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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast.

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Speaker 1: listen to the full episode, plus recent shows covering the

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Speaker 1: mysterious death of Kurt Kobain. The possibility that government may

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Speaker 1: witchcraft is told by an actual practicing which start listening

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Speaker 1: now by heading over to Coast to Coast a m

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Speaker 1: dot com at signing up for Coast Insider. Now here's

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Speaker 1: a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio,

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Speaker 1: and we're back with William Keller. Democracy Betrayed. When we

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Speaker 1: get to your calls, I'd be very curious to see

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Speaker 1: if you think that our democracy has been betrayed. I

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Speaker 1: think it has indeed. Now the question to William, will

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Speaker 1: it get worse or will it go the other way? Well,

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Speaker 1: I think that has a lot to do with, uh,

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Speaker 1: how accurate the information people can get is and the

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Speaker 1: problem with getting it nation to people. And well, actually

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Speaker 1: in a democracy it's usually very easy to get information

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Speaker 1: to people. But the problem in our democracy is what

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Speaker 1: I call secrecy and the classification system, and if it's

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Speaker 1: all right, I'll say a few words about that. The

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Speaker 1: role of secrecy um and the official reason for it

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Speaker 1: is simply to protect the national security. Now, I had

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Speaker 1: a top secret clearance and various nuclear clearances for ten years.

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Speaker 1: But I have to tell you that actually almost all

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Speaker 1: of the information classified documents that I reviewed didn't have

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Speaker 1: anything to do with national security at all. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: security means uh that there's no public record, So it's

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Speaker 1: it's not accountable the way that other things are in

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Speaker 1: our society. So it leads to a lot of waste

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Speaker 1: the intelligence agencies, uh right, about fifty intelligence reports year.

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Speaker 1: And it leads to fraud too, because it's very hard

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Speaker 1: to audit secret intelligence budgets. I mean, there's trillions of dollars,

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Speaker 1: aren't we I don't know how much we're missing, but

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Speaker 1: but certainly is a lot. And it's it's just unaccountable

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Speaker 1: because these budgets don't appear in the national budget. They're

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Speaker 1: just blank pages. And it also leads to a lot

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Speaker 1: of abuse because the classification system is used to cover

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Speaker 1: up problems like misconduct of individuals or cost overruns on

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Speaker 1: big budget items. So uh, you know you already brought

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Speaker 1: out the fact that since nine eleven, the the budgets

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Speaker 1: have increased by a factor of four and it's something

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Speaker 1: like a hundred and twenty billion a year. But but

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Speaker 1: we have no idea how that is divided among the

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Speaker 1: many different UH secret government or entities organizations. UM. We

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Speaker 1: do know that hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of

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Speaker 1: people work in the surveillance security sector. And astonishingly, astonishingly,

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Speaker 1: we know that one point five one and a half

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Speaker 1: million people hold top secret clearances today. And you have

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Speaker 1: to ask, what are all these people doing? And why

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Speaker 1: do we need so many? You know, it's only about

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Speaker 1: three or four million people in the government. Why the

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Speaker 1: half of them have to have top secret clearances? Is

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Speaker 1: the question? UM. Now the question always comes up is

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Speaker 1: the release of top secret UH and classified information? Is

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Speaker 1: it serious? How serious is the unauthorized releasing stuff? Absolutely?

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Speaker 1: For for example, it could be very very serious George

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Speaker 1: agents could be killed, for example, or if it's the

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Speaker 1: nuclear secret, the secrets could be revealed to a rogue state.

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Speaker 1: So there are certain things that need to be held

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Speaker 1: very closely. UM. But in actual practices, only a very

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Speaker 1: few classified documents are actually important. Let's bring up your example,

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Speaker 1: Ed snowdon Uh he's stole one point seven or one million,

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Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand ns A documents as National Security classified documents. Uh,

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Speaker 1: of which he released about two hundred thousand. So why

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Speaker 1: didn't he release all of them? Well, he still got

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Speaker 1: a million and a half to go. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, is he still ongoing releasing things? Ah, he

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Speaker 1: could at any time. I haven't seen a release for

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Speaker 1: for you know, a year. But uh. Anyway, he revealed

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Speaker 1: the existence of many widespread surveillance programs like the prison

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Speaker 1: program or the X key score or Tempura, which one

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Speaker 1: of them read your emails. And the interesting thing is

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Speaker 1: it not much happened. Okay, two hundred thousand documents fly

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Speaker 1: out the window to the press, and very little happens

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Speaker 1: except we learned that the National Security Agency is spying

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Speaker 1: on us, which we always knew, and that the high

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Speaker 1: tech business sector was helping them. Let's get another example.

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Speaker 1: Army intelligent annalist Private Bradley Manning. He's I guess now

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Speaker 1: he's Chelsea Chelsea Manning. Yeah, she released or he at

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Speaker 1: the time, I guess, released seven and fifty thousand military

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Speaker 1: related documents see, soldiers could have gotten killed with that,

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Speaker 1: but not much happened. That's the thing that's just scary.

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Speaker 1: I mean that it is this trivial information or what's

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Speaker 1: going on that So to me, that's why the issue

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Speaker 1: of whether or not Hillary Clinton had a few classified

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Speaker 1: documents under private server was not really an issue, you know,

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Speaker 1: um so uh to me. And this is going to

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Speaker 1: sound very strange. I'm a very patriotic person, by the way,

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Speaker 1: but the fact is that the release of classified information

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Speaker 1: often from both democracy because people get to know what

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Speaker 1: their government is doing, and that means that when they know,

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Speaker 1: at least they can have an open debate about it.

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Speaker 1: Let me ask you, let's counter this with looking at

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Speaker 1: Russia for a second to two fold question Number one,

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Speaker 1: if Kim john On would threaten Vladimir Putin like he

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Speaker 1: is threatened President Trump in this country, what do you

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Speaker 1: think Putin would be doing right about now? Uh? You know.

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Speaker 1: To me, Putin is is somewhat of a mystery. I

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Speaker 1: think what he is doing is he's trying to I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's outright militarism. I think he's trying to

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Speaker 1: restore the Russian people's sense of identity right, But I

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Speaker 1: think if he were threatened like Kim has threatened us,

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Speaker 1: he would have attacked him. By now he might although

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Speaker 1: you know he's awful close there, you've got a border. Well.

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Speaker 1: I still think if he were provoked, if he were attacked,

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Speaker 1: if he were pushed, if videos were made of Russian

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Speaker 1: aircraft carriers being destroyed by nukes or or sure that

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Speaker 1: would that would do so. But but here's the very

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Speaker 1: key point of UH. I also have done a lot

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Speaker 1: of work in the area of non proliferation and and proliferation. UH.

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Speaker 1: Nuclear weapons can never be used. They are not a

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Speaker 1: war fighting weapon. There a war deterring weapon exactly. It's

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Speaker 1: a weapon of mass destruction. So when we begin to say,

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Speaker 1: well we could take them out with a few nukes,

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Speaker 1: that's just a completely insane thing to talk about. You're

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Speaker 1: taking out the entire country. Practice take out the whole country,

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Speaker 1: and you know what happens if you fire too many

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Speaker 1: dukes off. And this is something we've only learned in

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Speaker 1: the last few years, is the atmosphere I nits around

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Speaker 1: the earth, So you really don't get's whole A great

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Speaker 1: book called Whole World on Fire and explains how that works.

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Speaker 1: They were afraid when they developed the atomic bomb for

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Speaker 1: World War Two, Oppenheimer and groups, they were afraid that

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Speaker 1: the entire atmosphere from just one was going to ignite. Right,

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Speaker 1: And and what would happen if you blew off a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of them is not at first it would start,

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Speaker 1: you know, massive fires everywhere, and then that and then

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Speaker 1: the whole world would just be on fire, and you

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Speaker 1: might ignite the all the oxygen as well. But uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a terrible thing. So we don't talk about

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Speaker 1: using nuclear weapons. We talked about not using them, and

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Speaker 1: they're kind of ultimate deterrence. Now, this thing that's been

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Speaker 1: going on with the Kim's Kim dynasty there, Kim John

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Speaker 1: Un and his father and grandfather. Uh, it's been going

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Speaker 1: on for a very long time. For almost twenty years now,

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Speaker 1: they've been working the nuclear thing one way or another.

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Speaker 1: We have never you know, this has gone on. We

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Speaker 1: never stopped them. Democratic presidencies and administrations, Republican administrations. We

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Speaker 1: just never had a way to do it. And somehow

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Speaker 1: they have gotten a whole lot more advanced technology than

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Speaker 1: they had. I'm going to make a prediction, William, right

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Speaker 1: here and now that if he does one more ballistic

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Speaker 1: launch test towards the country, like towards Japan or towards

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Speaker 1: the islands of Guam, I think we're going in. That's

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Speaker 1: my that's my guess. We might do something. And if

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Speaker 1: it was a conventional attack, it had to be pretty

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Speaker 1: good because even though it's old Soviet equipment, you know

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Speaker 1: that that line parallel there for the second Paris just

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Speaker 1: has guns on all sides of it. Absolutely, there's there's

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Speaker 1: enough there to hurt some of our thirty five thousand

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Speaker 1: troops and the South Koreans who are in Seoul. Well, yes,

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Speaker 1: Soul is within range of the artillery and there's about

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Speaker 1: seventeen million people there. So if you've seen the city,

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Speaker 1: it's a jewel of the city, very modern extremes. Well,

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Speaker 1: let me ask you this and we'll go to some

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Speaker 1: calls or lining up to talk to you. Based on

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Speaker 1: your research that you put together in the book Democracy Betrayed,

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Speaker 1: are you saying that this is a bad thing or

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Speaker 1: a good thing for us right now? I think that

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Speaker 1: it is a threat to our democratic system at this point.

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Speaker 1: And then we need to take the intelligence community and

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Speaker 1: the what I call the complex and just ramp it

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Speaker 1: down to just about nine eleven levels below that, we

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Speaker 1: know a lot more now we've been woken up. It

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Speaker 1: was the wake up call from hell, and we did

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Speaker 1: wake up. We're a lot smarter than we were. But

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Speaker 1: we don't need to be organizing large parts of our

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Speaker 1: government around us, and we don't need to be engaging

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Speaker 1: in endless foreign wars uh to track down the last

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Speaker 1: terrorist and staying there forever. Yeah, we don't know what

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Speaker 1: a terrorist is anyway, you know, we don't. We don't

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Speaker 1: have a way to define it. I mean, everybody knows

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Speaker 1: that when you see it. I think the guy in

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Speaker 1: Las Vegas was a terrorist, you know, I mean, well

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Speaker 1: into some form of fashion. He was, well, he sure

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Speaker 1: would have felt like that if you were at the

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Speaker 1: rock concert, Yeah, you sure would have. I mean, to me,

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Speaker 1: the definition of terrorism is merely that to instill terror,

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what your ideology is or what you know,

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Speaker 1: what the purpose. If it happens, it happens. And there's

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Speaker 1: always going to be some level of random violence in

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Speaker 1: our society. We know that, and we do tolerate a

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Speaker 1: lot of gun violence. You know, ten h ten thousand

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Speaker 1: people this year have been killed by it. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: I'm not taking a position on that one way or

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Speaker 1: the other for the purposes program, but you know you could.

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Speaker 1: Since we have so little terrorism terrorism in this country,

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Speaker 1: it's time to go back and and venerate our democratic

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Speaker 1: institution and our first principles and you know, take back democracy,

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Speaker 1: you know, for for people like you and me. Listen

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Speaker 1: to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: a m. Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more