William Binney Interviewed on Russia Today (11/08/2017)

Supplemental document for: "Theory that Roger Stone's back channel to Wikileaks was Randy Credico", link: https://wakelet.com/wake/2d352ae9-febe-44a1-a7bb-51674a2e4bf5

Bill Binney interviewed on Russia Today by Neil Harvey, broadcast date: November 8, 2017. Transcript is for the full clip.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6JIrJRdjys

NEIL HARVEY
The CIA Director Mike Pompeo has come under fire for meeting with a former intelligence official over the alleged hacking of the Democratic Party back in 2016. The U.S. intelligence community laid the blame for the hack on Moscow. Pompeo met with William Binney, a former National Security Agency official turned whistleblower, he believes the hack of the Democratic National Committee was in fact _a leak_, carried out by a DNC employee. Binney also co-authored a memo to the president on the issue, for which some have dubbed him a "conspiracy theorist". Many have also questioned Pompeo's motives, and his relationship to President Trump.

[bumper]

I'm pleased to say we can bring a firsthand account of that meeting now, because joining me live on the line is William Binney, who is the former technical director for the NSA. And it's a pleasure to have you on, William, and lets try to do what you say you like to do, which is try to get to the truth of the matter, about your report and everything else around it. Tell us, what was your meeting about, and a few more details, how long did it last, and what was said.

WILLIAM BINNEY
Well, it lasted about an hour, and it was about Russia-gate, and trying to get to truth, and what facts do we know, and what could we say clearly, and you know, what do we feel it meant. So, I went through the technical data we at veteran intelligence professionals, who have technical experience, all of the technical data we had available, and could look at to analyze, and from that, it was very clear, that it was a local download. Because the speeds and all- we've even tried to transfer data across the Atlantic through the web, and see what speeds we could achieve. And the most we got was like twelve megabytes per second. And you needed at least thirty eight megabytes just to pass the data. Not counting housekeeping. That meant that the capacity was about one-fourth to one-eighth that would be necessary to transfer that data somewhere in Europe, for example.

HARVEY
As I understand though, [some cross talk] I just want to challenge you on this, William. Because I read that one of the members of your team [two members: Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack], your kind of team that was working on this. Not that they disagreed with you, but they weren't so convinced, and I mean _convinced_, that this was definitely the case to be a download. Is it not possible to transfer at that speed?

BINNEY
Well, the best we got was from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK. And the best was twelve megabytes per second. That's what I said, one fourth or one eighth the necessary capacity you need to transfer that data at the rate it was downloaded. So, it had to be done locally.

HARVEY
So why do you think your, some of your team weren't so sure?

BINNEY
Well, I think they were- buying into the emotionally generated, agenda driven uh uh drivel that was being passed around by the mainstream media in the U.S. Without- There was no substantiative evidence _anywhere_. If they could produce some factual evidence, that we could look at and analyze, fine. But so far, they've produced absolutely nothing. I mean, they treat the American people like Pavlov's dogs. Through repetition, hopefully they'll believe anything, and so therefore, that's the way they're treating us...which, I think they're underestimating the population here. We all understand and see right through this facade.

HARVEY
So you go through the CIA Director, or you meet with him, and you've got what seems to be pretty hard evidence, certainly worth looking at, the very least I would have thought. What was his reaction to it?

BINNEY
Well, I thought he, he first of all, one of the main issues I was there telling him about, was that I didn't believe the intelligence agencies were telling him or the president the truth. That was pretty clear to me, because they were saying high confidence this, high confidence that. When it comes down to it, they've produced absolutely nothing to prove any of their assertions. The point is, for example, in the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy produced the photography from the U-2 plane about the missiles in Cuba. And that was very clear evidence that that was true, and that raised that crisis to a point, and that got resolved, and then President Reagan, the North Koreans- the Russians shot down the Korean airliner over Sakhalin island[s], he released the air to ground control of the fighter where the Russian ground controller ordered them to shoot. That was basically Japanese intercept. So, that there clearer evidence of people who are releasing evidence when they have it, and when it's a serious situation. And if people are going to call this kind of situation an act of war, they need to put up or shut up. And not simply throw out the allegation and expect us to lay over like Pavlov's dogs, and believe what they're saying. After all, look at what they said about the Tonkin Gulf affair, what they said about weapons of mass destruction, you know, and what they testified about spying on U.S. citizens in the Congress. I mean, you can't believe them unless they produce some kind of evidence. They have no credibility now.

HARVEY
Is that your general experience? Working within the intelligence community, you have to be very skeptical of the evidence they give to the leader of the country?

BINNEY
Yes, especially when it comes from the higher-ups in the agency. Because they change the story to meet their agenda. And, I mean, I experience a lot of that internally at NSA when I was working there, lying - even internally at NSA. Lying to one another. Not counting lying from agency to agency. Or event the government itself. Congress or anybody else.

HARVEY
Why is that? Does it think it's above the law, or above the president? Do they think they're running the country?

BINNEY
Well, yeah, they think- obviously, they think they're above the law, because they can outright lie and when they get discovered, like Clapper did to Congress, or like Alexander did to Congress, where they went in and said they're not spying on U.S. citizens when in fact they are - and it's come out over time, through Edward Snowden and various other leaks. And some of the reporting that's been picked up by the FISA court, saying you're violating the FISA regulations, and you're- that- that comes from the FISA court itself. And they've even compromised some of the internal affairs inside NSA where they called it internally Love intelligence, "Love Int", the NSA analysts were looking at the data they collected, to see if their lovers were cheating on them. I mean, that's a clear violation of the Constitution and the reasonable rights of everybody in the country.

HARVEY
So, William, getting back to your meeting with Mike Pompeo, at the end of that meeting, was there any suggestion that you would discuss again in the future? Or is that the end of the matter for now?

BINNEY
No, actually, he did say, he asked me, well, he asked me what my relationship with the FBI was, and I said, I said, "Well, the last time I saw them they were pointing guns at me." So...that was in 2007. And- But he did ask me if I would talk to the NSA and the FBI. Again, I guess he was interested in getting an assessment about what they were saying was true or false. Right now, it's clearly false. To me. As far as I can see.

HARVEY
Um- Information now suggesting that Pompeo met with you on the suggestion of the president, did he say anything to you about that? About why he was meeting with you?

BINNEY
Well, yes. This was the hopeful sign for me, anyway. He said, the president had told him he should talk to me to get some facts on the Russia-gate issue. And so, that was the opening statement from him, immediately. And so I thought that was very hopeful, here they're trying to find out what the truth is, but it also is indicative of the fact that they're not getting the truth from their own intelligence people. And that's really bad.

HARVEY
Some people will say, you know, this is- people who don't like Donald Trump, will say he's trying to divert away from all the accusations of collusion with Russia, and he's trying to put any kind of blame- well, anywhere but on himself. What would you say to that?

BINNEY
Well, I don't buy into mindless drivel, without any factual evidence. That's basically what their situation is. They have zero evidence. The only thing they say is, the intelligence community, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, you know, say that this is true. Well, they said it was true about weapons of mass destruction, and so we went and killed a few hundred thousand people. They said it was true in the Tonkin Gulf affair, and we went and killed over a million people. You know? And they said it was true in Syria, and we went and shot missiles at them. Come on. Where was the evidence for any of it? And there wasn't any. So, my point is, you can't believe them, you have to challenge them.

HARVEY
Sorry to interrupt you there, you wrote this memo back in July. Why has it taken so long for Donald Trump to become interested in it? Do you think?

BINNEY
Uh well, I guess I brought it up on some Fox television shows, Tucker Carlson show, also Sean Hannity show, and I think he watches those programs, for the last couple of months, and I brought it up several times, and he may have seen that. And said, well, it looks like the only place where I can get any evidence. Because he's certainly not getting it from the intelligence community.

HARVEY
Now, you've explained how this was about the speed of downloading data. I just want to go a little bit deeper on this. In your memo, you've explained it. If you could explain to our viewers, what exactly are your findings based on?

BINNEY
Based on the timestamping of the data being taken off - provided by Guccifer 2, by the way - for the download on the fifth of July 2016. And it came down in two sets. Two sets of data, forty seconds apiece, a total of eighty seven seconds. With a time gap of close to twelve minutes between. And they took down one thousand nine hundred and seventy six megabytes - not bits, but data. Which is about sixteen gigabits of data. And if you, back then, in that time of 2016, I was buying through the Costco [laughs] for a company, sixteen gigabit [sic] thumb drives [I have never come across a commercial listing of a thumb drive categorized by the amount of mega_bits_ as opposed to megabytes]. Now, if you're going to download sixteen gigabits of thumb drives, my view of it - doesn't mean it's true, but if you're gonna download sixteen gigabits of data, you don't want to do it all on one sixteen gigabit [sic] drive. Because you might lose something. So you split the data in two parts. And take it down in two parts. Insert the thumb drive, download the first segment, take that out, insert the next one, where you left off, download the rest of it. It's kinda what happened. That's my guess at what happened. All I know is, it came down, sixteen gigabits of data, in eighty seven seconds. And that's not- You can't- With a high rate of download transfer of data, as thirty eight megabytes, that's bytes not bits, per second, which is not supported by the network worldwide.

HARVEY
Is there certainty over the source of the information? I mean, the critics they're going to- Well, critique everything, but Guccifer 2.0, they'll say he's a Russian operative, he works for the Russian government, do you even have actual access to the server, can you be sure of these things?

BINNEY
Well, I can only be sure that it didn't go across the network, so it's locally downloaded. That's the only thing I can be sure of. Who Guccifer 2 is, I don't know. And nobody's produced any evidence - again, everybody's speculating, and they're going with their own agenda, emotionally driven justifications for it. So I mean, if anybody's going to make an assertion, give it back, so we can look at it, examine it, for ourselves, and be sure it's true, and we can build it and analyze it. I mean, we've been looking for data to analyze all along, the only data we found was the data on this 6th of July 2016 download. And also our experience in what we were trying to do with transfer of data across the Atlantic. I mean, I had some fairly experienced hackers in Europe who tried to download that data across the Atlantic, they could not do it.

HARVEY
And when you talk about "we analyzed the data", is that meaning, I was reading about an expert "Forensicator", is this the person who was analyzing the data for you?

BINNEY
Well, he was looking at the data, yes. So were about five or six other people. And I was looking at the output of that, trying to assess that too. Just to verify it, and we also tried to test it in the real world. Not in the speculative world. Trying to do the transfer to make it into something compatible with that download rate, and we could not achieve that either.

HARVEY
So, you're confident at the level of expertise of the people you had on this?

BINNEY
Oh sure. I mean, well, we had no other technical data or factual evidence to analyze. Everything else is just speculation and agenda and emotionally driven uh assertions.

HARVEY
Um your reputation- We spoke just before the interview, you're not a huge fan of being called a whistleblower in that sense, more of a reluctant hero, but you did ask questions about shedding light on the truth, about misappropriation of funds, the likes of CNN in the past have been quite flattering, when speaking to you...as I understand now, though, they and other outlets have been labeling you a conspiracy theorist when you've been going on about this latest story. Do you feel the change? In the kind of approach towards you now? That they're viewing you differently, certainly want to portray you differently?

BINNEY
Well, you see, they have a problem, of course, because they've been asserting this kind of speculation, of agenda driven stuff for over a year now. And it would be kinda difficult to back off that. So- But- today, it basically shows the- the shallow weakness of the argument, when you have to throw labels at people, instead of dealing with any factual evidence.

HARVEY
Do you think enough has been done so far? You've had this meeting, I mean I don't know where Mike Pompeo is going to take this, but based on the information you've provided, has enough action been taken to look - I mean, you just want the truth. Has enough been done to look into this?

BINNEY
Yeah. Yes. No, they haven't done enough. In fact, the FBI knows a lot more about this than they're telling anybody. So does the NSA. But they're not saying it either. So...and they're not telling- That's- This is the information I'm getting from other sources. I don't have it substantiated. But they need to come forward and say exactly what they've got. So far, they've not done that.

HARVEY
William, I appreciate you coming on and speaking to us. It's been great talking to you. Former technical director at the NSA, William Binney.