[00:02.680 --> 00:07.080]  On the end, yammering, is Robert Steele.
[00:07.360 --> 00:09.640]  He's the founder of OSS.net.
[00:09.900 --> 00:11.900]  He's written two books on intelligence.
[00:12.460 --> 00:15.600]  If you go to Amazon and do a search on him, you will find them.
[00:16.940 --> 00:22.320]  Next to him, the gentleman that has been speaking for quite some time, two hours.
[00:24.180 --> 00:28.680]  And this gentleman right here is Declan McCullough?
[00:28.680 --> 00:29.840]  Declan, that's right.
[00:31.480 --> 00:34.520]  You probably have read his stuff at Wired.
[00:34.980 --> 00:38.900]  He runs a little thing called PolitechBot, which stirs up a lot of trouble.
[00:39.080 --> 00:39.960]  And we like that.
[00:40.520 --> 00:44.780]  He is now the chief political correspondent for News.com at CNET.
[00:44.820 --> 00:47.260]  The name of this panel is The New FBI.
[00:48.040 --> 00:49.860]  And I'll let these guys take it away.
[00:49.980 --> 00:50.800]  Let's start with Declan.
[00:50.800 --> 00:51.980]  Hey, thanks.
[00:52.520 --> 00:56.000]  So I live and work... Thanks, folks.
[00:56.400 --> 00:58.520]  So I live and work in Washington, D.C.
[00:58.660 --> 01:00.860]  And, you know, I write about the FBI a lot.
[01:01.000 --> 01:03.400]  I go to these hearings and I watch what happens.
[01:03.400 --> 01:06.960]  And it's actually almost too easy to beat up on the FBI.
[01:07.420 --> 01:12.740]  These are the guys who wanted to ban crypto for the bulk of some of your lifetimes.
[01:13.020 --> 01:16.260]  These are the folks who wanted to carnivore everything.
[01:16.640 --> 01:22.500]  These are the folks who would try to outlaw opaque window blinds if they could get away with it.
[01:22.500 --> 01:27.520]  Their headquarters, think of it, is proudly named after J.
[01:27.680 --> 01:32.480]  Edgar Hoover, who we think of primarily as a cross-dresser nowadays.
[01:33.280 --> 01:36.140]  It's just too easy to beat up on them.
[01:36.400 --> 01:39.620]  But, you know, suck.com had a point.
[01:40.080 --> 01:43.020]  Fish, gun, barrel, let's do it.
[01:44.100 --> 01:46.500]  You probably know already that J.
[01:46.620 --> 01:52.160]  Edgar Hoover and his cronies, back in the good old days, spied on Eleanor Roosevelt.
[01:52.160 --> 01:56.140]  Martin Luther King, feminists, and gay rights leaders.
[01:56.560 --> 02:06.440]  The FBI used secret files and hidden microphones to blackmail the Kennedy brothers, sway the Supreme Court, and influence presidential elections.
[02:06.960 --> 02:15.100]  Now we hear about the new FBI guidelines that John Ashcroft, our beloved Attorney General, announced earlier this year.
[02:16.460 --> 02:18.780]  And he says, trust us.
[02:19.080 --> 02:24.320]  The FBI says, of course, we would never do anything untoward again.
[02:24.700 --> 02:30.420]  And, of course, we know that history never, ever, ever repeats itself.
[02:31.540 --> 02:51.400]  So, what we have to do, this is our task as American citizens, per Ashcroft, is ignore that these new guidelines, web surfing provisions, would allow federal agents, FBI agents, to do things not just related to terrorism, but to all other investigations,
[02:51.680 --> 02:55.700]  drugs, white collar crimes, public corruption, even copyright infringement.
[02:55.700 --> 03:07.600]  And we know that under the No Electronic Theft Act, giving someone copies of copyrighted material that's worth over $1,000 is a federal crime.
[03:07.720 --> 03:09.220]  $2,500 is a federal felony.
[03:10.640 --> 03:19.020]  We're supposed to ignore that the FBI was never prohibited before these new guidelines from surfing the internet or using commercial data mining services.
[03:19.340 --> 03:22.800]  The FBI has long, in fact, been a major customer of them.
[03:23.880 --> 03:30.320]  Before that, this is the difference, before these new guidelines, the search had to be related to some investigation.
[03:30.920 --> 03:32.760]  The threshold was very low.
[03:32.760 --> 03:44.320]  Under the old guidelines, the FBI could maintain what they called a preliminary inquiry for 90 days using data mining, undercover operations, photo surveillance, informants, etc.
[03:44.680 --> 03:45.540]  All that fun stuff.
[03:45.760 --> 03:52.680]  Whenever it had, quote, information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny.
[03:53.020 --> 03:54.620]  That's a pretty low threshold.
[03:54.640 --> 03:56.220]  You could step over that pretty easily.
[03:56.220 --> 04:04.380]  We're supposed to ignore now that the FBI can do phishing expeditions, like sending out robots to scour the web looking for certain terms.
[04:04.380 --> 04:09.080]  Again, not just terrorism, mind you, but any crime over which they have jurisdiction.
[04:09.340 --> 04:13.580]  The guidelines don't limit their new powers to terrorist cases.
[04:15.060 --> 04:17.700]  So, we talked about ancient history for a moment.
[04:17.800 --> 04:21.280]  Let's go and look at modern history, just last month.
[04:21.280 --> 04:24.200]  Let's go month by month through the bulk of this year.
[04:24.200 --> 04:25.380]  It's still young.
[04:26.220 --> 04:33.540]  Last month, the FBI pressured PADI, the Scuba Divers Association, to let agents snoop through all of its member records.
[04:34.020 --> 04:40.440]  Because PADI appeared to be afraid of the FBI, it did not challenge this request in court.
[04:41.180 --> 04:58.700]  Jeff Nadler, in email that we circulated on the Polytech list, PADI's government relations representative, translation, a lobbyist who spends too much time sucking up to the FBI, said he received assurance that, quote, this information is the proprietary property of PADI and its members.
[04:59.000 --> 05:06.500]  Two, it was provided to the FBI counter-terrorism division for the express and single purpose of investigation into possible terrorist activities using scuba.
[05:07.220 --> 05:10.600]  Three, the information would not be used for any other purpose.
[05:10.600 --> 05:16.940]  And four, once the counter-terrorism division had completed its investigation, the information would be returned.
[05:18.100 --> 05:19.800]  Well, you know...
[05:21.440 --> 05:27.560]  If PADI had stood up to the FBI and demanded a subpoena, the subpoena would have been far smaller than this in its scope.
[05:27.920 --> 05:34.660]  PADI could have alternatively challenged it in court, or PADI could have let its members take action in court themselves.
[05:36.000 --> 05:46.180]  Requiring law enforcement to go through these processes, such as actually issuing a subpoena and fighting it in court, is our only protection against phishing expeditions.
[05:46.720 --> 05:48.500]  Scuba divers should know about that.
[05:48.860 --> 05:56.940]  And, especially when information is turned over to the FBI in digital form, do we really believe them to delete all backup copies?
[05:58.480 --> 05:59.660]  One more example.
[05:59.660 --> 06:01.540]  Example also last month.
[06:01.740 --> 06:12.840]  The San Francisco Chronicle, in June, reported on the results of its 17-year fight with the FBI in federal court, based on documents they were trying to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act.
[06:13.040 --> 06:14.380]  They finally got them.
[06:14.800 --> 06:27.420]  It turns out that the FBI, back in the 1950s and 60s, unlawfully schemed with the head of the CIA to harass students, faculty, and trustees at the University of California.
[06:27.420 --> 06:36.180]  The FBI campaigned to get the president of the school fired because it disagreed with his policies and handling of the free speech movement protests.
[06:36.480 --> 06:41.840]  This included sending the White House derogatory allegations about him that the Bureau knew were false.
[06:42.420 --> 06:56.140]  The FBI, in contrast, developed a, quote, close and cordial relationship with President Reagan, then governor, who made campus unrest a major issue and vowed to fire the president during Reagan's 1966 campaign.
[06:56.860 --> 07:12.900]  And after Reagan was elected president, the FBI failed to report that our new commander-in-chief falsely stated on the federal security clearance that he had never been a member of any group officially deemed subversive in a mission that could have been prosecuted as a felony.
[07:13.720 --> 07:17.540]  One more example, one month earlier, May 2002.
[07:17.980 --> 07:19.340]  I was at Wired at the time.
[07:19.460 --> 07:21.000]  I hadn't jumped to news.com.
[07:21.080 --> 07:31.560]  And I wrote an article reporting that the FBI had ordered an internet provider to cease distributing the unedited video of journalist Daniel Pearl being brutally murdered.
[07:31.560 --> 07:43.460]  FBI agents from the Newark field office told a Virginia company called ProHosters to delete the four-minute video, which a customer had posted on the Ogrish.com site.
[07:44.340 --> 07:55.680]  Ted Hickman, who runs the ISP, told me that the FBI insisted that the video be removed immediately, and they wanted the identity of the customer who ran Ogrish.com.
[07:55.820 --> 08:00.480]  He told me, quote, They said they needed the content offline as soon as possible.
[08:00.760 --> 08:03.380]  I called back and I spoke to that agent and his supervisor.
[08:03.380 --> 08:07.780]  Both assured me that it was illegal to post anything related to obscenity.
[08:09.160 --> 08:11.560]  Well, let's go into that in a moment.
[08:11.800 --> 08:14.460]  I called the FBI to figure out what happened.
[08:14.460 --> 08:18.140]  I spoke with Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the Newark office.
[08:18.380 --> 08:28.860]  She said, quote, The local office did investigate certain aspects of the case and, quote, Some type of law was quoted by the agents in terms of a violation.
[08:29.540 --> 08:34.880]  Well, then she checked and she realized that she shouldn't have said that.
[08:35.140 --> 08:36.280]  That said too much.
[08:36.280 --> 08:40.180]  The official line is that they were just giving friendly advice.
[08:40.680 --> 08:47.300]  So she called me back in full damage control mode to change her story.
[08:47.940 --> 08:49.820]  Quote, this is with the revised story.
[08:50.040 --> 09:00.360]  Apparently the conversation with FBI agent Jay Kanitkar had been similar to other conversations with other website hosts, appealing to have various of these photos removed.
[09:01.720 --> 09:09.860]  And if you go to that art, go to wired.com, search for Pearl, and you'll see an editor's note at the bottom of the story with her revised statements in italics.
[09:10.740 --> 09:16.040]  Now, you don't need to be a lawyer to know that this video may be offensive, but it's not obscene.
[09:16.040 --> 09:26.940]  A 1996 federal obscenity statute does exist, true, but it only appeals to work, or only applies to work that, quote, appeals to the prurient interest.
[09:27.180 --> 09:31.060]  And Pearl's video, as disturbing as it may be, is not sexual.
[09:31.420 --> 09:39.300]  Or, if some agent thinks a bloody video of a journalist getting tortured and executed is prurient, I don't really want to know any more about this.
[09:41.380 --> 09:43.860]  The same month, May 2002.
[09:44.340 --> 09:49.620]  Do you remember Louis Freeh, the former FBI director under Clinton?
[09:50.140 --> 10:01.240]  It was always a real comfort to have Louis Free at the helm of the FBI, delivering a delightfully predictable sermon on demand about the importance of total government surveillance.
[10:01.240 --> 10:05.000]  Oh, it was Big Brotherish to the hilt, of course.
[10:05.260 --> 10:08.840]  But at least with Free, you always knew where you stood.
[10:09.400 --> 10:10.700]  Yes, that's right.
[10:10.920 --> 10:17.820]  You were a permanent suspect with fewer privacy rights than an Alcatraz inmate during a full body cavity search.
[10:19.400 --> 10:20.740]  Why do I bring up Free now?
[10:20.820 --> 10:21.800]  He's no longer the director.
[10:21.980 --> 10:23.500]  Well, he's still giving speeches.
[10:23.500 --> 10:30.480]  May 2002, still two months ago, Louis Free has not given up his fight to ban encryption.
[10:31.300 --> 10:34.720]  He spoke in May at a cyber terrorism conference in Canada.
[10:35.080 --> 10:37.730]  Here's what the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported.
[10:39.080 --> 10:40.500]  This is from the news article.
[10:40.700 --> 10:49.040]  Quote, in order to fight this threat, says Free, companies such as Microsoft must be legally obligated to hand over the keys needed to decipher encrypted messages.
[10:51.320 --> 10:56.240]  He says it could prevent Al-Qaeda from maintaining encrypted communication over the internet.
[10:57.700 --> 11:05.060]  As for individual liberty, still quoting from the article, Free says it would be no more of an infringement than a wiretap on a phone line.
[11:06.020 --> 11:07.060]  Enough said.
[11:08.020 --> 11:10.180]  We couldn't crack it unless we broke and entered in...
[11:10.180 --> 11:27.660]  May 2002, the same month, an Ohio prison guard was sentenced to 30 days of community confinement, a $5,000 fine, and a year of probation for misusing the FBI's National Crime Information Center, NCIC, system to check whether a warrant had been issued for a friend.
[11:28.240 --> 11:33.820]  The guy apparently met a woman prisoner and became, well, a little friendly with her.
[11:34.200 --> 11:37.080]  After she was released, the guard employed her as a housekeeper.
[11:37.640 --> 11:43.260]  And during this time, he checked with the NCIC nine times to see if she was about to be rearrested.
[11:45.160 --> 11:46.980]  Just be glad he didn't have right access.
[11:48.940 --> 11:52.000]  Let's go one month before, to April 2002.
[11:52.420 --> 11:55.000]  I'll quote from a Justice Department press release.
[11:55.180 --> 11:58.260]  It says that the FBI, DEA, INS, U.S.
[11:58.400 --> 12:09.120]  Marshals, and my favorite, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, will be... their databases, all of their information that they've collected about us, will be open to now local cops via the internet!
[12:10.880 --> 12:12.700]  I'm not making this up, folks.
[12:12.800 --> 12:14.060]  I'm quoting from the press release.
[12:14.280 --> 12:31.000]  Quote, announcing the development of a secure web-based system to enable local, state, and federal users to post, retrieve, and read information, restrict access to certain products, send secure email, and receive automatic new email notifications when new items are posted.
[12:31.280 --> 12:38.780]  This integrated system should also allow for future capabilities such as imagery and photographs, instant messaging, and improved access to federal databases.
[12:39.500 --> 12:40.860]  Now, instant messaging?
[12:41.340 --> 12:44.280]  I mean, does Ashcroft know what a time waster this is?
[12:45.300 --> 12:48.540]  I can imagine a local cop in Piscataway, New Jersey.
[12:48.700 --> 12:58.740]  See, he's typing in his squad car, and he's emailing across the Raritan River to someone in New Brunswick, chatting, hey, Bob, do you like the smiley face with the X over the mouth?
[12:58.940 --> 13:02.760]  How about the one with the really, really big grin, or the one with its tongue sticking out?
[13:04.960 --> 13:06.160]  March 2002.
[13:06.760 --> 13:08.740]  Nicky Scarfo pleads guilty.
[13:09.200 --> 13:10.200]  Do you remember Nicky?
[13:10.760 --> 13:12.260]  I met him once.
[13:12.360 --> 13:16.180]  He's a bit of a Windows hacker, if the phrase even works here.
[13:16.580 --> 13:18.980]  But not good enough, apparently.
[13:19.580 --> 13:23.740]  He got busted because the FBI sniffed his PGP's passphrase.
[13:23.820 --> 13:27.180]  They got a warrant and snuck into his office in New Jersey late at night.
[13:27.500 --> 13:30.740]  Now, there are a few problems with this, besides Nicky being stupid.
[13:31.420 --> 13:34.640]  The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
[13:34.940 --> 13:35.880]  You know the score.
[13:35.880 --> 13:37.140]  You've seen it in the movies.
[13:37.400 --> 13:40.680]  You get a warrant stuck on the door if you're not home, and they bash it in.
[13:40.780 --> 13:42.400]  You come back, and you know what happened.
[13:43.320 --> 13:45.540]  Delayed notification is not good enough.
[13:46.620 --> 13:51.380]  They can't just say, two years later, oh, by the way, we were sniffing around your house back in 1999.
[13:53.180 --> 13:53.940]  Practical problems.
[13:54.080 --> 13:59.740]  What are you going to do if you see some guys with guns skulking around your night, picking up your computer, and apparently about to make off with it?
[13:59.740 --> 14:01.100]  You're going to shoot them!
[14:01.300 --> 14:02.520]  At least if you live in Texas.
[14:02.880 --> 14:04.240]  That's what you're going to do.
[14:04.420 --> 14:09.700]  This is not a good strategy long-term for the survival rates of FBI officers.
[14:10.180 --> 14:12.600]  But the biggest problem is that it's all secret.
[14:13.060 --> 14:17.520]  Yes, the FBI claims their secret keyboard sniffer is actually technically secret.
[14:17.820 --> 14:30.800]  They told a judge that public disclosure of this mysterious keystroke logger would imperil ongoing investigations of, quote, foreign intelligence agents and endanger the lives of U.S. agents were it to be made public.
[14:31.480 --> 14:45.980]  The Feds claim that such stringent secrecy, and I was there in the court hearing I'm not making this up, is necessary to prevent, quote, hostile intelligence officers from employing, quote, counter surveillance tactics to thwart law enforcement.
[14:45.980 --> 14:52.480]  They actually invoked a 1980 law that is almost never used called the Classified Information Act.
[14:52.980 --> 15:00.340]  It's a 1980 law saying that the government may say that some evidence requires protection from unauthorized disclosure for regions of national security.
[15:00.680 --> 15:06.160]  Not only are observers barred from the courtroom, but the trial sometimes moves to a classified location.
[15:07.020 --> 15:18.800]  Federal regulations say that if the location is not sufficiently secure, the court shall designate the facilities of another United States government agency for the purpose and suggest a military base.
[15:19.520 --> 15:22.620]  That also means that not even defense attorneys get the information.
[15:22.880 --> 15:27.240]  They just get a redacted classified, unclassified, sorry, summary.
[15:28.600 --> 15:36.800]  One month before, February 2002, the setting is a bail hearing here in New York for Sherman Austin, who runs raisethefist.com.
[15:36.940 --> 15:38.700]  The FBI thinks he's a terrorist.
[15:40.900 --> 15:49.440]  Back one month in January, the FBI raided his Los Angeles home saying he was suspected of hacking into websites to post anarchist messages.
[15:49.900 --> 15:52.180]  Well, that may not be all that unusual, right?
[15:52.260 --> 15:53.240]  You hack into a website.
[15:53.440 --> 15:55.040]  The feds are pissed to find out.
[15:55.220 --> 15:58.840]  If they're sufficiently pissed off, they might get a warrant and come after you.
[15:58.980 --> 16:00.580]  We know this sometimes happens.
[16:00.900 --> 16:06.060]  I should say that I've never spoken to Mr. Austin, to the best of my knowledge, and I have no first-hand knowledge of the situation.
[16:06.480 --> 16:08.740]  But, this is what I do know.
[16:08.840 --> 16:16.580]  The feds told a judge, according to a transcript that the worthy John Young posted on Cryptome, here's a transcript of the assistant U.S.
[16:16.660 --> 16:24.540]  attorney telling a federal judge, quote, his website, before it was dismantled by the FBI, indicated he wanted to burn the Olympics.
[16:25.500 --> 16:27.220]  And I asked the court's indulgence.
[16:27.340 --> 16:31.420]  I'm going to have to use strong language, which was inside the website.
[16:31.420 --> 16:33.180]  But this is the language of the defendant.
[16:33.480 --> 16:38.160]  He indicated he wanted to burn the Olympics, and he wanted to fuck the corporate playground.
[16:38.960 --> 16:40.960]  Well, fuck the corporate playground?
[16:41.160 --> 16:45.120]  Last I checked, we're still allowed to use four-letter words on websites.
[16:45.560 --> 16:57.720]  This is why I was personally one of the plaintiffs challenging the Communications Decency Act in a lawsuit the ACLU and company brought back in 1996 so we could avoid this sort of piss-ant law enforcement nuttiness.
[16:59.980 --> 17:01.020]  February 2002.
[17:01.420 --> 17:03.540]  One last antidote.
[17:03.720 --> 17:11.900]  Let's actually go back to 2001, skip a year this time, to my all-time favorite FBI investigation, Bonsaikitten.com.
[17:14.460 --> 17:17.460]  You're familiar with Bonsaikitten.com, I hope.
[17:18.140 --> 17:20.780]  If you haven't been there, let me describe it.
[17:20.780 --> 17:25.400]  It's devoted to photos of squishing kittens into mason jars.
[17:25.700 --> 17:30.120]  And if you pay more, you can order them stuffed into Klein bottles.
[17:31.480 --> 17:32.680]  Think of it, folks.
[17:33.620 --> 17:36.340]  The webmaster is Dr. Wong Chang.
[17:38.000 --> 17:41.280]  Now, so a site like that has to be one of two things.
[17:41.280 --> 17:45.380]  A trenchant parody designed to provoke the clueless.
[17:46.380 --> 17:50.500]  Or, a nefarious kitty mutilation scheme that must be investigated.
[17:53.300 --> 17:55.600]  Guess which option the FBI chose.
[17:57.020 --> 17:58.480]  Right, door number two.
[18:00.360 --> 18:03.460]  FBI agents in the Boston field office, and I broke this story.
[18:03.460 --> 18:04.320]  I got to report this.
[18:04.420 --> 18:05.400]  It's all in the Wired archives.
[18:05.660 --> 18:06.320]  Search for Bonsaikitten.
[18:07.880 --> 18:11.800]  FBI agents in the Boston field office launched an investigation into the site.
[18:11.920 --> 18:24.500]  They served at MIT with a grand jury subpoena, impaneled just for this case, I presume, asking for, quote, any and all subscriber information about the site, which was once hosted in a campus dormitory but then moved to a commercial provider.
[18:26.120 --> 18:31.180]  Nothing ever happened, probably because the press got wind of it and everyone laughed their asses off.
[18:33.040 --> 18:35.980]  But in my article, I interviewed Harvey Silverglade.
[18:35.980 --> 18:36.760]  He's a friend of mine.
[18:36.900 --> 18:46.440]  He's helped me when I got a nasty gram, some lawyer threats from Cyber Patrol then owned by Mattel that wanted the address of all Politech subscribers a few years ago.
[18:46.860 --> 18:49.880]  Harvey's also the first attorney for the EFF way back when.
[18:50.140 --> 18:51.300]  And here's what he said.
[18:51.780 --> 18:53.160]  Why are they doing this?
[18:53.480 --> 18:56.980]  I think the answer is that political correctness has infected the FBI.
[18:57.420 --> 19:02.180]  The kind of fanatical end-of-the-spectrum animal protection movement has affected them.
[19:02.420 --> 19:03.860]  They want to be the good guys.
[19:03.860 --> 19:11.840]  They massively run rampant over Americans' liberties, but they want to be seen as nice, fuzzy guys who want to protect kittens.
[19:12.300 --> 19:13.160]  Thanks, folks.
[19:24.700 --> 19:32.640]  Just a couple of quick odds and ends that came to mind that you should be aware of.
[19:34.340 --> 19:42.280]  Go on the website, we did a couple of shows with Wes Swearingen, FBI agent who was part of COINTELPRO.
[19:42.560 --> 19:55.180]  And he tells in graphic detail how they set up Geronimo Pratt for a conviction, a homicide conviction, a murder he never did, and celebrated when he was convicted.
[19:56.380 --> 20:04.020]  And 27 years later, Wesley Swearingen, the same FBI agent who was part of COINTELPRO, testified to get him out.
[20:05.500 --> 20:08.080]  This is not an agency that you can beat up enough on.
[20:11.700 --> 20:12.440]  Thomas Kelly.
[20:12.580 --> 20:13.820]  You guys know who Thomas Kelly is?
[20:13.920 --> 20:14.200]  Anybody?
[20:14.580 --> 20:14.980]  Thomas A.
[20:15.080 --> 20:15.220]  Kelly?
[20:16.080 --> 20:16.840]  Well, you should.
[20:16.940 --> 20:17.500]  I'll tell you why.
[20:18.120 --> 20:18.580]  Thomas A.
[20:18.680 --> 20:24.000]  Kelly was the point man for the FBI during the Waco investigation.
[20:25.080 --> 20:29.040]  And Special Prosecutor Danforth accused him of obstructing justice.
[20:29.700 --> 20:33.080]  In fact, they had to get a search warrant for FBI headquarters.
[20:35.480 --> 20:36.140]  Thomas A.
[20:36.220 --> 20:41.940]  Kelly has just been named as the point man for FBI in the 911 inquiry.
[20:44.460 --> 20:46.040]  How much power do you guys have?
[20:46.860 --> 20:48.880]  What strikes me is you don't know it.
[20:49.660 --> 20:51.440]  That shows you the media control.
[20:52.340 --> 20:53.520]  You don't know it.
[20:54.780 --> 20:56.300]  Finally, I've got to tell you a story.
[20:58.480 --> 21:07.720]  Back in the late 70s, I was assigned to the FBI DEA task force as an assistant supervisor.
[21:08.680 --> 21:11.540]  And for the first time was working partners.
[21:11.540 --> 21:15.020]  I was actually supervising 12, 15 FBI agents.
[21:16.440 --> 21:18.340]  And there was an immediate war.
[21:18.340 --> 21:24.140]  I mean, the whole thing was set up so that there wouldn't be conflict like FBI, CIA.
[21:25.240 --> 21:30.620]  And we were going to share FBI informers with DEA street know-how.
[21:30.620 --> 21:32.540]  And we were going to win the drug war.
[21:34.520 --> 21:37.740]  A couple of weeks go by and nobody's making an arrest.
[21:37.740 --> 21:48.000]  Now, the reason that happened was because the FBI supervisor didn't trust DEA and he wouldn't let us work with any FBI informant.
[21:48.400 --> 21:52.860]  And the DEA supervisor didn't want this task force to be a success.
[21:53.760 --> 21:55.020]  So he wanted no cases.
[21:56.540 --> 22:03.440]  So after a couple of weeks, my boss, who is, they call him the Dirty Harry of DEA because his name was Frank White.
[22:04.860 --> 22:06.660]  He's killed more men in the line of duty.
[22:07.740 --> 22:08.720]  Can you guys hear me?
[22:09.040 --> 22:09.380]  Yeah.
[22:10.520 --> 22:12.060]  Frank said, go out and make a case.
[22:12.520 --> 22:13.300]  And I did.
[22:14.400 --> 22:16.180]  Call an informer, set up a dope buy.
[22:16.360 --> 22:18.620]  I grew up on Tremont and Southern Boulevard in the Bronx.
[22:20.260 --> 22:22.600]  The dope buy was right on the corner I grew up on.
[22:23.480 --> 22:25.380]  And we let the FBI make an arrest.
[22:25.520 --> 22:34.480]  And amazingly, these guys who were attorneys and accountants, 10, 15 years on the job, didn't know what to do.
[22:34.480 --> 22:38.960]  They were completely out of their element, drawing a gun, making an arrest.
[22:39.400 --> 22:43.560]  Turns out, most of them had been transferred in from a political unit.
[22:44.780 --> 22:47.000]  And one of them was a great guy, Roger.
[22:47.180 --> 22:50.080]  I said, Roger, you've been on the job 11 years.
[22:51.600 --> 22:52.740]  What have you been doing?
[22:53.080 --> 22:54.260]  And this was his answer.
[22:54.780 --> 22:56.680]  He says, I was in the communist squad.
[22:57.000 --> 22:59.900]  In fact, I was on the Bella Abzug squad.
[23:01.300 --> 23:02.720]  Bella Abzug squad.
[23:02.720 --> 23:07.680]  So my answer was, Bella Abzug, you mean there was a squad?
[23:08.260 --> 23:11.340]  Like you guys were on Bella Abzug around the clock?
[23:11.520 --> 23:12.580]  There were like a lot of you?
[23:12.740 --> 23:13.300]  Oh, yeah.
[23:13.720 --> 23:14.780]  That was good duty, though.
[23:16.120 --> 23:17.860]  Following Bella Abzug around?
[23:17.940 --> 23:19.360]  Do you guys know who Bella Abzug was?
[23:22.320 --> 23:26.980]  So, finally, I thought about the Bella Abzug squad again.
[23:26.980 --> 23:34.200]  When I started making inquiries into what happened to Zechariah Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker.
[23:35.100 --> 23:39.360]  Now, the man wanted to fly jumbo jets.
[23:39.820 --> 23:42.620]  But he wasn't interested in landing.
[23:42.920 --> 23:45.600]  He was just trying to turn left and right.
[23:47.160 --> 23:51.840]  And it was such a startling performance and behavior.
[23:52.140 --> 23:52.960]  Paying cash.
[23:53.740 --> 23:59.780]  Some of the things he said that his flight instructor called the FBI.
[24:00.720 --> 24:07.600]  Now, this is the end of July, five or six weeks before 9-1-1.
[24:10.100 --> 24:15.080]  Immigration sends out... the FBI ends up busting him, not him.
[24:15.140 --> 24:16.220]  They turned him over to Immigration.
[24:16.340 --> 24:22.760]  Immigration arrests Zechariah Moussaoui, puts him in a jail cell where he sits for four weeks.
[24:23.460 --> 24:29.160]  The French police send the cable saying that Zechariah Moussaoui is linked to Bin Laden.
[24:29.620 --> 24:37.140]  They sent another cable indicating that Zechariah Moussaoui was linked to a plot to fly planes into the Eiffel Tower.
[24:39.060 --> 24:41.420]  No FBI agent talks to him.
[24:42.820 --> 24:45.440]  But we have a Bella Abzug squad.
[24:48.720 --> 24:50.800]  Can you beat up enough on these guys?
[24:51.560 --> 24:52.380]  Thanks, guys.
[24:56.090 --> 24:58.270]  How many minutes do you have to talk about 15?
[24:58.610 --> 24:58.890]  Wow.
[25:03.090 --> 25:04.650]  I'm Robert Steele.
[25:04.770 --> 25:12.830]  And since I've got the floor tomorrow night, I'm really just here to support Michael Levine and the other panelists from Wired Magazine.
[25:13.270 --> 25:21.670]  Wired commissioned me under Kevin Kelly to write an article called, Is the communications and computing industry criminally negligent or just plain stupid?
[25:22.250 --> 25:26.790]  And after I'd written the article, I understand the Wired advertising department killed it.
[25:29.050 --> 25:29.890]  Zing, zing.
[25:33.490 --> 25:34.590]  No, don't do that.
[25:34.730 --> 25:35.150]  Don't interrupt.
[25:35.790 --> 25:36.930]  Just hold.
[25:37.770 --> 25:42.370]  I would have worn my I Love Feds t-shirt, but I've outgrown it.
[25:43.850 --> 25:47.210]  In the last ten years, I've gone from large to triple X.
[25:47.430 --> 25:49.710]  This is a really frightening process.
[25:49.930 --> 25:51.390]  I'm trying to work my way back down.
[25:51.390 --> 25:55.290]  I want to make some quasi-structured comments.
[25:56.450 --> 26:07.030]  In part because I think we need an FBI, but we also need an FBI that sticks to its knitting, which is crime fighting across state lines.
[26:07.750 --> 26:13.370]  What we have done in Washington in the last six months is destroyed both the FBI and the CIA.
[26:14.710 --> 26:17.330]  Everybody's been shifted over to counter-terrorism.
[26:17.330 --> 26:20.030]  They're answering phones and pretending to be doing things.
[26:20.170 --> 26:26.790]  And we have left crime and narcotics and human trafficking and all this other good shit completely untouched.
[26:27.790 --> 26:30.870]  India, Pakistan has also diverted a bunch of people.
[26:31.190 --> 26:47.130]  With the result that all of the festering criminal activities and drugs and things like that, that are really very, very important and at which the FBI is moderately competent, are being left undone.
[26:47.870 --> 26:49.650]  I mean, crime is on its way up.
[26:49.830 --> 26:52.110]  Structured, organized crime is on its way up.
[26:53.110 --> 26:54.690]  And that's a real mistake.
[26:55.150 --> 26:57.530]  Because that's going to have some long-term effects.
[26:57.570 --> 26:59.010]  And never mind corporate crime.
[27:00.650 --> 27:04.270]  We've just discovered really that we need four new FBI divisions.
[27:04.690 --> 27:07.790]  We need one for critical infrastructure protection.
[27:08.150 --> 27:10.350]  We need one for business espionage.
[27:10.450 --> 27:12.170]  We need one for white-collar crime.
[27:13.390 --> 27:19.390]  And then lastly, we need one to work with state and local police on homeland security.
[27:21.210 --> 27:27.610]  Now, we have in our midst some promising, rising, young FBI people.
[27:28.110 --> 27:29.930]  And I urge you to be nice to them.
[27:31.470 --> 27:33.490]  This is their first exposure to you.
[27:34.350 --> 27:35.670]  You can teach them.
[27:36.030 --> 27:41.170]  I'm trying to get Eric to have a feds-only brief at 10 o'clock tomorrow, but no one wants to get up.
[27:42.810 --> 27:54.930]  But I think you really do need, to the extent that you can identify and interact with some of the federal people that are here, Win Schwartow and I have been encouraging federal people to attend events like this and DEFCON and so on for years.
[27:55.410 --> 27:59.990]  And it distresses me that they're still in the mode of spying on you rather than listening to you.
[28:00.830 --> 28:05.390]  Because I think you've got a lot to teach them about vulnerabilities and about solutions.
[28:06.790 --> 28:11.510]  One of the real concerns I have is that power really does corrupt.
[28:11.670 --> 28:15.390]  And secret power corrupts in really terrible, terrible ways.
[28:15.390 --> 28:22.090]  I mean, if cold fusion had been a classified intelligence product, it would still be receiving billions of dollars in funding.
[28:23.770 --> 28:25.450]  Or the Intel Pentium chip.
[28:27.230 --> 28:32.410]  One of the things that I believe is that...
[28:32.410 --> 28:37.670]  And this is the reason my second book is titled The New Craft of Intelligence, Personal, Public and Political.
[28:37.670 --> 28:39.030]  I'll brief on it tomorrow.
[28:39.250 --> 28:41.450]  I'm just going to center my remarks around the FBI tonight.
[28:43.150 --> 28:58.290]  I don't believe we can protect ourselves as a nation unless we create a virtual intelligence community with individual citizen intelligence minutemen and constant web-based interaction at the neighborhood level and rising.
[28:58.870 --> 29:00.450]  There were many failures.
[29:01.070 --> 29:03.710]  And Washington is white... is stonewalling this.
[29:05.410 --> 29:08.510]  But among them, there was a movie actor on an airplane.
[29:08.690 --> 29:11.070]  And I think the New Yorker, Hirsch, had this.
[29:11.190 --> 29:22.730]  There was a movie actor on First Class and he had three basically third-class Arabs in the first-class compartment giggling over the silver salt and pepper shakers and the food that was being served and so on.
[29:22.730 --> 29:27.410]  And he said to the stewardess, he said, these are not your routine really wealthy Saudi Arab passengers.
[29:27.690 --> 29:32.510]  These are thugs on a joyride that's been funded by somebody.
[29:33.050 --> 29:38.010]  And she got the pilot and the pilot got the FBI and the FBI wasn't interested in meeting them at the gate.
[29:39.230 --> 29:41.370]  This is what I mean by citizen intelligence.
[29:41.810 --> 29:43.470]  We need to know what to look for.
[29:43.610 --> 29:44.770]  We need to know who to call.
[29:44.930 --> 29:47.930]  And they have to pay attention and not blow us off.
[29:48.530 --> 29:49.670]  And that's the problem.
[29:49.670 --> 29:56.110]  A true story on the depth of the bureaucratic problems.
[29:56.190 --> 29:59.710]  There's something called the National Drug Intelligence Center in Jonestown, Pennsylvania.
[30:01.050 --> 30:03.650]  It's a good idea to bring money to the district.
[30:04.410 --> 30:10.110]  And one of the things they did was they persuaded DEA to let them digitize all of DEA's files.
[30:10.570 --> 30:14.250]  900 files on a particular strategic drug organization.
[30:15.190 --> 30:27.690]  And out of this digitization project, which included everything including napkins with the names of witnesses and so on, they got to data mining and visualization and saw patterns and witnesses appearing in many cases and so on.
[30:27.770 --> 30:31.910]  And then they got an executive summary that DEA allowed them to take over to FBI.
[30:31.910 --> 30:37.970]  And that was used to persuade the FBI to digitize its 90 files, about 10%.
[30:38.850 --> 30:40.450]  90 files on the same organization.
[30:40.610 --> 30:40.990]  Same thing.
[30:41.190 --> 30:42.990]  Pattern, so on, so forth, so forth.
[30:43.330 --> 30:44.990]  They still wouldn't share files.
[30:45.150 --> 30:46.770]  But there's a deeper point here.
[30:47.370 --> 30:52.290]  These people are in the stone age when it comes to information technology.
[30:52.290 --> 30:59.170]  Special Agent Rowley has briefed Congress that the FBI database can only be searched one word at a time.
[31:01.230 --> 31:03.010]  Jesus fucking Christ.
[31:05.410 --> 31:07.030]  Not even Boolean.
[31:08.010 --> 31:09.670]  I can't pronounce it.
[31:10.890 --> 31:13.170]  This is a scary situation.
[31:13.350 --> 31:14.930]  Now, why did this situation happen?
[31:14.930 --> 31:19.210]  Congress has given the FBI money for information technology.
[31:19.970 --> 31:27.030]  And its managers have stolen that money and redirected it toward other more pressing things.
[31:27.210 --> 31:29.550]  I don't think Bella Absberg was their top priority.
[31:29.610 --> 31:32.630]  I think they've spent most of their time on that whorehouse in New Orleans.
[31:33.870 --> 31:37.350]  They have a very good list of clients.
[31:37.650 --> 31:38.470]  Is that what they're called?
[31:38.870 --> 31:39.450]  Clients.
[31:39.450 --> 31:44.510]  The FBI has had super squads on New Orleans whorehouses.
[31:45.250 --> 31:47.170]  And this is after 9-11.
[31:48.990 --> 31:54.870]  What you have here in the U.S. government is a massive bureaucracy full of really good people.
[31:55.130 --> 31:57.150]  With the best of intentions.
[31:57.690 --> 31:59.170]  And lousy tools.
[31:59.430 --> 32:00.550]  And lousy managers.
[32:00.870 --> 32:01.830]  And lousy priorities.
[32:02.670 --> 32:05.770]  And that's something that only you can change.
[32:06.570 --> 32:07.390]  I agree.
[32:07.690 --> 32:09.710]  And by the way, I love his book, Deep Cover.
[32:10.310 --> 32:12.490]  I read this about 15 years ago?
[32:13.110 --> 32:13.590]  10?
[32:13.790 --> 32:14.110]  10?
[32:14.210 --> 32:15.290]  10 years ago.
[32:15.450 --> 32:17.410]  It is absolutely a super, super book.
[32:17.890 --> 32:22.270]  We've been in some of the same Latin American countries together at different times.
[32:22.330 --> 32:24.510]  And his book is just right on.
[32:25.210 --> 32:33.050]  We have a massive bureaucracy of suits that don't know how to draw a gun and make an arrest and get out there and get dirty.
[32:33.050 --> 32:36.890]  And unfortunately, suits like to supervise young puppies.
[32:37.390 --> 32:53.410]  When I was being confused with Agent Steel, S-T-E-A-L, at a computer freedom and privacy conference, I'd just flown in from Australia at 5 in the morning and they got me up at 8, and it was two football captains and a prom queen at my door.
[32:54.030 --> 32:55.650]  They're beautiful young people.
[32:56.470 --> 32:59.070]  But they're not ready to deal with thugs.
[32:59.890 --> 33:13.070]  And so one of the things we as citizens have to do, and I'll go into this a little bit more tomorrow, but we as citizens have to say to our government, we take law enforcement seriously.
[33:13.070 --> 33:20.490]  We want the best law enforcement money can buy, not the best law enforcement that corporations can buy off.
[33:21.410 --> 33:30.190]  Because what we have right now is a law enforcement community that has been bought off, because the congressmen have been bought off.
[33:30.790 --> 33:32.930]  I'm here to support industrial hemp.
[33:34.250 --> 33:35.270]  We need it.
[33:35.730 --> 33:36.770]  Ralph Nader agrees.
[33:38.850 --> 33:40.890]  You know, this is lunacy.
[33:41.810 --> 33:43.210]  What's the bottom line?
[33:44.550 --> 33:49.810]  The bottom line is the only thing in this country that can trump corporate money is personal votes.
[33:50.890 --> 33:51.630]  That's it.
[33:51.910 --> 33:52.770]  It's that simple.
[33:53.530 --> 34:06.330]  And so if you want a new FBI, you better get busy figuring out what kind of FBI you've got, what kind of FBI you need, and then you've got to start writing and voting and activating.
[34:06.590 --> 34:11.110]  And tomorrow night I'll show someone else's brief for the first few minutes on cyber advocacy.
[34:11.870 --> 34:18.110]  There's a website that I really recommend, www.pac.org.
[34:18.110 --> 34:19.530]  It's the Public Affairs Council.
[34:19.690 --> 34:26.450]  And they've written some really neat pamphlets on cyber advocacy in the age of information and so on.
[34:27.530 --> 34:43.050]  Let me conclude by telling you that if some of you want to do homework before I speak tomorrow, my two books are on Amazon.com, and you can download a chapter from each for free from www.oss.net.
[34:43.450 --> 34:46.030]  And the chapter from my first book...
[34:46.030 --> 34:49.530]  There will be a test also at the beginning of tomorrow's speech.
[34:49.810 --> 34:58.430]  The chapter from the first book is the President's Chapter, which lists the 14 things that I've known since 1990 that needed to be done to prevent 9-1-1.
[34:58.430 --> 35:03.570]  I don't claim that my book would have prevented 9-1-1, but I will point out to you that in 19...
[35:03.570 --> 35:12.250]  from 1999 to 2001, 15 major, credible, authoritative intelligence reform books have been published.
[35:12.490 --> 35:18.090]  And they're all listed at the Council on Intelligence.org, with lines, hyphens between the words.
[35:18.630 --> 35:21.410]  15, the government's not paying attention.
[35:21.410 --> 35:28.030]  The last five directors of central intelligence have ignored the Aspen Brown, bipartisan Aspen Brown Commission recommendations.
[35:30.270 --> 35:33.650]  Washington is paying lip service to 9-11.
[35:34.470 --> 35:48.650]  And I wish I had thought to say this, but Amy Ziegart, the author of Flawed by Design, who's also a protege of Condi Rice and speaks to Condi on occasion, she did a bunch of interviews and one of the people said, we need another 5,000 body bags.
[35:49.570 --> 35:51.230]  Washington still doesn't get it.
[35:51.610 --> 35:53.490]  I look forward to answering your questions.
[36:04.780 --> 36:05.620]  Who's in charge?
[36:05.620 --> 36:07.980]  We have a wireless mic.
[36:09.720 --> 36:12.980]  So let's wait for the wireless mic folks.
[36:13.400 --> 36:13.560]  Yeah.
[36:14.580 --> 36:14.920]  Yeah.
[36:17.180 --> 36:19.220]  I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back.
[36:19.220 --> 36:19.580]  I'll be right back.
[36:19.580 --> 36:20.360]  You better line them up.
[36:20.420 --> 36:20.620]  Yeah.
[36:21.220 --> 36:21.960]  I'll be right back.
[36:24.080 --> 36:24.920]  Hey, you're first.
[36:25.240 --> 36:26.180]  Don't worry about it.
[36:27.840 --> 36:29.240]  Right here's the number one.
[36:29.840 --> 36:30.980]  Behind you is the guy.
[36:43.530 --> 36:44.230]  Can you hear me?
[36:45.950 --> 36:47.930]  I don't know what good this is doing.
[36:47.930 --> 36:48.350]  Here we go.
[36:49.990 --> 36:52.410]  I wonder if it might not be...
[36:52.410 --> 36:56.350]  I kind of regret actually probably it's the other panelist who should hear this question.
[36:56.530 --> 37:07.910]  But it might be the case that the FBI cannot be informed as long as it has both a policing role and an intelligence role because these two things are not compatible.
[37:07.910 --> 37:21.370]  I understand in principle, at least, the way it's done in the UK is that you have MI, whichever one is domestic, which does intelligence, and then you have Scotland Yard for the criminal investigations.
[37:22.150 --> 37:27.110]  Might we need such a separation as this if we're not going to have further problems?
[37:29.130 --> 37:34.850]  My take on it, let me give you a baseball analogy.
[37:36.150 --> 37:41.210]  When you talk about what is fed into computer systems, bottom line, informants.
[37:41.930 --> 37:44.290]  All their information comes from informants.
[37:44.830 --> 37:45.390]  Everything.
[37:45.390 --> 37:55.570]  So when you have master computerized, high tech, whatever the system is, it's all based on a man talking to another man and corroborating his information.
[37:55.970 --> 37:59.010]  You hear the CD, final warning.
[37:59.310 --> 38:13.850]  It is the equivalent of you being told that you're watching the best baseball team in history and going out and seeing on the inside, training, that these guys aren't even a little league.
[38:13.850 --> 38:16.010]  It's frightening.
[38:17.670 --> 38:24.090]  The art of human intelligence is measurable, as measurable as a batting average.
[38:24.710 --> 38:33.030]  In DEA, in other agencies, people translate their ability to get information into arrests.
[38:33.850 --> 38:39.630]  Many of these arrests end up with terrorism information, but it's measurable.
[38:41.230 --> 38:45.450]  The idea is the FBI is measurably awful.
[38:48.630 --> 38:49.750]  So amateurish.
[38:50.030 --> 38:58.190]  So bad that I don't think reorganizing them in any structure unless you get down to the very basics of how you play the game.
[38:58.470 --> 39:00.010]  And I've worked with them.
[39:00.130 --> 39:01.670]  I've had them work for me.
[39:01.670 --> 39:14.190]  I've just come from too much first-hand experience that tells me, and this is my opinion, that they are just too far gone and much has to be taken away from them.
[39:14.910 --> 39:27.290]  And there are ways of identifying the best people, the natural talents, like baseball players, like football players, the natural talents in human intelligence, who may be a plainclothes man in the LAPD.
[39:28.190 --> 39:29.070]  He may be.
[39:29.210 --> 39:30.550]  He may be a cop in the New Orleans police.
[39:30.690 --> 39:34.190]  He may be a Hoboken cop who just makes cases.
[39:34.490 --> 39:36.770]  He knows how to get intelligence out of people.
[39:37.650 --> 39:46.830]  These are the people we have to go out and recruit the way you recruit baseball players and build a fundamental intelligence system right from the bottom up.
[39:46.870 --> 39:53.350]  Because if you don't have ballplayers, you don't have a ball team, and I don't care what kind of equipment, what kind of organization you give them.
[39:53.350 --> 39:54.210]  That's my opinion.
[39:55.070 --> 39:56.370]  I'll respond briefly.
[39:56.770 --> 39:58.670]  The question is policing and intelligence.
[39:59.090 --> 40:01.090]  There's a conflict between the two.
[40:01.410 --> 40:15.510]  The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, for instance, doesn't always get the help it needs, according to a general accounting office report, because the folks in the intelligence arm of the FBI are afraid that secrets are going to be leaked.
[40:15.730 --> 40:18.570]  I think that the problem is endemic.
[40:18.570 --> 40:27.030]  I think that the long-term solution is make a lot of crimes local, state, instead of federal, and then downsize the FBI radically.
[40:27.030 --> 40:31.710]  I'm not sure why posting dirty pictures to the internet, for instance, has to be a federal crime.
[40:31.710 --> 40:33.210]  If the server's inside the U.S.
[40:33.350 --> 40:37.010]  somewhere, then pretty much every state already has obscenity laws.
[40:37.190 --> 40:40.610]  And so Congress keeps giving the FBI more power, and the problem keeps getting worse.
[40:40.610 --> 40:40.630]  Yes.
[40:44.110 --> 40:44.550]  Hi.
[40:45.650 --> 40:58.370]  First, I want to say that I'm glad that Mr. Steele is on the panel, because moderate though it may be, it's good to have a counter-opinion on the panel.
[40:58.870 --> 41:00.410]  It only lends to balance.
[41:03.010 --> 41:19.970]  Having said that though, I want to also say that I disagree with Mr. Steele, with this point of view that we need more homegrown intelligence, or we the people need to do a better job, and that kind of stuff.
[41:22.950 --> 41:35.650]  The example you gave of the three guys in first class on the plane sounds too much like stereotyping to me, and that could have been a mistake like any other.
[41:38.330 --> 41:42.370]  But I don't know how well this fits the theme of the new FBI.
[41:43.390 --> 42:05.710]  I just wonder why we don't talk in this nation, and I guess it's political, but why we don't talk about a better foreign policy, one that resolves the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian problem in a more fair way, which would automatically decrease the whole terrorist question in this country and the world.
[42:05.710 --> 42:33.370]  And in terms of domestic policy, not ratcheting up national security and domestic spying, but particularly with the Dow Jones average going down, creating something as simple as economic incentives for corporations to motivate them into alternative forms of fuel and energy,
[42:33.390 --> 42:35.290]  like solar power, anything else.
[42:35.290 --> 42:38.990]  And get off of this dependency on oil.
[42:40.090 --> 42:43.150]  And again, I don't know how that fits with the new theme, but I just wanted to say that.
[42:43.310 --> 42:43.590]  Thank you.
[42:43.890 --> 42:48.310]  Well, I'm going to spend four hours tomorrow night talking about that.
[42:48.730 --> 42:53.390]  But let me spend two minutes now just to give you a preview, because what you've said is very important.
[42:54.070 --> 42:58.310]  I mean, Lawrence Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas, is very worthwhile.
[42:58.310 --> 43:10.070]  It's extremely troubling to me, the way the corporations are essentially buying the commons, whether it's the environmental commons or the water commons or the cyberspace commons.
[43:10.150 --> 43:10.990]  And that's your fault.
[43:11.630 --> 43:14.970]  You get the government you allow to happen.
[43:15.990 --> 43:22.090]  You know, smarter guys than us wrote the Constitution and talked about the tyranny of special interests.
[43:22.770 --> 43:26.730]  Special interests take over when you have an apathetic people.
[43:27.010 --> 43:29.490]  And that's what we've got, and you're part of the problem.
[43:29.490 --> 43:34.790]  Well, I'm reviewer ranked number 70 on Amazon.com.
[43:34.990 --> 43:44.690]  And I'm competing against little old ladies that review Gothic novels and geeks that review software and do-nothings that review video movies.
[43:46.050 --> 43:54.090]  And the fact that I'm reviewer ranked number 71 or 70 when I only review national security books, including foreign policy books, and I'm trying to send you there.
[43:54.090 --> 43:58.190]  Because if you've got an hour to spend, find any review I've written.
[43:58.370 --> 44:01.970]  And where it says, see more about me, I've been trying to get them to change this for two years.
[44:01.970 --> 44:03.650]  It should say, see my other reviews.
[44:04.430 --> 44:09.330]  And you can just go down through the 294 reviews that are all centered around this topic.
[44:09.830 --> 44:15.210]  One in particular is on a book by McNamara and another guy called Wilson's Ghost.
[44:15.890 --> 44:37.590]  And in that book, McNamara talks about how there was a conference at Harvard in 1997 in which all of these elites agreed that billions and billions of Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Muslims, and Russians think that the United States of America is the biggest threat to their future prosperity and security.
[44:38.590 --> 44:39.150]  Billions.
[44:39.930 --> 44:40.490]  Billions.
[44:40.490 --> 44:40.770]  Billions.
[44:42.130 --> 44:45.750]  You know, all you need is 1,000 suicidal terrorists.
[44:45.870 --> 44:52.210]  And that 1,000 suicidal terrorists will come from 100,000 pros that are gathered around.
[44:52.390 --> 44:59.850]  And they're going to come from 10,000 pissed off people who have seen the Israelis bulldozing their last hope.
[45:00.870 --> 45:01.970]  Billions of people.
[45:02.210 --> 45:02.330]  Billions of people.
[45:02.330 --> 45:09.730]  We are spending way too much money on heavy metal, military heavy metal that is useful only 10% of the time.
[45:09.970 --> 45:15.690]  We're not spending nearly enough on information, on diplomacy, on the U.S.
[45:16.010 --> 45:22.070]  Information Service, on intelligence, on street, state, and local law enforcement.
[45:22.070 --> 45:24.610]  But this is all really bad.
[45:24.770 --> 45:30.550]  And I have to tell you, I think we're at a tipping point, and I've got good news and bad news.
[45:31.010 --> 45:37.110]  The bad news is we're 90% apathetic and just out of it.
[45:37.110 --> 45:42.290]  And the good news is there are 50 million people that call themselves cultural creatives.
[45:43.210 --> 45:54.370]  People who classify themselves as independents now are in the majority, according to William, according to Michael Lind and Ted Halstead in The Radical Center.
[45:54.570 --> 45:55.950]  Excellent book that I've reviewed.
[45:57.470 --> 46:19.630]  The bottom line here is that unless American citizens use this congressional election coming up to kick the shit out of the people running and make it clear to them that you want to take back the power, you're going to continue to have a problem.
[46:20.650 --> 46:23.150]  I mean, the common sense of the people.
[46:23.470 --> 46:24.490]  We the people.
[46:25.290 --> 46:28.410]  That was Nader's phrase running there.
[46:28.450 --> 46:30.030]  I don't think he was a spoiler for Gore.
[46:30.150 --> 46:31.510]  I think Gore fucked up big time.
[46:32.150 --> 46:33.490]  Now, Bush stole Florida.
[46:34.650 --> 46:35.870]  And that's too bad.
[46:35.870 --> 46:38.190]  And I'm amazed he wasn't held accountable for it.
[46:38.330 --> 46:41.870]  But the reality is neither one of them is very good as a president.
[46:43.610 --> 46:52.590]  My personal favorite would be Colin Powell with people like Nader and Sam Nunn and a few other balanced people as a team.
[46:52.710 --> 46:55.010]  I don't think America can be run by a president anymore.
[46:55.190 --> 46:56.630]  We have to elect a team.
[46:56.830 --> 47:04.390]  And we have to elect a team that is balanced and that represents the various parties, including the reformists and the libertarians and so on.
[47:05.690 --> 47:20.790]  But bottom line here is unless the people rise up in this next congressional election, nothing is going to change in Washington with respect to 9-1-1 or corporate crime or anything else.
[47:21.390 --> 47:23.590]  They're all going back to business as usual.
[47:23.690 --> 47:31.710]  There is only one thing on the minds of every senator and congressman right now, which is who's going to be in the majority after November.
[47:31.710 --> 47:33.450]  That's all they care about.
[47:33.830 --> 47:36.750]  And so you've got to make them care about what you care about.
[47:37.450 --> 47:43.710]  And I do believe that the Internet now makes citizen activism more effective.
[47:44.710 --> 47:46.570]  And so I'm hoping you guys will do all of that.
[47:46.730 --> 47:47.370]  Over to...
[47:47.370 --> 47:48.790]  Well, let's keep our comments short.
[47:48.930 --> 47:51.190]  I mean, that was... with respect...
[47:51.190 --> 47:54.050]  Well, you were a royal smartass for your whole opening thing.
[47:54.230 --> 47:55.890]  Excuse me if my comment was too long.
[47:56.110 --> 47:59.870]  Hey, I didn't... the question was about two things about the FBI.
[48:00.090 --> 48:01.030]  We've got eight people in line.
[48:01.210 --> 48:01.530]  Go ahead.
[48:01.530 --> 48:01.990]  Okay.
[48:02.470 --> 48:07.010]  I'd like to add another item to the discussion.
[48:07.270 --> 48:26.990]  I'm fairly convinced that all the books by CIA directors and top-down reorganization structures are missing a vital ingredient, and that are the people in the trenches who see where the mismanagement goes on, who see where things are not the way they're supposed to be.
[48:26.990 --> 48:31.050]  And right now, our whistleblower protection is practically non-existent.
[48:31.630 --> 48:33.870]  I've been in the computer field for decades.
[48:34.210 --> 48:37.490]  And when I'm working for a private corporation, my theory...
[48:37.490 --> 48:41.090]  or a private company, my theory is that it's their money they can do with as they want.
[48:41.250 --> 48:44.630]  The real problem comes in when you're working with government agencies.
[48:44.630 --> 48:49.530]  And you see bad things that shouldn't be going on that should be made public.
[48:50.050 --> 49:02.450]  And one of the things I'd like to bring out at this conference is I think it's really important for that reason, that we use the internet and the current communications technologies that are evolving to really protect anonymity.
[49:02.450 --> 49:11.090]  Right now, I would not ever post anything from my personal computer that I wouldn't want traced back to me, because I just flat-out don't trust it.
[49:11.230 --> 49:16.810]  And the internet cafes are pretty well set up, so you can't really post anything from them.
[49:17.130 --> 49:39.330]  So I would like to just bring out another dimension to our whole discussion of really looking at why privacy is put into the Constitution, because it is important that people who have first-hand knowledge of the kinds of mistakes and corruption that are occurring,
[49:39.610 --> 49:49.810]  have the ability to tell people in public about it in a way that won't get back to them, because most people cannot put up with what will happen to them, and so they keep quiet.
[49:50.030 --> 49:55.610]  And we do have the ability now, for the first time, to allow that kind of discussion to happen.
[49:55.610 --> 50:12.130]  And I think that it's a technological issue first, because that's where the privacy protection comes from, which is necessary to then create the public discussion that validates and builds a critical mass that then the political change and political sea change can take place.
[50:13.710 --> 50:19.590]  There are two obvious ways to protect your identity as a whistleblower, protect yourself.
[50:19.590 --> 50:21.330]  The first is to rely on the law.
[50:21.490 --> 50:23.750]  You're not going to get retaliated against.
[50:23.850 --> 50:25.290]  You're not going to lose your job.
[50:25.850 --> 50:30.310]  Or try to rely on the law to preserve your anonymity.
[50:30.730 --> 50:33.210]  And neither of those approaches work in practice.
[50:33.210 --> 50:49.430]  If you're a whistleblower inside, say, the FBI, which I try to describe fairly and accurately and objectively in every detail in my opening remarks, there's... you're probably going to be drummed out of the agency, the bureau, your friends may not talk to you anymore,
[50:49.450 --> 50:50.030]  and so on.
[50:50.330 --> 50:55.430]  So I think the second way of protecting yourself is to use technology.
[50:56.130 --> 50:57.950]  Use an anonymous remailer.
[50:58.430 --> 51:06.290]  Include objective... or include verifiable facts when you tip off the inspector general of the agency or a reporter.
[51:06.290 --> 51:08.650]  And then just let them take it from there.
[51:08.930 --> 51:11.610]  There's no other easy way to go.
[51:11.830 --> 51:14.050]  And it's getting worse in terms of the law.
[51:14.330 --> 51:19.150]  The Department of Homeland Security draft legislation does not include adequate whistleblowing protection.
[51:25.870 --> 51:27.910]  We've got ten minutes left, folks.
[51:31.420 --> 51:34.560]  I just want to start by saying this is a fantastic panel.
[51:34.720 --> 51:36.640]  I really enjoyed seeing all you gentlemen tonight.
[51:36.640 --> 51:39.920]  I think you complemented each other very well with your different viewpoints.
[51:40.520 --> 51:43.060]  Ms. McCullough, I've enjoyed your writing for a very long time.
[51:43.720 --> 51:46.500]  This is the first I've had the pleasure of hearing the two of you.
[51:46.560 --> 51:48.660]  I really look forward to reading some of your work as well.
[51:49.780 --> 51:58.140]  You're in this industry directly with the news, but it's been touched upon exposure or non-exposure of these sorts of facts, so I really want to hear what everyone has to say.
[51:58.980 --> 52:02.980]  This is just jaw-dropping stories that I'm hearing.
[52:03.460 --> 52:10.080]  Stuff that I've longed to read about, and I've even tried, but it's the first time I've heard it this amazingly told.
[52:10.380 --> 52:13.220]  Why don't we see this in the media more?
[52:13.440 --> 52:15.580]  People with inside knowledge, are we really...
[52:16.020 --> 52:17.900]  Does the media have that much of a grip?
[52:18.140 --> 52:23.440]  Or, as Mr. Steele would say, are too many people trying to find out who's going to be like the winner on American Idol?
[52:23.440 --> 52:23.900]  I don't...
[52:23.900 --> 52:27.540]  There's one book, Into the Buzzsaw.
[52:29.640 --> 52:32.060]  The forward is written by Gore Vidal.
[52:32.340 --> 52:40.000]  It was edited by Christina Borgeson, Emmy Award-winning producer for CBS, who is now my producer.
[52:40.540 --> 52:40.920]  Why?
[52:41.100 --> 52:45.740]  She was drummed out of CBS for trying to tell a true story about TWA 800.
[52:45.740 --> 52:53.660]  There are 18 essays by top journalists whose careers were destroyed because they tried to tell the truth.
[52:54.160 --> 52:55.260]  And these are factual.
[52:55.980 --> 53:00.700]  The best answer I can give you is get into the buzzsaw.
[53:00.840 --> 53:01.940]  One of the essays is mine.
[53:02.480 --> 53:03.720]  Yeah, it'll give it to you.
[53:04.160 --> 53:07.500]  That's why I don't know if the American people are apathetic.
[53:07.620 --> 53:09.240]  One of the things I did is run a test on you.
[53:09.740 --> 53:17.480]  None of you know that this Thomas Kelly, a man who was accused of obstruction of justice, is now heading to 9-1-1 inquiry.
[53:18.280 --> 53:18.760]  Right.
[53:18.760 --> 53:22.460]  None of you knew about the recording of Ahmad Salim in history.
[53:22.460 --> 53:34.440]  I urge you, listen to my show Monday night, and you'll hear the FBI historian who didn't know about that phone call, that it was introduced as evidence in the first World Trade Center bombing.
[53:34.800 --> 53:39.320]  So you're not apathetic, I don't think, because you haven't been told the truth.
[53:39.440 --> 53:41.300]  And you can't fix it if you don't know it's broken.
[53:41.980 --> 53:44.900]  So, Bob, I just agree mildly.
[53:44.940 --> 53:45.220]  No, no, no.
[53:45.280 --> 53:46.160]  Just one quick comment.
[53:46.280 --> 53:48.440]  I mean, I think media has sold out.
[53:50.220 --> 53:51.780]  And Nader thinks so, too.
[53:52.480 --> 53:53.360]  They either...
[53:54.160 --> 53:56.700]  They will do some good investigative reporting.
[53:56.880 --> 53:59.680]  William Greider, who will tell the people, comes to mind.
[54:01.420 --> 54:03.500]  But by and large, I...
[54:03.500 --> 54:05.540]  You know, Norm Chomsky's done all of this.
[54:05.940 --> 54:08.360]  Manufacturing consent and all of this bullshit.
[54:08.360 --> 54:11.220]  I mean, we're flooded with information crap.
[54:12.580 --> 54:21.640]  And one of the problems that concerns me is that the FCC is not allowing communities to set up their own bandwidth, their own little local radio stations, if they don't carry advertising.
[54:22.120 --> 54:23.360]  That's absolutely outrageous.
[54:23.820 --> 54:26.420]  And that ought to be an issue in the next congressional election.
[54:26.940 --> 54:28.100]  Who owns the bandwidth?
[54:28.460 --> 54:30.820]  I mean, you know, I know all the smarter people have been there before.
[54:30.920 --> 54:35.320]  But the bottom line is the people have to get together and, A, they have to do citizen intelligence.
[54:35.320 --> 54:39.260]  And that's the topic that we'll talk about tomorrow.
[54:39.520 --> 54:40.460]  But the stories...
[54:40.840 --> 54:44.400]  The information is there, but it's not being mined and it's not being disseminated.
[54:44.620 --> 54:45.480]  One last point.
[54:45.600 --> 54:50.660]  I worked for two years in the Washington Bureau of Time, which included Time Magazine.
[54:50.880 --> 54:52.420]  They even did a cover story or two.
[54:52.920 --> 54:56.120]  And the Washington media is very incestuous.
[54:56.180 --> 54:57.880]  It also sucks up...
[54:57.880 --> 54:59.220]  I'm not talking about time here.
[54:59.300 --> 55:02.320]  I'm talking in general to the agencies they cover.
[55:02.320 --> 55:07.100]  If you cover the FBI and you're a reporter, and you write something bad, your access dries up.
[55:07.160 --> 55:07.840]  You don't get the stories.
[55:07.900 --> 55:08.600]  You don't get the scoops.
[55:08.660 --> 55:12.620]  You eventually can't do your job if you're a full-time just covering the FBI reporter.
[55:12.760 --> 55:16.880]  So that's why you have that incestuous relationship that continues.
[55:17.100 --> 55:17.860]  There's no easy answer.
[55:18.140 --> 55:18.520]  Dead on.
[55:18.960 --> 55:19.560]  Exactly right.
[55:19.600 --> 55:20.880]  And you'll hear that over and over.
[55:21.040 --> 55:24.660]  In the 18 essays in Buzzsaw, you'll hear exactly that message.
[55:24.800 --> 55:25.280]  It's a good book.
[55:25.320 --> 55:25.940]  I'd recommend it.
[55:26.840 --> 55:27.320]  All right.
[55:27.600 --> 55:29.220]  Mr. Levine, you said you're in the DEA?
[55:29.220 --> 55:35.200]  I was with DEA, BATF, Hard Narcotic Smuggling, IRS Intelligence.
[55:35.800 --> 55:36.400]  All right.
[55:36.540 --> 55:40.080]  Well, I'm assuming by the fact that you're here tonight that you're a fairly free-thinking individual.
[55:40.320 --> 55:42.820]  So I guess I have a few questions about that.
[55:44.140 --> 55:57.720]  First off, I sort of really believe that the war on drugs helps fuel terrorism because of the fact that by driving it into the black market, you create huge entrepreneurial opportunities for, well, less legitimate businessmen.
[55:58.240 --> 56:06.340]  And secondly, I think, were you the one who was talking about taking back the FBI because they're doing a modestly incompetent job of late?
[56:06.700 --> 56:14.600]  I guess in order to do that, I think it's necessary to, first, you have to restore people's faith in law enforcement.
[56:14.800 --> 56:22.920]  And I think that a big cause of people's loss of faith in law enforcement is a consequence of the drug war because what you see is...
[56:22.920 --> 56:23.520]  I'm sorry, buddy.
[56:23.600 --> 56:25.540]  Let me answer the first part before you go too far.
[56:26.000 --> 56:41.280]  Everybody makes a living off the drug war, including the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, who are now the biggest advertisers on Madison Avenue, $2 billion program, say no to drugs, New York Times gets the money, Disney gets the money, ABC gets the money.
[56:41.740 --> 56:43.540]  One problem, the ads don't work.
[56:44.640 --> 56:46.540]  Who doesn't make money on the...
[56:46.960 --> 56:50.000]  It's a monstrous business.
[56:50.940 --> 56:53.980]  Nobody wants it to go away because everybody is making money.
[56:54.120 --> 56:54.520]  I agree.
[56:56.520 --> 56:58.380]  The second point, there is no confidence.
[56:58.940 --> 56:59.540]  Justly so.
[56:59.640 --> 57:01.120]  There is no confidence in law enforcement.
[57:01.560 --> 57:02.600]  And there shouldn't be.
[57:05.780 --> 57:08.900]  Would you say any of that is related to the war on drugs, perhaps?
[57:08.980 --> 57:09.100]  Pardon?
[57:09.320 --> 57:11.080]  Would you say any of that is related to the war on drugs?
[57:11.900 --> 57:12.760]  Very much so.
[57:12.860 --> 57:15.160]  I mean, what you saw is part of it.
[57:15.160 --> 57:20.900]  The idea of seeing that thing on informants is to tell you that if you think that's bad, look what's coming now.
[57:21.080 --> 57:22.760]  You will not believe this country.
[57:23.020 --> 57:25.700]  You will not have any idea.
[57:25.980 --> 57:26.920]  Imagine the worst.
[57:27.200 --> 57:28.520]  Because that's about what's about to happen.
[57:31.520 --> 57:37.620]  My question is, what's the difference between a bureaucracy that works and a bureaucracy that allows the World Trade Centers to go down?
[57:39.180 --> 57:52.480]  There's an old cliche, but it is that when you create a bureaucracy, I wish I could remember who said this, it develops its own soul, its own will to live, proliferate, get stronger.
[57:52.760 --> 57:58.560]  And logically, the first thing that happens is the first enemy of that bureaucracy become the people who created it.
[57:58.560 --> 58:00.660]  I've never seen that proven wrong.
[58:00.840 --> 58:02.580]  And I've been with a lot of bureaucracies.
[58:02.760 --> 58:05.780]  What the answer is, I don't think it lies in a bureaucracy.
[58:06.420 --> 58:19.520]  I think it lies in the people forming a party that when you take an oath to defend the people, that is the first oath, not to protect the Democratic Party, not to protect the Republican Party.
[58:19.520 --> 58:21.980]  And it has to be powerfully adhered to.
[58:22.120 --> 58:23.520]  That's the only answer I can think of.
[58:23.660 --> 58:32.180]  I'd like to give you a very short answer, which is, you know, I'm the other open source, open source intelligence rather than code.
[58:32.500 --> 58:42.760]  And there's been plenty of knowledge available in the public sector, well distributed, on these massive intelligence failures that have been occurring for many, many years.
[58:43.860 --> 58:48.780]  And we'll talk about this more tomorrow, but the bottom line is, nobody was paying attention.
[58:48.940 --> 58:50.500]  Nobody was holding Congress accountable.
[58:50.820 --> 58:51.440]  Two minutes.
[58:51.760 --> 58:51.960]  Yeah.
[58:53.360 --> 59:01.620]  I'd like to say that this panel has been really interesting for me because based on some of Mr. Steele's comments, there is a few things that we can do now to get the word out.
[59:01.840 --> 59:06.100]  One of them is, I come from Hartford, pretty good sized city, densely populated, quarter of a million people.
[59:06.340 --> 59:08.140]  I do a TV show and a radio show.
[59:08.140 --> 59:09.100]  There is a lot.
[59:09.200 --> 59:10.640]  There are some of these community resources.
[59:10.820 --> 59:19.300]  If we don't use them while we can, the FCC is trying to take away one of our college stations, which is only two minority run stations in the city.
[59:19.820 --> 59:23.340]  So anybody here, I mean, the resources are definitely out there for you to at least get the word out.
[59:23.420 --> 59:25.980]  Now when we go speak, there used to be only 10 people in a room.
[59:26.100 --> 59:30.540]  We can get 200 people in a room now if you consistently do your research and get your words out there.
[59:31.920 --> 59:35.060]  Two, I forgot the other gentleman that was talking about the actor.
[59:35.060 --> 59:38.680]  If anybody wants to look at this, I've been researching that on my show as well.
[59:38.860 --> 59:39.940]  That was James Woods.
[59:40.280 --> 59:46.100]  And if you hear the way he presented the information from an observational standpoint, it didn't really sound racist.
[59:46.200 --> 59:49.040]  It was the body, he's a trained actor and the way he was observing everybody.
[59:49.160 --> 59:49.960]  It's a really interesting read.
[59:50.080 --> 59:52.780]  So if you just look at James Woods in terrorism, I think it's huge.
[59:52.800 --> 59:53.640]  One more minute, buddy.
[59:54.140 --> 01:00:00.160]  And the last thing is, when you said that about the whorehouse in Louisiana, I was looking at Operation Midnight Climax.
[01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:03.860]  Man, the CIA has won more hard houses, I think, than anything else.
[01:00:05.900 --> 01:00:06.860]  There's one more guy.
[01:00:07.180 --> 01:00:08.000]  Go ahead, my friend.
[01:00:08.300 --> 01:00:12.580]  Just to make it really quick, it was very good to see you and you all raised a lot of good points.
[01:00:13.240 --> 01:00:17.480]  One of the questions I had from before, which was the whistleblower laws.
[01:00:17.480 --> 01:00:24.480]  Do you foresee any possibility of citizens' groups getting together to protect whistleblowers?
[01:00:24.680 --> 01:00:35.060]  Because there seems to be a lot of federal people who are bound by statute from discussing some of their work, and they're afraid that even if they whistleblow, they might go to jail.
[01:00:35.260 --> 01:00:41.040]  And also, if anybody is a state voting resident, I'm signing up for the Marijuana Reform Party.
[01:00:41.240 --> 01:00:42.140]  Please sign my petition.
[01:00:42.300 --> 01:00:44.660]  But thank you, anyway, for the question.
[01:00:44.660 --> 01:00:49.400]  Matt Blaze and I are here noon tomorrow, right here, same place.
[01:00:50.600 --> 01:00:51.400]  Thank you, folks.
[01:00:51.580 --> 01:00:52.120]  Thank you, guys.