We are joined by James Corbett so hello James thanks for joining us.
"Hey, lets do it"
Why do think there's such as huge backlash against the guy who essentially has done what
journalists have always done which is blowing the whistle on something he thought was wrong.
"Who are the people whose interests are hurt in this situation?
It is the power establishment.
It is the people who want to be able to keep this secret and of course their take on it
is that this endangers the security of Americans etc. etc. but I don't think that that lie
is worth the paper that it's printed in.
Basically what this is is just the establishment trying to preserve it's secrets at any cost
and anyone who fundamentally bucks against that is going to receive some backlash.
Regarding Snowden giving his information about the NSA spying to the Chinese and the Russians,
I tend to believe him when he says he didn't do that but I think we'd also be naive to
think that he got out of Hong Kong without the Chinese getting that information one way
or another.
Whether he gave it to them or whether it was simply acquired I think everyone understands
it was probably taken in some form."
You have a fascinating interview with Russ Tice on your YouTube channel maybe you could
sort of summarize what you found out from Russ Tice?
"Russ Tice was one of the original NSA whistleblowers in fact as far as I know the first NSA whistleblower
to come forward by name.
He was the one of the sources for the New York Times original story back in 2005 that
broke the warrant less wiretapping scandal.
Basically he is now naming names saying that when he was working for the NSA about ten
years ago he physically held in his hand the wiretap orders for some of the highest ranking
politicians in the United States, key ranking members of the Congressional, a leadership
both democratic and republican, every single one of the Supreme Court Justice, the former
secretary of state Colin Powell and even a little known senator from Illinois at the
time that was a political nobody at the time but who is now the President of the United
States, Barack Obama specifically targeted for wiretapping back in 2004 so some pretty
remarkable revelations there."
It's a big deal, that's a huge huge story.
"It is actually being suppressed.
Russ Tice after Edward Snowden came out he had lined up four different on camera interviews
with national television networks in the United States, all four of them cancelled before
he ever got on air.
So this is definitely something that's too hot to handle.
It's interesting that Snowden is getting 24/7 blanket coverage with the PRISM and Russ Tice
is trying to bring new information and no-one is touching is so I think this information
is just too hot to handle."
What's your take on the NSA's ability to 'dish the dirt' on the people and kind of hold people
to ransom?
"Knowledge is power specifically in cases where you can have dirt on someone that they
don't want to get out there so it's a really, really disturbing thing to think that there
are people with goods, with details about some of these politicians that can really
control what they do politically."
James Hayden is asking here: Isn't Snowden a smokescreen to bury major news from the
Middle East?
"Well I think there are three ways of looking at this story and one is that we can just
take it at face value that here's someone that's coming out with some information and
it's causing big political waves.
The other one is that this is a limited hangout, that idea is that Snowden is coming out with
information whether he himself is doing this or whether he's a dupe for someone behind-the-scenes
but he's coming out with information that is just a little bit of the picture, just
a few of the details not the big picture so that we can fixate on those few small details
and miss the bigger picture like for example what Russ Tice is saying and then there's
the third possibility which is that this is just a total smokescreen and the real action
is happening somewhere else.
I think that in a weird way I think all three are correct.
I'm sure this is a smokescreen for things not only in Syria but a lot of other things
are happening geopolitical right now and this does create a convenient distraction.
Whenever there's a 24/7 blanket news story I think it serves out interest to take a look
at what we're not being asked to look at constantly.
Regardless whether Snowden's a distraction or whatever at the very least we can use the
momentum of a story like this to try and bring people's attention to that bigger picture
that we're talking about, the total surveillance that's going on and why the security state
has to be dismantled because it is getting out of control.