Ci Crispin Burke Final Final Final.mp3 transcript powered by Sonix—the best audio to text transcription service
Ci Crispin Burke Final Final Final.mp3 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.
Eric Levai:
Welcome to Counter Intelligence.. This is Eric Levai. Today’s guest is Crispin Burke. Thank you to patrons Dana Berry, Andrei Dunka, William Healy, Angela Jackson, Zacharias Z Score, Kominski, Sacha Millstone, Craig Pierce and Gregg Schneider. This is Eric Levai and this is counterintelligence. Crispin Burke. Welcome to counterintelligence.
Crispin Burke:
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Eric Levai:
Hey, it’s great to have you. Crispin, how are you today?
Crispin Burke:
Oh, doing great. Well, great. It’s wonderful. Beautiful day here in our nation’s capital.
Eric Levai:
Okay. You know, it’s funny. All this time we’ve been communicating. I actually didn’t know where you lived. So that’s good to know.
Crispin Burke:
I guess I’m right here in our Washington, D.C.. Not far from where all the action is all the time, it seems.
Eric Levai:
And Crispin, I want to thank you. I’ve been doing the show quite a while, and you’re the first person to actually pitch me an idea on the show, which was a great idea about. Yeah, I really hate my attitude is whatever takes the hate. You know, we all have a little bit of a lazy streak in us, you know, and that’s the spirit. But I think in some way, yeah. So you pitched me an idea about the history of WikiLeaks. Yeah. And actually, Crisman, you know, maybe. Yeah. Before we get started, could you just tell everyone a little bit about who you are and your background?
Yeah. So I I am an employee within the U.S. government. I’ll say that right now. It’s like they’re like you have to ask some very guarded comment on WikiLeaks. I can’t specifically comment on anything that is related to a government source or the classified information. So I need to put that disclaimer upfront. But I’m also a lifelong Internet user because I kind of pre-date, you know, it a little bit. But I’ve been really kind of keeping Internet culture my entire life. I read a lot about cybersecurity, about the how the fake news epidemic. And I’ve been following the WikiLeaks story very closely since probably at least 2010. Maybe even a little bit before that. So and WikiLeaks is a name that is out in the news quite a bit recently, especially obviously we all heard of it involved in the 2016 election and most recent developments with the arrest of Julian Assange and the ongoing saga that will possibly result his activism back in United States.
So let’s let’s go and get started. Why? Crisman? Why was WikiLeaks founded in the very beginning? Can you give us just a little backstory?
So it’s interesting is that the concept behind WikiLeaks is not exactly new. So think about this. In fact, I’m gonna go back a couple hundred years. I quoted the very short story, but I’ll go back. Did you ever hear the story of Dr. thousand-year had to read that school?
I’m remembering it. I wish I could say that I’m an expert on it, but yes, I still still bout make the deal with the deaf.
Right. And there are a couple of different retelling of the story over the years. However, one retelling of the story was about to deal with the devil is this Dallas gets access to all the information in the world.
Right. Yet all the knowledge in the world like that, that makes them a very powerful man. Mm hmm. He gets it for a period. Sometimes the story gets 24 years. No, I don’t think 24 years that that’s why the devil picked it. And then after that, the devil take the soul. OK. Mm hmm. That is. And what did he do with this knowledge? He ends up squandering it. He used it to play practical jokes. He and such versions he uses to seduce women. He doesn’t use it for its intended purpose, which is to give him power or to do something or create something. And I think that that is such a metaphor for the Internet. Huh. Interesting thing that the World Wide Web has been around almost think about this time 24 years. Right. So in theory, we would have access to all the information the world. Right. It wouldn’t given all that information, you would think that maybe we could cure cancer. Right. Mm hmm. But in the past 24 years, what are we done with this information? We haven’t cured cancer. Instead, needles have come back. I mean, I think that.
I mean, think of what we’ve done with all this information. We had a very utopian view of the Internet many, many years ago. In fact, if you go on YouTube, there’s an interesting Canadian Broadcasting Corporation special about what is Internet. Not the Internet, but what Internet. And you have a lot of comments that seem funny in retrospect. So one person talks about online discussions. Mac and I got in the late 80s and early 90s and said something about, you know, discussions very civil. On this Internet thing, nobody’s screaming at each other or typing. Go to hell and like, oh, man.
Out to Twitter had not been invented yet.
And that people gave their their opinions on the matter of what they thought the Internet would provide. You know, people thought it would knock down borders, cetera. And then one person, you know, talked about his interests and he said it allows me to indulge my passion for all things tie.
And I’m like, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Still, it’s a little out of what we use the Internet for. But again, I think it’s kind of the fountain thing, you know, with similar sites that existed in the 1990s and early one was known as Krypton. And Krypton was actually kind of the people who were involved in Krypton saw their Web site as a ways where people could go and publish documents that were either sensitive and people could either work through them and they could be those made to be made acceptable in public. It was seeing itself as a journalism outlet. And many of those involved in Krypton met up with Julian Assange, who was born in 1971. He had kind of a troubled youth. He was very. His parents did some kind of acting and performing, and they moved around Australia quite often. And that’s part of why he moves on, see that they were all moving around the world as often as he does. He gotten to had the hacker scene. He seemed to have a talent for it. I was arrested sometime in the 1990s, Saint Peter related crimes, but was not given a very harsh sentence. He teamed up with people from Krypton and they eventually found what is called what we now call WikiLeaks.
And the concept behind it was people would go to WikiLeaks. They could post classified documents and sort of like what you would call Wikipedia. People could annotate things and walk certain documents for, you know. These are more important than others. Suppose becomes a collaborative journalism outlet where people could blow whistles on sensitive subjects.
And early on, they had some interesting successes. You know, the Church of Scientology and I’d be very, very careful before I came to Yelp because I know they have a lot of lawyers and they said, but it’s safe to say that the Church of Scientology is not exactly a very transparent organization.
So we say that I live right. We actually live right down the street from the what’s called the celebrity center.
And you’re carried. Yeah. Are you are you off?
No, no, no, no, no, no. And no, there there are visible. I mean, I could do a whole nother show on some of that stuff. No, no. So go ahead. Say what you’re gonna say. Oh, yes.
But, you know, like most religions, you know, if somebody wanted democracy and you go, you could pick up a Bible, you can read about Christianity. In a long book. But to put it all out there. It’s been out there for thousands of years. If you want to know about Scientology, all those documents are, you know, behind closed doors. You can’t accept them until your you’re wealthy.
Whatever level of biology. Oh, ti3. Yes, there are a number, but they don’t like that.
Doctor, you know, extensive devotion to your bank, to your bank account being drained.
I’ll say don’t worry.
You don’t have to say that.
Although WikiLeaks not be involved in what we call the project channel ology, which was a number of leaks which were perpetrated by not it it did publish some documents which were part of the Church of Scientology. And, you know, I have no issue with you bringing a little bit of transparency there. And that’s it. That’s about as far as we me to go before that. Lawyers certain knocking on my door.
Know that if I say anything more tangible is going to come by here.
And they know, you know, all the you know, in the not to get too much off on that, but they, you know, back back when the earliest critics of Scientology were harshly dealt with.
But it’s been so they’re basically long story short now, because it’s all out there, it’s much different than it used to be. But the first one, she was a journalist, really. I mean, it was some just reprehensible stuff that they did to her. So that’s just me. Oh. You know, so they. OK, great. So that was one of their, I guess, early scoops, the Scientology story or.
Yeah. They had no suitable Scientology. They published some documents associated with awesome businesses in Kenya that were kind of corrupt. And so, you know, they’re really kind of keeping true to the form of let’s take on other governments, which are corrupt organizations, which they viewed as corrupt or had secrets which were worth spilling. However. And, you know, they get a lot of notoriety. Now, it’s it’s really kind of understand that the story of WikiLeaks, you have to understand that the personalities, obviously, of Julian Assange we talked about earlier. He’s kind of a troubled youth, troubled about a lot got involved in this document dumping Web sites. He s writing is really odd. Some people believe very firmly in it. And the concept of transparency, because you hold people accountable, because they lead to honesty, fair government and things like that. You know, in prepress our system of government, you protect the privacy of the little people. But you want a government to be as transparent, open to the American public as possible while still preserving our freedoms and obviously the freedom versus security debate that we always have throughout our society. But you want your government to be as transparent as possible so that you can participate in the search. You understand what’s going on. Secret secrecy should be for the people, not necessarily for the government. That makes sense. Julian Assange is more has more of an anarchist view of secrets. He just wants to tear everything down. I think that was kind of his earlier writings. I mean, he’s a he’s a very, very complicated person. There are people who think that he is a terrorist. We can call a foreign intelligence agency. Other people believe it. WikiLeaks is a whistleblowing agency. And, you know, WikiLeaks has its fair share of bands.
I mean, if think with all of its celebrity supporters, I can think of no stranger to celebrity supporter than Pamela Anderson. She visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy all the time. I’d like to know if anyone understand how humiliating. Did have secrets dumped all over the entire Internet. It is Pamela Anderson.
Well, you know, I mean, I really never thought about that. But that’s I’ve got to say, that’s a really great point. You’re right. Well, you know, and it’s it’s. Yeah, no, go ahead. We’re going to say.
I mean, I mean, it’s just the strangest couple, a guy who big secrets for a living in it and a woman who had had her secrets leaked. And she probably made some money off that or. I don’t know.
It’s truly. Yeah. I mean and I don’t know people, especially with celebrities. And Assange is a celebrity, not me. He’s not a Hollywood guy. But there’s often this I don’t know, they they see things in each other. I’ve seen a lot of it comes from people like they’re just not very informed. And my own feelings about WikiLeaks aside that she just I don’t.
Well, whatever. It’s not really relevant. But that’s an interesting point you made about her.
Oh, yes. However, there are some legitimate people that had the interest of WikiLeaks. One of them was a man named Daniel Domme Trackwork, who is often known by pseudonym Daniel Schmidt. And it’s kind of a trivia. When he was speaking the media as Daniel Schmidt, Schmidt was the name of the cat.
Ok, so. So this is like that Schmidt. The cat was the most notorious cat in the entire world. At some point, leave or not, connect us.
Four games on Sipher a had kind of a different kind of has a more noble view of transparency. He really saw WikiLeaks as kind of a journalistic outlet where I think they’ve made a bit of naivete in there as well, where he would look at these massive document dumps. You know, for instance, the ones that if you’re in the United States or, you know, I’ve seen that the tens or if not hundreds of thousands of documents. Sure. And he had somewhat of this naive view of, you know, if a person wouldn’t know something about a subject, they would kind of dispassionately sit down and read tens upon tens of thousands of documents. And that really has not been the case. I mean, know what he’s going to do that what people really have wanted to reactions to WikiLeaks first is a sense of kind of like copulation bias. Right. If there is an organization that you think it’s sinister and they have secrets and those secrets are put out on the Internet, you automatically assume that that is dirty laundry or sinister information. Right. Our people a lot of people are predisposed against the U.S. military. And so, therefore, the U.S. military classified information that must the evidence of wrongdoing or the State Department or if you look at the DNC leaks out the Podesta there there is that ABC. The other is that. People may not read the documents themselves, but they’re going to read reports about the documents and then they may be led to very strange conclusions. Again, going back again, dumpsite, for example, he thought people were going to sit down and dispassionately, you know, tens of thousand documents and come to a very rational conclusion.
What rational person sat down, read the pathetic mail and came to the conclusion that there are child sex slaves in the Bible pizza place? Nobody. Yeah, the crazy thing.
But I mean, you had these conspiracy theorists, you and I don’t exactly get the entire leap of logic that they went through, but they just took passages. They saw a reference to a pizza place and somehow assume that there are sex slaves in the base of the pizza place.
And you know what I’d like to highlight and what you were talking to me about this story before was that it was almost like a sort of a a Shakespearean story of two men. And with, like you said, one who’s much more on the Hill. I’ll say the phrase anarchy aside. And then the other one you just described, who seem to have a more idealistic view as I am, I more or less right about that.
Yes. Yes. I think Dana’s I’m shocked or at an idealistic view of what WikiLeaks should then springing up around 2010, there was actually almost an attempted coup within WikiLeaks. So getting back to the character of Julian Assange, he has, for lack of a better term, some ego and narcissism problems.
And that’s kind of putting it mildly.
Daniel, that fact brought this up. And one of his observations was while the two were kind of being the public face of WikiLeaks, Julian thought he was very adamant that he would get 50 people, at least 52 percent of the press, while Don Kecksburg would get no more than 40 percent of the press.
Where are you? Are you serious? You actually. Yes. I don’t know if Julian thought he said that, but if you want to reference it is in Django’s.
I’m Schwartzberg. Get he birds up. Look hot inside WikiLeaks, which is.
That’s Arey. That’s Hollywood right there, I’ll tell you.
Oh, it really is. It was actually made into a movie. I can’t I do. This one was called the Fifth Estate with Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange and Benedict Cumberbatch as the maid and the amazing characters that he has portrayed. He did it very convincing. Julian Assange.
No kidding. So from the beginning, Assange had an ego.
Oh, yeah. In fact, one of the original founders of Krypton, which is kind of a I wouldn’t say I won’t say a parent organization, WikiLeaks, but they had some role in the founding of WikiLeaks.
A gentleman by the name of I think it’s lasting was young.
I think it’s Jonathan Young. Mr. Young said Assange is the narcissistic individual and WikiLeaks is willing to sacrifice Bradley Manning. That was that was Chelsea Manning at the time and anyone else who advance their own interests. And so he had he had the pretty damning things to say about WikiLeaks and that it wasn’t a journalist Web site anymore. It was more about feeding the ego and the public persona of Julian Assange.
He says that Mr. Young then comes to me. You know, he has a strange conspiracy theory into the founders of Ericsson. The financial backers of WikiLeaks said that this is kind of funny. He says the financial backers of WikiLeaks are.
But please. Yeah, go ahead.
Pick up to train. Soros and the Coke. I’m like, seriously? I mean, I expected not to say either Soros or Coke, but it’s a weird conspiracy to say Soros Tofurky together did something.
Yeah. And tell me again who who x who said that?
That was one of the founders of Krypton.
Oh, I see. I actually thought. Just sit down.
I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. These these conspiracy guys are unbelievable. I was reading them just to say Daniel Schmidt. I was reading an article from back when where just to highlight this for the audience, because I want you and I talked about where the funding comes from, which is sort of given some of the things that happened in 2016.
So, yeah, you know, for regulation that created transparency, there are not a very transparent organization. Yes.
And it’s like doing it, guys always trying to talk about its funding. And he gave a response saying, oh, I just made up 50000 percent profit on Bitcoin. Bullshit, man. Right. I think so.
No, it’s fine. Smith said from the beginning that your wasn’t transparent and he was the money was coming from his bank account. So it makes you wonder if it makes you wonder where that money came from from the beginning.
Yeah. And initially you could actually donate and back it back WikiLeaks. I I personally would did not and would never. But you could like go on the website just like he would find you know, I was almost like you would find somebody touching on page or whatever you could find five blocks and blocks away wherever to WikiLeaks. A lot of those transfer sites stopped sending money to WikiLeaks like PayPal and other functions. And sometimes there were hackers that had a little test and they’d like try to, you know, started off attacks in either.
How or Amazon for shutting down WikiLeaks funding. But they didn’t really last long.
It’s almost like if I could highlight a comparison, let’s say someone hypothetically was a I don’t know, a presidential candidate whose source of funds had run out due to shady business dealings. Then you start looking elsewhere. Makes one wonder where you get that money from. Just do some to think about what you’re reading. So let’s bring in a back to WikiLeaks. So, yeah, these two men who are working together, what is the big what put WikiLeaks on the map? The big splash.
So really the big splash were the document dumps orchestrated by Chelsea Manning, who then Chelsea Manning is now a woman at the time. Chelsea Manning was Bradley Manning, an Army private serving, striking up. True story. Bradley Manning was in the same division as I was at Fort Drum at the same time. No kidding. Yeah. Bradley Manning at the time grew up kind of a troubled household, had some anger problems, but later went into the army and was a very troubled person. The gender identity issues. This is at a time when you really could not be transgender in the military. In fact, this was before don’t ask or tell. So was young Ben Bradley. Manning was going to do some issues, however. And there are some stories that young Bradley Manning was picked on. But there are also reports that there were violent outbursts from Bradley Manning throwing things, etc.. But Bradley Manning was also an intelligent analyst and is his brigade was very short on training intelligence analysts. He’s one of the only few who had the right computer skills. He was naturally gets into the computer and understood how to use the systems. So they decided to take him to Iraq. He was deployed to Iraq. Still, the anger issues continued. And at one point, he punched his a female officer in the face and they said, yes, and they’re going to discharge him. Wow. So around that time, what he did. He still had acted. So he never pulled his security clearance. After that incident, which turned out to be a mistake. He was still allowed to be on duty while we were still processing his discharge paperwork. And so according to his own confession, he started making boarding classified information to see ROMs and writing in a black shark market. Lady Gaga on them.
Wow, that’s great. Did you guys meet with Lady Gaga? Mama, I love Gaga.
And then and then. Fun fact. When another one of us joined Thijs celebrity supporters is Lady Gaga.
By my own. I wish you had told me that.
So how did young then Private Bradley Manning get caught? Well, there’s a pretty well known hacker who used to be on the wrong side of the law. And now then was converted over to serve in the right side of the law.
Named Adrian Lamo, who recently passed away about a year ago. Here he is. He is what you would now call a white hat hacker.
Somebody who may have grown up kind of using hacking seals for bad purposes, gets arrested by one source and then is given opportunity. Use those skills to help organizations protect themselves. Manning contacts him out of blue. And let me actually go to the chat logs. This this is literally the first thing that Brad asks. Eighty seven says to Adrian Lamo, one of the most well-known hackers in the entire world. OK. I’m actually ready for the chat logs right now. Hi, how are you? I am an Army intelligence analyst, deployed eastern Baghdad pending discharge.
If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight months, what would you do?
Man, you got to be kidding me.
Adrian, what if you look, I got to chat like that, buddy. The next report is for Adrian Lamo. Auto reply. I’m tired.
Wow. Yeah. Not even. Oh, that’s like a butterfly.
And then he literally confesses the entire thing. Adrian Lavoe. You know, they talk about things that make up for, you know, agents turn. In Manning’s case, it seems to be revenge for being chaptered out the military in ego. And many goes on to say, you know, hypothetical question, if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time, what would you do?
So was Manning doing that father private computer or from a government computer?
Do you know that this is this is so Wired magazine published these chat logs. So they’re on my my home computer right now. Oh, by the way, it’s also kind of a Columbus Day weekend in federal government area. So that that’s this time.
Yeah. You know, it’s sort of. Manning is an interesting character. I just want to highlight that. I think like even with maybe Assange, people are complex and they they do things for different different reasons. I just I’ve always found Chelsea Manning story. Some of it was maybe to strike back at the army, some was maybe a belief that these things were wrong. I just think that’s interesting, some for all of us to keep in mind.
So I’ll go to go through the rest the chat logs, because I mean, back when we catharsis by saying, quote unquote, let’s just say someone ethicists I know intimately well has been penetrating unclassified networks. Well, so many by Manningham confession in the chat logs, which are public in the public domain. This is what he said. So I’m not going to comment on what may be out there, but I’ll talk about what many had said about these are these document dumps.
Many appear to be a gas that apparently, according to his own catalog, the US will provide assistance to Pakistan of humanitarian aid. And they talk about the humanitarian aid.
But Manning believes that the US would also not talk about, you know, that the foreign military sales or the military assistance the U.S. would give Pakistan. And that’s actually not the case. We’ve got all of these a lot of these programs are carried out with extreme transparency. If the U.S. ends up domestic A, you know, you got to bring aid to Pakistan. Yes. We need to publicize that in a press release. But believe or not, you know, the US also publicizes for military sales deals and everything like that. It’s not as public, but if you know where to go, I could find on the defense security cooperation website. And every time there’s a major foreign military sales deal that’s struck, it’s on the website. In fact, I even get a Google alert whenever it happens. And that’s one of the kind of common misconceptions we have about secrets these days in that I think Danny was very shocked.
To find that we don’t know about something doesn’t mean it’s secret. Yeah, the actually out there, if you just know where to look.
Yeah. On the other hand, astern and other things that you can’t comment on, there was one video from that. There was, you know, which everybody knows or listen, which was absolutely shocking. I know you can only talk about some of the stuff due to policy. I don’t know if I can if you’re on the show.
I think I’ll say one thing about the leaks in general. Know in that I think 20 years and they’ll be important historical tools. And this is kind of what I mean by that. Let’s say if I wanted to know how many B-17 bombers launching from such a such airbase in England and such and such a target in Germany on a certain day during the Second World War, I could actually find that because during the Second World War, you had specially trained clerks would document everything.
If even though the time when people did all the work on typewriters or, you know, pencil paper, there were no electronic violence systems, people knew how to keep records.
One of the things that’s kind of interesting about it, kind of out of the way we keep records these days is that, you know, whereas during the Second World War, only especially trained clerks could compile records and we’re trained how to archive these records any day any idiot can make a PowerPoint slide.
And we expect any idiot to make a PowerPoint slide.
I know that every time that there’s every time there’s a flight, every time his convoy or anything like that, we’re here to pick up the 30 page PowerPoint presentation with like risk assessments, maps, all sorts ridiculous stuff. But no one ever takes the time to kind of like archive all of those things. So the net result is, you know, if I want to know how many cons, how many Humvees went out in a convoy in Baghdad just a couple of years ago, I probably could not find that information.
So the WikiLeaks video, the the the document dump, whatever comes out. What was the public response?
So that the public response, again, part of it was that, you know, the shock that there were classified reports. And again, everybody knows that there there were you know, the military kind of keeps classified to these things, but there really weren’t that many new revelations that came out of any of the document dumps. People I expected that there would be some great secret which was leaked in the midst of these document dumps that somebody would have to resign as like that. And nobody did. It was just business as usual. I think people were just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that was put out there on the Internet.
You know, what’s always stood out to me is the video with the Reuters journalists. And I just want to, you know, for the audience that despite the complaint, whatever I think about Chelsea Manning, I there’s some. It’s a horrible thing. That’s I’m just going to say that. And then we can move on, because I know due to your you can’t talk about a lot of stuff.
I will say that if you want to know more, U.S. Central Command actually had the official investigation posted on their public Web site. You know, they they think they play some of these documents that are open for the public to review. And you can actually read more about the incident. I know this came out here that I saw on their Web site many years ago. I know what’s happened since then, but in theory, you can actually wear these documents and things like that.
So I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you so much for telling the audience that. That’s that’s fantastic.
I don’t I don’t know where it still exists out there, but I you know, if you’re a concerned citizen, you have concerns for what your government is doing. You know, we have these laws in place. You know, it was about the 1970s to kind of increase transparency in government. You can request a certain piece of information from the government and in your course to ask your government questions. And you can use these up process, even FPO, without having to resort to classified leaked ops.
Actually, I’d like to do a quick shout out, an unrelated story, a quick shout out to Garth over atá, who’s the FOIA officer at Cybercom for really being send me some professional. You know, I needed something and really professional, just great person. So. Yeah. Yeah. Really? Really? The people who work for our government. Just I just think there’s so many great people and they don’t get there like yourself. Don’t get the you know, the credit that they should get.
Party on guard. Yeah. Okay. So you’re good. So this is about 20 or so.
Danny’s arrested. WikiLeaked at first. Obviously, they don’t want to confirm that Danny is the source, obviously, because that’s that’s not it. You don’t want to do that, but they’re awesome. Initially, they did not pay a lot of money for Manning’s legal defense that they did change after time, after some public protest.
But and I don’t know if it was a legal defense. Obviously, if they’re paying money for Manning, for legal defense, that kind of, you know, dams Manning. But they did receive some criticism early on for not providing legal defense. I see. However, there was have interesting things. So obviously the documents came out against the United government. So the question later arose. So why does WikiLeaks not take on. The Chinese government, the Russian government, et cetera, et cetera. And so there are a couple of explanations. And Daniel Jamshedpur actually provides one of the simplest ones. He has a couple of explanations. The simplest one is that Julius on speaks no foreign language. He only sees things. So you give me a bunch of Russian documents. He doesn’t know what to do with them. So, you know, there is that it’s it was not a large organization with a lot of translators. So there’s that. Then this comes. Then we get to kind of the second thing in that it would be dishonest in ego to be pursued by the CIA.
I mean, obviously, every every government has skeletons that its closet, you know, the Canadian government probably skeletons in the closet. But, you know, you’re you’re not making international headlines if Canadian agents are pursuing you all over the world. You are making international headlines in the United States and the CIA or pursuing you all over the world. And for a while, keep kind of portrayed himself as this James Bond villain. In fact, I think it’s had a funny. Did you see the James Bond movie Skyfall? Oh, yeah. Great movie. Yeah, I did this did the billing in that movie not remind me of Julian Bond with the blonde hair and the hacking skills and things like that. It sort of reminded me of Julian Assange.
Yeah, I hadn’t thought about till now. You’re right. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think Assange is a cult of personality. You wouldn’t find a better phrase. And that’s what he is.
Yes. I don’t think there’s the final one is that, you know, it’s great to be perceived by the United States. And I know that the CIA has done some things in the past, but you are probably not going to get struck by a drone in the middle of a crowded city. If you take on the Russian government, you do stand up very strong chance of being poisoned in a major city.
I mean, I mean, we’ve work with the Russian government has done to the script calls back actually being called the story hasn’t gotten as much press as I thought it would put up. Do you hear about the poisoning with the North Korean government?
Yes, I did. I know exactly what I’m talking about, though.
It’s so for our listeners with interesting stories. So one of Kim Jong un’s relatives was I think it was made in Singapore or if I’m not mistaken, somewhere in Southeast Asia. Yes. And a woman on the street wearing a T-shirt that said, well, well, I’ll walk up to him and freedom in the face with an aerosol can.
Yes. And within seconds, this relative, Kim Jong un, is dead on the street, being struck with a highly lethal nerve agent. Then there’s a series photo of this woman, a who’s a murderer for you. Yeah, but tell him how Kim orients. I should have chosen that. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was on a television show. And this is a prank on some comedy, you know, hidden cameras or something like that. Yes.
So it’s like like we said, getting back to the topic.
Julie IFIs doesn’t want saying the Russian government because, you know, he knows that there could be some serious trouble. He takes them on.
And in fact, there is a point in 2010 and October 2010 where he claims to have documents on important Russian nationals. Shortly after that, an FSB spokesperson says we can make WikiLeaks disappear. And shortly after that, Julian Assange said absolutely nothing else. What the Russian government. And then following that, he starts getting a TV show on our TV that reads like the Julian Assange show.
But yeah, he’s called. Yeah, but they start pandering to his massive ego. They give more platform and money.
I like to really highlight the money because I think that is a unheralded part of the story. Where does his money come from?
And again, I don’t know. Maybe somebody does know, but I personally don’t know. But that that that is kind of. Yeah.
And some. So some WikiLeaks kind of associates start doing some things that are in the interest of the Russian government. So like we talked about the crazy conspiracy theorists, theorists who are kind of like involved in the whole WikiLeaks circle. One of them is a guy named Israel Shamir, Israel, Shamir.
I had no idea this is actually a thing. Israel Shamir is a Jewish Holocaust denier. No kidding. I had no idea. Somebody said that that would exist.
But he is apparently a Jewish Holocaust denier. Yeah. Yeah.
They think that this is just this is this just goes to show you that people that you like to hang out with. But apparently, Mr. Shamir came into possession of some documents about his opposition figures. Are pro-democracy activists how you might want to view them within the nation of Belarus, which is a former Soviet state, which is, you know, unlike, say, Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia, which joined data when her very western affiliated Belarus is very much Russian affiliated. And so WikiLeaks now starts publishing documents on these pro-democracy dissidents, which is kind of a which kind of turns the table on what WikiLeaks was designed to do, was designed to help the little guy. You know, he was being oppressed by some of these governments. So that’s kind of how far it has fallen.
I think now that it’s kind of fallen into Russian orbit, let’s bring it.
Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say no. Go ahead. What was a lesson here as well?
And, you know, obviously, since then, obviously, everything has been mostly releases have been anti-American. There was talk about the relationship between Russia and WikiLeaks. And this comes out. I’ve actually got the printed Bolt Report in front of me as we talk, whether they’re involved in the 2016 campaign.
There are Twitter gems which are set between the WikiLeaks account and the account operated by the persona, who was then known as Lucifer 2.0. In terms to kind of go back in June of 2016 after it was publicly announced that the DNC was hacked, a persona up here on Twitter calling himself to 2.0, saying that I’m a Romanian. I asked the DNC those Russians had nothing to do with it. I’m a Romanian. We now know that that was a fraud for officers of the GDR. You correct? WikiLeaks stopped communicating with this group to point out Christopher 2.0 has his own little website called DC Leaks. But of course, WikiLeaks is a much more popular phenomenon. And so I think there is a communication which goes. Back and forth. WikiLeaks winds up in possession of these documents and starts releasing them at strategic points during the campaign. One is before the DNC. There’s a document dump and decide as clear to me, I should say. The person operating the WikiLeaks Twitter account who is probably Julian Assange, makes it clear that the timing of that was intentional. There is the second release of information which takes place on the afternoon. I believe it’s October 7th of 2016. And so the mole report doesn’t specifically link it to this incident. It’s kind of clear that it was timed to coincide with the Access Hollywood release. Obviously, we know what happened there. And then shortly after an hour after that, Access Hollywood tape comes out. But after the e-mails are leaked.
So there is that and again, we can argue I don’t think anybody would ever settle whether or not the had a role in swaying you actually back and forth or anything like that. But to me, it is what WikiLeaks has done in the 2016 campaign was actually kind of interesting is that the second question everybody wants out is what did the Trump campaign collaborate with WikiLeaks for these dumps? And I’m going to go to a city to withhold report. I got a pretty one right here.
I’m impressed you printed it. Most people have an online. Well, they have it.
If you go around watching to see this is one that’s not published by The Washington Post, they find everything for you. So tonight, we’ll talk about what to carry around the most heavily redacted portion of the story. The whole report involves WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign. So I have it’s all cited the ongoing matter. I mean, four or five pages of almost entirely blacked out text. So, you know, it’s difficult to say what’s exactly going on there.
It’s heavily redacted. I don’t have it in front of me, but from my I’ve read it twice. But my recollection was there was one unredacted part that you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Trump or someone right under him was informed that more damaging documents were coming. Rick Gates or one of those guys, I think would I know that there were some cremating.
There were up there seem to be some knowledge that WikiLeaks was in possession of documents.
There are some ominous tweets, I think, for Roger Stone, who said next it will be protesters turn in the barrel, right? Oh, you mean that does not look good if you’re gonna do anything for me. Please don’t post on Twitter, guys.
But let’s bring that back to the day. Yeah, let’s bring that back to kind of the centerpiece of the show. Is that really what is WikiLeaks? Because what we’re describing now is not that’s not really. That’s something else. Where it’s it’s become in a quote unquote, organization has become involved, not just leaking or posting, but coordinating. That’s what we’re talking about. And I think that’s important.
I would say at least WikiLeaks, for its part, is definitely inserting itself. And I get that that portion that portion of the reciprocal arrangement is heavily redacted. So I really can’t comment on that, of course. Yeah. And it really has up, you know, and a lot of it’s due to the personality of Jewison. I mean, he is essentially WikiLeaks at this point.
He’s very he was very open also about obviously wanting Donald Trump to be president over Hillary Clinton, who he called associated with.
A lot of that, too. You know, I personally think it stems to the release of the State Department cables. Yes. Obviously, she was secretary at the time. He was trying to spread a rumor that she was trying to kill him with a drone at some point. I thought that was kind of that’s kind of funny. Like, really, you’re gonna float the Ecuadorian embassy or something like that? Yeah, he was trying to get that. You know, you know, he was trying to start that narrative as well.
Well, I’d just like to say my own personal feeling about WikiLeaks is that when it started, I like a lot of people. I’m a big believer in transparency. And I you know, with the limited knowledge I had in the first initial, I thought this was a great thing. I admired Assange. And fast forward to now I. It’s hard for me to believe that it’s the same thing. I’m very I was very disappointed in what what it became and who he who he is that I I now know. I feel like I was missing.
You know, I just want to say that I think I think that once you’re starting, you now catch up with this technology. So I’m going to kind of go to another scandal. So that is completely unrelated to WikiLeaks, actually. So you heard about what happened at Jennifer Lawrence in the hacking attempt on her on the phone. Right. Yes.
And for our our listeners, somebody at Spearfish, Jennifer Lawrence, got access to her phone and had uncovered some nude images of her and they were going to post them on the air. We’ve now I think we as a society have realized this sort of activity is wrong. It is criminal. And now you’re starting to see a lot of laws against the so-called revenge porn and things like that. I think we’re starting to develop some new arms as to what information should be protected in private. What information should you be exposed? The public. In 2008, somebody attacked europeana Yahoo! Account. They didn’t find anything. There was nothing incriminating in there. But just imagine, you know, even if you’re a public figure, you don’t deserve to have your personal emails plastered all over the Internet just for fun. Unless there’s something criminal in there now, I think we’re starting to come of come some norms with regards to these documents. You know, in terms of doxing, what exactly is it like we saw in other examples recently within the. I think one prominent Democratic figure had done some research into their opponents and they found whoever the their large backers were, even though that information is publicly available. Yet theguy. But should we be exposing every politician’s donors in such a fashion so that they can be retaliated against? I don’t know.
I have no problem with political donations, in my opinion, should all be public. And they and they are for the most. Well, not enough. But but, you know, Assange is on record saying when they including the names of informants who help our government in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I believe you correct me if I’m wrong, but he said he didn’t care what happened to them because their informants.
I mean, yes, he said that. I mean, that’s crazy.
Houses, which were kind of way that, you know, if somebody provide you with information that they fear for their lives, you know, a lot of journalists feel that they would have an obligation to protect that course. And so you lose and you have to make sure that you make sure their reporting does not actually harm a human being. I mean, there’s you know, we could talk a lot about journalistic. Got to explain. Yeah. You do have to consider the cost of putting this information out there and they help our military.
I mean, some of these these people are vital. Was contrived.
I think if they felt that if they wanted to come to somebody, if they thought that somebody was planting bombs, you know, it encourages them to come forward if they feel that their identity will be protected. That that no longer exist.
Yeah. Diplomacy can’t go forward if you publicize a lot of cables because diplomats need that base to exchange information. Right. You need to come to each other with issues. You know, it’s better to say nasty things in private in the world policy than be nice in public then you know, the other way around.
You have a question for you? Yeah. No, I just want to say, I went on WikiLeaks last night and I just curious what you thought about this. I put in a day, a time Ranger was in 2016 to right before Trump was inaugurated. So that whole period and I put in the phrase Trump and I got 20000 roughly hits. So a huge amount of stuff. Then I did the same timeframe for after the election till now and I got eight. So in other words, an administration that has had more leakers and more of scandals in most people’s opinion.
Wikileaks has no information. I don’t know if that’s sort of interesting. Any thoughts on that?
I don’t know. I haven’t looked for that on the Web.
Yeah, but I think that’s an interesting. Yeah. I mean, just for my reputation was built on, you know, exposing things is sort of strange that right after Trump’s been elected, there’s been no information. But maybe that’s just me.
A function a little bit guilty. Yeah, that’s true. You know, you’re right that you know. Oh, go ahead. Christmas.
I would like to conclude on something that goes back to the topic of whistleblowers. Right. In recent years, we’ve had people kind of styled themselves as whistleblowers. Obviously, Chelsea Manning has styled herself as a whistleblower.
I get that that when you look at what she did, she, you know, just some solid funhouse about the doctor’s idea, maybe not really understanding what she was putting out there in her motivations. But I doubt see that she was motivated to be a whistleblower to actually fight. I personally doubt that. We also see the example of Edward Snowden, who has portrayed himself as a whistleblower. I think he had I think he understood that what he was leaking was anybody. But if he took the information, he fled to Russia with it. The nation which has the most to benefit from, you know, this sort of document dump, not only in terms of, you know, he gave. Well, you know, there’s a domestic program, obviously, and you know, that that is the paper other side.
But I mean, so, you know, we’ll get into it. To be fair to Snowden, though, he did try to go to like 30 other countries first and then the government stop the book. You and I will do another Snowden show, who I think is a much more fascinating just it. But will anyway. Go ahead.
But yeah, but you know, it the domestic program and I know that that’s a debate for another time. But then it was a huge propaganda boost for our team because they could say, look at America spying on everybody. And had again, there are various issues with the Russian narrative that that that was their kind of take on things. The other thing is they gave them a lot of information about what we could do to our. A lot of information about our foreign surveillance capabilities. And that that’s pretty damning. You know, they if one of our our chief adversaries. So much information on our surveillance techniques. Again. We’ll talk about his motivations later. I personally think that he was not motivated by altruistic reasons. I think that he was probably I personally think he was recruited by. But who knows?
Snowden you’re talking about.
I personally think, wow. But every country who knows what it thinks? I think it’s interesting. So we look at these two people who styled themselves as whistleblowers and now we see the news about people within the government who are whistleblowers. And it’ll be interesting to see how this story plays out.
I have no comment on the actual content of what their plan was a lot, but. Maybe we’re getting back to that. I think this is very curious. You know, after you know, within this town, people leak classified information, leak things to the press all the time. It’s kind of nice to see people going through the formal process of registering and filing a formal complaint, whatever the content of that is. But actually working through the established system that we have yet to make their concerns heard if they think that something is is wrong. They think they feel confident in the system to come forward and have their voices heard. I think that’s actually quite refreshing. And I hope that, you know, regardless of what happens throughout the course of whatever it is, they’re blowing with a lot. You know, I hope the more people use the normal procedures of whistleblowing than just simply posting things to WikiLeaks is going to proceed. And maybe we’re reaching that moment.
We’ll see. We’ll see. It depends on the I guess it depends on the retaliation that they which is the argument against that, that that for things like WikiLeaks, that when you do do it the right way, your government can destroy you. Just just to say that that’s what they would. That’s what Snowden said. But I just really my final question. What what do you think the future of WikiLeaks is going to be?
I mean, it depends on what the future of Julian Assange at this point. Yeah, I don’t I don’t I mean, because I think that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are really one of the same at this point. It could be felt like he has a lot of full time employees.
He’s working at the Ecuadorian embassy.
I think that it’s really that those messages are the same at this point. You know, I think we’re still going to see people posting things on the Internet. I think we’re still going to see a classified document. Dumps on the Internet may not be true. WikiLeaks. I think that people were posting these sorts of sensitive materials on the Internet through crypto, which was a kind of a that’s organization that be doing it long after WikiLeaks is gone.
Let’s just hope that our names won’t be in any of those dumps. Let’s just end on that. No, I hope not. I’m a Christian. Yeah. Hey, Crisman Burke. So great having you on counterintelligence. I. I really.
And let me let me let me out. Yes, sir. It’s a fortnight. Can you just please, please ensure this gets in the final pipe? Yes. Mike, these are my own and not those of the U.S. government.
That stays in that that stays in. That is not being cut out. Actually, I really cut anything on the show. OK.
Excellent. It is so great talking you and I really hope to do it again soon.
Thank you for listening.
Follow forensic news on Twitter at Forensic Newsnet counter-intelligence as an intel pod. My personal account is Eric Levay. Support Forensic News UNpatrolled. Subscribe to counter-intelligence everywhere you listen to podcasts. This is Eric Levai. and this is counterintelligence.
Quickly and accurately convert audio to text with Sonix.
Sonix uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to convert your mp3 files to text.
Thousands of researchers and podcasters use Sonix to automatically transcribe their audio files (*.mp3). Easily convert your mp3 file to text or docx to make your media content more accessible to listeners.
Sonix is the best online audio transcription software in 2019—it’s fast, easy, and affordable.
If you are looking for a great way to convert your mp3 to text, try Sonix today.