economics, china, fire fighting, u.s. military bases around the world and much more. for a complete television schedule, booktv.org. booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. television for serious readers. now, we kick off the weekend with wikileaks editor-in-chief julian assange. he has a new book titled "the wikileaks files: the world according to u.s. empire." [inaudible conversations] >> to invite all of you here. this is the launch of "the wikileaks files." i'm jacob stevens, i'm the director of verso books, and we've been working on this project with julian assange and with wikileaks for about four years now. and so this is the culmination of a lot of collaborative editorial and political work that we're very proud of, and we're thrilled to be able to publish this in close cooperation with julian assange and with wikileaks and with his fantastic introduction. you should all get a copy. if you haven't got one on your way in, get one on the way out, it's part of the ticket. and it has in it an amazing round table discussion and analysis of what we can really learn from this huge, huge leak of diplomatic cables and what we can learn about the operation of u.s. empire and u.s. foreign policy from this. and i'm extremely proud to introduce jeremy scahill who is going to lead this conversation with julian assange. jeremy scahill, i'm sure you all know, one of the great journalists of our time, the author of blackwater and dirty wars and, of course, the film, dirty wars. jeremy scahill, please come up. [applause] i should add one of the founders of interception and that, of course -- intercept, and that, of course, carrying on the great works of wikileaks and edward snowden. thank you. >> well, it's really great to be here. i live in this neighborhood, and i never imagined i would actually with on this stage. they asked me if i wanted a music stand, they thought i was going to sing. it's like the last thick any of you guys -- thing any of you guys would want to hear. i'm really honored to be here to help launch this incredibly important book because we are gathered here at a time when there is a war in this country not only against journalists, but against journalism. there is a war against people of conscience within the united states government who dare to speak out without permission, who dare to uncover extrajudicial killing, extralegal activity by the government, unconstitutional activities that are done in our names and with u.s. taxpayer dollars. there has been a criminalization of independent journalism in this country that has manifested not only in the form of surveilling journalists, but in prosecuting whistleblowers. and as we know, this administration -- the obama administration, which is headed by a constitutional lawyer by training -- has indictmented more people -- indicted more people under the espionage act than all of his predecessors combined. the message that this administration has sent by going after journalists phone records are, by presiding over trials of chelsea manning who is now serving decades in prison and continuing to be harassed and abused while in government military custody, presided over the ruining of the lives of people like thomas drake, one of the original nsa whistle blowers by throwing people like john -- [inaudible] in prison who had the audacity to speak out about torture while at the same time allowing the people that created the torture program be -- dick cheney, jose rodriguez, donald rumsfeld -- to be on book tour, to be accepted as legitimate members of society with something to say on the elite talk shows on sunday. you can tell a lot about where our morals reside in this country by looking at what war criminals are on book tour and what whistleblowers are in prison. we can see a lot about who we are as a society. now, our special guest tonight is not able to be here with us in person because of a campaign similar to those that i've described against these whistleblowers. julian assange -- and i know that there is a lot written about him in the press, there is a lot said about him in the press, his personal life is debated every day in some publication across world -- julian assange spearheaded a project that made it possible for a brave whistleblower on multiple occasions, whistleblowers on hult billion occasions -- multiple occasions to provide concrete, primary source material on secretive government program, on extrajudicial murders of journalists and civilians ask provide the people -- and provide the people of this country and the world with an incredible map into a secret bureaucracy that in a democracy all of us should have a chance to understand and debate. when i was reading julian's introduction to this book, i was struck that it feels like a piece of writing from a different era. it feels like a philosophical writing from the late '50s or early '60s because it takes account of history. it's not written for the twitteratti, it's not written for the short attention span society. it delves into the history ask refers to the history of the ming dynasty, of using pa pie russ as paper, of having messengers cross mountains in an effort to map out the geography of empire. and what he says in his essay, ask i encourage all of you to read it, is just by looking at individual cables and what they say about a particular company or a particular operation that the u.s. was involved in, we are casting aside the empire and just looking at the cables. the forest in and the trees analogy. and it's noting all of this that, unfortunately, we have to welcome julian assange by video link instead of him sitting here on the stage. but please join me in welcoming wikileaks founder and publisher julian assange. [applause] >> thanks, jeremy. good to see you again. >> the last time i saw you, julian, we were sharing a whiskey in the confinement of the ecuadoran embassy in london. >> i remember. a year and a half ago, or is it two? >> it could be. >> i want to start off, there's a lot to talk about here. i want to not forget that we are talking at a moment when chelsea manning, of course, is still in the crosshairs of the government, edward snowden is, of course, in exile, and other whistleblowers that have not yet been taken by the government across the spectrum are quite possibly out and in our midst and facing persecution in the future. but i did want to ask you about the latest on your current situation. there's been speculation over the it's months that you were potentially going to leave the embassy, that statute of limitations have run out this some of the cases against you in sweden. but i wanted to give you a chance in your own words to address people here, and i'll have you know, we have a packed crowd here this brooklyn, new york. what's going on with you, what's going on with your case, what are the your thoughts on what's going to happen in the coming months with you? >> okay. it's going to be fantastically boring and a bit technical. i am, of course, sick to death of the whole issue, as you can hajj. but, okay. as you can imagine. but, okay. i've been detained now for five years without charge in prison, in house arrest in this embassy. that's without any publicly-revealed charge. there's a possibility my washington lawyers, almost a certainty, that there's a sealed indictment in the united states. there otherwise are no charges. we have a dozen different legal cases around the world, half a dozen criminal cases. so those are united states, sweden, criminal cases that we have taken, offensive criminal cases this iceland, denmark and sweden ask germany -- and germany. additional criminal cases against me in australia and saudi arabia. so we have a lot going on. that doesn't include the civil cases that we have going in relation into the unlawful banking who caild that being constructed against us by visa, western union, diner's club, jcb and discover. coming up to the present moment, the status now in the united states is there's a pending prosecution for espionage, serious to commit espionage, computer fraud and abuse which -- the computer fraud and abuse be act contains a mini espionage act conversion which is stealing government property and general conspiracy. that's quite, that's a charge spectrum. we don't though how many charges -- know how many charges of each type, we just know the types. that information came out because the u.s. government has been sending warrants to a variety of service providers in the united states including google, they managed to get a number of gag orders on google, but some of those have been overturned, and as a relt we have the warrants for about six of our people, six of our journalists that the united states has served that on. now, very interestingly there was a case in u.s. federal court in d.c. earlier this year in march, a judgment in that case related to us. and we, cot with epic -- together with epic in washington, d.c., were trying to understand whether the government had been illegally surveilling our supporters in the united states. and freedom of information requests for files in relation to that. the doj and fbi have been battling this out for about two years. ask can the judgment found -- and the judgment found that the wikileaks case, the case against me, is effectively a state secret in the united states. that is, the u.s. government argues to even reveal a single line, a single word out of the 100,000-something pages that the doj and fbi has in their pending prosecution would be to harm that pending prosecution and to harm u.s. national security. so as a result, that series of freedom of information act requests is restricted. but, further, around another 500 freedom of information act requests filed by us, by our lawyers, by other journalists in the united states and other civil rights groups are also held back. so there's a -- it's like a hoover dam blocking off a torrent of documents, all under or the excuse that there is a pending prosecution of me. and so it leads to an interesting -- we might have shot ourselves in the foot a bit politically insofar as if the case is dropped in the u.s., then suddenly this dam breaks up and something like 100,000 documents into the u.s. possessor be cushion of wiki -- persecution of wikileaks come out. so politically, they have to keep the case going. >> and what would -- just game out this scenario for a second. what is your logic for not just exiting the embassy and saying i'm going to challenge all of this both from the united states' end of things and the swedish end of things? and i realize those two things have different legal repercussions for you in answering this, but, you know, you certainly have never been shy about challenging the empire p challenging the u.s. government. you had prominent politicians saying you should be assassinated in a drone strike. you were portrayed as a threat to u.s. national security by very powerful current officials. what is stopping you from stepping outside of the embassy and saying i am going to face all of this head on, and if you want to put me on trial in the united states, you're going to have the trial of the century, because i'm going to have the best lawyers, and you're wrong, and i'm right, and be i have justice on my side? what's to stop you from doing that, julian? >> well, i've thought about it. presently, the u.k.-sweden refuses to say whether they have already received u.s. extradition order or not, and we know that sweden was already this informal talks about -- [inaudible] published in the london independent. >> the u.s. government has been running, admits to have run the grand jury against us now for five years this in alexandria, virginia. alexandria, virginia, is the hotbed of the national security state. it is in the catching area for the jury pool; cia, pentagon, the department of homeland security and so on. it is the largest single concentration of u.s. government workers. and there's -- it's not by coincidence. in fact, the u.s. government tries to make sure that all cases involving national security claims are held in alexandria, virginia, which has what they call there the rocket docket and pushes cases through very fast, and you've got a jury pool where you have significant problems in finding -- [inaudible] there's also a special rule that says you can't get rid of a jury member because of what their spouse does. >> one of the things that amazes me about your reality is that whenever people start to write off wikileaks as irrelevant, you somehow seem to get your hands on more documents. for instance, the bounty you put recently on the tpp and the tact that a you guys were -- the fact that you guys were able to affect that debate while the founder of the organization is stuck in a handful of small rooms in an embassy in london. without divulging, you know, any methods or sources, how do you see the ongoing relevancy or relevance of wikileaks in the current era? what is it that you hope to achieve even though you are stuck talking with us on a video screen and limited in your movements? what is it that you hope to achieve, and how is it that you're able to still get documents? >> there's a frown on my face because, jeremy, you sound like you'ring with dingingtized and placed -- you're being digitized and placed underwater on mars if if at all possible. >> dick cheney is in the room, that's why. >> you hear me clearly? >> yeah. we hear you effort. >> okay. why don't they try and fix your audio. i didn't understand the gist of that question. >> just the short of it -- >> [inaudible] >> can you hear me, julian? >> it's super, super bad. [laughter] so i just want to say, i can make a dedication while we're or waiting for that to be fixed. i'd like to dedicate this book and its u.s. launch to michael ratner, the present emeritus of -- [inaudible] michael's a very dear friend of hine and chief of the wikileaks team in the united states. and to some degree, this book could not be written without him in the sense that he provided me with legal cover which has given me enough time to be able, and security, though it's a difficult situation here, enough security to be able to write the book. he's a bear. he has a very sore head at the moment. so, michael, we wish you were here, and i'm sure that's also felt by a number of other people that i know are in the audience. >> julian, just so you know, if you don't know, michael ratner is one of the greatest freedom fighters in the modern history of this country, litigated the first challenges to the guantanamo prison not just post-9/11, but actually when thousands and thousands of haitians were taken to guantanamo in the 1990s and were being systemmatically stigmatized as dangerous to america because of the potential for hiv/aids. and be michael has been -- and michael has been just an incredible fighter for freedom around the world, and he is at present in a battle for his life. i just, i saw him the other day, and his sirtes are very high. he -- his spirits are very high. he definitely wanted to be here tonight, and i think it'll mean the world to him to though that people thought of him here and brought his name into this room, so keep him in your thought asks in your hearts, because michael ratner is important to so many causes around the world. julian, are you able to hear me now? >> loud and clear. >> okay. basically, what i was asking you before was how you have managed to stay relevant despite the fact that you are stuck in a few rooms. you still get documents, you had the bounty on the tpp that produced results. you managed to shift that debate and and impact that debate, and it seems like when people are are trying to say, oh, well, wikileaks was just the manning stuff or just iraq ask afghanistan, you somehow always manage to op up with new documents. and i'm just wondering, i don't want you to divulge think sources or methods, but how is it you're able to do that given where you are where you are right now? >> well, i can divulge the source confident methods quite easily. sure bloody mindedness on the one hand and oarnd, having a pretty good team. people in my organization. so that's, i mean, we can go further afield and, of course, we have legal support, and we have a bunch of donors in the community and sources still believe in us. it is, it is interesting to try and pull it off. it is quite hard work. i should say right around this embassy right now there's around, about seven uniform police and about the same number of covert police in the covert action surveillance team that operates around this building. interestingly, it's done a deal with hair rod's -- her rod's, the very famous department store here that owns most of the surrounding buildings. it's got a deal to place their surveillance team in those buildings 24 hours a day. we managed to get hold of those documents. the budget spent just by the police surveillance alone, not including gchq, not including mi6, runs to $20 million so far surveilling he in the embassy. -- me in the embassy. it operates at about $15,000 a day. it's the one area where we've been able to gain political traction here in the u.k -- [laughter] that so much hundred is being spent harassing someone who hasn't even been charged -- >> i remember how ridiculous it was when i came in to see you, there's police on the steps there, and they just barely give your visitors enough space to get by them. it's almost like they want someone to bump their shoulder. but then there's this cartoonish surveillance van that is right outside one of the windows. is that an actual, real thing, or is that just sort of like a prop to, like, kind of mess with you? it's a huge van -- >> it's a good question, actually. >> what's that? >> different parts of the surveillance, some is not visible to people going past, maybe actually about two-thirds is not visible to the public. then there's a very public component where large, conspicuous surveillance vans are parked this front of the embassy. and there's a uniform police presence as well. it's something that is done for public relations purpose. when there's negative press on how much it's costing, for example, that retreats. and they park -- [laughter] in the side alleys. and then once that wears off, they're back again. it's a very visible component that is designed to be visible. >> right. it seems like it's meant to send a message. there have been some reports in the media recently about your position vis-a-vis the ecuadoran government. ask i'm wondering if -- and i'm wondering if you still are confident in your relationship with president corps rea and the foreign minister of ecuador. i don't know the veracity of some of the reports, but -- >> not very, not high veracity. >> okay. that's why -- i mean, i don't know if people saw this, but i wanted to ask you about it because it got a lot of traffic, and you should have the opportunity to address this. the short of it there were a number of news reports that portrayed a scene where the internal staff of the embassy was this conflict with you and that you were there because of the grace of president correa, and a lot of others don't want you to be this that embassy. can you address some of these reports that are based purportedly on leaked documents of ecuador. >> sure, it's not similarly a matter of political will. obviously, a government needs political will to enforce its laws. it is a matter of law. ecuador is a party to the 1951 convention of refugees amongst other conventions, and it has activated those conventions in this process. when i won hi asylum -- my asylum case with ecuador. and be as such, it has an international, legally-binding obligation to make good on the asylum. and that's a matter of law are, but it's also a matter of national concern. it's, ecuador would be seen to be remiss in terms of its asylum obligations the it broke that halfway through. now, does that mean that there are factions in ecuador outside the government and and some inside the government that have a different position? yes, it does. there are and so we do have to keep an eye on what the domestic politics are. not so much in terms of would it mean that they would violate their convention obligations, but more in terms of, for example, how much support there is in the embassy giving me, for example, access to this high-speed line which we're doing this talk for at the moment. >> right. and there -- i want to get for a moment, in a moment to what happened to president morales' airplane when the u.s. government was hunting edward snowden. but one brief follow-up on this. would you accept the post of ecuador's ambassador to the united nations the be offered by president correa in. [laughter] >> well, it's an interesting question. if i said i would accept it now, maybe it wouldn't be be our offered. [laughter] >> all right, fair enough. >> that's a very interesting situation where in science we can comment about the weather, for example, and the weather doesn't change. but in politics and human society, you can comment on some feature of it, and then it changes because of your comment. >> okay. fair enough, mr. potential ambassador. [laughter] wikileaks recently put out a statement trying to clarify some of the events that occurred when edward snowden was in transition moving from hong kong, ultimately ending up in moscow, of course, and ea know there your own account that you very much were involved with strategizing around that and helping to facilitate edward snowden actually being able to get on a plane with some form of documentation. i have two questions but the first one i want to ask so we don't muddy the waters is we all remember when the president of bolivia, able morales, who has been a fierce critic of the united states throughout office and before, his airplane while it was traveling through european air space was forced to land on direct orders from the united states. there are can you explain given that you were directly involved at the time with that reality on the ground with ed yard ?oalden what your understanding is of what happened with e slow morales' plane? the reason for that a was they thought edward snowden might be on the plane. that's what was reported. >> sure. look, we saw edward snowden was in a difficult position this hong kong, and how were we able to see that? how was i able to see it? well, because i've been detained without charge for five years, and i've also seen chelsea manning and jeremy hammond go through their cases in the united states and watched and observed them closely. i've come to know tar too much about the espionage -- far too much about the espionage act and also how the 1951 refugee convention works ask so on. so i read the hong kong extra diction can act and the hong kong bail act and contacted some very good sources that we had developed this hong kong -- in hong kong and also in china in relation to the will of the chinese politburo. china has control of foreign affairs function of hong kong. domestically it doesn't have formal control of hong kong, but in terms of its foreign affairs function, it does have veto power. hong kong's relationship to china is very much like, say, bermuda's relationship to the united kingdom. and so the chinese politboro did not have the will to intervene in the edward snowden case and step in to protect him. the hong kong government, our forces informed us, were going to conduct things very strictly by the book. they weren't going to give edward snowden any breaks, but neither were they going to act corruptly in relation to the united states. what strictly by the book means for hong kong in terms of extradition requests from the united states is that the person who was going through the extradition process is in prison during the whole process. so that's point number one. point number two in relation to asylum applications within hong kong, hong kong has a very poor record in relation to the percentage of people who apply for asylum that it grants asylum, about 1 %. furthermore, in the past few years that we studied, it had never done it for someone from the west. therefore, we thought that edward snowden should leave and go somewhere that he was more likely to receive asylum. and we engaged in a variety of negotiations with our diplomatic contacts that we had developed from hi situation and also -- from my situation and also in relation to us if you like specializing on diplomacy for a while. and i managed to secure him asylum offer, informal offers from venezuela, from ecuador, there nick nicaragua, and publiy bolivia was making some good noises as well. then there was, we routed him in a safe path to latin america. safe path, obviously, doesn't go through hawaii, ask so you've to the go -- to go over the top. we also secured in russia that russia would not extradite him to the united states before we had even put him on that plane to make sure that he had a secure route the whole way. and we put him on a russian carrier in case there was think kind of interference with the -- in case there was any kind of interference with the pilot. now, once he was in russia waiting for his transit flight to cuba, the u.s. government canceled his passport. that's one of the great own goals, dip lo hat bic own goals of the state department this century, was to cancel snowden's passport while he was in russia. i go guess some more spear tomorrowly- conspiratorially-minded might say that it was intentional including the, r damage that it height inflict on snowden, but i think it was most likely that they had started the process because they wanted to entrap him in hong kong, and they just got their timing wrong ask ended up canceling it while he was in has cow. okay. so he was in moscow, and then we looked for, well, how can we get him out of moscow without a diplomatic, i'm sorry, without a passport? was the airplanes weren't taking him. commercial airliners won't take him. and we noticed that there was an oil conference in moscow, and president no during row was going to be there amongst other presidents, and one of those other presidents was president morales. we then reached out our tealers to moduro who had already given a formal and maybe by that stage public offer of asylum to snowden, but we decided since there was so much surveillance in this communication our code word for the president would be morales. because he was so surveilled. and we had lawyers involved and nontechnical people who couldn't really communicate. and then evo made a joke where he was in russia at this oil conference, president evo morales joked at the end of interview that, well, he was off to meet snowden now. it was just a joke. anyway, these things seem to have combined, the interception of us and the joke by morales, and the u.s. intelligence services put two and two together and made 22 -- [laughter] and decided that they then had to expend vast amounts of political capital ringing up the countries of western europe and trying to close their air space to a presidential jet flight from are evo morales are. which they did. and spain be, trance and portugal -- spain, france be and portugal closed their air space, incredibly, to a presidential jet flight because u.s. intelligence had asked them to, they'd done so without any legal or administrative process. and then the morales flight took off and tried to go into its overflight path to refuel in the canary islands to go off to bolivia. they couldn't do so because the air space had been closed and was forced to land in vienna. and then there was a 12-hour process where president be morales was stuck in the airport waiting lounge of vienna because he couldn't get the clearance. now, a presidential jet is protected under the vienna convention. that's the convention that, in fact, protects me in this embassy. it's around diplomatic territory, and presidential gents are listed as -- jets a listed as diplomatic territory. so you had an enormous violation of the vienna convention in vienna. [laughter] now, this really sealed edward snowden's successful asylum application when eventually it was too dangerous to take any other option in russia. because what could be be the russian response to this downing of president evo morales' flight? the only response to seem like a critical country was if he, snowden, asked for asylum, then they would accept the asylum request, and that's a what ended up happening. so this incredible diplomatic own goal led to this bullying of western europe which provided the ultimate proof that edward snowden wassing with politicalliers cuted -- politically persecuted which was what ended up giving him asylum. [laughter] >> i love the vienna convention being violated in vienna, that's -- you should use that one her, julian. [laughter] you know, i'm a glutton for punishment, so i read a lot of right-wing former swell people on twitter. [laughter] and i wanted to, because i think it's important to have you address this head on. i want to paint for you a picture of what these people say about you and your relationship to edward snowden and just have you address it once and for all so that there is a response, because they, they seem to think that they have stumbled upon some dark secret by stringing together innocuous parts of sentences you and snowden have both said to create a very tan tsa call conspiracy theory. and -- fantastical conspiracy theory. and it goes something like this: you are basically an asset of the russian intelligence services and that through your connections to the russian, the sb and other intelligence services -- fsb and other intelligence services, you were able to facilitate a situation for edward snowden where he would be given safe passage by putin and the fsb and kgb where he would become an fsb asset -- as you already are. once he was safely in a safehouse somewhere in moscow that snowden has just been giving the russians all of america's deepest secrets that he accessed while he was at the cia, the nsa, etc. what is your sons to all of this -- response to all of this beyond, probably, a funny joke that you're going to make. i would like to hear a serious response to that. [laughter] >> i'm not sure it deserves a serious response. you're talking about a conspiracy be theory that's pushed by the nsa dick pick guy, right? [laughter] >> schindler's dick? yes. >> this is a guy, john schindler. he'll with be orr gaz hick that his name -- >> i can't believe you've given him the satisfaction. >> yeah. he'll be absolutely orgasmic. who brags about having worked for the nsa for ten years and is now a professor or was until very recently a professor at the naval warfare be college in the u.s. and he runs something called 20 committee which is actually -- [inaudible] and he posits these conspiracy theories. what is interesting about them -- i should explain the joke. i won't explain the joke directly, because it's a bit tawdry. the reason that he's called the dick pick guy, you can just search for -- [inaudible] and gawker, or john schindler and gawker. >> i don't remember doing this if you want to keep your dinner down. >> yeah, yeah. you need to have an unseen button on your eyes. [laughter] okay. so anyway, he's been pushing that. that's not actually very interesting at all. what is interesting is, because there's plenty of trolls on twitter, what is interesting is the people who pick it up. and one of those just recently was one of the governors of the broadcasting board of governors, the bbg. and the bbg is the u.s. government's official propaganda funding organ. so it funds voice of america, it funds radio free asia and so on to the tune of about a billion dollars per year. anyway, this governor has been spreading that around the place, and it made me think, well, i know what the broadcasting board of governors does more or less, but maybe we should look in our cables to see if there's anything more on it. and i came across a fantastic cable from the congo, from the u.s. ambassador there, written in 2008, 2009 calling for an intervention in the congo. but one of the most interesting things that comes out of this constellation analysis of the cable is the role of u.s. embassies. you'd think the role of u.s. embassies is more or less to throw diplomatic parties, maybe occasionally to provide cover, diplomatic coffer for some cia agents, to negotiate trade deals and so on. you think that's basically what they're about. that's not at all true. the state department and u.s. embassies play a unique role out of all the bureaucracies in the united states, maybe only the treasury can be equated in a similar way. the treasury, of course, provides money for all the other government institutions in the united states. the state department provides physical housing and lobbying for all the major elements of u.s. national power. in fact, more than 27 different agencies are housed in u.s. embassies, and the largest u.s. corporations also get access to u.s. embassy meeting rooms and also special advisers that act as political advisers and trade negotiators for them. so, for example, u.s. embassyies most nearly all of the larger ones have national security agency monitoring equipment in them. many of them have -- >> hold that thought a second. it's saying the connection is unstable. sorry, julian. you were just describing -- the last thing we heard was how you were describing the nsa surveillance gear that is placed often times on the top of embassies. >> yeah. u.s. embassies are like a rotary club. some might say an evil rotary club. [laughter] and in that clubhouse is not similarly the state department, the clubhouse is run by the state department, but it is the other major elements of u.s. national power. including the marines ask army and air force and cia and department of homeland security and so on. and the largest u.s. corporations, although they rarely have a permanent station there, they are given meeting rooms and political advisers and assistance making deals. and the largest ones, in fact, the u.s. embassy goes out of its way proactively to -- [inaudible] especially arms contracts. so that's something very interesting that you get from a constellation analysis of cables that we have published. more than 2.7 million cables now, more than two billion words. in fact, we've been publishing even this year 500,000 diplomatic cables. okay. so go back to congo. the u.s. ambassador to the congo put in a request for a sigh-ops intervention which she had constructed the plan of in the congo to beef be up support for the government. so that included cia should come in and the broadcasting board of governors should come in as part of this psychological operations intervention to boost up the fortune of the government of the congo against the opposition. >> but how does that relate to the issue of -- the question i asked about fsb. i don't want to leave the door open on this. it's not just john schindler -- >> i'm not sure what more one can say about this. you can look at how they put together their conspiracy theory. their conspiracy theory is that because i said that i advised edward snowden to take the russian offer of asylum because it was, in my opinion, he was much safer in russia physically, and over a several year period i don't believe that he -- i thought that the risks were too high in latin america that he would be kidnapped or possibly even killed in the process of attempting to kidnap him. there's a variety of reasons for that a; the weakness of latin american intelligence service, the nature of their land borders and that they have democratic governments that shift wildly in character between one election cycle and the next. he was absolutely focused on the rhetorical counterattack to nsa mass surveillance and didn't want there to be any accusation that he was a russian spy which he thought would be used to rhetorically undermine his critique. so despite the risks, he was intent on going to latin america, and so i said, okay, fine, we will try and arrange that. the that's what you want. -- if that's what you want. my advice is that that is a significant risk, but we'll try and do it anyway. >> and i should say just for the record, i think those allegations are ludicrous. i personally have spoke been with snowden about this -- spoken with snowden about this and his views and what he's done in russia are completely antithetical to the conclusions drawn by those people. but i'm so sick of seeing that line that i wanted to raise it here in a public way. >> well, a simple factual point which i guess i should also mention. you know, the national security agency, they should give us a massive bonus. we made sure when edward snowden entered onto that plane that he was not carrying any laptops. we made sure of that because we knew he was passing through russia. and we didn't want him to get stuck in russia on his way somewhere else. we didn't want to the create, if you like, any attractive bait that might compromise that situation. >> don't let -- get in the way of those conspiracy theories, you keep making that mistake. [laughter] we're going to get to audience questions in a moment, but i wanted to ask you about your introductory essay of this book. i found it fascinating, and i found it to be a different style of presentation, and and i thought it was -- it's actually a remarkable piece of writing. and maybe you can walk people through this sort of geography of empire that you describe as being told through not one or two documents or a selection of them, but as a body of documents and sort of why you think this book is so important to understanding the impact of what chelsea manning did or that we understand that she did from her own words in revealing these cables and other cables that you have published at wikileaks. >> well, i had a great frustration with the media reportage of the earlier cables that we published, the the alleged chelsea manning cables. and we had -- there was over 110 different media organizations had contractual relationships with over 110, so we were able to look at the different biases in different regions and even across different organizations and sometimes even the different editors. and lots of cables were censored either through selection or directly. "the new york times" scandalously censored one of our 62-page cables about nuclear weapons in iran down to one paragraph. sorry, down to, well, 26 words from 62 pages which were the only 26 words that went along with the line of the thesis of the story that they were trying to push which was that iran could whack europe soon enough with a nuclear weapon. the rest of the cable spoke in a different, almost in a completely different direction to that. okay. so i was irritated with the reportage for that reason and for the shallowness of it, that, you know, a rush between journalists. and not to criticize them too much, but, you know, they're news journalists, so they do things quickly. throw in some famous names and find some scandalous comment or some hypocrisy, and they write a story. and a sort of a habit was developed amongst cable journallests of doing that. okay, so there needed to be something deeper. and i fully expected that that deeper approach looking at the relationships between countries and how the state department worked as an organism and how the u.s. worked in its modern form, was it a modern empire like the roman empire or the british empire, was it a modern empire, and if so, what kind of empire was it? i expected that academics would do that because we have produced the single most important repository of international relations, prime resource repository. covering 40 years, two billion words, a corpus of information. easily searchable, well indexed and so on. it's the natural thick to go for, the first thing to go for. in fact, many investigative journalists, even just many political journalists, it's one of the first things they look for when they see a name that they haven't are come across before in international politics, what do the cables say about them? but it didn't happen. english-speaking academia in the united states seemed extremely shy, suspiciously shy about how it was engaging with this incredible archive, this 30,000-volume archive of how the most significant international organ that the united states has actually operates in practice to administer the parts of the world where it has an influence which is most. okay. that was contrasted with other journals in other parts of the world concentrating on international relations in asian languages, in spanish languages, in slavic languages and in german and french where there is decent coverage and in the courts. so the elementary cia kidnapping case, for example, six of those cables were cited in the judgment. completely innocent, the cia admits that, completely innocent german citizen was snatched off the streets and detained and tortured and then dumped on a street in albania. anyway, verge hi his case -- eventually, his case came before -- [inaudible] people have been freed from pakistani prisons paced on the cable -- based on the cables. relitigation of some of the cia interventions in spain as a result of the cables. there's about 30,000 citations of the cables in various papers including once you get out of the field of academic relations journals inside the united states by u.s. authors. for example, in epidemiology, epidemiology of war, in computer computer -- in computationalling qisics which is -- computational linguistics which is how you look at language. it's a great thing for people interested in language to study. lots and lots of these being done even in the united states, even in u.s. journals, even with u.s. authors. so it clearly wasn't simply the legal risk. and u.s. journalism organizations used cables about, you know, once a day there is something published in the u.s. press that is derived from that massive cable set. okay what is the largest organization in the united states that deals with the international relations at an academic level? it is the international studies association. now, the international studies association is viewed by the state department and by the white house as actually relatively left-leaning. but it controls five big academic relations journals, number one of which is international studies quarterly. and there's one citation in the past five years to information derived from the cables this that journal -- in that journal. and the editor was asked about this just in december last year by an academic who was studying what the hell is going on with u.s. academic journals not citing wikileaks cables, and the editor responded that the editors are in an untenable position because there's a rule which there are to be no citations. and that's because of legal, supposedly, because of legal fears. that policy will not change until the isa, this overarching organization in the united states, changes its policy. so and i thought, okay, well, that's the answer. english-speaking academia is not going to study these properly because it is scared; scared for legal risks, and as it turns out, much more scared, the participants, of not gaining security classification or of not gaining contracts with the state department or the u.s. government if their name is on something like that. so we had to do it ourselves. and that's what we've done. now, i hope that people will equip it. we have 17 authors, a lot of very skilled authors in this book, specialists in their field. but in particular chapter four is a discussion of how we did it. and how to search the cables and how to understand this incredibly rich repository of state history, relatively recent state history, how to do that and write the sort of books and articles yourself. >> it's interesting to note, and i'll just say to people there's a microphone here. unfortunately, there's only one microphone, so poo -- so if people are interested this asking julian a question, you can line up here. and we do ask that it be a question because it's very late julian's time, and we're on somewhat of a limited time frame. the microphone is here if people want to line up and prepare to ask questions. it's interesting to note, julian, that "the new york times," which published a lot of material based on the bravery of a whistleblower and sold a lot of papers and gained a lot of notoriety as a result of being one of your original partners, publishing partners on multiple projects, in fact, had to be shamed into covering kelsey manning -- chelsea manning's trials, arguably one of the most important trials in modern american history, by alexo bryan and other independent journalists who were doggedly there every day reporting on it. we joined a lawsuit with you and other organizations to challenge the secrecy of those proceedings and to try to gain the right to just have a transcript of the proceedings. and what that ended in is the government saying, okay, you can have someone transcribe it, but you have to pay for it. and it just -- there was a deafening silence on the back end of all of this when someone actually was, did have their livelihood, their freedom, their liberty put into the crosshairs of the most powerful state in the world. so maybe you can comment, and i know you've had battles with the guardian publicly, with "the new york times" about how they've treated you or how they've treated wikileaks. maybe you could address that disconnect between the way they cover the consequences, your case, chelsea's case and the way they use the documents. >> i've become philosophical about it. i was very pissed off at one stage. we had contracts, for example, and "the guardian" broke those contracts. in fact, every single -- all of those contracts -- >> julian, you're breaking up a little bit. let's wait for the -- oh. hold on. julian, we lost you there for a minute. the last thing you said this we could understand was that you had contracts with these entities, "the guardian," the new york city times. >> we had contracts -- the new york city times. the guardian editor's moved on now who was responsible then. the awful editor of "the new york times," bill keller -- [laughter] quite interesting to trace his history. he's awful even to 30 years back. [laughter] .. there when they get into a fight they have the ability to be very damaging to the reputation of the state organization or individual. a circle around each other, in a diplomatic way with each other, when dealing with large institutions. the new york times and relationship -- the heat started in response to the publication. you could say maybe too close to the interests, in various respects, has become too close to the organization's you of government that is next to be scrutinizing but i think it was mostly fear. they saw this very intense reaction coming, and they didn't want it to have a system and therefore someone needed to be the fall guy. of the incoming fire power they didn't hold its but simply directed that on to us and on to me personally. and actually wrote against us. to make life very difficult for meat and our publication. by attacking us and distancing themselves, they were horrified about being called partners exclusively in the publication, exclusively requested that they not be called, why is that? won man's partnership is the doj's conspiracy, the flow of collaboration back and forth looks very similar to a conspiracy back and forth and at the new york times petrified about it but instead, enough institutional strength that it had to create something and pushed the incoming fire power directly on to us and keep that distance -- >> you broke up a little. we lost you for the last part of its. >> they decided not only to cover the chelsea manning trial, forget loyalties, the chelsea manning trial is the most important journalism related trial, free-speech related trial in the last 20 years without a doubt, although it was the largest ever u.s. military trial, took the longest time, the civil war. that is a statement >> alluding with the government to shroud the entire thing. just refuse to let silence when, and the power of independent voices, independent journalism and journalists who work harder than corporate counterparts. >> absolutely correct. he was very dogged throughout that process. >> we have some people that will ask you questions and we try to move through it quickly and people will ask questions and if you could cut to the chase, get through as many people as possible. >> thanks so much for speaking with us today. as all of this points out even though the journalism was created as a way to check government the u.s. government is incredibly powerful and in an ideal world what would you say would be the role of the u.s. government in the international order, what should be the role of the state department and the role of the u.s. embassies. >> it will be another world, but where it can be adjusted. i am under no illusion that if russia had the same expense of 14 million military bases, that would be at nicer empire for the chinese given what happened, probably less militarize, in other respects. the problem isn't the united states but simply its empire has grown too big and they're is not effective bargaining power by other states in many different areas of the world. very few play off support by china and a little bit of support to russia. very few states are able to do that. results is there is no accountability. the fundamental believe that institutions, organizations, even marriages i kept honest by people and organizations involved, bargaining power, they can go somewhere else, the structure of the u.s. empire is such that that can't happen in places, had a very corrosive effect within the united states because it has led to and extremely large military and intelligence to a state within a state which i am sure jeremy could tell you more about, 5.1 million active security clearances now and probably another 20 to 30 million people on the periphery. is distorting effect within the united states and you can see that in a simple way, and easily abandon double way when you look at ferguson, when you look at the fruits of occupation and methods of occupation in afghanistan iraq being brought back home literally in the form of body armor, intelligence data bases and so on. my answer is smaller empires. you have to have a ballot. i would say within the country the only thing that keeps honest is the balance between the commercial sector, the government sector, the church, civil society and the media. people have places to go. that keeps the country on this. the ability to transfer allegiances when you factor out. >> the last part, we lost the first clause in that sentence. something not flipped around. >> what keeps societies decent regardless of their form within their monarchies or dictatorships or authoritarian capitalism or some form of democracy is the ability to transfer support and allegiance from one power group to another when you get factored out. >> we understand the exclamation point. >> next question. >> i am a history teacher in new york and this is from my tenth grade student, very similar to the one you answered, a little more less idealistic and more realistic, and they say this is low voter turnouts, and what it has to say about that. >> it could be a good thing. why is there a low voter turnout? voting doesn't make a difference. doesn't make much difference compared to what you might otherwise do. in australia, not my own, supporting someone else's, but as i meant a polling booth, that makes it different, makes a difference, very rarely. >> we are breaking up a little bit. you were trying to dissuade all young people from voting. >> very few exceptions, you don't become disengaged but spend that time doing something else. most people can do something more productive than spending time voting. >> there will be an interesting debate in somebody's history class tomorrow. >> you advise ed snowden against going to let america from russia, more generally, when countries offer of asylum what are your criteria for choosing which country gets the refugee? which countries are your best friends? >> it depends on the person, what their conflict is. i found a foundation, a journalism, courage foundation, when we were involved in getting someone else out of asylum, works for you as military, pro u.s. guy in relation, in the united states and russia and he end ed up going, being transported, end ed up happening, what we hoped would happen, from that. >> a technical problem. you wear saying something about that case versus the ed snowden case. >> there are other people tracking energies around the world, some ethiopians, senior political people, and the italian embassy in ethiopia. and media activists, more or less on the upper row u.s. side, until very recently in the swiss embassy, we arranged and he came out on the slide. during the opening ceremony of the european games he came out on a flight on the swiss foreign minister's-ins with linda and the swiss government stood up for him. and who is willing to stand up for the asylum, legal and political debts, how much that country is invested in the 1951 convention. and what physical threats are for the person protected in that country. >> basically the answer is once you have applied all those constraints, usually very few countries left, a situation where you can pick from five countries, that is very very rare. >> my question is you acknowledge a lot of the victories that have come from a lot of the documents you have gotten, you are exposing for russian and different kinds of activity but have you ever been contacted or have acknowledged some of the negative repercussions that have come from the exposure and people who have died, with his baby military assets or intelligence assets, how you acknowledge that in the grand scheme of considering what you are doing positive versus people see this as a very big life-threatening negative? >> i am glad you brought up that question because it is complete bullsh bullshit. has been admitted under oath by the u.s. government in the chelsea manning trial they could not find a single person who had come to physical harm as a result of any of our alleged joel c. manning related publications. it hasn't been alleged as far as i am aware in relation to publications either. and an old rhetorical technique by government in order to divert attention away from a scandalous news story, it involves in this case proof of the u.s. government's involvement. >> we are losing you again. >> naming of more than 2,000 people on our side. we produce evidence on a person by person basis, of the u.s. government involved in the death port maimings in iraq and afghanistan of 200,000 people, 200,000 deaths or maiming records. what that publication shows is the pentagon and ultimately the u.s. political class that backed the invasion of iraq and afghanistan coverage in blood. in some instances involving war crimes and involving torture. the response to that is simply to make that divers along similar lines. the risk of someone getting hurt. we just documented 200,000 people getting hurt or killed so it is to try to be sensitive to hypocrisy so you try, critique in one arianna and back in the same direction. if something is being used rhetorically with great effect by government for these 50 years that i am aware of, i don't know of a single case across our publications that everyone's publication of leading to direct reprisal, there are plenty of events where the bbc for example publishes a scandalous reports of a riot when someone dies. that has happened many times but not in relation to intelligence information or people who have a great record. >> it is increasing, we have procedures in place where we give the government to chance to respond to stories we have going to publish particularly when we are going to be publishing classified documents. i started to add the data position that we shouldn't even ask because they never actually answer a question and they always push for more time and always give you the identical statements so we have an internal debate at our own media outlet but in a recent conversation we had with a representative about spot organization, this person, if you publish it you are going to have blood on your hands. it is ridiculous notion because it was the very benign piece of information but it is a default and are was so fed up with hearing this that i finally said your hands are already drenched in blood. [applause] >> without any substantiation that wiki leaks caused people to die and anyone who asks that question should be required to present an actual case because the u.s. government hasn't done so but i am glad the questioner asked because it often comes up and that is the next question. >> hello. thank you and jeremy both for your time, your voice is an your relentless courage. what can an average tech savvy person do beyond buying the book, giving you the valuable tweet, what can someone do to help adversarial journalism like you do and hope and courage the next person to come forward, relay exit note, cover traffic, what can we actually really do to encourage and support? >> it is very boring, but number one, give money, comparison. >> financial appeal. >> the scrambling of the appeal. >> those guys. >> it gives -- if you have a comparative advantage that makes money, your plastic surgeon, that is a very extreme case, resources to others wear their comparative advantage is doing their job most efficiently. technical and boring answer. otherwise be sending the rights of people to do this is quite important so speaking very frank and robust way this is simply an expectation in a reasonable society, keeping your eyes and ears open in relation to sourcing the opportunities for organizations like us in germany, hear something, say something, say it to us. if you find something, get something, give it to us. and encourage others along the same direction. >> i am assuming you don't want people to report suspicious bags on the new york subway to wiki leaks. i remember when these companies were starting to shut off wiki leaks access to donations and targeting activists who were involved with campaigns to oppose that, including up how, the intercept, one of the founders of ebay, and never publicly commented on that. and on the paypal 14, and i think he should comment on this kind of discussion we are having now and i will directly ask him about it the next time i see him because i think people deserve to have an answer to that question from the air and other people who are executives but a lot of tech people ran to the defense of wiki leaks in helping to mirrors the site, figure out ways to circumvent the financial censorship of which the leaks and there's a lot of opportunity for freelance tech savvy people to use their own in ovation when they see whistleblowers or whistle blowing sites under attack. many times we see people on their own initiative step up and do something far more creative than we would have thought about even though we have journalistic resources to do any should donate money to causes that you believe in if you have that money and i think there's a unique role that tech savvy people and play in an era where freedom fighters are sitting at their computer all day long and keep your eyes open to bolster support, actions of organizations that are taking risks or dealing with sources that are taking risks. next question. >> i am a student at the new school, i was wondering with the beginning of the u.s. election in 2016 and the public opinion and whistleblowers, ed snowden, how you see and the future the war against whistle-blowers, do you see it advancing or digressing? >> in the context of the e election, very interesting question. we are watching it closely. bookmakers, for most of them you can't bet on hillary clinton any more, not because she's guaranteed to blues but because the marginal costs -- she is pretty certain, anything could happen in politics, maybe hillary will have a stroke. hillary is very likely to win. she is the much bigger orchestrator than barack obama. barack obama we have seen more people prosecuted under the espionage act than all previous presidents combined, more and twice as many, up to three times as many now. >> the reason we're having technical problems is hillary's primary. there is pretty big news reported the i am going to be hillary's worst nightmare, the e-mails being released are quite interesting. i am somewhat sympathetic to hillary if we had disputes in the past over the e-mail scandal because it is a ridiculous overclassification. it is not surprising to me that she has been swept up in the overclassification scandals. hillary can't say so herself, but the correct defense she should be giving is most of the classification stuff is bulls t bullshit. there might be a moment the president was supposed to land somewhere and what hotel he is staying in should be classified, to prevent the assassinations, that is fine but we're talking e-mails that are several years old so is very interesting to think what could still be classified, genuinely classified in those e-mails issue there is nothing. there is nothing that could be genuinely classified in those e-mails. i tell you what. i believe it is classified top-secret in those e-mails, disgraceful efforts by the united states to subvert libya, out subvert syria, overthrow the government which has led to the rise of the islamic state, involvement with saudi and qatari and turkey in doing that which would be diplomatically very embarrassing if it was released. very unlikely anything hillary's e-mails would be genuinely classified now, genuinely classified, i mean according to what is in the law about classification, information which would threaten the genuine security of a significant fraction of the population of the united states. >> i know that if there is a whistle-blower out there that has access to those current cables, i am sure wiki leaks would be happy to publish them and would be at the intercept and i agree with you that there are scandals that playhouse in public and public secrets and investigative journalism that could poke holes in little pieces of it but we are not scratching the tip of the iceberg in what is happening behind the scenes and that is why this book is so important not just because of what it reveals but how the government works but it shows the potential for what could happen if we have transparency encouraged rather than criminalize, that we would have a more round debate in our society is about the moral stance of the country, what national security actually means, about what is the definition of a terrorist, how do you get on a kill list, how do you get off of a kill list short of being killed in a drone strike? we have multiple administrations, democrat or republican, constitutional lawyers, the wall have embraced this idea that the executive branch is effectively a dictatorship within the united states when it comes to dictating who lives and dies around the world on any given day. we only have five minutes left and i am sensitive to we have more people in line so what i want to do is ask their cooperation and ask questions one in a row and give him a chance to wrap up for a few moments. >> what do you see the role of which he leaks in a functioning democracy in relation to that or a manner in which they can engage with wiki leaks without being interlocutor of the journalists? >> thanks in advance for answering, with your writing, all these whistle-blowers come forward and a culture of intimidation is oppression against anybody, how that works and what it reflects on society, people calling for standards, woodward and bernstein whistle-blower in watergate and nixon, the demand for transparency and no outcry, what you have actually seen is the media almost cannibalized itself, who do whistle-blowers and in still transparency. >> thank you for everything you have done. in all the cables we have read and published, what do you find the most surprising? >> last question before julien answers. >> thank both of you, seems like you made your name challenging power in one way or another so i want to express your ideal sense of power relations, you are a big supporter of the revolution in iceland but kicked out the creditors, also scandinavian, social welfare state, there's a very strong social democracy, is that something you would support in general in society. >> there is a lot more but you can whip through it distinctly. >> you can't teleport's icelandic society. iceland has a population of 320,000, you can transport that to a country with a population 100 times the size of the united states but you can't transport that to the united states if it has the scaling problem. but you can certainly craft some ideas. in relation to wiki leaks if we are talking about taking action against bankers a lot of our work has been on the financial industry. our earliest biggest cases where from banks. relationship to wiki leaks and his role of journalism more broadly, of people, we encourage it can interact with us directly. the majority, something interesting, the majority, the majority, the largest segment of our readers comes from india. the largest type of readers we have, not people looking at news, not academics, journalists although they are there every day, people searching for who their sister is proposed to mary, see if he is corrupt. people wanting to see who they are going to engage in business, or many foreign service departments, government departments outside the united states that want to check out what people inside the united states have thought about one ambassador or another. we take a view that the stories that we release our bait for something much deeper and more important which is historical archives, grand library of how states actually worked. >> the remaining question in all the cables that you read what surprised you? >> the most important one, i answered this question, the most surprising thing is not a cable which is what this book is about, the most surprising thing is the grand sweep of it all, the big structures, that is the surprising thing. how it all in its together but if you want little vignettes i will give you two, one in relation to my present circumstances right now. united kingdom, there is a conservative power, reelected. a principal figure, william hague, the foreign minister during the conflict i have here, david cameron, the prime minister, george osborn, the treasurer, back to they see, william hague, foreign minister has come into the embassy and here is the report. hague said he, david cameron and george osborn were people of that -- whoever enters 10 downing street, the british equivalent of the white house as prime minister soon learns that the essential nature of the relationship with america, we won the pro american regime, the world needs it so the current government's, deployed 100 full-time surveillant passports around this embassy are the most disgusting, the most vulgar, the most embarrassing u.s. stocks imaginable. there is a secondary question as to weather hague was being genuine or not or trying to manipulate the u.s. ambassador. either way it is genuine or machiavellian kind of panhandling the principal leaders of the british government have done. the other cable which i think is the richest of any one single cable concerns so much in it, so rich, it concerns censorship, turkey, violation of the separation of powers and false status of scandinavian states as liberal democracies and how the head of nato got his job all in one cable and barack obama. so the kurds exist as an ethnic group, 30 million people in regions of turkey, iraq, and syria. big news at the moment because of what is happening in syria and iraq with the islamic state. the tv station or rather they had the east asian, the largest kurdish language broadcaster, that tv station was destroyed as part of a plot. who was in on that plot? barack obama, the turks and the head of nato. the head of nato until just recently, rasmussen, the former prime minister of denmark, he wanted to be head of nato. he is a reactionary transatlantic -- >> now denmark just packed your connection. -- denmark wanted to become nato. you will see him in the past year trying to increase tension between the united states and russia. that is rasmussen, he wanted to the head of nato. the u.s. and obama also wanted to be 5 of nato. the turks perfectly happy with him being head of nato fought the way nato works is each country has veto power. the turks wanted to destroy the kurdish language tv station, what is denmark going to do with it? denmark is where they were head -- headquartered. it is beamed down into the kurdish region. turkey had been going after it these things in a variety of way is this, tried to allege it displayed too much violence, took those cases domestically within denmark and they all failed, was found to be perfectly normal tv channel with no connections, but in the cable, the equivalent of the danish attorney general and senior member of the cia go into the u.s. embassy to have a chat about how to mess up the deal with rasmussen, obama and nato, the u.s. embassy and the danes are going well, the problem is we haven't been able to find any of these connections, let's go after ron tax grounds, let's go after it looking at the content, see if we can come up with creative solutions and that is precisely what happened. on content of grounds, they said this kurdish language broadcaster was talking about things from the kurdish perspective and was not balanced enough with what is happening in the kurdish region of turkey and so the danish court as a result of this conspiracy was developed, the cases before the european court of human rights, the star exhibit in that case, the kurds have taken support, these two cables, one in particular, barack obama has sealed this deal, the tv station was wiped out, censorship, not merely one tv station but the entire language group. how the modern world works, and with social democracy in scandinavia. it is not there, just more sophisticated illusion. >> all that in one cable gives you a sense of the wealth of information house on wiki leaks's sight. i want to thank julian assange, it is the middle of the night there, for joining us. everyone was really happy to see you. [applause] >> as julien fade away like the wizard of oz on that screen, remembered chelsea manning is behind bars, ed snowden is in exile, julian is in the embassy and other whistle-blowers had their lives ruined, have been targeted and are under tremendous pressure. all of you should have one of these books, tell your friends about it, talk about it on social media, by another copy and give it to someone and most of all be out there in public whenever the cross hairs are aimed at any whistleblowers or journalist. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. at 7:00 p.m. eastern doug casey said down with booktv to talk about politics and economics, from freedom fest, an annual libertarian conference and at 7:30 firefighter jason rate goes recalls his life as a smoke jumper battling wildfires from above. >> coming up next, mississippi governor haley barbour recalls his role in the state's recovery from hurricane katrina. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> welcome. i am leila salisbury, and i am thrilled to see all of you this evening, i want to give a special thank you to our book friends of the university press of mississippi for this beautiful spread of snacks and to take