PCR: Yes. Of course, but they lie about everything. When has the United States government told the truth? Can you tell me one thing they've told the truth about? That you remember in your lifetime? Did they tell the truth about Weapons of Mass Destruction? Al Qaeda connections? Did they tell the truth about Gaddafi? About Assad using gas against its own people? About Iranian nukes? Have they told the truth about Ukraine? What have they told the truth about? Did they tell the truth about the unemployment rate? The inflation rate? The GDP growth rate? No. You know, every month I expose the lies again and again and again. They don't tell truth about anything, Rob. Nothing.
R.K.: Yeah.
PCR: Just try to think of... I sat down the other day and spent three hours and I couldn't think of one damn thing that the government said that I could remember that was truth.
R.K.: Yeah.
PCR: They do what they want. They have an agenda. It's this neoconservative driven overall American hegemony and under that comes build the police power, build the unaccountable power, do what I want, I'm not accountable, I've got power. What's congress doing? Nothing. We can lie to them about whatever we want. What will they do about it? Nothing. He is still in office. Why wasn't he impeached? They wanted to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair with a White House intern. Well you can't blame him for lying. Why would he want to stand up in front of his wife and daughter and say, yes, I've been screwing around with this girl in the Oval Office? Nobody would want to do that and what does it matter? But here's a guy that's spying on the congress, blackmailing them and he lies about it and they don't do anything about it.
R.K.: Well wait. You're just saying that Obama is spying on the congress and blackmailing them?
PCR: Oh yeah, sure, that's right. Look, that was the original reason for the spying. It was to shut everybody up. If you've got a program like Bush had that is going to war without cause, without congressional authorization, if you're going to do all kinds of things on the basis of lies, do you want to be challenged? No. Do you want to be brought down? Impeached? I mean, Bush is a perfect example of somebody who should have been impeached a dozen times. Why didn't it happen? Nobody dared. Remember when somebody said we've got to impeach him and Nancy Pelosi said, it's off the table? It's off the table! She was scared to death. She was the House Leader.
R.K.: You know, it's interesting, I had-
PCR: They had something on her. She knew immediately to kill this before it could go anywhere.
R.K.: Back then, you had John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, and I happened to have an opportunity. I was down in congress and had a conversation with him that happened to be taped. It was three or four minutes long,and I challenged him and he absolutely denied that it was Nancy Pelosi keeping it off the table.
PCR: Well, she said it publicly.
R.K.: No, I know! I know.
PCR: So what good does it do for him to, look, don't you remember Conyers? People thought Conyers was going to do something about something. I forget what it was now, but they were all enthusiastic and thought he... and he started out like he was going to do something about something and very quickly changed his spine, backed off and sold out everybody who was relying on him. I forget what that particular incidence was, the issue was I mean. We could probably research it on internet and find it, but there was something a whole bunch of people trying to do right, get justice, and they were relying on Conyers and he was going to do it. He was enthusiastic and then, all of a sudden, it just stopped. So, I think when it first happened I wrote, this was years ago, I said the whole reason for the spying was to blackmail congress and foreign leaders. If you can blackmail them then they can't oppose your policies. So it's a power thing. It's a power thing and that's what it's used for. And they use it against themselves, like Petraeus. He pissed somebody off about something so they got him out. And that's what it's all about. It's not... and of course the media is, they can't do anything, I mean, blackmailed or not, it's owned by five big companies and they don't represent journalism. They represent government interests and the corporate interests. So the editors and reporters know that there are all kinds of things that they can't possibly touch or say anything about. And now we have the case with the recent Supreme Court ruling that this New York Times reporter has no protection under the First Amendment. He has got to go tell the government who leaked him the secret of the government's wrongdoing that he wrote about in the chapter of his book.
R.K.: That's James Risen.
PCR: Yeah, Risen. So if Risen reports a government crime, that's linked to him, nothing happens to the government for committing a crime, but Risen has got to rat on the whistleblower so the whistleblower can be arrested and imprisoned for ratting on the government's crime and if Risen doesn't, then he risks being arrested and imprisoned. So what kind of journalism can exist in that environment? None. And once they shut down the New York Times, then they turn on the internet and they'll shut you down and me down. So we can't simply assume that they're going to let us talk and say the things we do and run the facts we run if they don't let Risen report what a whistleblower tells him about government misbehavior. So the power is there. It will be used, there's no doubt.
R.K.: So, do you think that Snowden's bringing all of this to light will have any positive effects?
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