outside u.s.

territory while the original nine hundred seventeen espionage act specifically said this had to take place on u.s. territory that was changed in one thousand nine hundred one when a congressman got upset by a state department official in poland who apparently gave in to blackmail while he was outside the u.s. so that the act was changed so you don't have to be on u.s. territory anymore as well so if they want to go after him they can but it's never happened before the nixon administration did not go after senator mike gravel when he published the pentagon papers outside the congress where he's protected to say whatever he wants and it hasn't happened since john peters anger in sixteen thirty five colonial america that a government of britain then the british colonial govern went after a publisher for writing something that turned out to be true but they didn't like it because they were on uncovered exposed crimes by the government so he's in a very precarious situation because the trump administration might be the first one to actually do this even though politically it's never been been the right decision even though they have the legal tools they've never been used and i should add the

new york times number two lawyer was out on the west coast few months ago and told judges in a speech that they did not want to songe prosecutor because the new york times could be next because they're just writing thing we can leaks does publish classified information you know patrick and that did see that's the whole wrinkle here because they're going to they're going to say. jillian assigned was more than a publisher and that's why i think the report is very germane here because they want to make people believe because because i didn't on the on the way they couldn't do it they could actually do all of this against them if they get their hands on him in secret and we would never really know what evidence all we would have to do is believe the judge and believe moller which i wouldn't believe either considering what's happening here way and patrick go ahead with this in order that you just laid out there peter if that is indeed what will what they're trying to to do what they're what might happen that would essentially preserve the narrative so

in other words if you go they could go through the shirat of due process or whatever passes for due process today into these political environment and then preserve the narrative which essentially is russia gate a russian collusion which to date there has been no actual evidence to sort of substantiate that and that's the premise of this whole. circus basically what robert mueller and the special counsel have been digging for and digging through dumpsters for for the last two years literally. literally recently to is is really a dumpster fire of fake news basically so but that's what that that's the premise of the this whole thing. that you're absolutely correct that's one danger but peter the other thing that very related to this is the case of a drone corsi which is in the news right now and they're trying to you know maneuver or try to maneuver corsi into a position where he would in fact you know live with himself essentially in order

to accept a plea bargain which he's outright rejected but the point is and the point corsi made in an interview with miss n.b.c. which is an excellent example of a decent interview although it's quite tough the interview from you. but even if a staunch had stole the documents himself and you know course he still is protected as a journalist under the new york times worse as united states case with the pentagon papers so he has a right under basic press freedoms to go and find out and he can even look at them and he can report on them you add to this the context of the twenty sixteen election and of course he made his political biases known to the public he says i'm pro trump and of course i'm interested in this and see if i can help the trunk and paint drum corps he's been more honest and transparent and put his biases on the table more than the investigation which looks like

a kangaroo court to anybody who's on isstd but you have to get everything to weigh in on that because i mean there are there's a long history of the espionage act being used but it wasn't really journalism and even even the pentagon papers they never voted there this is the precedent that's being said here is that a publisher can be made to face charges under espionage as a traitor to his kind country he's aiding and abetting an enemy whatever though there's no enemy has been a den of fide in this in this case here so i mean this is the criminalization of journalism ice as i said in my introduction. well you know i think that's that's absolutely right i think what what you're talking about here is precisely a response to the the moeller teams need for

the ability to squeeze the joy in a sunshiny that appears to be the real prize that is that they see within their grasp or potential grasp i had thought originally that. really this was about the cia's embarrassment over the vulgarisms by wiki leaks of the vault seven documents because they were so clearly showing that the cia not only has been rampaging through all of the electronic media or electronic devices of everyone across the globe but that they had the capability and undoubtedly used it at some point were planning to use it to make it look like another foreign intelligence agency was responsible for the hacking and clearly the timing of the original decision that it was announced to go

after a songe came immediately after the release of the vault seven documents so there did appear to be a connection there but i am now more and more persuaded by the idea that there must have been there must be a primary connection here with the mole or the mole or folks. you know but at the same time has to wonder one has to wonder but then you can kill a lot of birds with one stone this is like this is like that silver bullet you get russia gate taking care of you cowed the media you get journalists in line it's a bit it's a perfect storm if you're if you're at the state here fifteen seconds joe real quick and then i'll go back i think break we're talking about finish up gareth go ahead peter i think what we're what we're talking about is a convergence of two possible or likely sets of interests here that both are after

a songe for different reasons ok or i get right general i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion julian assange staying with our. i go to a place called camp sundown to get for people that can. and they're like so vampires . this is like a safe house i guess they don't have to talk about what they go through with us because we understand her daughter katie was diagnosed with a very rare sun sensitive condition if i get sunburned i heal she doesn't feel patients are going to have problems with the walk to talk to her son the brains of her actually shrinking inside their head the still gets flicker in the brain still

small. the pain is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscle all the way down to the bone and there's no really. we're just not sure this is but just over. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world the politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see of that. when a loved one is murder it's natural to seek the death penalty for the murder i would prefer it be to win the death penalty just because i think that's the fair thing the right thing research shows that for every nine executions one convict just

found innocent the idea that we were executing innocent people is terrifying lose just noodle hasn't been that we're even many of the times families want the death penalty to be abolished the reason we have to keep the death penalty here is because that's what murder victim's families what that's going to give them peace that's going to give them justice and we come in and say. not quite enough we've been through this this isn't the way. welcome back to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing julian assange. ok let me go back to joe in washington again you know this russia gate moeller report and julian assange i think it is all tightly connected particularly the

timing here because i'm convinced with the public evidence that's available that julian assange did not get those protest the e-mails from russia he got it from someone then probably on a memory stick ok the n.s.a. with all of its assets could have figured out if that amount of information had been sent over the internet it was vast ok so they would have been able to pick that up so so they know where it probably came from but it doesn't fit their narrative entered julian assange in a secret court and you tie all that all that you pull all the threads together you tie it up into one little pretty bow that the western media the liberal media will sell it saying gotcha joe what's your reaction. well absolutely in fact it goes back to two thousand and ten what the afghan war logs and the iraq collateral damage tape that's when drew and his lawyers believe the indictment was

first made but now we do does bring itself very clearly into the russian gate story and ruler and luke harding a journalist journalist at the guardian ad that the british government has a journalist masquerading as a as a clown yeah go ahead. yeah but the real change here also is ecuadorian government changed the previous government left wing under correll gave him a songe asylum was protecting him in this his status would not have changed but the new government is very close to the us and has been pressured by pence vice president prince and others and they want to get him out so these three can picking up on what garrett was saying about confluence of interest is the interest of the government get him out of the british and the us to get him and of luke harding to get his reputation restored because he recently heard bestseller called collusion there is no evidence of collusion he has to go find some so the ecuadorian

intelligence and the us knowing that the guy's going to be very open to anything it's fed him this absolutely fairy tale that poem and if it went in and then met would. three times the last times more or less when he became the head of the campaign they need to connect the trunk campaign to a sondre and we could weeks and therefore they say to the russians they haven't been able to do this so this is an opportunity given to harding who grabbed it and ran with it without any video evidence of man for going in and out without his passport having been given or logging in at the embassy the zero evidence he went there they both furiously denied both manifold and weekly leaks of weekly suing the guardian for this story so if russia gate has brought this absolute to a head ecuador wants him out you markets want him and they they need and moolah needs a collusion evidence that because every indictment he has put out has specifically said when they announce that there's no americans and no a trump campaign people involved there's no collusion yet they haven't found it so

they cooked up the story but none of which is i don't think it's going to go very far frankly peter because it is so ludicrous well patrick let me go to you i mean. luke harding is never really bothered much with facts he has a different type of thing and i think you know what i mean. patrick one of the things that's really sad here is that if you look at the fascinating career of weiqi leaks and they've been right just every single time they have a wonderful track record no news agency can match that but through the career of weiqi leaks and julian assange and she's made a lot of enemies during the bush years the democrats loved how george w. bush was criticized with all the document releases but then when but destiny came around it switched now both parties and the deep state and feckless people who call themselves journalists don't want to stick pull their head out of the ground i could use other language but this is t.v.

you know this is a perfect storm against julian assange isn't it. you know it is if if truth if truth was was the gold standard by which professional journalism was measured then wiki leaks and julie songe would be heralded heralded right now instead of hounded yeah joyce and could walk right out the door within weeks and he would have had everybody rallying on his side but there's been a major political alignment a realignment as it were and i think this began under the obama administration is has to do with a lot of things including the the division or split of this of the antiwar left or the remnants of it opposed to bush but also the fact that russia that's the reason d'etre of washington right now in terms of geopolitics and so that that split is pronounced but the other thing is. that with the guardian two to knowingly they had

a heads up the day before when the when the story was published online you needn't think that they were they still ran with it on the morning print edition the following morning i went to the newsstand and there was this completely fabricated story and they had like at least i don't know how much time to stop the press from the day before but they ran with it anyway this tells me that there's a deep seated corruption within mainstream media outlets and i think it's becoming more than an open secret now that there is a sort of a level of penetration by the intelligence services in the west whether that's through influence or through actually in bet embedded people in editorial desks or whatever but we have to thank luke harding and denny collins for helping to expose this we owe them a great debt of gratitude this week because it showed exactly what these mainstream media outlets are doing in a coordinated fashion and i know i'm going to add the anonymous document dump of the integrity initiative which is the m.k. and national endowment for democracy funded initiative working with mainstream

journalists to coordinate anti right. ssion talking points at the hub is the atlantic council and the deal far less so that was exposed this week as well so all of these exposures really point to a damning indictment that the fourth estate has become a fifth column yeah working against the interests of the public interests this is devastating in terms of the general narrative of the state of the media or what's left of the free press in the west people should really take a step back and look at this this is an absolute circus what's playing out in front of this and that and i'm waiting for people of honest character to step forward people who are there who they were there on this program ok there are a lot of there aren't very many more but some of them are here ok we need we need more we need more of them and let me quickly just add to guardian then fold this up with a story by john swing from their new york bureau and they used

a source is glenn simpson function g.p.s. and they didn't even mention that he works for fusion they just had an expert on the matter glenn simpson so my question is is is a fusion g.p.s. using the guardian as a dumping ground for all the leftovers now this is just out of control it's amazing using one of the guarantee when one of the things it's fascinating to me and watching the julian assange. story and russia gate is that there is absolutely almost absolutely no downside in being wrong you know as if you look at the pedestrian e-mails we learned a lot that's what makes them so angry that you learned a lot about hillary clinton in her campaign and we also learned for us on this program is that new york times journalists would send their copy to the d.n.c. to be proof read to be fact checked to be approved before it would be published now

if that isn't a sad state of affairs for journey. listen i don't know what is ok you asked the powers that be that you genuflect to the powers that be to get permission to print propaganda this is pathetic go ahead gareth that's the state of journalism now. you know i think the point is here that you can you can get away with almost anything as long as it is in line with the than the official. the accepted narrative and that that seems to be what we're seeing play out here but i have to say that there are limits of some sort in that. you know you can publish something that is so obviously off off the charts and that that is not believable that it causes problems and i think luke harding has strayed into that territory not the friend of whatever it is because of evidence that i would offer

for that. right i would just point out that politico this morning had a piece by a former cia operative who suggests that luke harding was was taken for a ride by somebody who is on the other side of the issue trying to discredit him which is a rather interesting well development a story ok well let me go let me go to joe i mean i met luke harding about a couple of times here in moscow and he was really the laughingstock of the entire foreign press corps here so not the first time for this guy you know he's a he has a real track record there maybe when you meet him ask him about his plagiarism of a. satirical magazine called the exile ask mark eames he was the editor of it there joe what's you know again you know the our our numbers are thinning the people that want to do real journalism here i'm very pessimistic i don't see it turning around because you have

a fusion of the media into the state and everybody's happy everyone's with. rich you don't have to think mary very much stupid people can be on t.v. a lot i mean everybody wins on their side it's all about status career ism vanity fame money and they and the sucking up to people in power you know journalism has a power even greater than the power of government because our power if it's exercise is to keep those in power in check instead we see journalist it's been going on for a while now they have sucking up and living vicariously through the power of government officials and just taking whatever they say and not challenging it and this is what hartings problem was in this particular case he was sold a bill of goods yes but i think not because as garrett pointed out from that cia piece to try to discredit him by the people who were supporting assad but in fact they wanted to pass this story that man if it went in there to try to establish the collusion he took that information and never said well that's interesting but show me the video of man for going in the sea in london if we're going to see his ring

to it c.c.t.v. cameras the entire city of london is and where is monifa going in and out where the large hang on you're never challenged and this is the problem don't challenge let me go to the last thirty seconds compare jim acosta and julian assange thirty seconds big task go ahead. that's a difficult one. in one sense i don't know look the point is and what i pointed out earlier less a couple weeks ago is that you know the media the press spent days crying over jim acosta when in fact the most important person in the field of journalism who is under threat is julius on in the in the basement the ecuadorian embassy because he represents a pillar of western post and like in many democratic society which is the right to publish to publish and be damned to have the right ok that is essential and still we finish on that very excellent point thank you very much that's all the time we

have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in washington and in plymouth and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. . next time and remember. me to quote tony and emma. i'm one of them but i think ended up going to one when there's a real body. a blot on the. banister.

put them to i don't want that i or i can't that's funny as hell and nation into that whole community yeah he told me he could feel that he had a chicken does he going i am a he made a move to uphold the law that young enough but otoh both were out of the. most people think just stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand down to lose business you just leave as the right questions and demand the right answer. question. us veterans who come back from war

often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo from the circulating branches off that says we're going to attack and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with their money others with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war then surely we can risk some discomfort for uneasiness for. the. one that lives you know what obama will ultimately

lead of. he. can't get up. and act. like nothing. but political tensions gripping the g. twenty in argentina but even a putin is happy to meet a great number less so the leaders in a positive start to see this even though donald trump of course council that much anticipated face to face with the russian leader also. got a taste of the heart of the streets in the belgian capital as the so-called yellow best move spreads.