Glenn Greenwald on Bill Kristol, Sean Spicer, Chelsea Manning, the CIA & more

Democracy Now
January 2, 2018

(From Democracy Now interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Glenn Greenwald)

"Glenn Greenwald on Trump-Russia Probe: Be Skeptical of Spy Agencies with History of Lying & Deceit"



GLENN GREENWALD:
.."I think that if you were to go back and look at not just the Bush years, but also the Obama years, the person, the journalist or pundit who was probably the single most disgraced and discredited was the neo-conservative editor-in-chief of "The Weekly Standard", Bill Kristol.
It wasn't just that he was this incredibly vocal advocate of the Iraq War.
His sins and crimes extend way beyond that.
He advocated for torture.
He was one of the people who wanted to go to war with Iran and have regime change in Tehran.
During the Obama years, he accused Justice Department lawyers who had represented Guantanamo detainees of being jhadists and called them "the al-Qaeda Seven"
I mean, he's one of the scummiest and least ethical smear artists in American politics over the course of 30 years, somebody who has constantly lied, defended the most atrocious policies.
And suddenly last year, because he became a critic of Donald Trump, he's now welcomed on MSNBC almost on a daily basis, talked about as though he's some kind of person whose thoughts are to be valued, who is a person of high morals."

AMY GOODMAN:
"And what's happening with Sean Spicer?"

GLENN GOODMAN:
"..the example of Sean Spicer is particularly amazing because I think most people are in agreement that the Trump administration has systematically lied to the public.
All governments lie, as I.F. Stone famously observed, but the Trump administration has taken that to an entirely new level.
And the face of that for the first six months of the administration was Sean Spicer, who stood in front of the public and lied on a daily basis.
He ought to be disqualified from public life in every decent institution.
The most amazing thing of all was that he was given a fellowship at Harvard in the Kennedy School, which is the same program that gave a fellowship to Chelsea Manning, who risked her liberty in order to provide the most valuable journalistic archive that we have in American journalism, which is the archive that she gave to WikiLeaks about the Iraq and the Afghanistan War.
She was part of that same fellowship program that Sean Spicer received, and yet the CIA objected to Chelsea Manning being given this honor, and Harvard turned around and instantly rescinded the offer to Chelsea Manning saying, 'We have to preserve the integrity of this program,' while allowing not just Sean Spicer, but Corey Lewandowski, a former top Trump campaign official, who lied repeatedly, to become part of that same program.
And I think that the point that I'm getting at, is Chelsea Manning has no power in Washington, and therefore there's accountability for her.
She spent seven years in a brutal prison and now has her offer rescinded, at the demand of the CIA, by Harvard.
But people like Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski, who continue to wield power in Washington, or David Frum and Jeffrey Goldberg and Bill Kristol, continue to climb the ladder of success."

Read entire transcript of interview, or watch full show:
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/2/glenn_greenwald_on_trump_russia_probe