Renewable Revolution

Joshua Scheer:
We're definitely going to want to talk about that. We're also going to talk about Jeffrey Sterling who is another whistleblower who is still in prison. I believe he is the, at his time, was the fifth person used in history the Espionage Act by President Obama. I want to talk about this intelligence briefing because the president-elect said on Fox News this Sunday, he's a pretty smart guy. We've discussed it in brief.
 
I want to let our listeners know what this president intelligence checklist was. It started with Kennedy in '61. It was typewritten. It's stamped for president only. It has gone through, obviously, technological innovation. Obama gets it on an iPad, and Trump has kind of said, "I'll get it when anything is new. It'll go through Mike Pence. It'll go through my generals." He said, this is his quote, "If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I'm available at one-minute's notice, but eight years, I don't need that. If something should change, let us know." Talk about this, because I'm sure you've been involved in briefing the president and certainly writing these reports.

John Kiriakou:
Sure.
 

Joshua Scheer:
How important are they? Some of the intelligence community, one David Bass, I'm thinking, worked for the-
 

John Kiriakou:
Priess.
 

Joshua Scheer:
Beast, yes, worked for the State Department, worked for Bush and Clinton as a CIA intelligence officer and talks about how important it is to be informed, and that you're making these decisions and you want to know all the information. Talk about this a little bit, about the president-elect rejecting these intelligence reports.


John Kiriakou:
Yeah, we've never had a president since Kennedy who just outrightly rejected his intelligence briefings. Bill Clinton famously was not briefed by his PDB briefer. PDB is President's Daily Brief, but what the briefer would do is that he would go to the White House every morning at 7 a.m. and drop it off, and Clinton would read it at his leisure. He was only briefed in person twice during his presidency, but Gore was briefed six days a week. Clinton read the briefing later in the day, and so he was informed.
 
Now, each day's PDB is specifically tailored to the president and to his interests, and so what Trump is reading right now, or what Trump would be reading if he were being briefed is really Obama's briefing. Obama has been steeped in these issues for eight years. I can see how they might seem a little too tactical, too detailed for Trump, but that's not just what Trump said. He didn't say they were too detailed and too tactical. He said he was a smart guy already and he didn't need to be briefed. That's a mistake, unless he is going to just wholesale turnover foreign and intelligence policy to Mike Pence. If Mike Pence is going to be the de facto president on these issues, then okay, I guess there is really no reason to brief Trump. If Trump is going to still have the final word on foreign defense and intelligence policy, I think this is a big mistake.
 

Joshua Scheer:
Yeah, go on on that a little bit. Obviously, Mike Pence, this guy ... Trump is acting as if this is not even a job. This is something where it's one of the many things he will be doing, certainly has given Pence a lot of power, which is scary. Jeremy Scahill has written about this de facto Christian fascist in power. There has been others who have written about that. What do you make of this? I mean, you've obviously followed politics a long time. Certainly, we've talked about this earlier in the interview, the CIA is probably scared about this, but is to be expected both on ... Obviously, we all have other people on to talk about, the EPA.
 
We're talking about scared agencies. The EPA right now is ... The Department of Energy, I'm sorry, is hiding people's names who have worked on climate science. They're not codifying the data they have gathered over a number of years to try to say that US States like California saying they're going on alone on immigration, on climate change. I mean, this is a really tumultuous time for everybody. I mean, we talked about it a little bit earlier, but I can't imagine that this is ... I mean, this must be the most experience you've ever seen, right?
 

John Kiriakou:
Yeah, I've never seen anything like this, and I've been close to several presidents from my CIA time. Even my wife was a senior CIA officer and has been even closer in some cases to presidents than have, and he's never seen anything like this either. I had dinner with a great friend of mine on Saturday night. He was my first boss at the CIA, and he goes back to the Carter administration, and he was of the opinion that this is utterly unprecedented. What makes is so dangerous is that this is not a weak president giving a strong president the authority to handle intelligence policy. This is a strongman who has surrounded himself with generals who is giving a weak vice president the authority to lead intelligence policy.
 
He said, "It's a disaster waiting to happen," and he feared that the only time the American people are going to understand what a terrible mistake this is, is when we're the victims of a terrorist attack on American soil, and people are going to want to know why the president wasn't up on this, why the president didn't order countermeasures, why the president dropped the ball. I fear that's the direction we're going in.