Let's Talk About the American Deep State Raw Draft TXT Dump

(Lars) Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Lars Schall.

I am an independent
financial journalist from Germany,

and I am now connected,
in Berkeley, California,

with Peter Dale Scott,

who is a former Canadian diplomat
and a former Professor for English,

and moreover, he is
a political research and poet.

Hi, Peter.

(Peter) Hello, Lars.
Good to talk to you again.

(Lars) Thank you very much
for being available.

Peter, we decided to talk this time
about the Deep State.

And the first question
I would like to ask you is,

why would you say it's still relevant
to talk about 9/11?

Well, 9/11 was the occasion
for major changes,

both in American foreign policy...

-- it's the reason why we went
almost immediately into Afghanistan,

and it's also why we began planning,
almost immediately, to invade Iraq,

which was based on the false assumption
that Saddam Hussein

had some connection with al-Qaeda.

There had been evidence provided.

It was false evidence, but
the administration chose to believe it.

From an American point of view,
the changes in foreign policy

are perhaps not as serious
as the implementation on that day

of what we call "Continuity of Government"
procedures,

which has radically altered the status of
the American Constitution in this country.

They had been planning,
for 20 years, what to do

in the case of a major emergency
like 9/11;

and the plans were worked on
for two decades

by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney,

who were also the two men
who implemented them on 9/11.

And we don't know, in detail, the plans;

but I think we can safely sum them up
under three headings:

warrantless surveillance:

-- that's what Edward Snowden has proved
beyond a shadow of a doubt,

that it's massive in the country --

and it's because of the COG authorization

warrentless detention: we had
more than a thousand Muslims

rounded up without a warrant
and held;

we have something called habeas corpus
in our common law:

you're not supposed to hold people
for very long without charging them.

Like, more than a thousand people
were not charged;

some of them were tortured.

That is a huge, huge change
in the domestic tradition of America.

And then, finally, the involvement
of the military

in what we call, now, Homeland Security:
let the military play a police role.

And that, too, is something new:

you would occasionally
have the Army called in

to deal with a crisis, like the rioting
in the inner-cities in the 1960s,

but to have a permanent Army Command
for North American,

-- that's called NORTHCOM --
it's very new;

and that's a radical change
in the road (xx).

And above all...

-- this is what I talk about
in Deep State --

...we now have institutions that are able
to operate in America

without being controlled
by the American Constitution.

I don't see how you could have
a more radical change than that.

(Lars) What is the Deep State,
what are Deep Events,

and what has 9/11 to do with both?

(Peter) Well, let me give somebody else's
definition of the Deep State:

the Washington Post reporter
called Dana Priest wrote a book,

Top Secret America.
And in it, she said,

"We now have two governments:

the one that citizens are familiar with,
operated more or less in the open;

the other a parallel,
Top Secret government

whose parts have mushroomed,
in less than a decade,

into a gigantic sprawling
universe of its own."

Well, in a sense, that second level
-- the Deep State level --

has been growing over decades,

but it is true that it has mushroomed
in the last decade,

when she was writing,

and exactly because of 9/11

and the changes which
were authorized, implemented...

before the last of the four planes
had gone down, they had implemented COG.

Then they proclaimed an emergency
three days later,

and we've been living in this state
of emergency, which means that,

in effect, the Constitution does not rule
the way it used to.

Now, you asked about Deep Events.

9/11 I call a Deep Event,
because from the very beginning,

it wasn't clear exactly what happened.

Meaning, the journalists commented
on the confusion,

and the inaccuracy of reports
that became so bad

that Congress had to press....
it was a fight to get an investigation.

This is the largest criminal act
that was ever committed in America,

and the White House tried to ignore it.

There was a crime scene:
it was dismantled almost immediately.

Some people would say that was illegal.

They say they were looking for corpses,

so that's why they
carried away all the steel.

But now scientists are
very interested to know

what residues there were in that steel,

to see if the buildings were, perhaps,
blown up or not.

Most of the steel was shipped
out of the country very quickly,

and so it's a Deep Event.

And we had, then, a Commission.

The two great events that are Deep Events

are, first, the Kennedy assassination
in '63, then 9/11.

There are more.
Some of them can be very small.

You know, I think I've had
some Deep Events in my personal life.

I write about one of them in
American War Machine.

But the ones which had
Constitutional consequences:

the Kennedy assassination.

the consequences were pretty invisible
in that one, but they were real.

It changed the role of the CIA

and its relationship to the FBI
and to local police.

Much more important
were the changes after 9/11.

Just take the one that Edward Snowden
has so completely documented:

warrantless surveillance.

That, I think, of the big three,
is perhaps the least important,

but it's the only one that we're really
talking about in this country.

And in both cases, you had
commissions to investigate,

and they came out with findings which
were demonstrably not true.

Now, that's the real test
of a big Deep Event:

when they investigate it,
and they give you a story

which, almost immediately,
people can start picking holes in,

and see it's not true.

So, my definition of a Deep Event
is one which...

an event which we are not
given the truth about,

and the biggest ones we are given a story
which may be true in certain respects,

but in key respects is not true.

One thing you're looking at in your work
are patterns that were common

both in 9/11 and the JFK assassination.

First of all, when did you discover
this phenomenon,

and what did you feel about it?

Pretty soon after 9/11,
I was struck by the fact

that they knew, almost immediately,
who had done it.

Richard Clarke's book...

he was in a position of authority,
and he says that the FBI

had a list of the hijackers of the planes
before ten o'clock that day.

And that, I think, also, is before
the last of the planes had gone donw.

So for anyone who knows anything
about the Kennedy assassination,

one of the things
that has never been explained

was how they were broadcasting,
on the police tape,

a description of the perpetrator:

the man who had shot Kennedy, allegedly,
from a window, and they gave...

they gave a pretty accurate description.
I mean, precise description:

5'10", 165 pounds, and they could never
explain where that description came from.

they allegedly... they attributed it
to a man named Howard Brennan down below,

but he would have only seen the top half
of the man in the window,

so how would he know 5'10", 165 pounds?

The interesting thing is, that was
the description of Lee Harvey Oswald

in his FBI file and in his CIA file,

even though it was not true.

They were broadcasting a description
of the perpetrator within 15 minutes,

that had been taken...

-- and, when I say, broadcast
on the police tape --

...that had been taken from
the FBI file and the CIA file.

And the FBI has never been able,
really, to explain...

nobody has been able
to explain how that was done,

from the government side.

And the same has proved
to be true with 9/11.

In fact, you know,
they broadcast a description...

-- but again, I'm saying, internally --

...they circulated a list
of the hijackers.

And there were two names on that list
that later got hastily dropped,

because one of them was dead,

and the other one, I think,
was not in the country,

and certainly not on an airplane.

It was a list, I think,
they took out of files.

And that's just the first of about...

that's the first similarity
between those two deep events.

In my book, The War Conspiracy,
I have more than a dozen,

and I've been adding to that list myself:
the modus operandi.

The other thing is that these people,
they laid a paper trail.

Oswald kept a diary,
and he did all kinds of things

which were later used
to incriminate him...

-- although he was, of course, dead --

...and at Logan Airport, the...
Mohammed Atta and his friends,

they left a car
that was filled with evidence.

That was very convenient for the FBI
that the perpetrators...

-- or what I call
the "designated culprits,"

because it was clearly decided in advance
who was going to be blamed for this --

and they had these people actually help
document the case against themselves.

I could go on and on.
I don't know if that's enough for you?

(Lars) Well, I would like to ask you
about specific communication channels

that were involved, both in JFK
and in 9/11.

Why is it, perhaps,
the most important similarity?

(Peter) Well, yes: I believe that
the national communications network...

-- it has had different names
over the years --

but it's the special network
that was set up

in connection with Continuity
of Government planning,

and it goes back to the 1950s,
and they changes its name all the time.

This is a similarity that I came to later.

For many years, I've know that
the White House communications agency

was a factor in the Kennedy assassination,

because we were given,

in conjunction with the Warren Commission
investigation of JFK,

they released the police transcripts,

and they released certain
Secret Service messages.

But it was known... and there were
two channels of the police, both released.

But there was also a third channel
that was being used in Dealey Plaza.

The Secret Service was using a channel

of what's called the White House
Communications Agency,

and for years, I've known,
we should get that,

we were not able to get that in 1993,
when they set up a review board.

I went to the review board,
and I said they should get those records.

They have not been released.
The White House... and yet,

the White House
Communications Agency

boasts on its website...

-- you can, I imagine,
still read it there --

...that they helped solve
the Kennedy assassination.

Well, that's very interesting

because their records never reached
the Warren Commission,

which was supposed to be solving it.

And then, when the records
began to come out about 9/11

-- this took a couple of years --

we got the 9/11 Commission Report,

and it turns out that there are
certain communications,

certain phone calls that were made,
but there's no record of them.

And in my book, The Road to 9/11, I said
the evidence points to the suggestion

that they were using the...
they had already implemented COG.

Well, that means...
I imagine, if that is the case,

they implemented the COG's
special communications network,

with, which change of names,
is the inheritor of the net... (xx)

the White House Communications Agency

was and still is part
of that emergency network.

So I could say, throw in,
that another deep event was Iran-Contra.

And it turned out that Oliver North,
in 1985-86, was sending arms to Iran,

which was illegal, and a lot of people
in the government knew nothing about.

They didn't know about it because
Oliver North was in charge

of that same emergency network,

and he used that emergency network

to make communications with the
Embassy in Portugal, for example,

in order to facilitate
getting those arms to Iran.

So that is, for me, a common denom--...

and in Watergate:
that's another Deep Event.

We still don't know why there was
a wiretap put on the phone

in the Democratic National Committee,

but we do know that James McCord,

who was in charge of the team
that installed it,

was a member of a special
Air Force Reserve network

that was concerned with
Continuity of Government.

So this is... and he was charged with
the same sort of thing:

who to round up,
the warrantless detention:

they had that back in
the days of Watergate.

So this, to me, is one of
the most striking common denominators

to the big four Deep Events:

JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra,
and finally 9/11.

And if we ever have
another Deep Event of this kind,

I would predict, now,
on the basis of past performance,

that the emergency network will...

-- the one which ordinary people in
the government don't have access to --

that will be a factor again.

(Lars) Is the Secret Service,
in both events, of special interest?

(Peter) Well they're of interest
precisely because

of what we've just been talking about.

Because they use the White House
Communications Agency

for their communications.

And a lot... whole books
have been written

about the Secret Service
and the JFK assassination,

some [very exaggerated?]
and some people involved within the plot

I think there was (xx) malperformance
on that day.

They didn't do things
they should have done;

they didn't investigate people
they should have.

That doesn't necessarily mean
that they are culprits,

and so I'm not subscribing
to those theories.

It's less obvious in the case of 9/11,
the Secret Service;

but what is interesting:
they do play a role:

because, at a certain point,

there's a special airplane for
Continuity of Government called the E-4B.

They call it the Doomsday Plane.

And they call the COG planning
the Doomsday Program.

and this plane flew over the White House.

No plane is ever supposed
to fly over the White House,

and yet on precisely this day,
where everything went wrong...

The E-4B: it's supposed to be
the special plane

for the National Command Authority,

which is the President
and the Secretary of Defense,

but of course, neither of them
were in the plane.

One was... the President was in Florida,

and the Secretary of Defense
was in the Pentagon,

according to his own account,
helping put people on stretchers,

which seems an odd thing
for him to be doing

when the nation is under attack.

But the plane was there,
and the Secret Service reponded

by rushing everyone out of the building.

There's a very vivid description

of how they almost lifted
Vice President Cheney out of his chair

to rush him out of the building.

And of course, (xx) saying
the nation was under attack,

it would have been logical, very sensible,

for him to get, as quickly as he could,
to what we call the PEOC:

the emergency bunker that's under
the White House

for when then nation is under attack.

But the interesting thing is,
he didn't go straight to the PEOC.

There were many, many minutes
when he waited in the tunnel,

using a telephone that was
there in the tunnel.

What would that telephone possibly be?

I would bet money that
that was a telephone for...

that was connected
to the emergency network.

And I think it was on that phone
that a lot of the key decisions were made,

not even in the presence
of the top advisors who were in the PEOC.

So the Secret Service are involved

in the sense that it was their mission
to get him out,

and they stayed with him while he did...

with Cheney, while he paused
in this tunnel...

-- it was maybe as long as 20 minutes,
something like that --

to make a series of phone calls

with both the President and
the Secretary of Defense.

(Lars) Related to
Continuity of Government:

why is it important
to know more about this,

and is it still active to this very day?

(Peter) Well, let me begin
with the second half.

Yes, as far as we know, it is still...
it's very hard to talk about it,

because no one has ever released a word
of what these special procedures are.

We only know about it from
what was released back in the 1980s.

But seeing that what was
talked about in the 1980s

is what has been implemented since:

warrantless surveillance:
we certainly have that;

warrantless detention:
we've had that,

and martial law: we have now...

the military are permanently
involved in law enforcement.

There is an Army Brigade
that is on full-time status in America

to deal with any possible disturbances.

And... sorry, what was the question again?

(Lars) Why is it important
to know more about it?

(Peter) Yes...

(Lars) For example, does it mean that
the Constitution of the United States

that the Americans are so proud about,
is suspended?

(Peter) It's not altogether suspended,

but it has been supplanted
to a large extent.

The three things I just described:

every one of them is...
particularly the first two.

I mean, we have very clear...

habeas corpus is mentioned
in the Constitution.

It isn't exactly guaranteed
by the Constitution;

it's just taken for granted
in the Constitution,

because it goes back to Magna Carta
in the 13th Century.

It is one of the oldest
foundational rights

of common law freedoms,
and it has been seriously abrogated.

Not totally suspended, but if they want
to detain somebody, they will.

And they do.

And they... not just foreigners,
but US Citizens.

It's... so, yes: it has seriously eroded
the status of the Constitution,

and more and more people
are beginning to talk about it.

We're finally getting a serious debate
about the warrantless surveillance,

which is unconstitutional,

and the President has said
he's gonna do something about it,

but we haven't seen any results so far,

and meanwhile they're not only trying
to prosecute Snowden...

-- who did a public service, I would say,
by revealing this --

...but they're also...

they've indicted the man
who made the encryption program

which made it possible for him
to share documents with Greenwald.

And they've persecuted that man

to the point that he's had
to dissolve his company.

So, they're still
pretty ruthlessly enforcing

this system of secrecy,
secret government,

that has supplanted
and become a second layer

overshadowing open government.

(Lars) Regarding 9/11, you say
you know only one thing for sure:

there has been a massive cover-up.

What has been covered up, and why?

(Peter) We still don't really have
an explanation why...

the planes failed to intercept.

They should have intercepted.

Certainly by the time of the third
and the fourth plane,

they should have been intercepted.

And there's an explanation
in the 9/11 Commission Report.

but there are many things
which are still really inexplicable.

You have the behavior
of the Vice President,

who was a key figure in this.

You know, he said that there was...

all right: there was a phone call made
that implemented COG.

That is the very center
of what happened here.

There's no trace of that phone call,
not because no trace was made...

-- you know, he didn't do it
from a payphone or something --

it was certainly done within channels;

but I'm sure it was done on a COG line,
and we have to hear what was done.

This, by the way,
has real legal consequences,

because one of the things to be explained
is why the Vice President made decisions

that he was not legally
empowered to make.

We have a National Command Authority
that governs the military,

and the is the President and
the Secretary of Defense.

But what seems... as far as we can tell...

-- and hearing the records are missing:

so that, I would say
they're being covered up --

is that the actual decisions were made
by the Vice President,

who was not part of
the National Command Authority.

All of that should be investigated,
because it is quite possible

that crimes were committed
in the response to 9/11,

and not, now, talking about 9/11 itself:
which I do not discuss in my book,

because there are too many books
being written about that.

But in the response to 9/11,
certain things were done

which were not done in the way
which is legally prescribed.

And that, how they were done,
is being covered up,

because we don't have the records.

(Lars) Could 9/11 have been prevented?

I mean, for example, this is a question
that is very crucial

for everything that has to do
with the NSA.

that the NSA knew nothing about the plans
to attack the US?

(Peter) Well, of course,
we know so little about the NSA

that it's difficult for me to say.

There are allegations, of course:

this Lieutenant Shaffer came forward
and said that the DIA

-- which is the Defense
Intelligence Agency --

that they, in fact, had very complete
files on Mohammed Atta and others.

The Pentagon has denied this,
and then a Congressman, Curt Weldon,

brought it up in Congress, and really
wanted to get to the bottom of it.

And the FBI treated him abysmally.

The FBI leaked the idea
that he was under investigation

for some kind of scam
that involved his daughter;

and the newspapers were full of this.

And he was never charged,
but he was defeated:

they got him out of Congress.

And so it was a sign, which...

I've talked about this in books,
that it's very dangerous for Congressmen

to challenge that part of the government
which is known as the Deep State,

because inevitably, if they do,
they get defeated

when they come up for re-election.

I wrote that before
the case of Curt Weldon,

but that was important.

Let's talk about the CIA.

The CIA, definitely, knew about
two of the hijackers,

that they were in this...

alleged hijackers, I always say,

because I don't really know
what their role was on 9/11;

but I think it's probable
they got on the planes;

I just cannot believe that they were able
to steer the planes into buildings.

That was some other power that done,
from outside the plane.

And that technology is totally feasible
in the 21st Century.

(Lars) Yeah.

(Peter) But those two hijackers:

the CIA should have told the FBI,
and they didn't.

And they were able to move around,
be in touch with other hijackers.

Now, if procedures had been followed,
the CIA would have notified the FBI;

the FBI would have
put them under surveillance;

and from those two, they would have known
about virtually all of the hijackers.

So the fact that the CIA
did not communicate

something that it should
have communicated

is one of the causes for 9/11 happening
the way it did.

It's only a part of the big picture,
but it's a tell-tale part,

and you had similar failures
of communication

in the case of John F. Kennedy.

That's another of the many similarities:
that the CIA sent a cable to the FB--...

-- not a cable, it's a message --

...they sent a message to the FBI
about Lee Harvey Oswald,

and they suppressed the information in it,

which would have led to Lee Harvey Oswald
being put under surveillance.

And if he'd been put under surveillance,

he couldn't have played the role
that he did in the...

becoming the designated culprit
for the Kennedy assassination.

So in that sense, I think it's very, very
significant that the CIA withheld that.

Whether... because I don't really un--...

I don't claim to know who
made 9/11 happen;

and unlike many people, I am not saying
that the White House made it happen: no.

I think somebody in the Deep State
made it happen;

but, you see, in my notion
of the Deep State,

there are elements of it
that aren't even in the government.

So to say that the Deep State
did something,

it doesn't really tell us very much,

but the need to know more...

and there are records buried, still,
that could be released

that would help us
to understand these things.

(Lars) Now, let's say:

if rogue elements of the government
were involved in 9/11,

people say that someone would have
surely talked by now.

"You can't keep a secret in Washington."
What's your take on this?

(Peter) Well, you know, there's actually
a book about the Kennedy assassination,

and its title is,
Someone Would Have Talked

-- because, of course, they said that
from the very beginning

about the Kennedy Assassination.

And the answer in the book is:

many people talked;
they don't get heard

And with 9/11, too:
I was just talking about 9/11 last night,

and there was somebody who was prepared
to swear on a Bible

that the last plane, Flight 93,
was maybe hit, injured, over Shanksville,

and part of it went down over Shanksville,

but that it continued, because he...

I have a friend who talked to
a very close friend of his,

who talked to a very close friend of his,

who says he saw a missile hit Flight 93
over Camp David, and...

the President's hideaway
in the mountains.

That's not in the papers;
it's not because the man didn't talk.

It's because he talked,

and the FBI came to him and said,
"You must never talk about that again."

It actually was in the media.

There is -- I just looked at it --
a TV report from the time,

that the FBI was saying that a plane
had been shot down over Camp David,

and they got this information
from the FAA.

All of that was on TV,
but it was all taken off TV,

and the nation has forgotten about it...

-- or nearly all of the nation
has forgotten about it.

The E-4B over the White House:
CNN reported that on TV.

It's a very important part of the story,
but then they took it down.

Luckily, somebody had recorded it,
and they put it back up on YouTube,

and if you buy my book
when it comes out in November,

you will see a URL to watch the video
of the plane over the White House.

The Air Force denied it ever happend,
but it clearly did.

It's clearly an E-4B,
and so people come forward with...

other people have come forward
with explanations.

The thing is, information
is always controlled in any society,

and if somebody said something
that doesn't fit in the official story,

we are a pretty open society in America,
so they do get to say it:

it just doesn't get to be heard.

(Lars) Related to the question:
if someone has talked about 9/11,

and that there may have been
something else than the public was told

is significant in the case
of Sibel Edmonds.

Can you talk about her case a little bit?

(Peter) Yes, well, Sibel Edmonds was a translator working for the FBI,

and she saw things in the...

-- her languages were Turkish
and, I think,

Farsi from Iran. [Also: Azerbaijani] --

...and she saw things:
the FBI were investigating people,

but because the agents

were not Farsi [sic: primarily Turkish
and Azerbaijani] speakers,

they needed her to translate these
communications they had,

and what she saw was so alarming

that she tried to bring it
to the attention of her superiors.

It's a long time since
I've looked at her case,

but essentially she was told to shut up,

and eventually she was under
a court order, I believe,

and to this day,
she doesn't want to go to jail,

so she talks about many other things,

but she will not fully share
what it was that she saw,

except she's given us strong indications.

There are people very high
in the government

who are involved in improper activities
with other governments,

and she's named those governments

-- the Turkish government
being one of them --

and she is an example,
and not the only example,

of somebody who is... she cannot talk
in this free society that we have.

(Lars) The official version of 9/11

is based, in very large part,
on torture testimony.

Does this make the story
pretty much worthless?

And furthermore, is this something
that too many people are ignorant of?

The part of the 9/11 Commission Report
that came...

it's only one small part of the report,

but it's the part that is talking
about what al-Qaeda did,

how they planned it, and so on:

yes, that is all from tortured testimony,

from people who were being tortured
before they gave this testimony.

Some of those witnesses, now,
are no longer in custody

and recanted what they said.

They put in about one person,
Abu Zubaydah:

he confessed to being a part of
the al-Qaeda thing, and he wasn't at all.

It was a total misguided direction.

So I think all of that testimony
should be thrown out.

That wouldn't invalidate the whole
of the 9/11 Commisssion Report,

but certain chapters of it
which are talking about what al-Qaeda did,

yes, are not to be taken very seriously
because of their reliance...

by the way: you know, the 9/11 Commission
wanted to see the transcripts.

They're not allowed
to see the transcripts.

Right away, that becomes very suspicious.

They're not told
that the people were tortured.

And since then, I think,
both of the co-chairmen

-- Thomas Kean and [Lee] Hamilton --

have complained that they
were actually misled by the CIA.

So it's in a bit of a shambles,

the official version that's in
the 9/11 Commission Report.

It's been discounted even by
the co-Chairman of the Commission.

So, but yes: the fact that they
used torture to obtain testimony with...

should not have happened,
in the first place.

It should not have been used,
in the second place.

They should have been canadid about
the circumstances,

and they weren't. in the third place.

And so in every way, it is a disgrace.

(Lee) Do you think the hegemony of the US
in the world declined

because of the action that followed 9/11?

(Peter) [inaudible]

(Lee) Well, for example,
it seems as if

the true beneficiaries
of the War on Terror

are China and Russia.

(Peter) Well, let's go with that
bit by bit.

One of the major consequences of 9/11
was the invasion of Iraq.

And I think there is almost no one who...
everyone would agree

that American power in the world,
and particularly in the Middle East,

as been eroded because of
the invasion of Iraq.

It has resulted in...
first of all, in the election...

if you want democracy in Iraq,
then the majority are going to rule;

and the majority are Shia, so you now
have a Shia government in Iraq.

And it is much more friendly to Iran
than it is to the United States.

Many people could have,
and did, predict this.

It's not rocket science:
it's pretty obvious.

That, also, has led to major tensions
between the US and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, historically...

-- whether this should be or not,
it can be debated --

but historically, it has been
the strongest ally

of the United States in that region.

And now, there are major differences,

because Saudi Arabia were delighted
to see Saddam Hussein go,

but they didn't want an invasion, because
they knew it would destabilize Iraq

and create this status of...

-- I don't want to say a "failed state":
I don't like that phrase --

but a very weakened authority in Iraq,

which is very dangerous to Saudi Arabia.

They have every reason,
legitimately, to be upsed

at what America did in Iraq,

and so that weakened
America's relationship to Saudi Arabia

You have (xx) the whole
of the Middle East now,

Zbigniew Brzezinski called it
"an arc of crisis" back in 1978 or '79.

It's much more an "arc of crisis" now
than it was then,

as a result of... you know,

I think that the invasion of Afghanistan
was also misguided,

but it's much more defensible than
the invasion of Iraq,

and the two of them
have grossly expanded...

-- let's not talk about al-Qaeda,
but let's talk about al-Qaeda's forces:

people who do similar things to al-Qaeda:
and there are many groups now --

and many of them are actually
based in Iraq

as a result of America's invasion of Iraq.

And this is spreading into Africa.

So I'm not sure that the beneficiaries
are really so much Russia and China

as (xx). I think Russia, China,
and America

all have common interests
in not seeing terrorists,

and I think Russia has been...
made it very clear

that they would like to collaborate
with the United States

in dealing with terrorism.

And there are times when,
particularly, Obama

seemed as if he was going to do more
in common with Russia,

particularly in Syria, for example,

where al-Qaedist elements are a major part
of the problem, now,

for both Russia and America.

And then we certainly get the Ukraine.

Even the Ukraine you could
really blame, in a way,

on what's happened since 9/11.

That may take more time
than we can do in our hour here,

but the deterioration of understanding
between Russia and America, which...

Afghanistan is part of that.

These are all complicated things,
but one thing that is so clear

is that the Iraq thing was a disaster,
and it's created tensions,

and if we don't learn how
to deal with these tensions,

we are closer to the risk
of nuclear war today

than we have been for 20 or 30 years.

And that is a very alarming situation.

(Lars) Related to the Iraq War:

has the peace movement
around the globe failed post-9/11?

It protested, for example,
against the war in Iraq,

but without questioning
the root of all evil,

the official 9/11 narrative,

as the pretext and justification
to go to war.

(Peter) Certainly, it would have been
a more powerful protest movement

against the idea of war in Iraq

if we had understood
what happened on 9/11.

I don't think that it's realistic to think
that we could have known enough

at the time America went in in 2003

and we didn't even get
the 9/11 Commission Report until 2004.

So I don't think it ever could have helped the anti-war movement in 2003,

but it certainly could help
future such movements.

I don't know what's going
to happen in the Ukraine, but...

-- well, no.
Actually, I think I do know, now:

I think Europe is intervening

to stop America from making
a complete fool of itself.

I cannot believe some of the things
that John Kerry has said recently:

I mean, when he, for example,
said to Putin after Crimea:

"We don't do that sort of thing
in the 21st Century,"

when America has been

the most conspicuous and flagrant example
of that kind of behavior.

So I think it's...

people not in government
have to mobilize around the world,

and create a kind of global public opinion
that can check...

-- I don't want to say just America,
but America and other governments --

...when they start doing
excessive things.

It used to be the case that governments
didn't worry about public opinion,

and that was bad.

And now we're beginning
to develop a public opinion

which can constrain governments
-- and it has, sometimes, on occasion --

and that's good. I think public opinion,
for example, was a major factor

in persuading American corporations
not to invest in South Africa,

And that divestiture movement,
which was public opinion,

was a major factor -- Nelson Mandela
has said as much -- a major factor

in the liberation of South Africa.
So there have been...

public opinion, in the end,

is what ended segregation
in the southern United States.

So there is... there is, possibly...
it wasn't successful in Iraq,

but you shouldn't think that we could
draw the conclusion from a single thing,

and that these things
are not worth doing: they are.

(Lars) Do you have any hope
that the question

what did actually happen on 9/11
will be seriously addressed in the future?

(Peter) Well, if you mean addressed
by the US government, perhaps not.

But it is already seriously addressed

by people who have
devoted their lives to it.

I don't count myself in that number,
but there are such people.

I think they have made
very significant discoveries.

I think the amount of...

the fact that there was
explosive materials

has been pretty well established
in Building 7 and both the Towers.

There was a government investigation
of why the Towers went down, by...

I think it was called NIST:

the National Institute of Standards
[and Technology], and so on.

And NIST was forced
to revise its findings.

You know, they said the building...
Building 7 came down in 5.3 seconds,

and the critics were saying,
"Well, part of that time was free-fall."

And they just simply said,
from the 5.3 seconds:

"That's not free-fall."

So we asked for a clearer definition
of what they meant,

and they produced a graph
which showed that, in fact, yes:

for two or three seconds in the middle,
the building was in free-fall.

Now, if the building was in free-fall,
it must have had some kinds of explosions

to clear away the path
of the top of the building to descend.

It's as clear as that.

So I think we have made
significant progress.

We can talk about that as "serious."

When you get the government
to admit that...

well, you know, it's 2014,

and there has not been a reconsideration
of the Warren Commission,

but almost everybody in America knows

that the Warren Commission
is not the answer.

So, in public opinion, I think,

there will be more and more
serious investigation.

(Lars) Yeah, and that really matters.

But, from the international community,

that there's some pressure
on the US to get clean?

You don't think that this
will ever happen?

(Peter) I'm a former diplomat:

I don't think that's the way
governments talk to governments, no.

And I'm not sure they should:

they have to deal with
their narrow interests.

What we need to see is people in the world
exerting that kind of pressure.

Newspapers exerting that kind of pressure,

and it's lucky that we have
other countries that speak English

besides the United States, so that...

For example, the British press have given
a much better account

of what Glenn Greenwald has got
from Edward Snowden,

and in general, I think if an American

wants to know what's happening
in his country,

he should read The Guardian
in London.

We can read it online, so he has
no excuse not to.

That is the sort of thing that may restore
a degree of sanity to the world, when...

I have to say: America is
a wonderful country. I love living here.

It has a government which, you ultimately
have to say, is behaving insanely.

The invasion of Iraq was insane.

There was any number of experts who said
this was going to work out badly.

And when they said that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction,

the evidence was discredited before...

so discredited that
we couldn't even use it

the way we really had wanted to use it.

Those kind of pressures
from public opinion are what we need

to bring the American government
back to sanity.

(Lars) And how do you judge upon the fact
that there was no...

that there was no punishment
for this lying about the Iraq War?

(Peter) We can
get into details about this.

You know, in my American War Machine,

I show how a private corporation
conducted intelligence

on whether he had weapons
of mass destruction or not,

and they concluded that he did.
SAIC is the name of the corporation.

And then they decided afterwards,
when it turned out that they hadn't,

they said, "We'd better find out
how we could have been so wrong."

And who did they charge
to find out what went wrong?

The same corporation, SAIC.

I'm sort of like Bishop Tutu
in South Africa:

I think we need truth and reconciliation.

That's more important right now
than to send people to jail.

We need the truth so urgently,

I would be willing to forego
putting people in prison

if we could get the truth.

Becuase if we got the truth,
that would certainly force, for example,

ending the State of Emergency
that still exists in this country,

renewed by Obama
without discussion every year:

once a year, it has to be renewed.

Then Congress would do
what it's supposed to do:

look at the State of Emergency,
look at Continuity of Government.

The more the truth came out
about these things,

the more we would return
to America as it used to be,

which was very, very far
from an ideal condition,

but very, very much better
than what we have in America today.

(Lars) Are Wall Street interests
at the very heart of the Deep State?

(Peter) Yes. The way, in my book, I...

the initial notion of the Deep State
is the public institutions,

and then overshadowed by NSA,
CIA, JSOC, and the Pentagon:

all these new secret institutions.
That's your first level of the Deep State.

But these agencies are powerful because

they have connections outside
the government.

They don't just report up
to the President, but they are also...

particularly the CIA...
-- this is easy to document --

...is very rooted in Wall Street.

And it was, like, largely designed
by Allen Dulles

while he was still a Wall Street lawyer,
before he actually entered the CIA.

And it... the CIA is as powerful as it is

because of its connections
to Wall Street, and...

-- it used to be almost the same thing --
its connections to Big Oil.

Because the big oil companies
used to be based in New York;

and they were put together by Wall Street;
and they operated as a cartel

that was defended successfully
by Sullivan and Cromwell,

which was a Wall Street law firm
that, not accidentally,

John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles
were senior members of.

Yes: the... Wall Street is important.
It was then.

It's historically easy to show
in the 1950s: and I do in my book.

It's harder to show in the present,
but there are are many indications.

I think... oh, one thing is:
the Deep State, we should mention,

is going more and more multinational
as the corporations go multinational.

Exxon is a multinational firm,
and there are some US firms,

-- notably Blackwater, which is
this kind of private army

that turns up in various places --

Germany is saying...
I believe you have, in Germany...

your President said that Blackwater
or a subsidiary of Blackwater

is operating in the Ukraine.

(Lars) Yes, that's right.

(Peter) Well, we called it
an American corporation,

but now, technically, their headquarters
is in Qatar, in the Persian Gulf.

So, you cannot control it.

How is Washington going
to control a corporation

whose headquarters are in
the Persian Gulf?

You're getting the apparatus
of a supra-national Deep State,

and we are going to need to develop
institutions on a supra-national level

that can deal with
these new kinds of institutions

whose business is to stir up unrest,
because it's profitable.

(Lars) Two personal questions
at the very end.

How do you deal with it
that you get dismissed

as a "conspiracy theorist"
from time to time?

And how do you deal with the sadness

that must surely be a follower of yours,
given your ouevre?

(Peter) [inaudible]

(Lars) I mean, when I read your stuff,
I get super depressed.

And so I would like to know,
what's with you?

I mean, you are the one
who writes this, right?

And has to cope with the truth:
and, how do you deal with it?

(Peter) Well, I've learned
to expect less and less in my lifetime.

I am... first of all, call me
a conspiracy theorist.

It's almost a badge of honor the way...

the people who are using the phrase,
they lump me in

with people who believe
in extraterrestrials, and so on.

I guess if they refute me
by talking about extraterrestrials,

that's a sign that they don't want
to deal with what I'm actually saying,

which, I suppose, is a kind
of negative compliment.

I had trouble hearing you,

but if you asked how I deal
psychologically

with not being heard and so on,
it's been difficult at times in my life.

In fact, back around 1980,
I was supposed to have a book come out...

-- a quarter of a million copies,
first printing --

about the Kennedy assassination,

and then my publisher suppressed it.

And I took that very hard.
I went into a kind of depression.

But it was the luckiest thing
that ever happened to me,

because out of that depression,

I started writing a poem
called Coming to Jakarta.

And that poem deals with depression,
and deals with terror,

and deals with all the things
that were really upsetting me.

And my other book,
that didn't get published,

is not nearly as important to me
as Coming to Jakarta,

which was the result of the suppression.

So I feel I was, in a sense, a lucky guy.

And in my... I have a very lovely
second marriage,

and I feel sustained: meeting people
like you, Lars, in Germany.

I know somebody in Moscow now.

I have my French translator,
Maxime Chaix.

These are all wonderful people

that I'm so privileged
to know and work with.

And because I've always believed
that the task for my generation

was to lay the foundations
of a global public opinion,

a global civil society:
and I think I see that happening.

I don't feel depressed.

I think that it's very fragile,
because it depends on the Internet,

and the Internet is a gift
that can be taken away very easily

by those in power,
and occasionally is.

Actually, my website on Facebook
was suppressed at a certain point.

I don't know why:
probably accidentally,

because they really wanted
to get someone else.

So, it's fragile, but it's working.

And if it were to be suppressed,
then something else would be...

I do believe... I believe in the goodness
of the human species,

and I also believe that we have had
bad governments

from the beginning of time.

And we haven't made... you know,
we've made progress in some respects,

but we've made the opposite of progress
in some respects,

because the risks of the human race
destroying itself

are obviously greater today
than they were 100 years ago...

-- so, that's not such great progress --

but I... in my poetry, I talk about
what an idiot I am to write about politics.

And sometimes I think I am an idiot.

But I enjoy it;
and I enjoy talking to you,

so let's... why not keep going?

(Lars) OK. Thank you very much
for this conversation.

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