As Native American people, why have we been reduced to a single word, a single silhouette?
Red skin, one word, two syllables.
Labeled in many dictionaries as a noun, dated or offensive, and simply defined, an American
Indian.
This is John Cain, join me for a free screening of More Than a Word, Thursday, September 27th,
7 p.m. at the Brooklyn Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, right here in Brooklyn, New York.
And coming to you live from Brooklyn, New York, it's WBAI in New York.
It's 8 o'clock, time once again for another edition of Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Alex.
Good evening.
And Kyle.
Oui.
And Kyle.
Let's get right to it, shall we?
We have a job to do.
We've been hired out to do this, and we're going to use our brains and the resources
of our listeners to try and solve the mystery as quickly as possible, because that's what
hackers do.
We have been tasked with figuring out who wrote the secret editorial that just appeared
in the New York Times from inside the Trump administration.
Did you guys hear about this?
Well, obviously you did, because we've all got our thinking caps on and our notepads
out, physical and virtual.
And yeah, for people listening in the future, for people listening who haven't been paying
attention to anything else, there was an editorial that was printed in the New York Times today.
This is how they prefaced it.
They said, The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous op-ed essay.
We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration
whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.
We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective
to our readers.
We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
And of course, I can't give you the link.
Well, I could read the link, I guess, but I can't.
You can't click on it.
So yeah.
Now, it's unprecedented.
This just happened a few hours ago.
And people are wondering, who is this?
Who is it that said these things that basically don't make Trump very, very happy?
I'll give you a couple of quotes here.
We believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner
that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That was frightening words, especially if you're a senior member of the administration team.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails.
He engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed,
and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
I mean, this isn't somebody on the outside.
This is somebody on the inside, somebody on the inside who is still there.
And that is what's amazing about this, the fact that they are still there.
He doesn't know who they are.
He's probably freaking out now.
There's probably some kind of line up against a wall, and he's pacing back and forth
and occasionally shouting in someone's face, trying to figure out who it is.
And I just think that's kind of awesome.
But do you think that Robert Mueller could be considered a senior administration official
since he's part of the Department of Justice?
Well, I don't know.
First of all, it would not be at all classy for him to do this.
Well, of course.
I don't think he would be one of the people.
Well, let me present some of my thoughts on this.
I read this shortly before the show this evening,
and I think if we want to try to deduce who this person could be,
perhaps the first exercise in which we should engage
is to determine which of the senior administration officials
say a lot of words without actually saying things or imparting a lot of meaning.
They all do that. What do you mean?
Well, perhaps, yeah.
Say a lot of words without saying anything. That's D.C.
Perhaps it's an art form down there,
but who tends to kind of go on and on and make a lot of obvious points,
but doesn't really let you in on anything going on behind the scenes?
I mean, it seems to me almost like somebody perhaps in the press office.
That's a pretty studied art.
Are you implicating Sarah? Because she's already condemned this.
I'm implicating her in all kinds of things. Perhaps this.
Why do we need to know?
Well, I mean, I just like figuring things out.
I think it's kind of, you know, plus I want to take some bets on this,
make it interesting.
Got it.
If we have a pool going, I'm told we can do this for this particular thing.
It's illegal usually, but we can take bets on this particular item
because it's of national importance.
Well, I do think, though, I don't really necessarily believe
that it's somebody in the press office.
Whoever the source was did go on here and there about the attacks on the press
and how it destroys civility and discourse suffers and whatnot.
But he also did mention quite a few things about he or she, I should say,
mentioned quite a few issues with Donald Trump's destruction of federal institutions.
And when he mentions that, I think he or she is referring specifically
to the intelligence community and the law enforcement community,
notably agencies like CIA, NSA, and FBI
because they've all been summarily ignored with respect to Russian threats
and other such activities.
So my guess is that this would be somebody who is either in a law enforcement
or intelligence capacity.
Okay.
Thank you, by the way, for saying he or she because nobody in the mass media
is doing that.
They're all saying he, and I think it could easily be a she.
Yeah.
Not so easily because the Trump administration doesn't have a whole lot of she's.
Not so many left, but think about Sally Yates and the stand that she took
when she was head of DOJ.
So, yeah, this could very well be a woman.
By the way, I've been told that I was incorrect in saying that it would be legal
for us to gamble on this, on the air, or on anything else.
Yes.
So please just forget I said that.
I was in error.
I misinterpreted.
Well, this could be sort of a game of skill.
Yeah, let's just do it for our own mental challenges here.
Now, just to give you an idea, I'm trying to determine when they say a senior
official in the Trump administration, how many people like that are there?
How many senior officials are there?
Now, I found a bunch of organizations, and here's a list.
Office of the Chief of Staff, Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council,
the Office of Cabinet Affairs, Communications, Digital Strategy,
Office of the First Lady.
Yeah, wouldn't that be something?
Office of Information Technology.
I think we got some friends there.
Maybe, who knows?
Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of Legislative Affairs.
We don't know half these organizations, so it could be somebody in there.
Office of Management and Administration, Office of the National Security Advisor,
Political Affairs, Presidential Personnel, there's an office of that,
Public Liaison, Office of Scheduling and Advance, Office of the Staff Secretary,
Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, Office of the White House Counsel,
and Oval Office Operations.
I assume any leader of those organizations will be considered a senior official
in the Trump administration.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
No, I think that's correct.
What senior means here could mean any number of things to any number of people.
In the federal service, you have the GS level of seniority,
so somebody with, let's say, a GS-15 pay status could be considered a senior administration official,
and then you have higher levels than that, which are SES,
or the Senior Executive Service in the intelligence community.
You have SIS levels, or Senior Intelligence Service,
and those are more of the executive level positions.
Given the breadth of what was discussed in this particular op-ed,
notably discussions centering around Russia, discussions about the media,
it seems like this is somebody who's not at the GS-15 level or senior in the sense of
they've just been promoted to SES level.
I think this is somebody who actually does have a lot of White House access
and specifically access to the West Wing where he or she sees what's going on
and understands what's being put forth in front of the president
and what's being held back from the public that the president would like to engage in
because there's a lot of activities that are discussed in this particular op-ed
that make it very clear that there are other administration officials like this person
that are preventing Donald Trump from doing what he would like to be doing,
and this person would only have that particular knowledge if it was a highly senior person
who would have access to the West Wing and know about these happenings on a daily basis.
These are all good clues.
Another clue that was brought to my attention,
one thing that hackers and investigators and people like that like to investigate
and use as a clue is sort of getting the writing style of something anonymous
and figuring out what it matches up to.
Someone I know on Twitter called Minus Baby pointed something very interesting out,
the writer of this op-ed used the archaic word lodestar.
Yeah, I saw that.
Which is also an archaic word that Mike Pence likes to use a lot.
Oh my God, really? You think it's Mike Pence?
So maybe we're all thinking too small,
and maybe it's a senior official in the Trump administration with access
in the sense that it could be the vice president.
It's spooky because we were talking about this on the other radio show yesterday
and about how Mike Pence, horror that he is, would be preferable
because at least our lives wouldn't be in imminent danger as they are right now.
But wow, that would be something if he turned out
or somebody in his office turned out to be lodestar, wow.
I think today might have been the first time I even saw that word.
So there you go Rob, that's a clue, that's a good clue.
And take it to the Twitter user.
The other clue that lends credence to this particular theory
is the fact that whoever the author was noted specifically
that they were not part of the left resistance,
that they believe in these Republican ideals
and that Donald Trump has been trampling all over these Republican ideals
for a really long time.
He doesn't take them to heart, he's not a real Republican
and that there have been great things that the administration has done
in this person's view like major tax cuts, deregulation.
These are all pinnacles of the Republican Party's ideals.
So I think the fact that that's in there also indicates
that this is somebody who leans very much to the right
like somebody who could be in the Vice President's office right now perhaps
or in the, where does he live, the Naval Observatory?
Something like that I think.
The Vice President.
Yeah, the Vice President I think.
Honestly, you know, Pence kisses up so much.
He'd have to be a really good actor to pull this off.
Yeah, that would be really stunning.
I'd be afraid of him then, more afraid of him.
He is one of the biggest apologists and covers for the President constantly.
It just doesn't seem fitting unless it is, as was mentioned I think
in the course of the coverage today, some kind of alarm bell.
But you know why he's such a kiss up is because he wants the job
and he knows he can get the job.
He knows that he's got a really good shot at having that
because there's no way Trump will last.
So for him to risk everything by putting out this piece now,
having it be exposed as him, yeah, I don't think he,
but somebody who hangs out with him, yeah, I think that is definitely a good theory.
On the other hand, if this is a person with the insider access
that we are presuming that they have, this person could have inside knowledge
about the inner workings and unravelings of this presidency
to the extent that if it was somebody like Mike Pence,
if he were to come out and step out anonymously first
and then de-anonymize himself as the author of this op-ed,
standing up for Republican ideals,
he could very easily step into the shoes of the presidency
and become himself the lodestar of the Republican Party.
Actually, I kind of follow that.
That would be a sound tactic because then he would come,
he would be able to distance, I think, from the culpability
that I talked about on our show yesterday and discussion there with this news.
And it just seemed that if he was just biding his time,
it would still be a bad look for him coming in.
But on the other hand, if this president is really going down
and he can come out looking like a hero, that's a different narrative.
That works. That plays.
That's the kind of president we want.
He's sticking up for our country.
There's a lot of people saying that this person,
whoever this person is, should resign and identify themselves
because you're a coward.
And the people on the left and the right are saying this.
You're a coward if you say these things and don't identify yourself.
But I have a different feeling on it
because you have somebody like this inside
and you don't know who that person is.
That person can do a tremendous amount of good
by revealing things as they happen.
If you resign and leave, who do you think is going to replace you?
Not somebody with your standards.
Somebody else who's going to do exactly what they're told.
And what do you gain from that?
It's far better to have somebody in there.
And the bonus about all that is that it drives Trump crazy.
He is out of his mind tonight trying to figure this out.
And I hear lie detectors are being wheeled into the White House as we speak.
Polygraph machines, all sorts of things.
I would not want to be a senior Trump official right now
because they're all going to be questioned rather harshly.
Do not forget how important loyalty was.
The loyalty oath when we were hearing about the federal investigation
that Comey had been in charge of as he was leading the FBI at the time.
All of that loyalty stuff that came out that was really egregious and alarming
was revealed to be so incredibly important to him personally.
And now just thinking of it, that was kind of my point with like,
why do we need to know?
I mean, we don't really need to know.
In fact, that was why, by design, why this was unveiled and released
and timed and done in the way and the structure to protect people
and allow it to fester, right?
That is a tactic in and of itself.
And especially for someone, like you said, that could affect from the inside
and report from the inside and also have this unintended effect
or sort of side effect of him in his role as president
looking over his shoulder constantly and, as you said,
wheeling in the polygraph machines and everything.
It's just everything's on the table all of a sudden.
In a moment, in a moment when he needs as much of the technology
and the teams and the assistance and the cohesion to keep the media at bay
and also handle his private affairs and stuff,
it's just amazing that just the specter, just the suggestion
that he could have disloyalty at this very moment is just crushing, I'm sure.
And, as you said, leading to the aggravation there.
Well, you know, we need to know for a variety of reasons.
At some point, we need to know because otherwise it can be claimed
that this person doesn't actually exist.
But, you know, to believe that, you would have to think
the New York Times is in on the whole thing.
And, of course, Trump says that sort of thing all the time
and his followers will also believe that the Times is taking part
in something akin to a coup right now.
And that is the talk you will be hearing over the next few days.
Who is behind this and who is helping them
and why won't they come forward?
It's important to legitimize these things.
And I think what you might see is that this person writing
this particular piece in the Times today is not just one person.
They refer to themselves in the plural a couple of times.
They say that people have taken a vow, I believe,
to protect the country.
Here it is.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can
to preserve our democratic institutions
while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses
until he is out of office.
That's something that you say after discussing it with other people.
It's not just one person mouthing off.
That's somebody who has talked to a bunch of other people.
And, you know, what's also interesting about that particular sentence
is there's a hyperlink in there under vowed to do what we can.
It links to a story from the Times, I believe, yesterday
concerning the new book that just came out.
And it's interesting that they're linking to that.
I don't know if the link was made at the suggestion of the submitter
or if they're simply trying to make it more relevant.
I think that should be pointed out
if the person instructed them to make that particular link.
But it just shows you that this is not an isolated instance.
This represents a lot of things that are going on
in that particular place right now.
I think it shatters the narrative of the deep state in a lot of ways
because it's a pivot from the tunnel vision
that that narrative has about intelligence being against freedom,
being against this administration or success in general of our country.
And when you have people that were picked by the president,
ostensibly picked and replaced over and over again
in the last two years or whatever,
but whatever it's settled to now, having made, as you said, a pact,
like an agreement, which is suggested in the language there,
it is just amazing to imagine.
And I think that definitely that extra perspective
of people who were purported to be loyal now,
well, how could you argue they are deep state
or that this is an attribute of that?
Well, no, it's not related.
But gee, is the sentiment not similar?
Is there truth to that?
Is that then substantiated?
And again, it shatters that idea.
And building off of that and what Emmanuel said,
I would not be surprised to ultimately find out
that I was not a singular author to this particular piece,
that it might have been authored by a number of individuals
and then submitted anonymously to the New York Times.
I would have signed it Spartacus.
I just would have done that.
I think it would have been cool.
Yeah, I think so too.
But also to bounce off what you had originally said,
is that you're absolutely right, I think, to say that
having people on the inside is really going to drive him nuts.
And it's just something that I've always felt since I was in law school,
that change can come from within the federal government
as opposed to without.
And that we should, as the article says,
rise above this tribalistic notion of politics
and the divisions that Trump himself have created.
We need to identify our common ideals as Americans,
have those become our unifying characteristics,
and ignore this nonsense that is destroying our discourse.
And this issue of change coming from within as opposed to without,
which is why I don't think that we should be so quick to cast aspersions
on anybody working within the federal government,
anybody who works with the Trump administration.
They're not necessarily bad people.
I mean, even people, and this will be an unpopular view on this station,
even people I submit that work for immigration and customs enforcement,
there are going to be good people.
You mean like the guy that cuts the grass or something?
How high up are you going in that organization?
I think pretty high up because change is going to have to come from the top.
The change often comes from legal memoranda that are written.
When I went and worked for CIA many years ago,
I was called by some of my law school classmates a war profiteer.
And I made the same case back then, many years ago,
that it was easier for me to effect change from within
than it would be from without.
Yeah, but you also weren't separating kids from their parents.
You don't know that. You don't know that.
I'd like to assume that's not the case.
But, yeah, I hear what you're saying,
and I agree to some extent that a lot can be done from within.
But at some point you have to realize that you don't belong there,
that you're not part of that particular group of people
and that you are working against them.
Now what this person says is that a lot of what has been done so far,
such as tax reform, deregulation, military things,
it's all good, but it's happening despite, not because of Trump.
So, yeah, this is a person that obviously has different viewpoints
than a lot of us.
But, yeah, you still can't say that this person isn't doing something good
because, yes, you can do good things even if you disagree politically.
And I think decent people, regardless of what kind of hat they wear,
will always come through in the end.
And that's what we are at now.
We are at that particular stage.
And I know a lot of people are rolling their eyes and saying,
what does this have to do with hacking?
What does it have to do with technology?
It has everything to do with it because hackers notice things,
hackers are able to tell when something is amiss,
and we're able to see the fine details.
And a lot of smart people are in the hacker community
that get things well before the populace.
We are at a stage right now where I honestly don't know
what state this country will be in in another week.
We could have a turnover at the highest level within the next few days.
It's something I know a lot of people are hoping for, myself included,
but how that happens is going to be very, very telling.
We are at a precipice, and it would be kind of irresponsible
to talk about the latest vulnerabilities in Windows
at this particular point.
Yeah, and to make a counterpoint here,
since I think we've all been speaking in fairly laudatory terms
about this particular op-ed,
one point I would like to bring up is,
did this really say anything that we didn't know already?
No, absolutely not.
Nothing.
But it came from within his people.
That's what's so telling about it.
Yeah, this is what people have been saying from the very beginning,
but to hear it confirmed from the inside
and to know that there are people there that are,
as described, grown-ups in the room.
And, you know, it's interesting.
The first time John Kelly gave a press conference,
I remember the media going nuts, saying,
at last there's an adult in the room.
You know, that phrase kind of stuck.
So it could be somebody in his particular corner of the office there.
That's true.
You know, another point, then,
that just brings it back to the usual topic
of our ordinary conversations here on Off the Hook,
I don't really necessarily care who the anonymous source or sources is or are.
What would be more interesting to me is an article
about how they communicated with this person.
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that,
because that's the next thing I want to talk about.
Oh, good.
I'm pretty sure it had to be through SecureDrop,
which we talked about last week on this show.
Right.
2600 has SecureDrop.
In fact, we got some interesting pieces since the last show.
And, you know, some people just said hi in the message thing.
We have no idea who you are, but hi back.
Other people wanted to know about how they can encrypt things.
And you know what?
You don't have to encrypt things anymore,
because it already gets encrypted when you drop it into the SecureDrop application,
and we have to decrypt it on our end.
The computer we use is in a different location.
It's air-gapped.
Is that the right word, Kyle?
Yeah, among other things.
Which means it's not connected to the Internet at any time.
Correct, yeah.
And there's a whole bunch of procedures and layers
and just a lot of stuff to set you up for the best possible security.
We have to physically move data from one place to another under guard, by the way.
And that machine is never connected.
So there is no possibility that I can see where there could be a leak here
unless it's on the sending end where somebody is reading out loud what they're typing
or, you know, if we got on a megaphone, but we still wouldn't know who the person was.
And we don't know who the people are that are giving us.
Well, they would find out who the person was through that communication
by having a back-and-forth dialogue and saying,
OK, we need some way of knowing that you are legit,
and they confirm that in their own way.
I would just add that in a lot of the mainstream publications
and a lot of these leaks and revelations,
you will not see any mention of the platform that was used.
There are other platforms, of course,
and there are a myriad of ways you can do essentially the same functional thing in the analog realm.
You can devise your own system with shoeboxes or something.
I don't know.
But the point is it is part of the operational structure
and the suggested best practice not to cite the platform.
Right. You'll notice it's never cited.
In fact, when we get leaks, we are not going to say,
by the way, well, I did just say someone said hi to us.
I didn't think that was particularly dramatic.
But if we get something, say, like tax returns or audiotapes or videotapes
or things like that of certain things or people,
we won't admit that that came exactly from that particular leak.
Well, you don't know it wasn't like a DVD we picked up under a piece of trash in an alley.
No, you'll never know. We won't tell you.
We won't tell you. That's part of the security.
But it's just good to know these things are out there and people can use them.
And there are, as you say, other ones as well.
But if it were something like SecureDrop, that is how they would have done it.
They would have initiated contact and they are able to preserve their identity
up until a point where they feel comfortable talking to a particular person
or meeting in a particular place.
And that is how these things are done.
It's not just dropping something onto a website like, you know,
with WikiLeaks or something like that.
This is you control how it is distributed, who you talk to and where it goes from there.
Yeah. And another caveat with this in particular,
like just the opinion piece, it's a part of the New York Times
that is compartmentalized as the editorial department.
This has been mentioned a lot in the coverage today.
But it's crucial to think about it.
But the organization itself probably doesn't have access
to whatever infrastructure they've used to keep the source anonymous.
And in fact, it's probably just that department.
It's probably just a couple of people working on it,
just the critical individuals to help get that story to light
and nurture it along the way.
And they probably did reveal or otherwise verify in some way to one
or just a very small compartmentalized group.
Within the New York Times, they don't want to know.
I would be surprised if more than one or two people at the Times
knew the true identity at this point.
Yes. Yeah.
And Kyle, you mentioned compartmentalization.
And I think that's a really interesting point to make
because here you have a very clear example of the ways
in which the media operates very similarly to an intelligence agency
where you have confidential sources, assets essentially, right?
And the sources and methods by which that information is collected
from these particular assets is a very highly guarded secret
that is compartmentalized to only a few people.
I mean, it's the equivalent of having TSSCI, you know,
plus clearance in the federal government,
that only a few people are going to have access to this.
Nobody really sees the entire picture.
And I think it's incredibly important that this kind of information
and the sources and methods are protected
because we're already seeing the president making these nonsensical tweets
about this being a national security issue.
Yeah. In fact, there was one tweet a couple of hours ago
just said, all caps, treason, question mark.
First of all, why are you asking a question about
whether it's something that you should know?
And second of all, of course, it's not treason.
What national security issues have,
other than you being a menace to the entire country,
no, it's not a treasonous issue at all.
You're being a menace.
I was just going to add a menace of ad-libbing
to the very idea of national security.
Yeah, the other tweet that he just put out more recently,
does the so-called senior administration official, unquote,
really exist, or is it just the failing New York Times
with another phony source?
If the gutless, all caps, anonymous person does indeed exist,
the Times must, for national security purposes,
turn him or her over to government at once.
I cannot believe this is what this guy is,
turn him over to the government.
That just sounds so evil right there,
but he really believes this.
And of course, that's not going to happen.
Yeah, in the same tweet, he's calling the New York Times failing,
and he's also asking them a massive favor.
I mean, this guy's supposed to be a great negotiator?
No, he's not asking.
He's telling them,
you must turn them over to the government right away.
And yeah, I think everybody realizes
that is not something that is imminent.
Another really interesting thing that I thought is worth mentioning
is sort of the social engineering aspect of Trump.
He's so two-faced.
And where I got that is this Bob Woodward tape.
He recorded this call,
and it's just about the book being released.
Like, hey, Mr. President, you know,
there's this thing that's going to, you know,
would you like to come?
And he's talking about this, you know,
communications that he had had within,
and Trump is feigning ignorance.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I didn't talk.
I would have loved to be in your book.
Basically, so he can deny, you know,
plausibly deny his lack of contribution
and then cast it aside as a negative failed book, whatever.
It totally shows how two-faced he is
because there's evidence that, you know,
Bob had made the efforts,
and he documented his own sort of work and vetting
and getting permission and access.
And then here he is, you know, talking to the guy directly.
And through this recording,
we hear Trump talk about how he didn't know
and how he would have loved to do this and that
and the other thing and how honest he thinks Bob is.
It's just this complete facade of what I would say
is like sort of a social engineering,
but it's, I don't know, more sociopathic or something.
There's a mix of things going on there,
but it's really glaring to see just his chameleon-like behavior,
when interacting with people.
Even if it's, I mean, there's no discerning between lies.
It's just however he wants to shlack a coating of,
you know what on it to get through that moment.
Right. I'm glad you brought up the book
because the book is very relevant to all of this.
It's called Fear, Trump in the White House.
Great titles coming out.
It hasn't come out yet.
Excerpts were being read yesterday.
It's due to be released on September 11th.
Whose idea was that?
September 11th to release a book. Wow.
So that's a week from yesterday.
The book will actually be out.
But think about it.
This statement was released the day after that book came out
where all these quotes or stories were being told
and this person or people wrote in to the New York Times,
which is a process that takes time.
You can't just write in and expect an editorial
to be printed within minutes.
This obviously took time to organize and to prepare.
Whoever this is, is somebody that Bob Woodward talked to
and is on the same page, quite literally,
with what he is saying.
And this serves as kind of a backup to what it is
that he is claiming is going on inside the Trump White House.
So, you know, if you want more clues as to who the person is,
just simply see how many people Bob Woodward talked to.
Maybe the clues are in some of the conversations
that he has already revealed.
And to build on what Kyle had mentioned with respect
to Trump's manipulation tactics,
we see this happening already.
What I believe will happen next is that he is going to try
to manipulate this, manipulate the Bob Woodward issue
to the extent that he energizes his political base
to gin up enough political capital to put pressure
on the senior administration officials
of the Department of Justice to actually consider this
a national security threat.
And then, if he is able to do that,
what they would do is make an application to, let's say,
the FISA court or any federal district court.
If they could really make a great case
about this being a national security issue
and perhaps somebody working on the behest of a foreign power,
they could perhaps obtain a FISA warrant
to begin surveilling people within the White House
to determine who is communicating with whom.
That could include their personal communications,
their personal devices, their home networks,
things like any kind of communications.
And then separately, if it were to go
to an individual federal court and they could convince a judge
that this was a national security issue,
they may be able to have a federal judge issue a subpoena
to reveal the source, in which point
the New York Times would be placed in a position
of revealing the name and identity
of this particular source to a federal judge
or having their reporters held in contempt.
I'm going to push on that.
I think that would be plausible.
I'm not going to go down that with you
because of the current special counsel.
They're coordinating.
They're coordinating with other indictments and other cases.
And I'm curious where you think that might fall
in your hypothetical.
Yeah, well, I don't necessarily know.
I mean, that's a good question.
I think the special counsel would be rather interested
in speaking with this particular anonymous source.
In fact, they may have already.
There's nothing stopping anybody from contacting
the special counsel and saying,
hey, I have additional information here
that this person is violating his oath of office.
One other thing, I would not discount those names
that came out with official denials
based on the Bible word statements in that book
because they're playing the game.
Even now, I'm giving them a lot of credit.
Assuming one of the, like John Kelly and Mattis,
these guys that came out with this sort of classic,
I mean, it was like right into the Trump template
of like apologies.
There's at least half a dozen of them, right,
that had to come out after this book was released.
And I don't want to, again, like guess,
because honestly, I don't care, like Alex had said.
One of those people may be lying
just to continue to perpetuate in this administration
as deeply as they choose.
Wow, if Trump is hearing this, his head's gonna explode.
He thought those people were eliminated as suspects,
but you're saying that if they deny right away,
they might be the guilty ones trying to clear their names.
Absolutely, they are playing his game.
He set up the rules.
They'll just continue to play it
and then be as two-faced,
but in the interest of what's right.
Right, and just to look a little closely at this
from our particular perspective as hackers,
I'm heading off all the tweets of,
hey, hacker radio show,
how can we spend half an hour talking about Trump?
This is a massive case of social engineering,
and social engineering is a central,
I think, arm of the whole hacker world,
and we are watching a huge case
of a really talented social engineer.
Yeah, if we call him Facebook president,
does that make it more relevant to you?
Absolutely, and we are watching what happens
when this is enacted on a national scale
and when it's starting to have little holes poked in it,
and this is just, in a sense,
this is really educational just watching all this fall down
and happen before us.
And where else do hackers get a chance
to actually put forth some theories
that might turn out to be relevant and true,
except here?
In fact, here's our phone number,
347-335-0818,
if you want to lend any particular theories,
thoughts, expertise, things like that,
our phone lines are wide open.
And honestly, I mean, I respect the opinion,
but, you know,
why don't you submit what's more relevant?
Please, we ask every week, send us something.
Here's our email, here's our phone number.
If you have something that is so relevant
to hacking and to us and to the world,
do tell!
Sit down, Kyle.
They will, they will,
and we get lots of things,
but right now we think this is very relevant,
and a bit-
Spend your time on that.
Well, I think people do,
to give them some credit there.
Yeah, well, we get it.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
To bring it back to a potentially more relevant point,
if we think about the incentives
that others have to unmask the identity
of this particular person,
anybody who would want to curry favor
with the president or the administration
has a major incentive
to try to crack this case as well.
And I'm talking specifically
about other foreign nations.
Remember, it was not beyond Trump
during the presidential campaign
to make that idiotic statement,
Russia, if you're out there, right?
Yes.
You know, I'm half expecting
another statement like that
at the next Trump rally,
not that I go to them.
That's tomorrow, 7 p.m., Billings, Montana.
So, our Montanan listeners,
please show up there
and let us know what happens.
But here's a very serious issue
about when it comes to information security
and these particular sources,
because there are many, many, many
other active and very effective
intelligence agencies worldwide.
They could be targeting
the putative sources here.
They could be targeting them
without any lawful restrictions
of federal law.
They don't have to abide
by the Warren process.
They don't have to abide
by the Fourth Amendment.
They're operating illegally
in this country
to perform covert operations
to begin with.
And that means that
nothing is off limits,
that the people at the New York Times
that are working on the story,
that the putative sources,
that the federal officials
in the White House
could have any component
of their life targeted,
their home networks targeted,
their traffic redirected
and analyzed if their routers
aren't particularly secure.
So, this is a wake-up call
to everybody who's involved
in the media
and these particular stories.
Exactly, yes.
In an information security perspective
and a hacker perspective,
go home, update the firmware
on your router.
Yeah, with the amount of technology
that we use every day
without the proper amount of security,
the way we can be compromised
is simply mind-boggling.
Hey, we have a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Go ahead.
Hi, okay.
Let me go through first
real quickly
who I think it's not.
Okay.
Make it quick
because there's other people waiting.
Very fast.
Okay.
It's not John Kelly.
It's not Mattis.
It's not anyone in his family.
I doubt it's Mike Pence
because Mike Pence knows enough.
Just give him enough rope
to hang himself,
he'll do it on his own.
Doesn't have to be Mike Pence
because it's not Sarah Sanders either.
Anyway, here's who I think it is.
I think it's Don McGahn,
the White House lawyer.
Why?
Because it's just a couple of days ago
that Trump put out a tweet,
not even talking to Don McGahn,
about he'll be leaving in the fall.
Took Don McGahn by the surprise.
I mean, he knew his days
were numbered anyway.
Okay.
But also, Don McGahn
also had said some time ago
if Trump asked him to fire Jeff Sessions
or Rod Rosenstein
or any one of those people
that he would resign before he did that.
Once that tweet came out
about Don McGahn is leaving in the fall,
Don McGahn didn't even know
that that was coming.
I bet it's Don McGahn turned around
and threw his last shot at Trump.
Anyway, that's who I think it is.
He might have other people along with him,
but I can't see anybody else
in the White House,
in that West Wing,
who would have done it
more than Don McGahn.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for that theory.
That's an excellent theory,
and I'm going to write that one down.
I think that's a good possibility.
However, you did say
it wouldn't be anybody in his family.
That got me thinking.
What if it was Jared?
It could be his son-in-law.
It could be his daughter.
It could be Ivanka.
Maybe she's fed up.
It's possible.
Here's a line from the editorial
that really got my attention.
The erratic behavior
would be more concerning
if it weren't for unsung heroes
in and around the White House.
Some of his aides
have been cast as villains
by the media,
but in private.
They have gone to great lengths
to keep bad decisions
contained to the West Wing,
though they are clearly
not always successful.
When you say something like that,
I'm thinking,
Steve Miller?
Really?
No way.
That guy is just evil incarnate.
There's no way.
But the fact that he's talking
about other people,
or she's talking about other people
doing these things
and being cast as villains,
again, tells me there is
more than one person at work here.
It's a collective.
That's comforting to know that.
Again, the phrasing of
Americans should know
there are adults in the room.
We fully recognize
what is happening,
and we are trying to do what's right
even when Donald Trump won't
from his own people.
Stunning.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Good evening.
What's on your mind?
I have a funny feeling, right?
It's Melania, his wife.
Okay.
Does she qualify as a senior?
I mean, I guess.
I guess she's a senior.
I mean, I'm sure she hears
everything going on.
That's for sure.
Yes, and she never
looked very happy about it.
FLOTUS is pretty senior, right?
Yeah, or somebody
in the FLOTUS office.
Okay, well, again,
that's his family,
so that would be something.
Can you imagine, though,
his family betraying him?
It would be the end of the rope,
I think.
His wife.
Yeah.
All right, thanks for that.
I think going against that theory,
though, is this issue
of the Republican ideals
that were espoused
in the particular article.
I don't necessarily think
that Melania would mention tax cuts
as being something that was
a great accomplishment
by this particular administration.
Yeah, I think that may be a clue there
that it's not in that direction,
but I could see her being
incredibly frustrated
with the amount of money
he tends to spend on his libido.
She probably wants to see that
in her wardrobe or somewhere,
you know, that's important.
There's plenty of other things
he could be investing
his time and energy into.
I mean, let's not discount
the theory here
that there are probably
certain red herrings
in that particular article
to throw the scent off,
so to speak.
Damn, I didn't think about that,
but yeah, you're probably right.
Maybe he liked Lodestar.
Yeah, maybe that's
to frame somebody else.
Maybe they're doing that
because they don't like Pence.
Rob, what's a Lodestar?
I know he used it.
Do any of us know?
What is it?
I think I have one
at home on a shelf somewhere.
Okay, I'll look it up.
You look it up.
I'll keep myself busy.
I'll just hush up over here.
Let me give the phone number again,
347-335-0818.
There is other news.
In fact, there's
a very disturbing story
coming out of Norway
where someone who gave a talk
at a HOPE conference
and is known in the hacker world,
Arjen Kampvries,
I'm probably mispronouncing that,
a 47-year-old
Dutch privacy expert,
cybersecurity expert,
has gone missing,
gone missing in Norway.
This happened actually
on August 20th.
He was visiting
the small city of Bodø.
I've been to Bodø.
I've been to Bodø
a number of times actually.
It's kind of like,
well, I mean,
there's a lot going on there.
There's an airport there.
You can use it
as kind of a transfer point
if you're going further north
or if you're heading over to Sweden.
But he was leaving
that particular place
and getting on a long train ride
down to Trondheim,
and that is the last
anyone has heard of him.
Now, this is somebody
who is described
as a cybersecurity expert,
also a senior associate
of Wikileaks,
and the story is getting
quite a lot of attention
for that alone,
which I guess is a good thing,
but unfortunately,
whenever there's
a Wikileaks story,
it just turns into
just about Julian Assange.
In fact, if you see stories
about this guy being missing,
you see Julian's picture
and not his,
which makes no sense whatsoever.
We need to focus on this guy
and make sure that he is found,
that he is safe,
and that nothing bad
has happened to him.
There's all kinds of suspicions
because, well,
this is the kind of thing
we're talking about,
people who know
how things work,
people who reveal information,
people who know
how to do that securely.
They can be threats.
They can be people
who are of great interest
to others.
Anyway,
it's basically
all over the Internet,
but I'll spell out his name
in case people would prefer
to look it up themselves.
Arjen,
A-R-J-E-N,
and his last name,
Kamphuis,
K-A-M-P-H-U-I-S.
He wrote a book
called
Information Security
for Journalists,
which offers advice
on investigative reporters
working on national security
and intelligence matters.
You see,
this all ties together
in a really interesting
but also scary way sometimes.
Now, he has Dutch citizenship,
and he likes to travel,
but the fact
that he's disappeared
and has not made
any of his appointments
in the last week or two
is very, very disturbing,
so we are keeping a close eye
on that particular story as well.
Again, our phone number
is 347-335-0818.
I know we had a couple calls
come in, and they timed out,
so if you got timed out on,
please call back.
We have a couple of minutes left.
I hadn't realized
that he wrote that compendium
on information security
for journalists
until you mentioned it right now.
That's something.
We consult with a lot of journalists,
and actually, that's something
that we've pushed out
to them many times.
I didn't realize
it was the same person.
There's a number
of his talks online.
In fact, the talk
that he gave
at The Last Hope,
that's online.
There's a TED talk
he gave more recently.
By the last one,
I don't mean the most recent one.
I mean the one in 2008,
by the way.
Hopefully, he turns up.
Hopefully, he's just out
exploring somewhere,
doing something
without telling anybody.
The thing is,
he knows how to go off the grid.
That's what a true hacker
knows how to do
is to turn off the phone,
to not connect,
to not be found
if you don't want to be found.
Let's hope it's something like that.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Hey, how are you doing, sir?
Hi, what's on your mind?
Okay.
I was saying,
I give those guys a lot of...
They're kind of not getting
a lot of credit, man.
They just sit there
and endure questions like that
for like five or six hours.
I know with me,
I have a headache
at the end of the day.
You're talking about Kavanaugh?
Yeah, man.
How do they sit there
and endure those questions, man,
for so long?
It's like the guy
didn't take a drinking...
He didn't take a water break
or something?
Well, I think you took
a number of breaks,
but yeah, it takes patience.
But when you realize
you're on at least
two C-spans at once
and a nation watching
and an audience of millions,
I guess you behave yourself
at least for a little while.
Good night.
Well, thank you for that.
I thought he was going
to say something else,
but go ahead.
Yeah, you can really hand it
to Kavanaugh if you want,
but just don't try
and shake his hand.
Oh, God, yeah.
The Gutenberg thing.
That was...
We talked about that
on yesterday's show as well.
The parent of one
of the murdered children
in Parkland
tried to shake his hand
and he just looked at him
with contempt
and turned away.
And I understand
he was even given
a second chance to do that
and refused.
This guy is scum, okay?
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to be so crude,
but there is no other word for it.
Yeah, a potential
Supreme Court justice
I see as scum.
To the Kohler's point,
this is exactly what
the federal judiciary
is trained to do.
If you think about
what they endure
on a daily basis
at the trial level,
not necessarily
at the appeals level,
they sit through
some of the most boring nonsense
you could ever imagine
on a daily basis
and having an interactive
day like this
is probably seen
as a nice respite.
I mean, could you imagine
sitting through
a two week long trial
that has to deal with
insurance coverage
under one particular clause
or under an error
or omissions policy
and what is the definition
of an occurrence
and things like that.
These are the cases
that have shaped
the legal system
in the United States
and they're so incredibly boring,
but when you have suffered through
enough of these
and enough depositions...
You're boring me
describing this.
Exactly, I'll shut up.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening,
you're on the radio.
Hello?
Hi, what's on your mind?
Oh, I just wanted
to make a prediction
of who I think
the leak would likely be.
Okay, let's hear it.
Yeah, well,
I've worked actually
around a lot of people
around the White House.
I think it's likely
going to be one of the people
on either the executive
support staff
that work either
with the communications department
that have access
to all those records
or likely secret service agents.
Well, would they be defined
as a member
of his senior staff?
Anyone that's a 14
or a 15 or above
is considered
senior government.
14?
Do you want to describe
what that means,
14 or 15?
Okay, so it's like a GS,
like a general service scale,
GS scale.
You have like the equivalent
of Lieutenant Colonel of the Army
or Commander of the Navy.
That's when you're considered
a senior official.
I got a question for you,
caller.
Do you think that this would be
somebody in the civil service
as opposed to somebody
in active duty
military service?
I think it's likely
someone in the civil service.
Why do you say that?
Because if you are
in the military,
you're going to fall under
the penalty of the UCMJ
because you're questioning
or criticizing
your commander-in-chief.
If you get caught, yeah.
Well, I think this person
will be revealed
at some point fairly soon,
I think.
Yeah, I think the caller
is absolutely right about that.
Yeah.
Any other theories?
That's the only one
I'm going with right now.
All right.
Well, thanks so much
for calling us
and for lending your expertise
on this.
Thank you.
Take care.
Wow.
I love getting calls
from people that know
what they're talking about
and we learn so much
from that alone.
He made a great point
that this could be somebody
in the Secret Service
that has access
to the President
that sees the daily happenings.
This jibes with everything
that we've been saying as well.
Wow.
It would improve my opinion
of the Secret Service
quite a bit,
I'll tell you that.
We don't have much time left,
so I wanted to quickly mention
Australia because it's
a very time-sensitive.
Yes.
Do you have that recording
that you made?
I have it on a drive somewhere,
but I can point you toward
what we're talking about.
If you're an Australian,
your government is considering
the Assistance and Access Bill 2018,
and you only have until this Monday,
the 10th of September,
to comment on it.
So if you go to
digitalrightswatch.au,
that's digitalrightswatch.au,
and scroll down to the link
that says
Digital Rights Watch.
That's the link
that you can go to
and click on it,
and it will take you
to the link
that you can click on
and it will take you
to the link
that you can click on
and if you scroll down
to the link
that says
Defend Encryption,
you will get
all the information
on what the bill is,
what it means,
and how you can organize
against it
because it's actually
very frightening
when you look into it.
Basically,
it's another attempt
to get device manufacturers,
coders,
technology,
the technology world,
basically,
to build back doors
so the government
can crack open encryption,
and that's,
as we've said
on this program,
very, very dangerous indeed.
So, digitalrightswatch.org.au,
it's an Australian domain,
and scroll down to it.
It seems like they never
stop with these things.
Yep.
It never stops,
and there's a big thing
going on with basically
the Five Eyes countries,
which is the United States,
Canada,
the UK,
Australia,
and I think New Zealand
basically getting together
and being super cooperative
with one another
based on what they want to do
and how they want to share
information on people.
So, now,
we found the file
that you made.
Now, maybe you could tell us
something about this
before it starts playing.
This is a video made
by The Juice Media,
who've also made Rap News,
which we've featured
in the past on this program.
Okay, all right.
And it's basically
a satirical government ad.
It's called
An Honest Government Ad.
And this is not safe for radio,
but you fixed it,
so it is safe for radio.
I did.
Okay, well,
let's hear this.
Hello, I'm from
the Australian government.
Do you have something to hide?
Nah, just kidding.
We're not some fascist regime.
Seriously, though.
Do you?
Unfortunately,
encryption makes it hard
for us to spy on you
these days.
So, just to make sure,
we're introducing
yet another law
to expand the surveillance state.
Introducing
the Assistance and Access Bill,
or Ars Access,
for short.
Oh, relax.
Despite how it sounds,
we're not trying to
access your data
through your back door.
We're just after the keys
to your front door.
Yep, Ars Access
will force tech companies
to do our dirty work for us.
For example,
by making them
insert a little
secret source in their app,
which lets us
access your device
once you download
the latest update.
And if they refuse,
we'll find the
s*** out of them.
Ars Access.
It doesn't break encryption,
only your trust
in your favourite apps.
To bring you Ars Access,
we've taken the UK's
fascist spying law
and made it
even more fascist
by removing any need
for judicial oversight.
But don't worry,
we promise to only
spy on you
if reasonable
and proportionate.
And you know
you can trust us.
We're the same c***
who docks the welfare recipient
for criticising us,
who are prosecuting
a whistleblower
for exposing our misconduct,
who throw kids
in concentration camps
for seeking asylum,
and prosecute
the journalists
who report on them,
and who gave
half a billion
of your tax dollars
to a foundation
full of our friends.
So of course
you can count on us
to be reasonable
and proportionate.
And if we're not,
well,
you'll never hear about it
because we've also
introduced
the 10-year jail sentence
for any Snowden wannabe
who disclose
our abuse of Ars Access.
Ars Access.
Brought to you by Australia.
Where the laws of d***heads
can trample human rights.
Which is why
to test this s***f***ery
we chose Australia.
The weakest
of the Five Eyes Alliance
thanks to our lack
of a Bill of Rights.
So international data requests
will now be funneled
through us.
Compromising not just Aussies
but all of you f***ers too.
You're welcome.
We'd love to know
what you think of Ars Access
so we've set up
a public submission system
where for a limited time
you can protest
our next step
towards a f***ed up dystopia.
Australian Government.
Relax,
we're not after your d***pics
just the last shreds
of your civil liberties.
Authorised by the Department
of Home Or Pairs.
Oh, that's brilliant.
Thank you Rob
for putting that together.
Ars Access.
Okay, great.
That's going to be
our show for tonight.
We are pretty much out of time.
But we have this
one important announcement.
Yes, 2600 meetings
happen all over the world
this week.
2600.com slash meetings
find your own or start it.
And Hope videos are out
from the Circle of Hope.
You can go to Hope.net
or 2600.com
to see how you can
get your copies.
Write to us
oth at 2600.com
we will read your emails.
If you have something
secure to drop to us
go to our secure drop page
2600.com slash secure drop.
We'll see you next week
and by then
who knows what state
the country will be in.
h, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, 
Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don't remember
Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don't remember
When I was at WBAI, I liked WBAI
The Great Studs Terkel
I know it's known as a kooky, goofy station, and yet it's so exciting for that very reason
I like WBAI. I wish there were more stations like our number, but more like this, with the outsider's views expressed often and frequently