Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome back to going underground. Broadcasting all around the world from the UAE amidst repeated US threats to wipe out tens of millions in West Asia. Tomorrow marks 20 years to the day that Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks, giving whistleblowers a platform to shatter the lives of elites and notably NATO power. The anniversary is within the very week the US finally stopped avowedly occupying Iraq. After an imperialist war built on lies relentlessly promoted by compliant NATO nation, totalitarian media killed, wounded or displaced millions. It was WikiLeaks that published Chelsea Manning's files exposing the reality of American war crimes. From the infamous Collateral Murder video to the logs documenting atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks also demonstrated what would happen in in Ukraine for the high crime of committing journalism. Assange was tortured year after year by the British as Washington sought to kidnap him before a deal released him in 2024. Yet since shock and awe in Iraq and devastation across the Middle east, the USA and its vassals continue to bomb and support genocide, unable to comprehend one defeat after another. Joining me again is Matthew ho, a former U.S. marine Corps combat engineer and captain. He's a former U.S. state Department official who resigned over Washington's catastrophic war in Afghanistan. He is now senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network and joins me now from North Carolina. Matt, thanks so much for coming back on going underground. 20 years since Assange founded it, you campaigned for his freedom as he was being tortured by the British security state. What does Julian and his work mean to you? And signify 20 years on, we were
[00:01:58] Speaker A: just saying, first of all, thank you for having me back on option. And we were just saying before we came on, the first time we met, I was in London on a visit to visit Julian when he was in the embassy, the Ecuadorian embassy.
In these years, we've seen this great shift in our technology, this ability to access information, to see things from a firsthand perspective.
Of course, the genocide and gods are the best example of that.
We've seen the success of what Julian assange built with WikiLeaks in the sense of bringing some accountability, right? Maybe we understood things in Iraq, but WikiLeaks gave us color to that black and white understanding that we had in Iraq and in so many other places where the American empire was carrying out its war crimes and this idea of an accountability that was able to surface from that. And we have seen the backlash to that, whether it's been the surveillance, whether it's been the government censorship.
I mean, there's no one better to talk to about government Censorship than you and your folks on this program here, Right? But then also, too, we saw the culmination of that backlash against information, against letting people know what their governments were doing in these last three years, as we've seen the Israelis and the Americans murder over 250 journalists in Gaza.
So I think what it means to me is we don't ever stop, right? That no matter what success we have, we don't stop. Whatever setback we have, we don't stop. And I think Julian, of course, with what he's done, his work, but also too, his personal trials, the prosecution and the persecution he endured for years by the British state, by the American state, I think he is the best example of how you don't ever stop.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: And actually, things in my country got arguably worse since you were there to visit, Julian, let alone Ecuador, which you mentioned, of course, which has had a CIA base placed in it. You now get maybe, I don't know, up to 14 years for just holding the words Palestine action up under, under the new government, under another unelected Palestinian prime minister. He's kept the designation.
Is it going to get harder in some places? Is it going to get harder in the United States and Western Europe in the coming months and years? Or has it changed in one way? Because I know in the United States, the population there seems to regard Israel in a unfavorable light, something that we could never have said 12 years ago.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: And that's why it will get harder, I think, for the work that you do, the work I do, the work that so many others do. Because this scares. Scares the hell out of the empire, this type of work, this type of information, your programs like yours scare the hell out of the empire, out of the establishment, out of the elites in the United States. This idea that we have seen, this shift in public understanding of what Israel actually is, of what lives for Palestinians are like, of what the genocide has been, the apartheid, the occupation, really the reality of it, that shift in understanding by the American public came not because the New York Times told them about it or CNN told them about it.
NBC News told them about it. The legacy. Mainstream corporate media remained loyal to the United States and to Israel, to their narratives, their talking points, to their requests for censorship. I don't think there were requests. I think that was by the American corporate media, mostly self censorship.
So why did the American public shift its opinion, its understanding on Israel, on the American empire, on the reality of what the Palestinian people are enduring? It's because of this technology. It's because of independent Journalists, it's because of alternative media. Again, it's because of programs like yours that have allowed the American people to truly understand what its government is doing around the world. And that scares the hell out of them. So what I think will get harder, it will get tougher, you will see more censorship. You'll see more what we've seen already, right, this consolidation of media. Larry Ellison and other billionaires trying to buy as much media operations as they can to control it. Pressure by the US Government and other governments on the big tech firms to censor. We've seen that, we saw that under the Biden administration during the COVID years.
But then also too, if that doesn't work, if they can't buy this danger, if they can't censor this danger to them, then what they will do is simply make it illegal. And you've seen that as well. In the United States you have Presidential Security Directive number seven published last year by the Trump administration, which I think of the 20 different things that qualify as being characteristics of anti Americanism, I think we've probably hit on 5 or 6 already.
So the idea that being that you then have the threat of federal action against you and whether that federal action means you're in prison or that you're enduring a legal affair, that bankrupts you, I think it's that power that they have that they will turn to in order to try and protect themselves. Because again, the idea of what we have been able to do in terms of educating people, informing people, getting people to cooperate, to coordinate, to mobilize, to organize through this technology that 20 years ago when Julian Assange started WikiLeaks was just in its infancy. This scares the hell out of them. And that's why I think it's going to get harder. Because this is this technology and the information it allows us to bring to people that threatens their power.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: I mean I wish I could be this, that optimistic in one sense because yes, people have abandoned so called legacy media. But then how do you explain no big US outcry from the people in the United States about the war on Iran? Millions have been displaced, let alone the killed and the wounded. 861 at last count. It was a new figure surreptitiously put up on the Pentagon website. 861 US casualties.
Where are the demonstrations?
We did see, of course, demonstrations about Gaza. Luckily no Kent State sort of situation. But it's not like Vietnam, is it?
[00:08:43] Speaker A: No, it's not. And what the American empire learned and what the elites have done, the establishment does we have to recall that these are always remember, these are living organisms. These are organisms that learn themselves, that adapt, that evolve. So from the success of the popular movements of people on the street in the 1960s and 70s, for Vietnam, for civil rights, for women's rights, for the environment, people getting into the 1980s, for the nuclear movement, the establishment, the elites, the empire, they learned that we have to insulate power from that popular pressure.
So one of the things they do in the United States, of course, is we basically are a political system of legalized bribery. It was always been that way. But certainly you could see, starting in the 1980s, this evolution, this protection of the political establishment through money, through campaign finance, as it's called.
I think that's what we saw really come to a head in 2020, Afshin, with the movement in support of black lives in the United States, where we had more than 20 million people on the streets. Largest popular mobilization, most amount of people on the streets in American history.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: But where are they now?
[00:09:52] Speaker A: What came of it? That's it. Well, that's, you know, I think what you have is you have fatigue, right? You have some exhaustion, but as well as too, you have an American public that is burdened by their own problems. You have an American public, American population, where more than 60% of us, 65% in some polls, are living paycheck to paycheck.
And so I think that frustration, that exhaustion, that getting out on the streets and protesting for black lives and then for Gaza and seeing nothing change, I think that is a real problem for us because it shows the limits.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: So they can't even demonstrate about the spike in inflation of diesel caused by this mass killing in this region.
They won't even demonstrate about the fuel price rises.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Right? You've seen that. You've not seen that real impact on the American people, right? Whether it's just not diesel, it's what it costs at a fertilizer, grocery market, phosphate, all sorts of ways, as well as to just the cost of living here in the United States in terms of where interest rates are heading. Just the idea of younger generations ever owning a home seeming just a fantasy to them.
So you really have this. This degradation, this malaise among the American public that has been useful in terms of suppressing, I think, to your point, this idea, why aren't people getting out on the streets? Because that is a really good question. Where are the demonstrations? This war was never popular. This war against Iran started with not even 33% approval. It has fluctuated between 25 and 33% approval over these last seven or eight months.
The reality of the war affecting Americans here at home, whether it's they see at their gas pumps, whether they see it through rising interest rates, whether the fact that United States bombs are on and Spirit Airlines goes out of business. I mean, so you do you have this issue of how do we then affect power? If to your point being that mass mobilizations, getting people on the street doesn't affect power. And if you also have the ability of the government, then through either exhausting the population by showing them the demonstrations aren't working or the threat of government action against those who do demonstrate, because we saw that throughout the United States over these last three years, many people go into prison, many people facing deportation, thousands of college students facing suspension and expulsion for standing up against the genocide in Palestine.
So I think this gets back to that earlier conversation we were having about how this ability to inform people, to educate people, for people to see what is occurring in real time on the other side of the planet, what their government's doing, that fear it has put in the government has pushed the government to a place where it has really sought to suppress any type of mobilization. But your question is very valid. How come we're not seeing them on the streets when it's so clear that this war is so unpopular and it is having a direct impact on American families? I mean, that's, you know, that that's not arguable at all.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Matt. Oh, I'll stop you there. More from the former U.S. state Department and Pentagon officials after this break.
Foreign.
Welcome back to Going underground. I'm still here with the former US State Department and Pentagon official Matthew Ho. At the end of Part one, we were talking about the absence of protest, public protest in the, the heart of empire in the United States. You know, I something really disturbing that a former chief of staff at the U.S. state Department has told me that the word on the street, as he put it, was that Trump had given the okay for Netanyahu to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Would that get people out on the streets? And what's your reaction to the escalatory ladder here in West Asia?
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if that would move people.
Again. I think there's the exhaustion, the effects of the suppression on the college campuses that are still motivating people, but maybe perhaps that type of mass murder, that type of war crime or would be enough to move people.
This idea, though, of the danger of a use of nuclear weapon in this war has always been here. I've been afraid that the United States would use a nuclear weapon, possibly back in April, again, say maybe one of the facilities like Ischifon, the idea presented to President Trump. Mr. President, these are low yield nuclear weapons. They are a fraction of the size of the Hiroshima bomb. There's hardly any fallout. You can barely even call these a nuclear weapon. What we can do is we can drop it on Ischifan and that will seal off that facility and the Iranians will never be able to get to that enriched uranium. And this way you can declare victory and go home. You could see that same argument can still apply this time, maybe with Pickaxe Mountain or something like that. The idea that it provides for a grand finale for the President of the United States to declare victory and go home. For the Israelis, the reasons why they have nuclear weapons is to dominate the region.
They didn't build their nuclear weapons in the 1960s to deter the Soviet Union. They built those nuclear weapons in the 60s to dominate the Middle East. And if they are now in this war where they feel they cannot dominate, where perhaps their missile stocks are running low, Iran is clearly showing a missile and drone dominance over them. They are overextended in places like Syria, Lebanon, throughout Palestine, that perhaps a nuclear weapon is what the Israelis need to assert their dominance in the region. So I don't dismiss these accounts of the use of possible use of nuclear weapons. And I'm very much afraid that there is a significant possibility of their use.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: I. How probable is it? I mean, Netanyahu faces elections at the end of the month, end of October.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, certainly with the pressure he has been under with these revelations that he knew about the October 7 attacks before they happened. I mean, come on, man. The Prime Minister of Israel getting on a plane and flying to the Emiratis to plead with Muhammad bin Zoe to take back that story.
I mean, it shows how desperate, how dangerous things may be for Benjamin Netanyahu. We have to recall, of course, that for Netanyahu, losing the election just simply doesn't mean that he goes into retirement, that he goes and hangs out with his son in Miami or something like that. No, this means that he goes to prison.
So there is very much a political reality here that Benjamin is facing, as well as a very real personal, existential reality for him as well. So to your point, this idea, then using a nuclear weapon to break the conversation, to win the war, to show the Israeli people that he is the only one who will do what's necessary to protect them, you can see how the use of a Nuclear weapon fits all those talking points and narratives.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, there's no confirmation that that was precisely the reason for Netanyahu's appearance here in the United Arab Emirates. I have to say there's about.
About 12 low ranking state Department officials resigned from the Biden Blinken genocidal cabinet when Joe Biden, Genocide Joe was in power. You resigned over Afghanistan in September 2009. You were the only one, which I. It's quite amazing that you were the only one to resign from the State Department.
Joe Kent, who's been on this show, resigned. What do you think is going on in Rubio's State Department while things like nuclear weapon use is being discussed and wiping out 90 million people is being discussed, and I'm not even sure what being discussed about the war in Europe.
How do you understand it?
[00:18:11] Speaker A: You look at Marco Rubio, you look at Pete Hegseth, you look, of course, at Donald Trump, and these are men who would all fit into an updated edition of Edward Gibbons the History of the Decline of the Roman Empire.
There's a madness, a quality of insanity to these people. You can't even.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: What about the officials of your rank? What about the officials of your rank now? Who would be in places of State Department power?
What are they doing?
[00:18:45] Speaker A: We did, we saw. We saw under the Biden administration, 12 just people do what was necessary for their own consciences as well as. As to try and give some semblance of notion to the world of what was occurring.
But now we see no one doing that. I think that a lot have already left, but many are men and women who will tread water. Many are men and women who will say they have the golden handcuffs. Many are men and women who say it's not my time to do this, or that's above my pay grade. One of the things that always haunted me during the Biden administration was watching Matt Miller, Afshin, the State Department spokesperson, who would get up in front of the world nearly every day and lie on behalf of Israel, lie and protect their genocide. And I had this understanding of how that system works, of how that building works, of how that city works, that even if, say, the Holy Mother had appeared to Matt Miller in his dreams that night and he had resigned the next day, the State Department would simply put out an email and within hours there would be a hundred people from the State Department lined up to take Matt Miller's job. We are in a situation here where we are dealing with the realities, the historical through all human civilization of the lust for power, of the lust to be proximate to power, not even be in power, but to be near power. And now, of course, what's led by these madmen who, again, as I was saying, you can't even call ideologues, you can't even say that Rubio is dedicated to a neoconservative agenda, because this is not as much as the Bush administration. Those war criminals we need to constantly remind ourselves of and deride, at least you could understand them in a sense of them being ideologues of true neoconservatives, but these people here. And so now you look to your question, this idea of who in the State Department is standing up for any semblance of what is right or on any degree of principle, and you just don't see that. And I think this is something that will continue to allow the American empire to move forward without breaking down or without collapsing because its people are abandoning it. Because you're always going to have people who are willing to fill those roles, to go in front on the podium and lie, to go overseas and kill people, to do whatever they need to do, to for whatever purposes they have. They will always do that.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: I mean, we hear that Vice President J.D. vance was against the war. Tucker Carlson told us that the other week. Dan Driscoll, your understanding, he went, he's Vance's friend, not so much over the morality, but over forced depletion. So is that why we're seeing more from the Pentagon leave arguably and go into the private sector than in the State Department?
[00:21:38] Speaker A: You know, exactly.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: That was the former Army Secretary Driscoll.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Right, right.
And recall, of course, that you had the Navy secretary leave in April and you've had at least a dozen, maybe more, I think closer to 23 and four star generals either denied promotion or forcibly retired, including the Chief of Staff of the Army, Randy George, you haven't seen from these men and women, though, any outrage. You have not seen any explanation to define their disagreements with Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump and this administration over policy.
And perhaps if we do, it's a difference in opinion over how to reshape the Pentagon. That seems to have been this disagreement between Dan Driscoll, the former army secretary, and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of defense, this idea of how to transition or transform the United States army, not over the illegal actions of that military throughout the world, not over the counterproductive policies or the policies that were not just bankrupting the United States, but also making it incapable of conducting operations anywhere else in the globe because it's overextended in the Middle East. I mean, all these explanations, all these reasons, all these arguments they could be presenting, they're not. And that goes even the admiral who resigned in Southern Command, responsible for the murders in the Eastern Pacific and in the Caribbean of people. Alvin Hussey, outright murderer on the high seas.
Yes, exactly. We've not heard from him. So this idea to kind of get back to your question about the people in the State Department applies equally to the question of the people in the US Military that if you're waiting for them to do something, if you're waiting for them to save this, this, this, this, this country, if you're waiting for them to intervene and stop these policies, stop these wars, stop these crimes, you're not going to, you know, you're going to be waiting a very long time.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Okay.
I suppose there's something quite good about that question, specifically about this week, because it's the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials.
And does anyone, you think, in elite power in Foggy Bottom at the State Department, let alone the Pentagon, understand the Nuremberg trials and what they were about and that they technically, obviously, if one talks about Nuremberg, you're talking about the hanging of Trump exit and Rubio.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: I think if we took a tour of the bedrooms of these military officers, of these diplomats in Washington, D.C. of these political appointees, let al people at the continent level or general officers, if we took a tour of their bedrooms off street and looked and saw what was on their nightstands, what their bedtime reading is.
These are not people of history. These are not serious students of the world. They're reading hagiographies of Ronald Reagan, probably. Right?
So you're dealing with a class that understands in Washington, D.C. what matters is being loyal. It's not principle, it's not history. It's certainly not being effective. So what you saw that put a point on this is go back to September of last year, when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth bring in all the generals and admirals of the US Military and all the senior enlisted leaders of the US Military, and they bring them into that auditorium in Quantico, Virginia, and Trump says flat out to them, if you don't like what I'm doing, you can get up and leave. No one gets up and leave. And you had a commentary, a commentary class here in the United States that took the American generals and admirals who were sitting there silently as Trump and Hegseth, you know, gave their rally speeches or whatever they were doing as some type of disrespect of some type of disapproval, of some type of resistance against the President and the Secretary of Defense. And that was not what that was at all. That was acquiescence, that was acceptance, that was obedience. And so this idea that you have within the American government some type of functionaries or some type of officials or some type of. Of cadre that would provide a real resistance to these illegal acts, to these people in power, it just doesn't exist and it never has existed. As you pointed out, the war in Afghanistan, which seemingly now everybody was against. I was the only person to resign from it. And when I did resign from it, the people who were supportive of me were legion.
Very hard to find someone who disagreed with my arguments against the war. But when it came time to ask, to answer your boss as to whether or not you agree with it, they all said yes. And I think that is what you have within the Washington, D.C. within the capital of the empire, this understanding that loyalty is the most important quantity of quality, right? That the loyalty is upon which everything revolves. And that's what you have, this idea
[00:26:47] Speaker B: that you have political taking orders, in effect, which was, after all, the whole point at Nuremberg.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: That's exactly right. This idea of taking orders, but also too, living the narrative, living the lie, this belief of American exceptionalism, this belief that what Americans are doing overseas is righteous, that we have white hats on that regardless of the outcomes in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan. We meant well, right? That is the type of character, that is the type of belief, that is the type of narrative to which you have to embrace if you want to rise through the military, if you want to rise through the State Department, you want to rise through the CIA.
And then, you know, of course, the loyalty that comes with that, you see. So I think this idea, this expectation that there will be those who resist, it's just not going to be answered. It's not going to be met. And you're going to see them come in ones or twos, and we should celebrate them and protect them and support them as much as we can. But this idea of that there will be some resistance from within the U.S. government, whether it be civilian or military, just. It's just not there.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Matthew Ho, thank you.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Thanks, Ashton.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: That's it for the show. Condolences to all those of you bereaved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression. We'll be back on Monday to ask a former CIA senior operations officer about CIA false flags from Syria to Britain. Until then, you can keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel, going underground TV on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going on the Grand Sea Monday.
