Transcripts For CSPAN2 Carter Page Abuse And Power 20240712

We are here to talk about his book, one of the most stories about our time and hasnt been well told until now. We will talk about that today. I got to know carter page professionally and i was blown away by the facts as the case when you cover stories where powerful interests are trying to shape them and youre not getting the true picture. He will talk about all of that today, carter, ask we start with you giving a brief background of your education, where you went to school and very briefly your job experience in career . Yes, sheryl, thank you so much for doing this today, great to be with you. I grew up in duchess county, new york and i received a nomination to the u. S. Naval academy which i started a week after graduating high school in 1989, and i so i completed anapolis and then commissioned in the u. S. Navy and served with the u. S. Navy, first as arms control action officer doing International Arms control negotiations in the pentagon and then i moved into i served on a couple of surface ware fare ships, atlantic and middle east. Dont you have a couple of degrees . Yeah, yeah. Ive been sort of a lifelong student, although i joke around when i was in annapolisi dropped out in my junior year, but i ive always been studying. Just because ive been working kind of throughout that period, so i always studied at night and, you know, go to night classes and stuff, so, for example, when i worked in the pentagon i did my masters in National Security at georgetown across from the pentagon and while i was a Research Fellow in the the counsel of Foreign Relations in new york i did my nba in International Business at new york city university. Yeah. I was mentioning because people that follow any of the story in the popular prez they likely heard that you were not too intelligent hapless guy and i learned about your background i clearly thought that was a misrepresentation of what you had done and then i think we also ought to start maybe of the beginning of the conversation with how you came to work in russia because if not for your presence in russia for business at some point in time, they may not have had what someone call an excuse to wiretap you, to what some would say get to President Trump. So explain first of all why you were in russia. A lot of people act why theres so suspicious if someone goes russia and do business when many thousands of people in the United States live and work in russia. Yeah. Its ironic in a lot of ways, sheryl. Im a free market guy and that was my other degree. I did my doctorate in the university of london in African Studies looking at middle and east affairs and the tensions between capitalists and socialist approaches in emerge ing societies. My first time to russia was actually during the late soviet period in the summer of 1991 just a few months before the end of the soviet union. I was a part of First Exchange program between the u. S. Naval academy and the soviet. Ive been working in various capacities. In the pentagon i did a lot of u. S. Russia arms control negotiation. When i got out on Foreign Relations, i did a a Research Project with the Central Asian c. Aspian sea basin and russia is one of the countries on the caspian sea. Ive done a lot of work in developing markets in general and with russia in particular, its one of key emerging market. I did a lot of work there and eventually, you know, its sort of on the interface between capitalist and socialisttype approaches with the end of communism that, you know, president reagan worked on in terms of transition to free market societies. That was some of i was really inspired by that growing up and i decided i wanted to contribute to that process in people who worked in russia for the United States were not viewed automatically with suspicion because this was encouraged by our government as we tried to help them move from what was the soviet union to something more we hoped to a market economy like ours, and then you were based there for a Financial Company and lived there . Yeah, me and another guy opened it was Merrill Lynch, the u. S. Investment bank, we opened their office there in 2004 and it actually its kind of related to the overall transition to the market approaches because in 1998 Merrill Lynch was one of the few banks that decided that they there was a Big Worldwide emerging markets crisis and russia got hit particularly hard there and they just merrill decided that they were going to shut down the office. Fastforward 6 years later and russia is the biggest, you know, fastestgrowth market in the world. And theres a lot of privatization going on, again, sort of a transition towards free market approaches and so me and another guy ended up heading over there to open the Merrill Lynch office. Last point on this and this all plays a big part from the story of what ultimately happened to you but, of course, it is not unusual if youre a businessman in the former soviet union because of the way the economy works if you were doing business with russians, you were in essence coming in contact with russian government officials and you are in essence coming into contact knowingly or not with all kinds of people that spied for russia. Russians worked and provide intelligence for the russian government, is that right . Absolutely. And again, i had a philosophy at the time that its useful to tell the truth and help, you know, help serve your country to the greatest extent that you can. I mean, that was my philosophy when i served in the navy throughout those years and i i had, you know, through a lot of different work i had done various contacts in the u. S. Intelligence community and some people i know asked me for help, so, again, ive always served my country in various capacities, whether its as an eagle scout or catholic altar boy or serving my community as well as in the navy and when i was asked i was more than happy to help. Again, with the view that its useful to provide accurate and insightful information and since i had, you know, lived and worked there throughout, you know, for now its been over 25 years, it would be useful to provide some insights which could be helpful to our country. So you having been a source in the past for our information for fbi and cia ended up really being the saying that drove the nail in the coif i have in essentially the Trump Campaign. We will get to that in a moment. The book, abuse and power tells the whole story. Where can people order the book, carter . Theres a website, carterpage. Com and that gives all kinds of options in terms whatever book seller you prefer, amazon and the full range there, so its all available at carter pagebook. Com. In case people dont know who i am, im an Investigative Reporter with history working at pbs, cnn, i was an dependent show called full measure on sunday tv show that you can find online and ive written my new book is called slanted, how the news media taught us to less censorship. Thats what chapter 9 of carters book focuses on, its called overcoming the abuses of american democracy and talks about surveillance. I will read a short passage from that and then you can provide some context. The illegitimate case against me revealed several other forms of dysfunction, talking about the government spying on you. When i was targeted with four applications for fisa surveillance, you say, they were filed under title 1 which defined me as a possible agent of a foreign power. Now as an aside, you have provided intelligence for intelligence agencies but they are secretly wiretapping you claiming that you could be spying for the russians. And you write, but i wasnt the only target. The federal government could make two from me, people talking to you and people who were communicating with them which would include fbi reviewing your private data, private data from steve bannon, for example, and Steve Bannons contact donald trump. The carter page warrant were direct assault and first and Fourth Amendment rights of all americans and you say this isnt a partisan issue and people from the spectrum view it as an american issue. As this unfolded, when did you start to believe that they werent just after you, they were trying to get to perhaps President Trump or others on the campaign . Well, its interesting, sheryl because i actually threw my contact with the Intelligence Community and i had someone give me the heads up even before the first one of the main defamatory articles which was used by the comey by fbi to t the fraudulent warrant, way back in 2016i contacted mine with ties to the Intel Community told me that the democrats had paid quote, unquote, Opposition Research people to dig up dirt on then candidate trump and his supporters such as me. So i knew that they were in the process of trying to come up with these lies, primarily with the initial idea of just pumping it out to the media and getting people to, you know, a real Election Interference Campaign to deceive American Voters and this is, again, just a couple of months, less than a couple of months between the 2016 election and then sure enough on september 23rd, 2016, even though im getting all kinds of questions from reporters, finally, the washington post, new york times, cnn, they are all asking me about the same false allegations which the democrats had paid for and their consultants were trying to push out in every way possible. Finally, they found someone who is either a Media Organization who is unethical enough or gullible enough or possibly both to to go ahead and publish this article on friday september 23rd, 2016 and really the rest is history because this is one to have elements in part of election interference where this these false stories were used as a way, part of the fraudulent fisa affidavit against myself as a way of spying on so many people i was associated with. Other Trump Campaign volunteers back in 16. Lets say that by way of summary the things that were said about you in part to get these wiretaps under false pretenses, the secret wiretap application says that you were acting as a russian spy or become one, people may know not these are qualifications, you cannot wiretap somebody, eminently about to become one and the very fact that they wiretapped you four times over the course of a year without any evidence to charge you with anything or do anything about it seems to believe if notion, and the part of the evidence claims that you had visited russia and made improper contact with certain government officials as liaison for the Trump Campaign. Is that a fair summary . Yeah, i think it is. An important interesting insight and it goes back to your personal story of having to deal with similar things like this. As part of your ongoing bat unless the court, its very similar to what we have seen in the last several years for Senate Judiciary chairman Lindsey Graham, right . You have been making various allegations with a lot of basis to it and unfortunately people within the u. S. Government, department of justice which handles all civil litigation and investigations such as this, they unfortunately have not been very supportive at all in terms of providing the full information about what happened and precisely the same thing that Senate Judiciary chairman Lindsey Graham and so many of his colleagues in congress have been fighting for so hard. I think we are all in this battle together and its very much the focus of this chapter here in terms of understanding everything thats at stake and how it affects so many people such as yourself, myself, leaders in congress that are just trying to protect civil rights and so its a very long complicated story and i i tried to make it as simple and understandable as possible with this chapter while also illustrating what exactly is at stake, just given the civil rights abuses or potential abuses that we are all susceptible to. Lets call it the catch 22 when part of the community committing the abuses and they have no desire to do that or provide the information that would allow us to do that in court, they hold all of the cards. And this is whats so dangerous about it because it didnt just happen to you and it didnt just happen to me, my information says that there were many operations, there were hundreds if not thousands of people involved over short time periods and over long time periods and other administrations, not just one administration. There were probably too many people to count who have been involved in potential abuses of the Constitutional Rights and we may never know. You also wrote in chapter 9 the department of justice lawyers, Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed that the breakdown in surveillance has been much worse than we originally realized and an examination done of 29 of the fisa wiretap application that is were reviewed for possible abuse after they learned about yours all 29 had serious deficiencies. Think about this. The Inspector General could not even find the document that shows the fbis mandatory processes were followed and Inspector General revealed something thats been apparent to many for a long time. You wrote the whole system of secret surveillance is broken and thats what you say getting at the heart of how this impacts people if they say, so this happened to carter page, maybe he will get redressed in the end. This is much bigger than that, isnt it . Absolutely. There are so many different dimensions and challenges related to it and, again, its a little bit of a spectrum. I think as youre saying this is a serious problem thats happened for, you know, impacts all americans on the one hand but also very often, and this is a core element of First Amendment liberties and First Amendment Constitutional Rights. In addition to having freedom of the press, theres also, you know, freedom of thought and freedom of Peaceable Assembly and so many freedoms inherent in the First Amendment and unfortunately what you have sometimes is when people have a different view or when people journalists such as yourself might Say Something which is not exactly what the powers that they again, the incident that started with me happened during the Obamabiden Administration and, you know, sometimes you have pretty harsh political activists working to achieve their political objective. This is a great story, the one that i think youre about to tell. This is another bit of wow insight that you gave me when i interviewed you from my program full measure. Theres some evidence that they were looking for anybody surrounding President Trump, that case scenario, they really thought trump was a russian spy and they were looking for russian ties. Worst case scenario, they were looking for experiences, anybody who had been to russia or experience in the region to try to wiretap to listen in on them, but with you and your experience with some of n the fbi, they talked with you in the period, was it the boston bombing . Yeah. Take it from there. Well, its funny, the right after the boston bombing in the first half of 2013 i was helping the fbi with a particular russian spy case in new york and unfortunately i was writing some various ideas in terms of, you know, the certain approaches that should be taken. I had just recently red academic article and i had offered this, in one of my meetings with the fbi agents. I had mentioned my various perspectives to them and i think what we have seen is just a real severe bias. This big Inspector General report which led into this major investigation, the initial fisa abuse report as to these abuses that the Trump Campaign and myself were that were inflicted upon us. That was a very serious issue but unfortunately it really extends far beyond that and one of the elements of that and one of the big debates is the Inspector General horowitz, obamaappointee, he said that, well, we dont find any political bias there. Well, it was an interesting conclusion and i know a lot of people who actually know the full facts have pushed backon this really hard, but on the face of it, theres a ton of evidence of political bias and unfortunately again, its similar to what we are talking about, things that youve had to deal with and chairman Lindsey Graham and so many members of congress have had to deal with in terms of getting the truth. Its only part of the story and if youre just getting i refer to it as garbage in and garbage out, the u. S. Department of justice, they interviewed 100 you know, 100 witnesses and read over a million documents as part of overall review. Unfortunately a lot of the same perpetrators were the same people they were talking about, are talking about so i think its understandable where, you know, if youre only talking to many of the same bad actors, of course, they are going to say we are not biased at all and i was