head of key of tax department, huge sums of cash refined. he was discovered to be part of a number of multi $1000000.00 illegal enrichment ventures. several ukrainian defense ministry officials were also found to be involved in cases worth millions in ukrainian currency. but the us treasury department has said there are no evidence signs that funds from washington has been misused in ukraine. we have no indication that us funds have been misused in ukraine. we welcome the ongoing efforts by the ukranian authorities to work with us to ensure appropriate, safe guards are in place, so that us assistance reaches those for whom it is intended. as a reminder of a report from last year or from c, b s news only, around 30 percent of the weapons sent by the west to key of actually made it to the front lines with no real information on where the rest is going. the investigation suggested that getting the arms to the troops involved navigating a network of,

quote, power lords, all the guard and political players. your report also say some of those weapons of ended up in the hands of organized crime groups in the e. u. well journalist and phone drug don boss inside our crystal knee on believes the raids in ukraine are an attempt by key to show its international backers out. it's capable of tackling huge levels of corruption there. i think there's a lot of pressure from the west on me as it is key to clean at least a little bit of the people who are around him. i mean, it's a regular long time that it's, you know, that the circle around it in ski is corrupted. zelinski himself, he's corrupt. k e was mentioned in the pandora papers and they are a lot of information indicating that to him self getting reached during these all the special operations. so i think her job by then has to give some illusion

there to be doing something about this problem. because of course, when you get the information that on the 30 percent of the weapons reach the prompt, ordinary people can ask, but so it means 70 percent of my taxes are going to the, to the rubbish been or 2 in which some people in ukraine and it's a big scandal. so i think it's a way for joe biden to extinguish a little bit this problem by giving some warranties about that. ok, former cia with the blower turned r t program host on cardiac of his back on our screens in moments then i'm here again at the top with all of today's big stories. ah, almost one year into the conflict. no major western leader is called for talks to bring peace to ukraine and europe. instead,

we're witnessing dangerous escalation. the great tank debate has settled. will it be fighter jets next? where does this n ah, what do you do if you want to blow the whistle on waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality? but you know that if you do, your life will change forever. what do you do if blowing the whistle might put you in physical danger? or what if blowing the whistle might land you in prison? you try to do it anonymously. sometimes that works. the whistleblowers who brought us to panama papers, for example, are still unknown, but others who tried to remain anonymous like drone whistleblower daniel hale. and se whistleblower reality winner had their anonymity compromise, and they both ended up in prison. and john kerry aku, you're watching the whistleblowers. 2 2

2 2 2 2 2 blowing the whistle on waste fraud abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety is something that every country should celebrate. many countries have some sort of whistleblower protection law, even a national security. but those laws are rarely enforced fairly or equally. sometimes they are ignored altogether, and sometimes national security trumps whistle blowing. even when the whistleblower is exposing a crime, were joined by an attorney who is not only a hero to national security whistleblowers here in the united states. but she is a whistleblower herself. she tried to remain anonymous and she was out it, and her life has never been the same. welcome to the show jaslyn re deck. thank you john. jesse, you were a senior attorney at the u. s. department of justice working in legal ethics. your job was to make sure that the justice department's attorneys acted within the law and within the guidelines of professional responsibility. but then the september

11th attacks occurred and that many people in government decided that day that the rules would go out the window. you were not one of those people. soon after those attacks, you found yourself involved in the case of john walker lind, who became known as the american taliban. and it was soon after that that you became a whistleblower. tell us how that happened. it happened because i was in the ethics office and part of my job was to give advice to attorneys prospectively. and that included not just attorneys, but f b i. agents on the ground and we got the news that they captured a terrorist. and that he happened to be american. so, commensurate with any advice that would give anyone in that situation, i said that they should mirandize him. and that apparently at that point their picture circulating around the world of him being tortured of him naked, blindfolded, bound, gagged. and, and held in basically a coffin,

and i advised that we don't torture people and that those images are unacceptable. and certainly any information they obtain as a result of him being kept in, that kind of captivity would not be in miscible in court. so that was the advice i gave. i gave that in writing. put, i got a call back. that was on a friday. i got a call back on monday saying oops, well, you know, we went ahead and, oh, boy interrogated him. anyway. what do we do now? and i explained, you know, not to worry, you can still use that information for national security and intelligence gathering purposes, but not for criminal prosecution. then they shortly thereafter used it

for exactly that to criminally. prosecute him that you i found out about inadvertently when i learned that there was a discovery order for all internal justice department correspondence related to john walker lynde. so i went to check the file because back then we had paper files . and the advice i had given was missing from the file, right? i have to be apparently more computer savvy aides and some of my superior. so i went and called tech support and was able to go through the computer archives the internet. at this point we're talking 2000. 1 is a new thing that's right. especially for the government, which is behind the 8 ball lawn technology. so i was able to resurrect the missing e mail and provide it to my boss. and i said,

i don't know why this was not turned over in discovery, but here it is. and then what happened because you ended up, you ended up being in touch with quite a prominent journalist. and that's really where your problems began. that's correct . basically, when i learned that the document had still not been turned over to the court, i ended up resigning and i took home a copy of the document in case it disappeared from the file again. and when the government was continuing to pursue this case, and it was evident that this information had not been turned over consistent with brady and cleo obligations. i ended up sharing it with a member of the press. i tried to do so anonymously. i think this was a blurs blow the whistle anonymously. it's not about them. they want people to

focus on what they're blowing the whistle on or not on them. unfortunately, because it was the beginning of the internet edge, while newsweek shield to my name from the print edition, my name appeared in the digital version. and that was the beginning of the unleashing of one of the 1st criminal leak investigations of modern time. when you were outed as the source, in this case, your life changed. you were forced to leave a job that you loved. many of your colleagues and friends turned against you and you had trouble finding work here you were a renowned attorney. you had graduated from brown in yale universities to the top schools in the world. and you were having trouble finding a job. you finally found one at a large law firm in washington, dc. but it didn't last long. what happened there? at that point, the government contacted my private 3rd party employer and told them that they had

just hired a criminal though i had not been charged with anything. i had not received the subject or target letter. my so i, the law firm of course, knew that i would have a claim against them if they just fired me, especially for being a whistleblower. so they put me on unpaid administrative leave, which left me kind of hanging in limbo for a number of months. and in the meantime, i had to lawyer up and get a criminal defense attorney, an employment attorney, and a constitutional law attorney. my gosh. and then followed, continued. actually, you had trouble when you traveled internationally. complaints against you were lodged with the local bar association, but you ended up taking the bull by the horns and you went to work with the government accountability project as their director of national security, representing whistleblowers and national security. in fact, i'm proud to say that you were one of my attorneys,

and you represented also an essay whistleblower tom drake and even ed snowden. what made you decide to take on the national security establishment? my experience of how i was treated as a whistleblower. i thought if they can come down with the full force of the entire executive branch on a public servant who had been a public servant for a long time because they were just doing their job and trying to do it. honestly, it made me, i didn't know what it was. so blower was i had the same reaction. most whistleblowers do when my attorney said, you're a whistleblower. so no, i'm not. i was just trying to do my job, right. but after what i went through the fact that the government ended up putting me under criminal investigation and referring me to the state bars and literally started a whisper campaign in my law firm, which ended up somehow following me even to my own synagogue. i realized how

draconian the government can be, how, how brutal and underhanded but also completely over the top. i was a mom. i had 2 young kids. i was pregnant during part of this ordeal. i mean it, it, in no public servant, no human period to serve criminal defendants often have more rights than whistleblowers. and they never charged you with a crime that they entered for charged me with the crime. and in fact, the bar complaints, it took 12 years before those charges were finally dismissed by the bar. but it was a cloud. it's just right of damocles hanging over your head to have to tell any potential employer. yeah, i've been referred to the bar, but based on a secret report that i've never seen and don't have access to, you know, had something called the whistleblower and source protection group. it's

a part of expose facts. tell us about the kind of work that you do there. we represent national security and intelligence whistleblower hers mainly blowing the whistle on human rights violations. so that can include the gamut of torture, secret surveillance drone killings. and that's been an entire kind of boutique that we have focused on. we want to protect disclosure that are in the public interests. and unfortunately, a trend that started during your era of using the espionage actually just an incredibly draconian law to go after whistleblowers has unfortunately become normalized and been used primarily on whistleblowers from f b i the c i, c i a. and i say that the power house agencies that run this country's

most significant programs and in fact sentences have been getting noticeably longer . have they not? they have they have reality winners. sentence of about 5 years was twice, twice the, the normal 2 and a half years that people had been, had been given. and daniel hale, even, his sentence of 45 months. i mean that was for one count, one count under the espionage act. so those sentences, i mean that's part of the reason they use the espionage act because it is so punitive and one count can carry, you know, 10 years. so we're going to talk about daniel hale again in a minute. but before we get to break, i wanted to ask you one other question. one of the things that i've noticed that they've been doing with whistleblowers is putting them in higher and higher security prisons. stephen kim, the state department whistleblower was in a minimum security work camp. i was in a low security prison,

but daniel hale is in a maximum security penitentiary. is that just just because they can, is that just to make the time that people like daniel hill are serving as difficult as possible. it is unclear why daniel hell is and communications management unit because there are only 2 in the country and they were created to house terrorists. and daniel had no prior criminal history. he was not convicted or charged with an act of terrorism. it is unclear. ah, how or why he ended up there? ah, but it was alarming certainly to assess his attorneys because his judge had recommended a specific prison and that would have been much lower security and where he could have gotten that therapy that he needed. right. it's not just that he drives over

to prison and turns on the tv and makes himself comfortable. he was do about psychological counseling, drug and alcohol counseling, which would have shortened his sentence. thank you. jacelyn rate act, but don't go away. we're going to continue our conversation with jaslyn reed at right after the short break, stay to. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ah ah ah ah

ah ah ah, ah, brought them back to the whistleblowers rejoined once again by esteemed whistleblower attorney jeslane rate at jesse. it seems like we've seen so many whistleblowers who have wanted to remain anonymous who have tried to remain anonymous, but their identities invariably are revealed and the consequences have been drastic

for many of them. the f b i whistle blower, terry. all bery, for example, received 4 years in prison. drone whistleblower daniel hale. we mentioned a moment ago received 3 years and 9 months. and as a whistleblower reality winner received more than 5 years in prison. ca, whistleblower joshua shulty face is as much as 80 years in prison. is there a safe way to blow the whistle? can somebody in national security do it without being caught? and then being sent to prison? it's incredibly difficult even when you go through proper channels. a lot of the people you mentioned did try to go through channels at one level or another. but even with successful whistleblowers, even like the white house whistleblower on trump, they still went through the proper channels and still got tangled up in internal channels. i mean, is there a safe way in theory? there is in practice. there are a lot more ways to week these days, but there are

a lot more ways to get caught. and whistleblowers are not. you're not assume to be expert at spy craft and keeping your contact with the reporter secret that's really incumbent upon journalists, especially the ones that hold themselves out as being all about source protection and basic mistakes were made in number. the cases you mentioned, whether the journalists was just being careless or whether there was a snafu in the way a document got transmitted. it's very easy to get caught these days. it's almost like we're back to the days of meeting in the underground parking garage where you meet in person paying cash, you know, and try to do it very out of the sight of cameras, but their cameras everywhere, including and parking lot. it's true and an ongoing scene to, especially with national security whistleblowers,

is that identifying information is almost always embedded in documents. so if you work for one of the national security agencies and you print the document, your name and your personnel number are embedded somewhere on that document in a period in the door of an eye. and so if the document finds its way to the media, and then the media sends it back to the agency to ask about whether or not it's a legitimate document. you've just coded yourself or the journalist has audi due, right? that's correct. a lot of people have been caught basically by metal of data. so not the actual document itself, but something like you said, a marking on the document, a watermark, and something that imperceptible to most people like in reality, winters case. instead of showing a xerox copy of a document to the government, they showed the actual document. so they could immediately identify where she,

they are for space where she said occurred and immediately it, it was a bright red arrow pointing to her jeff sterling. that was another case based on meta data. i think it's easy now it's very hard not to leave digital footprints even when you're using encryption. i would advise any whistleblower to use signal or to get well versed in encryption. but what you can expect a whistleblower to, to have to be well versed in security protocol to be able to get the truth out. and you reason important point to people ask me all the time. should i be using signal? should i be using what's up or viber? i've always been told that signal is the best, but signal is not perfect either tom drake. the say was the blower told me recently that even with signal they can intercept the message before you hit send. they can

intercept it as you're typing it because it's not yet encrypted, it only becomes encrypted when you send, when you hit that send button, that's exactly right. the end points are dangerous points. it may and again, if people think that it's the content of messages that ends up basically pointing a finger at the whistleblower. but it's not, it's the who's sending it who's receiving it. and when that's what is getting people convicted, not the content of what they're actually saying. just we've seen whistleblowers in banking or in the legal profession who have been able to maintain their anonymity. i mentioned the panama papers whistleblower earlier in the show. they were very careful where they sent their information. the outlets involved protected their identities, but that hasn't been the case for national security whistleblowers. why do you think that is our counter intelligence agency is really that good. i think

in panama papers, other cases that have more been international dimension, it's probably easier because to not be living in a surveillance state, which if the united states has been trending again, people are being caught on metadata is some, it would be impossible for me to take the metro and come here without leaving a huge trail of metadata with buying a ticket. taking the exact train that i took care walking with the camera on every corner. so it's easier to get caught if you're in surveillance state that has so much monitoring going on. i think also traditionally people who are in the banking arena, including in the u. s. they have protections under dodd frank and the sarbanes oxley act. and the false claims act and a whole bunch of other protections that national security and intelligence whistleblowers do not have in this country. there is a specific, carved out for national security and intelligence employees. so not only,

i mean they, they have a statement in the i c, w, p, a saying that they're protected, but there's no enforcement mechanism, right? so you can blow the whistle, but then when the government retaliates against you and comes down on, you will like a ton of bricks. you have no recourse. there is nothing you can do. and in fact, they will now prosecute you. whereas before, you may have gotten an administrative risk slap or fired, or even blackballed from the industry, now you will go to jail. when i was at the cia i sat next to a woman who was having an affair with someone working for cnn, who had been a senior officer. and in the course of pillow talk, she revealed some classified information to him. he used that classified information in his commentary on the or on cnn, and sure enough, the office of security did an investigation. they immediately figured out that it

was her, but they didn't arrest her. they didn't charge her with espionage. what they did is they suspended her without pay for 6 weeks. they put a letter in her personnel file and she was ineligible for promotion for, for a year. and that was it. now if that were to take place today, she would be charged with espionage and would be looking at at least 5 years in prison. that's correct. and then there are whole, there's a whole range of other subtle but career killing retaliatory mechanisms like taking away people, security clearances. so even if they're still free walking around, they can't find a job in the profession. they've been trained in because they can't get a security clearance renewed. so there are the subtle ways and there is no way to contest that there is no way to say you're mistaken. this person is not a security risk. what they blew the whistle on was validated by congress and they

still can't get your security clear if you're exactly right. you mentioned metadata a moment ago. one of the things that i fear and tell me if this is a legitimate fear is that when the government or individual companies private companies like the big information companies, apple in google, and yahoo and whatnot. when they collect this metadata, they have the capacity to save it forever. is that correct? and then the f, b i or the cia or n s a can go back and draw this information whenever it suits them. that's my understanding. i mean that was an issue with the data retention facility in utah. bill benny had talked about apple. i know you has actually pushed back and said you need a warrant if you want out. but then if the government can get a warrant, they will turn over the data. other companies like facebook and twitter,

i am not sure the current policy that they have in place in terms of when they will turn over data or not. but i think people do not give it a 2nd thought when they're entering all their personal information willy nilly into facebook. you're making the government's case for them. it doesn't matter if you don't think you're doing anything wrong or, you know, i'm not doing anything wrong. they wouldn't be interested in me, but it's awfully easy as you know, to construct a circumstantial case around things that actually were meant to be. and i actually said those words, they wouldn't be interested in me and they were very interested in me. you know, one of the questions that i'm asked very frequently is if i would do anything differently, if i were to blow the whistle again and my answer is the same every time the answers, yes. what i would do differently is to hire an attorney before blowing the whistle . that was a mistake that i made because i was forced to be reactive rather than proactive. what advice would you give whistleblowers considering blowing the whistle?

yeah, i would. that's exactly what i would tell them, talk to an attorney ahead of time so they can safely walk you through these land mines. also, you need to make a consider determination about whether or not to tell your family what you're doing and how much to tell them. i had not told my family at the time because i wanted them to have plausible deniability that they didn't know i was blowing the whistle . but at the same time that can end up causing a rift when suddenly you have f b i. agents working on your case. so there are a number of considerations i think it's always was to talk to an attorney. unfortunately 90 percent of people come in my door. you know, are they come in after the fact after they blew the whistle in they are being retaliated. yep. that is exactly what my situation was. that's how you and i met. that's all we have for you today. thanks to our guest jacelyn rate act. i'm john

curiosity and this has been the whistleblowers. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ah lou and who needs to come to the russians state to never. i've stayed us on the northland stephen hammond. i'm not getting calls all set up for a week within the $55.00 would be. okay, so my new final speed, anyone else with will van in the european union? the kremlin? can you get machine restate on to rush up to date and split our t spoke neck, even our video agency, roughly all band to on youtube? with

me, a headline stories this our local authority, se russian troops have insert gold, the ukrainian health city of archibald, in the done yet republican. it comes just the day after rushes. millet free cut off a major supply route for kids forces. the i m f predicts the russian economy will grow in 2023 bouts. despite western countries living sanctions imposed on law school will bring the nation with the claims from a one to top adviser to former british pm bars. johnson who claims.