hi, sir, my dear, of all said the strife targeted paws of the southern province of home there, the board of lebanon. they said as soon air defense system was able to neutralize some of the missiles. need your report said that is really this house targeted an ammunition depot. i submitted she airfield. it was the 2nd time in a month that israel is believed to have targeted. he area. there was no immediate response from is really authorities about the issue to get more or less develop in, sorry, we spoke to political alice time of abraham says is really tanks are aimed undermining sir. emerging capabilities. i think that says what had happened today is a continuation of the israeli policy and targeting several parts and site syria airports, which are the most important part of the military and civilian of her structure and,

and sometimes with the average targeting air defense and some silly an military sites in the of the art not protecting has mala or iran. of course, there is a kind of presence for some members of as well. and the iranian sites here about the door, they are working legally, as i advice as to the city anatomy. so i think we must wait 2 or 2 to know they're really going behind that which i feel it is not related to attacking has below re run. it is related to and our mining this he of in military capabilities. john curiosity was on the whistle, blows length on the we'll be back here in the cedars at the top of the hour. ah hi, i'm retentions and i'm here to plead with you whatever you do, do not watch my new shell. seriously. why watch something that's so different. my

little opinions that you won't get anywhere else work of it please. if you have the state department, the c, i, a weapons makers, multi $1000000000.00 corporations, choose your facts for you. go ahead. i change and whatever you do. don't watch my show stay mainstream because i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called direct impact, but again, you probably don't want to watch it because it might just change the way things ah ah, ah ah

. 2 2 we've all seen the news since late 2022, that president donald trump had classified documents in his home in mara lago florida. and just as democrats began gloating and talking about whether or not the former president would be prosecuted, classified documents were found in president biden's home in delaware, and in the washington dc office that he used in the years between being vice president and being elected president. former vice president mike pence then admitted that he too had classified documents in his home. so what happens next? do they all get prosecuted? should they be prosecuted? i'm john kerry. aku welcome to the whistleblowers. ah,

it seems that all the talk in washington these days is about classified documents. who has them? why are they retained and what should be done about it? but those are the easy questions. the more difficult questions concern why the american government produces more than 100000000 classified documents every year. how many of those documents are properly and legitimately classified and why over the years has the mishandling of those documents, whether properly classified or not, ended up being equated with espionage. one of the gravest crimes with which an or can can be charged will classified documents in the possession of former leaders. just lead to the next step in draconian national security punishments. or is this an opportunity to revamp the system and return some sanity to the classification process? we're happy to have with us. jeslane radack. jazlyn is the executive director of the whistleblower and source protection program at expose facts in washington. she's also a former justice department ethics attorney and

a whistleblower in her own right. it's great to have you just thanks for joining us . thank you for having me. let's start with these classified documents that have been found in the homes and offices of donald trump. joe biden. and mike pence. do we even know what these documents are? are they highly classified national security secrets, or are they just routine diplomatic messages that are classified only out of force of habit? what do we know? we don't know. i mean it, the fact that they are classified indicates that they are either secret, top, secret or top secret sensitive compartment and information that we have no idea of what they, what they relate to, what the subject matter, isabelle. and given that we have a huge problem with over classification, in this country, it is entirely possible that they are very innocuous documents that were just stamped classified as, as a matter of routine. jess,

in the interest of transparency, i want to say that you and i are not only friends, but you are also one of my attorneys and my own national security case in 2012. in my case, my judge made a ruling that had a major impact on the way the courts look at cases like this. she said that the definition of espionage was very simply providing national defense information to any person, not entitled to receive it. with that definition of person could accidentally commit espionage. for example, if a person leaves classified documents in a restaurant and somebody else in the restaurant sees them and reads them, the person who accidentally left the documents there has technically committed espionage. if a person has a conversation, let's say with a journalist and says something that could be construed is classified or is based on classified information, even if it's just analysis that would be espionage. with that said, we all know that washington runs on leaks. so what's the end game here?

just lock everybody up for espionage. well, the people getting locked up for espionage are not the leakers who have political power. so in other words, joe biden and mike pence and donald trump are certainly not going to be locked up for revealing classified information. just like c i a director betray us was not locked up or, nor was c. i a director panetta so that people with power and prestige are safe. it's the lower level employees who are going to get skewered under the espionage act. if they disclose classified information, even if there is a compelling public interest reason for doing so. when i was working at the cia and this was in the mid 1990 s, a woman i sat next to was having an affair with a journalist. in the course of that affair, she told him something that was classified,

and he repeated it on the air on cnn. a cia investigation led directly back to her and she admitted that she had revealed the information. she was suspended without pay for $4.00 weeks and was not allowed to be promoted for one year. that was it. today she would face at least 10 years in prison for doing the same thing. how did we get to this point? and why do you think that happened? you? i think we got to this point in part because again, there's a huge i'm after 911 with rampant over classification, which makes it much easier to accidentally leak something classified, especially when things are not routinely classified at all. or sometimes unclassified in one in one agency, but classified in another. and then i also think we got here because brock obama thought for some reason it was a good idea to dust off the espionage act of 1917 and use it on

whistleblowers. and that was very disappointing from someone who was supposed to be at the transparency president and supporting federal workers and that kind of thing . but it unleashed what is now a normalization of going after sources and whistleblowers criminally. and there are a number of criminal laws that could be applied, but the espionage act is by far the most brutal, near the end of 2022 representative ill on omar sponsored a bill in the house of representatives that would have completely revamped and rewritten the espionage act, so that we wouldn't have cases like mine or like jeffrey sterling's or reality winners. that bill went nowhere. it didn't even make it out of subcommittee. do you think that there is any mood on capitol hill to rewrite the espionage act? and i should point out that the espionage act was written in 1917,

to combat german saboteurs during world war one. it has never been meaningfully updated. what do you think is change possible? i wish i could say yes, but i am not holding my breath. i, you know, i think, i think a lot of people in positions of power in jo, including legislators feel that this is good for plugging weeks. and again, they don't have to worry about it being deployed against them or any of their high level cronies. because it's only used against, against low level government officials, specifically ones who have revealed information that evidence is illegality or things that are embarrassing to the cover. government like torture, secret surveillance war crimes. those are the kinds of leaks, they got prosecuted. and they are also some of the darkest most controversial programs in

u. s. modern history. one of the most important sticking points when thinking about the espionage act is the absence of something called an affirmative defense. whistleblowers are not legally allowed to either use as a defense or to stand up in court and say that what they did they did in the public interest. i blew the whistle on the sea ice torture program, which was an illegal program. the judge didn't care at snowden told us that the u. s. government was spying on american citizens, which was illegal. it didn't matter. the heroic whistleblower daniel hale told us that the u. s. military's drone program was illegally killing scores of innocent people including children. he's now in a maximum security prison. why are the government and the courts so afraid of an affirmative defense? the ill hon. omar bill would have allowed for one, but it died without ever coming up for a vote. i think the government loves strict liability law that renders any defendant without

a defense because they don't have to even try to make the case. all they have to show is that a disclosure did or did not happen. and unlike every other law in the criminal system where your intent would be relevant, oh, you know, the government fed, we, you know, we'd never tortured anyone, but i hope torture. someone or we did torture people. i mean, that's why they don't want there to be any kind of intent and miserable by. they don't want to have any kind of public interest defense because you would actually understand why people are being charged with the very draconian espionage act. you know, and it, having a strict liability law just makes it easy. so it means slam dunk cases, virtually impossible to defend one of these cases because they take place largely in secret. and again, you don't have any kind of meaningful defense. you can raise an impact,

your intent only becomes relevant at sentencing meaning after you've been convicted. where speaking with attorney activist and whistleblower jaslyn rate arc about classified documents and the espionage act. we're going to take a short break and come right back. stay with us. 2 ah ah ah

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king also sons, and maybe 205-0000 disabled keys on any pharmacy you on your policy. about this, even though we will fan in the european union, the kremlin media machine, the state on crush today and split or t smooth neck, even our video agency, roughly all band on youtube. she's the executive director of the whistleblower and source protection organization at exposed facts in washington. d. c. great to have you back, jess. much of this discussion will inevitably come back to julian assange. you've been intimately involved in supporting assange and the work that he's done with wiki leaks. assange released evidence of american war crimes committed in iraq as well as lots and lots of diplomatic cables that arguably should not have been

classified in the 1st place. yet, the u. s government has pursued him now for well over a decade. walk us through the slippery slope. that is the ongoing prosecution of julian assange. many of us maintained that if his sanchez prosecuted, every national security journalist in america will be open for prosecution. i think it's even broader than that to the extent that a sons is being prosecuted. it makes our own journalists who were dealing, practicing journalism and branding stories in countries that have really authoritarian secrecy rules. subject to those secrecy rules. i mean, can you see, i mean turkey imprisoning one of our journalists because we've violated one of their secrecy rules for iran or iraq. i mean it's, it's frightening it and it's just such a dangerous precedent that actually ends up apparently any kind of person in including foreign correspondent for violating other countries. secrecy laws. so

and, and i think it also creates a very chilling preston because people are already very skittish about reporting on classified information. the national security beat is a treacherous one. and i think people will be even more reluctant of both the journalist side and the source side to, to talk about this stuff. and the government wants it that way. better to have people shaking in their boots and airing on the side of not reporting something than bringing out any of the us as dirty laundry, or even worst. it's illegal conduct. just one of the things that disturbs me is the fact that julian assange has not had the support of most of the major news outlets here in the united states. there was a, an open letter that the new york times signed along with the guardian and police and the lamond, and a couple of other papers. but after that, we didn't see similar announcements from the washington post and the wall street

journal and cnn. why is it that these outlets are not jumping to julian sanchez? defense when, if julian is, is convicted, they'll certainly be the next to be targeted. yeah, i think the statement that came out. yeah. with the very newspapers was a little too little a lot too late. and the it discipline in needy unwillingness to coalesce around sancha in the mainstream media in even the alternative media. but i think that's because he has been so vilified over the last number of years that it's hard for people, you know, whatever you think of a sancha as a person, people, people are care concerning him and basing their lack of support on that rather than on the larger ramifications that this decision will have in terms of affecting all

journalists and the u. s. has done such a great job smearing him in every possible way, including with allegations about russia, stuff that's not in the indictment bio, by the way, all the stuff in the indictment dates back to 2010 era. but i think, you know, i wish i think these people like to say, oh, he's not a publisher. he's not a journalist, but you know, again, creating that kind of litmus test. he, he's, he is a publisher. he is a journalist, as a blocker, technically could be prosecuted under the espionage act. any joe schmo who shares a new newspaper article with someone else that happens to can in classified is technically in violation of this law. you know, i think they are trying to authorize him and paint him as not a real journalist and a renegade. and oh, he was playing footsie with the russians and oh, stuff happened in sweden and,

and everything that has to do with his person and not his profession. and it's really slimy. i think people are sophisticated enough to know better the ones who are doing that. but even this, oh, he's not a real journalist, that's neither here nor there when it comes to the espionage act. so i, you know, i, i wish more people, she could just disastrous suppressed. and that, that, that really is gonna imperil viewing torture, which is it'll be part of it a bit. but the other part is also that courage is do have a conscience. and the people going after the whistleblowers are the moral invertebrates in this country who are self serving and don't really care about the headless interest. so i think people, by and large, they want to be able to sleep at night. they want to believe their country will do the right thing or correct the wrong thing. finally,

just tell us how drone whistleblower daniel hale is doing. you're one of his attorneys. we were both in the court room during his sentencing. when a relatively enlightened judge gave him a sentence that was significantly shorter than what the justice department was asking for. the judge also recommended the daniel be sent to a low security prison, where he could also receive treatment for a medical condition. but the bureau of prisons sent him instead to a maximum security penitentiary. and even then they put him in a restrictive communications management unit. is that justice department policy? how was he doing? despite all of that horrible stuff, he just laid out and he is very resilient, grounded, thought hall young man. and he's doing as well as can be expected. ah, the judge actually yes. was very sensitive to the fact that daniel was struggling with p t a. he anxiety and depression and wanted him as

a medical facility where he could get some therapeutic intervention. and unfortunately, that doesn't happen. i mean they're only 2 c. m use country and they were built to house terror. ok. so again, it's most people in there are in there for life. so it's he, he has a lot of restrictions that even death row inmates don't have restrictions on his communications that even people in the super max don't half they can communicate, they can write letters back and forth with people with him. every single letter that comes in is, is xeroxed, and he only gets a copy of it if he gets it at all. it's very hard to schedule a phone call even as his lawyer. so it has been very frustrating and overly punitive. but unfortunately, the judge had made a recommendation that he be placed at a medical facility,

but it was not an order. and so of course, the bureau of prisons took advantage of that and put him in this c, m. u. and i said, why on earth is he in a c, m u. and he said because his crime involved a communications based offense. and i said his crime with communicating with a journalist. so think deeply about that, that that's the reason the communications, the offense was that he communicated with the journal. not with a spy, not with a hostile foreign agency, nothing like that. but with a regular journalist, i'd like to thank our guest attorney activist and whistleblower jeslane radar for joining us. and thanks to our viewers. former us president theodore roosevelt once said that quote, patriotism means to stand by the country. it does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he,

himself stands by the country. and it is unpatriotic. not to tell the truth whether about the president or about any one else on quote. let's hope that more and more people are able to come forward and do exactly that. i'm john kerry aku and you've been watching the whistleblowers until next time. 2 2 ah, a bit, i don't, i mean i had a me, joe. was i your ship with a hair dresser, a bus driver, sales person. anyone could become a victim that sail private negotiators 1st appeared with we would have been focusing with a,

a september. then you'll be up, but i am on that on the global dilemma issue, warranty feces for missing it on, on the yet yet, studies bush took over the summer. you may, you could put it with this request with some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities and other countries, the united states of america is different wherever people long to be free. they will find a friend in the united states. ah, with

it all about it all to anybody basie since only city in ki, draw the look at the book. they incentives of each cigarette. a few color rebel notions is one among several means to reach the goal of conquering foreign lands and bringing them onto the help of u. s. weston economic interest. sorry, i didn't actually get to that group value democrats. yeah. it's pretty cool actually. so no, that's a lot of power america. final goal of these thing revolutions is to ensure that there are no independent players in the world anymore. ah, the season she should do if there is really a special kind of cynicism in this incident. because this is affecting a school,

it's affecting children. authority isn't violated. international law by rating and then see a building that was being used as a school for the russian embassy. iraq proposal issues harsh criticism. all the u. s. military intervention in the middle east to mental. the region as the conductor historic summit is the leader of neighboring iraq massive laser ups and for i mean the local authorities saying and drone the facility.