[00:00:02] Speaker A: KMUD Podcast presents.
Good evening and welcome to the show. This is global stuff. My name is Jimmy Derschlag, and if you haven't heard the show before this, we talk to a lot of people who are involved in some amazing work, doing good things around the world and around the country and bringing important information to all of us. Been doing this for a long time now. So if you're new to listening to us, welcome to the show. Really pleased. Certainly our guest tonight falls in that category.
That's Colleen Rowley. Colleen is a retired FBI agent, special agent in the FBI for 24 years, and she now works with a variety of organizations. In 2002, she was named one of Time magazine's Persons of the Year for exposing and sharing some of the FBI's 911 intelligence with official congressional investigations. She's spoken at numerous academic and other professional venues with an emphasis on ethical decision making. And a longtime member of Women Against Military Madness and Veterans for Peace.
Recently spending a lot of time talking about and exposing some of the things that are going on between Israel and Palestine was, and I'm sure she'll tell us something about dad. Recently part of a freedom flotilla to Istanbul to deliver over £5,500 of aid for the people in Gaza. So welcome to the show, Colleen. Thanks so much for making the time to be here.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for having me. Just a slight correction. The freedom flotilla was not allowed to ever depart from Istanbul.
The plan was to take over 5,000 tons, not pounds, of humanitarian aid. And Erdogan has stopped it. It was stopped for different reasons. And you know, it's politically very difficult. Even though all of the international courts now say that Israel is committing genocide and starving its people and yet can't get humanitarian aid in. No private, no individuals can get it in. Israel stops the ones that do try.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you making that correction, but so it's kind of just sitting there and you don't really have a way to get it to the people in Gaza. Are you still working on that?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: They're still working on it. In fact, the humanitarian agency, there were a host of humanitarian organizations that tried to sail aid into Gaza since 2010. Actually, I think beginning in 2009, in 2010, Israel boarded the one ship. Well, they boarded all the ships and shot people.
And anyway, the organization that's behind this has sent the aid to the trucks that are waiting. There's, I guess it's a five mile backup of trucks that cannot get in. And in some cases they're looted by different Israeli settlers or Stopped. And I think just a trickle gets into the south. The north of Gaza is completely starving right now. Completely famine, everything.
It's awful. So it was eventually sent and got into some trucks. But I don't think it ever has gotten in.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: You know, the situation there is extremely serious and I know you're very focused on that.
What do you think about these charges that have come through the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and his defense minister Gallant? And that's supposedly they can't go into a lot of countries now without getting arrested at all. The US Used to be a participant in the icc. I think it was Trump that got us out of there. So he came to the US and addressed, of course that was before these charges. But if we were still members of the icc, he couldn't come here without getting arrested. We'll see if anything comes out of that. I guess that's some kind of a step against the extreme actions that Israel's been taking.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yes.
Here's my recollection of the icc. I think they were considering signing the Rome Treaty. That was the, that founded the International Criminal Court.
But then Clinton, way back, it's way long ago Clinton was told not to sign it because we never want, the United States never wants to be held accountable no matter what they, what war crimes they commit.
So Israel and the United States are not members and, but there's a hundred, and I think it's 130 some members around the world. The history of the International Criminal Court is that they really were used as a tool to go after various African leaders. So different. I know that the president of Liberia was prosecuted by the icc and there's been others, Rwanda I think. And the only, most of them were in African black countries, black leaders that were prosecuted. And the United States was okay. I mean we didn't really, I guess the United States didn't much care one way or the other, but they were fine with prosecuting other countries.
And then they also used it to go after Slobodan Milosevic for the Serbian crimes. And the United States States was fine. They wanted, you know, wanted to prosecute. Then most recently, just before the ICC prosecuted it charged Netanyahu and Gallant and Hamas leaders. By the way, it's, it's a very fair and balanced prosecution. It's also charging Hamas leaders as well. But before that they charged Putin for a very strange thing. They called it kidnapping children, but basically it was removing children from the front because it was a war zone. So they took some Russian, ethnically Russian children from The Donbass into Russia and the ICC charged Putin in three weeks. In three weeks time, Putin was charged. And European members of the ICC and NATO members and even the United States, even though it's not a member, applauded that charge. But then when it came to going after Netanyahu in Israel for their war crimes, it was a completely different story.
Initially, if you go all the way back to when there was a. I forget what her last name was, Ben Suda. And so she was the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and she was looking at war crimes in Afghanistan and I think maybe also Israel too, but I know for sure Afghanistan of the United States. And our leadership in the United States went ballistic.
They put sanctions on the prosecutor, on the International Criminal Court, Prosecutor Ben Suda. They would not, they would not let her give her a visa to come into the United States. And there's a notion that she was threatened, actually with her family. Everything was threatened. So she was removed or she resigned or her term was over. And then they put in place this new prosecutor, Khan, who was very friendly with European nations in the United States, and they thought he's the one who charged Putin. And they thought, okay, we have our person. We won't have any problems with Khan.
When there was such an outcry about this ongoing genocide, even Khan had to eventually open an investigation, but he dragged his feet for at least five, six months. And yes, when you asked about. This is a slow response to my reaction to the, to yesterday's news that the arrest warrants were finally given. And I forgot one thing. They even changed the three judges that actually sign off on the warrants. There's a three judge panel and they even at least two of the three judges were exchanged with friendly judges who are friendly to Israel and they've written good things about Israel in the past, et cetera. So they even did that.
So, yes, I was surprised. I actually have to say that it was a surprising thing that finally, after all this time, the International Criminal Court did charge Netanyahu and Gallant. You can wonder why they didn't charge SMotrick and Ben Gvir, who are two of the other top officials in Israel that have called for starving the people of Gaza. And they've made all these admissions. It's not a hard case, by the way, because they've admitted that they're committing genocide in many ways. They have hundreds of pages of evidence on this. So it's not a difficult case, evidence wise.
But the only two charged were Netanyahu and Gallant. And I'm actually surprised now.
What's the result of that? I studied international law a long time ago before I joined the FBI. I actually spent a summer at the World Court in 1979.
I think I might be nearly as old as you. I graduated from law school in 1980. And so I spent the summer of 79 studying international law at the World Court, which is the International Court of Justice, not the icc, but it's in the same place in the Hague.
So I know a lot about international law. And the thing is, it's called soft law because there's no, like, FBI that can enforce or a police agency that can enforce a court's orders. And so they have to depend upon member countries to basically adhere to these orders. Now, if a member country doesn't adhere to the order or is in, you know, complete. What's the word? You know, in contempt of the order, I suppose there's some other things that the court can do, but essentially they do not have an enforcement, a hard enforcement thing. So, yes, if Netanyahu comes here, we're not a member of the icc. As I said, the United States wouldn't join it. Nothing will happen. The question is, there's a question, what will happen if Netanyahu or Gallant want to travel to Europe? The European Union is a member of the icc and they're over the barrel now because they do not want to do take any action against Israel. Even Canada is in this same situation. And they, they kind of are hedging. They're hedging when, when reporters are asking them. Now they're not answering the question. Now, in theory, they are supposed to take action and arrest Netanyahu, but the question is, will they? Small countries, you know, less powerful countries, are hard pressed to go up because at this point, it's more or less law of the jungle, the rule of law, especially internationally, but obviously even here in the United States to some extent has really kind of, you know, gone up in smoke. And it's a, it's a big hypocrisy that we're waging wars. We've been waging wars for 20 some years now, even before I retired from the FBI. The war on terror, which involved the Mideast, and then now the proxy war in Ukraine. All these wars are for democracy. We claim that we're trying to bring democracy to the world. And yet here in the United States, I mean, we could be here all night talking about the various illegal things and very undemocratic actions that have occurred here in the United States.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: The many threats to democracy which were brought up in the election but didn't seem to change the results at all.
I want to remind the listeners this is global stuff. My name's Jimmy Derschlag. My guest for this live show, Colleen Rowley. He's a retired FBI special agent and has been working since then on a variety of issues related to the military actions around the world and opposing those military actions. She's part of the Women Against Military Madness.
The impetus behind bringing you on the show, and we will get to that, was this transition of the Trump presidency and some of his appointments. And you've looked at them in how they, we anticipate them influencing US International relations, Israel and Gaza. What we were talking about on how some of these specific appointments I almost he's appointed over 40 people have been named to the various positions. So they're very rapidly putting it's like a subdivision of, of Fox, the Fox network right now. There's so many people that he's appointed who have some relationship to Fox, either having been on it as, as hosts or in, in other ways. It's pretty remarkable. That seems to be his bullpen, so to speak. Not, not exclusively, but certainly a lot of that. But one of the things that was a driving force since we have been talking about Israel and in Gaza and will continue to do so in the elections, seems to be a blowback against the Biden administration and their support for Netanyahu. And yet it seems like Trump has always been buddy buddy with Bibi. And in fact the anticipation is that he will give, I don't know if he'll give him free rein, but certainly not come out in any strong way against the actions that Israel is taking in Gaza. Doesn't that seem somewhat ironic to you that this was a force perhaps in how the election went? The people who objected to the US Support for Israel and yet and were upset about what was happening in Gaza and yet now the guy in office is potentially much worse with Trump's campaign.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: I think he clearly misled the voters to a large extent about being the so called peace candidate. Of course, the country right now is war weary. I mentioned we've been at war, perpetual war. Remember John McCain when he ran, he said we're going to be in War for 100 years. I think people have forgotten this. This was back in 2008 and he bragged before he ran, he said our country is going to be at war for a hundred years. Well, so far he's not been proven wrong. He's been proven correct. We've been at perpetual war for 20 some years. And so, yes, people now are starting finally, even without a draft, as we had in Vietnam, where it became very unpopular with a draft, but even without a draft and waging these proxy wars and aerial bombing campaigns instead of boots on the ground, it's become very unpopular. If you, if you do the polls, it's somewhere, I think they said, like against the genocide. It's overall in the United States, 70% of Americans want that genocide to end. On the Democrat side, it's 80%. It's even higher.
So it's a very high percentage of people that want that to end. And actually a large percentage of people also want the proxy war in Ukraine to end, especially as it's gotten even more dangerous and we're practically heading into World War three right now. So Trump, when he was running, he made a very more or less firm promises that he would end the war in Ukraine. He said, I can end it in one day. And then when reporters would say, well, how can you do that? What's your plan? He wouldn't tell people what his plan was to end it in one day. But you know, he did make a firm promise that he would end the war in Ukraine. Now on Israel, that was, he never made a promise that he would end the genocide, but what he did in his surrogates tried to, I think they actually misled the public. And I don't know if you remember, but in the final days, Trump actually went to Michigan because Michigan has a certain percentage of Muslim and Palestinian Americans and he wanted to get their votes. And you know, people gave him kudos because, you know, those are kind of your enemy. Everyone knows that you're, you're very entwined with Netanyahu in a lot of ways. They're like really close.
Trump's son in law is like the godson of Netanyahu. I mean, there's a whole bunch of ties there. And in this first administration, the Adelsons, who are the Israel lobby's top funders, multimillion dollars. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave tons of money to Trump way back before he even won in 2016. And then he pretty much did everything they wanted. He moved the Capitol to Jerusalem. He, he said that they could annex the Golan Heights. A whole bunch of things that he did that were actually shocking at the time. But you know, it was because of him wanting to support Israel and the Adelsons to, to basically all the money they gave him. And, and there was also, there was a talk that the Adelsons spent more time in the White House in this one room that they never, you know, they were always there and he, he bragged about that. So when he somehow, like I said, misled people to say that he was for peace and even, even the people in Michigan, he even went there, I mean, I thought to myself, how could they fall for that? I mean, honestly, how that's kind of crazy that they would have thought that he's going to bring peace.
Maybe it's because people are so desperate right now and they don't have any other avenue. They don't know what else to do. So they, so there were people that fell for it. I will say the one, there are Republicans and they come from this, this tradition that started with Ron Paul. If you remember, he was an anti war Republican and at one point he had, he was leading the other candidates. He had more, more states and everything for a while. And then they put, just like Bernie Sanders, the Republicans pushed Ron Paul out. But those people that are still want to have, they're kind of the true America first people. They fell for Trump being a peace president. And again, this was because he was, he definitely firmly promised on Ukraine, not so firmly said anything on Israel, but people still thought that he might help.
And there were, you know, if you remember some of the surrogates for Trump like Tucker Carlson and others, they thought there was a better chance with Trump than with Kamala, which, you know, that was a known quantity having been there for four years now. The question is, will they be disappointed when they find out that, you know, Trump is not either not going to change anything from the Biden administration or possibly with Israel? Israel's genocide may actually be worse because Trump has said, I will let them finish the job now. No, what does that mean, finish the job? Most people think, okay, it means finish the genocide. So it may, you know, they've already killed Ralph Nader and Lancet think that at least a couple hundred thousand Palestinians have been killed. Well, there's 2 million more and they're starving. And so most people think Trump will go with Israel and the Adelsons and let possibly millions more die. And then is, well, they will they be disappointed? Even the people, like I said, there are some anti war Republicans and will they be disappointed?
[00:22:36] Speaker A: It's hard to know because like you said, you could say so many things about the campaign.
Your statement, how do they fall for that?
You could put that on a lot of the things that were said during the campaign. So you wonder if they'll fall for whatever that they're so enmeshed in drinking the Kool Aid that no matter what they say, somehow he'll get their support. But I do want to move on to, you know, what we were going to talk about some of the people who are going to have a major influence on foreign policy. One of the first and of course such a critical appointment for how the US Operates within the world. You know, Trump said so much during the campaign about how he'sour standing in the world has fallen down so much during Biden and I'm going to bring it back up again. Of course he didn't have a great record of that during his first term, but he appointed as his secretary of state appointment that will considering all the controversy around some of these other appointments which will undoubtedly get approved anyways, he appointed Marco Rubio who on the surface of it seems like almost moderate compared to some of of his other appointments. I know he isn't, but he has come out, you know, supported some positions during Trump's first administration that were not supported by Trump. So I'm wondering about, let's start there with Marco Rubio. How do you feel about that appointment and what it means?
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Well, I agree with you that he is almost certain to sail through the confirmation and he, I don't agree with you that he is somehow more moderate than the rest of them actually in terms of foreign policy, war, the genocide, ongoing genocide and actually even Ukraine war. He was all for arming Ukraine and using them to to so called weaken Russia. Now when, when Trump, a lot of times when Trump is naming these people, they somehow quickly morph their position a little bit. So Rubio was all for this but now in the last bit he has had to, what's the word? Adjust to Trump's position about this. I think frankly Rubio is the worst choice and I will tell you why. Back in back when they were having these interviews in before 2016 election, when Trump won the Adelsons, the Israel lobby picked Rubio first. Trump was only their third pick. After Rubio failed out, I think they first picked Rubio again. They go and have interviews with the Adelsons because you're talking millions and millions of dollars. This isn't like a little campaign donation. It almost determines the election. And so they so all of your Republican side go to have these interviews and they first picked Rubio. Then I think the second one they picked after he failed out was Cruz. And then the very third one they picked was Trump. Trump actually is worrisome for that neocon position because he puts his foot in his mouth all the time. The allies do not like him.
He thinks NATO should pay their own way, which is not popular with the Europeans. There's a lot of things that he's done that if you were part of the deep state establishment and telling him what to do and then he'd say, I'm not going to do that. And even in his first administration, he didn't follow advice that was given to him. He said, of course he said a lot of dumb things. He, he was embarrassing and he just simply can't be controlled. But Rubio will be like the next, I would say Blinken to Biden. You know, a lot of people now don't think Biden is making any of these decisions. They think Blinken and Sullivan are the power behind the throne and Rubio will likely be one of the powers, if not the power behind Trump. So I would say he's the worst one. But yes, he's going to sail through. He's respected by Democrats. That's the key thing when you're trying to get the confirmation is that you can't just have your own party loyalty.
Gates just found out that he didn't even have his own party loyalty, let alone could he get any Democrats. But so Rubio, the war hawk Democrats highly respect Rubio. And so, I mean, I think it's awful that this is the case because it does show you that there's a little bit of a false distinction between the two sides of the war party there. But they do respect him and I don't think and also I would be surprised if Rubio has had any sex allegations against him. That kind of dirt they can use. So he's going to sail through. But I think on foreign policy, I think he's the worst and he'll probably.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Take the lead in dealing with Ukraine. I would guess this promise that Trump mentioned that he's going to end it in a day. It seems like Rubio will be out front with that. I don't know what he'll offer to do that, but.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Well, Trump is going to have a lot of trouble now because Biden administration has given the green light to the Ukrainians to launch attack of missiles deep into Russia. And a lot of the former, I guess you would say former military. I'm in a group with Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter and there was former CIA. Former were the veteran intelligence professionals, Larry Wilkerson. There's, there's a bunch of us and we are all extremely worried about what's going on now. And Basically, it's so dangerous, even writers are saying it's like playing nuclear chicken. So. So if we even make it, by the way, if we even make it to Trump's inauguration, I mean, then Trump will have that, you know, his day to end. Ukraine, he's going to have trouble.
And it's for a lot of reasons. One is Trump hasn't been realistic about what Russia now, the territory that they have gained control of. Partly because here in the United States, our mainstream media keeps telling it. They never tell us about the problems that Zelensky and Ukraine are having. They keep telling us, oh, we're sending billions more, we're sending missiles and tanks and. And they're. And they're fighting for democracy. We hear all the good stuff, but we never hear any of the bad things. And one of the things now is Ukraine is losing badly. And so because Russia has gained more territory and now it will be more difficult for Trump to come up with some deal to end this, because why would Russia, if you think about it, after they've lost, I don't know how many people they've lost in this, but they've certainly lost at least a couple hundred thousand of their young men fighting. And, you know, they're not gonna. They're not gonna say, oh, well, we're gonna go back to the first deal that was worked out. If you realize this was about three months after the war started.
There was a deal worked out, and all it was was they weren't even going to give back the. The Dunbass. They were just going to let them have an election and to give them some kind of, like, little bit of. A little bit of independence for the Russia, the ethnically Russian territory that. That Russia is wanting to. To gain control of. After three months, they had worked out a deal, I think it was in Istanbul, and then we sent Boris Johnson over. No, keep fighting. But that deal actually was very favorable to everyone. It basically said that. That Ukraine would be joined NATO, but it was very favorable. And that is not going to be the case now, because after 14 months, excuse me, after two years, two and a half years, they now do. They have made significant gains. So Trump's going to have a lot of trouble. And Rubio, I don't think he cares. I don't care. Think he wants to. I think he would be right now on the Democrat side of Biden's side of allowing this missile strike, as dangerous as this is, because Russia now has new missiles, supersonic missiles. They can put nuclear warheads. They're threatening that if they are attacked, which they are being attacked right now, that they will then launch these nukes on European capitals and everything else. I don't want to be, go ahead. I don't want to be. What's the word? You know, look like it's, I'm panicking here. But this, these are, these are people like former ambassadors Matlock and Chaz Freeman. These are people who are 40 years in the government. They know everything about the inside and outside of all of these deals that have gone on in the past. And they're worried as hell about the situation right now. And it's actually Biden and that has started, has done this. And I, my guess Rubio is not going to have any problem with continuing that somehow and even escalating because there's, there's very little room to escalate now. There's, it's before we get into nuclear war. But I think he, he might do it because he's very ideologue.
Obviously, people know that he hates Cuba because he's a Cuban American and somehow he hates Cuba. So a lot of the foreign policy, it's not hard to predict what Rubio will do.
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[00:33:45] Speaker A: This is global stuff. My name is Jimmy Derschlag. We are talking with Colleen Rowley, who's retired FBI agent named in 2002 one of Times magazine's Persons of the Year for exposing and sharing some of the FBI's 911 intelligence with official congressional investigations.
Long time activist against war, part ofWomen against MilitaryMadness.org you can go to their site that's all those words Together, women against militarymadness.org to learn more about them. We're talking about a lot of different things, mainly about what's happening with the US and foreign policy and these military actions around the world and how that will be affected by the Trump administration.
This is a call in show if you have a brief comment or question, mainly for Colleen, about this conversation, this discussion. The Number here is 707-923-3911. Appreciate Dennis coming in on a short notice and holding down the engineering fort here. And so if you want to call in about this, otherwise we will continue discussing this. You brought up Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary who is one of the people.
There's more and more accusations coming out about his past activities.
Seems so common, doesn't it, that these guys in power think they can get away with that kind of stuff. Although it's coming out against him. I know that there's a lot of Trump and others are going to bat for him and other Republicans, but.
And he's the Fox guy. He's one of the Fox hosts and comes from, has been doing that most recently and has a military background. But there are some questions about his time in the military as well. Not as stellar as he makes it out to be, but yeah, why don't you take it from there. What comments do you have about Mr. Hegseth?
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make him my number two worst choice that Trump has picked for the reason is that Secretary of Defense is a powerful position. I think he, he and Rubio will not have any disagreements between them. Hegseth has glorifies war. He's written books about war being a crusade, like a holy crusade and he's taken the side of war. Even war criminals that were prosecuted by the military and convicted of horrible crimes. You know, we've committed a whole bunch of Abu Ghraib type crimes and killing of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And Hegseth in his position as a Fox pundit was able to lobby Trump during his first administration to get those people off scot free. Even though the military wants to enforce, they don't want to be seen as we are now seeing Israel. You know, our military wants to make it look like it's professional and that you don't commit horrible crimes and kill women and, and civilians and this type of thing. So. But that's Hegseth's background. She wants to, he, he wasn't a high ranking officer. So you know, like the Eisenhowers of the world. You know, you pick somebody who was a four star general or somebody like Lloyd Austin. Lloyd Austin. You know you, you can say that he, he was a Raytheon, he made a lot of money, you know, revolving door afterwards and going to Raytheon. But ranking military officer, whereas Pete Hagseth is some. What was his highest rank? It's like major, it's in the National Guard. He's, he never went up to up the ranks and you know, yes he did serve in Afghanistan and Iraq and yes, he absolutely loves war. He's, etc. He's not. This is where he's very different than what Trump made people think that he was. Would bring peace.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Yeah, he wrote this book, he wrote this book the War on Warriors behind the Betrayal of the Men who Keep Us Free where he said he's revealing the left wing betrayal of our warriors. So he's got it. He's definitely got a bug about the left opposing the military and I guess he wraps that all up together. We do have a caller though.
Hi, you're on here.
[00:38:49] Speaker C: Hi.
Interesting conversation.
I think we, well, I feel that the best thing we can do is.
How do I put this? Like, I don't want to pay attention to anybody who's telling lies.
So like, so I, I suggest that we have more conversations like this and we have people's assembly where like no, there's nobody boss over us because we know better.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Well, let's see. I don't know if the elect recent election proved that, but what do you think about that? Maybe Colleen has a comment about that. Should we all be getting together and talking about this?
[00:39:49] Speaker B: You know, in years gone by and I go way back when I retired from The FBI in 2004, I ran for Congress in Minnesota in 2006. And at that time many of our elected congress house members as well as senators would hold something called town halls. There may still be a few of the 535 elected, elected, appointed politicians who do that, but most of them have gone away from having any kind of direct contact with. And I'm speaking from Minnesota. Maybe there are some states where they still can get direct contact with their senator or representative. In Minnesota, you cannot go in and talk to a senator at all, nor do they hold town halls. The only time they will talk with members, just ordinary people, is if it's a fundraising event. And even then it's pretty screened.
Our House congresswoman here is Angie Craig and she's one that's voted over and over to support the genocide and she will not have any town halls at all. The only thing she will, you know, she did have one big fundraising event and you know, no one could go in who, who opposed her. They had to give money to her before they could even go into this event. I think that that's Minnesota and Minnesota is pretty progressive. So I'm thinking that if that's the practice here in Minnesota, it's probably, probably the practice any other districts in the, in the country. So democracy would require town halls. Yes, you have to have a way of interacting with your elected leaders then secondly, some states still have referendums. So instead of voting for a, you know, we just talked about politicians who lie or make false promises. And of course people know this by now. By now we know Obama said he would close Guantanamo. I mean every single president makes promises on the campaign trail and then afterwards they laugh about it. Oh well, that was just a promise. I sit on the campaign trail. Don't you know, we never keep promises on the campaign trail. And that's the problem of trying to hold. It's the problem of trying to hold them accountable, because they'll just say, well, that was just. I couldn't do it. And they'll make up some reason. But a referendum is where California holds referendums. And there are some pluses and minuses to these things. But the good thing about a referendum, Minnesota's only had one that I know of in recent history, and it was on gay marriage. And it was a fluke because normally Minnesota will not allow a referendum on the ballot where you can actually go in and vote on an issue issue instead of voting for one party or the other, making campaign promises.
So this one on the gay marriage, the Republicans, for some reason, thought that it would be a winning thing to put it on the ballot. And then the Democrats said, oh, yeah, put it on the ballot. Put it on the ballot. And they did. And of course, it went overwhelmingly. This was back when gay marriage was not legal. And so the referendum changed everything in Minnesota. The people came out, they voted on an issue. It wasn't a politician promising that he would bring a bill to get gay marriage. You actually voted directly. And I think the lady that just called in is kind of going in the direction of, why can't people. Why can't we have more direct democracy voting directly on an issue and. And, you know, being able to at least argue, even. And I'm sorry to take the time here, but this is very, very important. You know, the group I'm in, Women Against Military Madness, is 47 years nonprofit. It has a lot. It's twice as long, three times longer than Veterans for Peace. It was founded by a lady. She finally died at 103 back in the 70s. I mean, it was founded a long time ago. And yet right now, because the House just voted that they can. They can end nonprofits with a stroke.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: He can just wipe it out. Yes, the president can just wipe it out.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Yep. No due process, no hearing.
The Women Against Military Madness. You know, we're mostly old ladies. I'm one of the younger ones. Like I said, the founder died at 103. And so we're mostly old ladies. And, you know, we do hold signs, you know, but we're not. We're not terrorists. And I have a feeling the congresswoman in my district voted with the Republic to. To empower Trump to have this power to end nonprofits, even though she's a Democrat, Angie Craig, because she supports Israel. And she thinks that the students and some, the Veterans for Peace, the Jewish Voices for Peace, she thinks that they are terrorists. And she would, she would have no, if it had been for, if it had been to give Kamala, if Kamala had been elected and Harris had been elected, there'd been no, she wouldn't have had any reason not to vote to enable us. And she even voted to enable Trump even though she's a Democrat now. Yeah, go back to your democracy. How are we going to function when there is no dissent? Because you can't even have an organization, a non profit organization.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Let me jump in here again. This is global stuff. Not a lot of time left in the show. Having a great conversation with Colleen Rowley, retired FBI and talking about her involvement with Women Against Military Madness. You can go to their website if you want all those words strung together.
WomenAgainstMilitaryMadness.org and that's something that you brought up that's so incredible to me that the Democrats who voted along with the Republicans on that bill, I'm hoping it'll get voted down in the Senate while they still have a Democratic majority because this gives free rein to take a radio station like ours talking to you.
You know, Planned Parenthood, they're just endless organizations that are at threat of their nonprofit status.
You know, to me, this is like not the first step because I'm sure there'll be many more to this authoritarian government that we may be fighting for the next at least four years. But we do have a caller with a question. Hi, you're on the air.
[00:47:17] Speaker C: Okay, thank you so much. Great conversation. And Colleen, thank you for jumping on our community radio station. I want to thank you for that and also your bravery as a whistleblower as it relates to some of the information that may have been withheld during 9 11. That said, I wanted to see if you could share some of your background and insight as a former special agent with the FBI. You know, what the next four years could look like when we're seeing, you know, a trifecta of loyalists in place. You know, the FBI could be one of the, you know, last line of defense to investigate, you know, public corruption.
You know, especially I was actually, you know, thinking earlier about reality winner who was arrested, you know, for leaking information that, you know, Russia was involved in election hacking. You know, she was an NSA contractor. And just, you know, there's a lot going on. So I'll take my call off there. But I'm just hoping you could share insight as to how you see the FBI playing a role in upholding our country's values and democracy in the next four years. Thank you.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for your question.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a very good question, and let's cross our fingers. But I. Well, what. For starters, Trump has pledged that he would clean up the FBI. Now, you remember back during the Russiagate, there were all these. There was a guy named Strzok and he was having an affair and they concocted stuff. There are bad FBI agents. I can tell you. I could talk all night on that, too, on that topic. But to clean up an organization overnight is not going to be easy. For starters, when you are hired, there's all kinds of job protections. You know, you can't. I actually was part of personnel. Personnel have to have due process. And yes, if you find someone stealing or, you know, one. We had one FBI agent who killed his informant and kept her body in his trunk of his car for three days. Mark Putnam. I mean, we've had some. We were operating Whitey Bulger. Obviously, if you live in the Northeast, remember that whole fiasco, there's been a lot of bad things, but they. If you find out some misconduct, it's really hard. You have to have your ducks in the row and you have to have a lot of evidence to fire someone, to hire people. You're not going to change the FBI overnight. It took over two years for me to be hired after I was in law school. You go through this whole process of interview and you have to even do a physical fitness test. You have to have to do a test first and then you have to have background investigation. And it was over two years. And so by the time if he wanted to somehow get all of his people into the FBI, that is not going to happen in one term. Now, what he can do, of course, is appoint. He probably will appoint a new FBI director.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we haven't heard that one yet, but we're expecting it.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: And I will say the last several FBI directors have not been good. Even Louis Freeh, that we all had such high hopes because he had been an FBI agent. He turned out to be this lobbyist who's taken money from the Iranian Mujahideen Kolk that gave money to Giuliani. All of these people all took thousands and thousands of dollars. So, I mean, Louis Freeh did some bad things. Then after him, that series of. Mueller. By the way, I was a whistleblower when Mueller was only one week in. And Mueller didn't know anything about 911 because he was only the director for one week. But yes, he did cover it up afterwards. You know, they were trying not to tell the truth about it. You know, the FBI was operating some of these people as just like the Whitey Bulger. If you ever saw Charlie Wilson's war. Well, the CIA, not so much the FBI, but the CIA was operating terrorists around the world in Afghanistan and that was part of the reason why they didn't act when they had all this intelligence. That's what I became a whistleblower about afterwards. So Mueller was part of the COVID up and he covered up other things as well. Comey comes on. Comey concocted the Steele dossier and the Russiagate. He was part of all of that. And then I don't think Ray is very much different in the past, not when Hoover was the FBI director this long before I became joined. Hoover was terrible in a lot of ways. He hated women. I mean all kinds of bad things about Hoover. But one thing that maybe was good is he tried to keep the FBI apolitical and he had the strongest enforcement mechanism on the FBI at the time. That's because he wanted to do the blackmail himself. And so he collected information on all of our Hoover did and they had all this, this dirt on presidents and everything else. But if you are just a normal FBI agent and this even applied when I was working, we couldn't even have a campaign button. We couldn't have a yard sign. We couldn't talk anything politics inside the, in the FBI now and the directors usually were appointed for 10 years. They were supposed to be fairly apolitical. What's happened is over this time since 9, 11 they've turned out just like the US Attorneys. Every new president will come in and put, put a new FBI director even though the term is supposed to be 10 years. So certainly Trump does not like Wray and he's going to put a new person in just as Trump in his first term kept Comey on, even though Comey was leaking about him and backstabbing and everything else.
I don't know. There's one name, there's one name that's been talked about for FBI Director and he's a bad one. His name's Mike Rogers and he was an FBI agent for a little while and I think he, from what I know, maybe this is a rumor. He left as an agent years ago under a bad cloud and then he became a politician and so they've mentioned his name and he would be a terrible pick because he's He's, I think he's corrupt, but we'll see who Trump picks.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: Well, we don't have much time. I do, of course, as usual, all the callers pile up at the end of the show, but we do. Let's, let's try and get at least one more in here. Hi, you have something quick?
[00:54:39] Speaker C: Yes, I do have a question for Colleen Rowley. You know, as a person who is well known for being a post 911 whistleblower, what is your opinion of the post October 7th Israeli whistleblower, specifically in regards to the IDF's use of the Hannibal directive? On October 7th you have, you know, several Israeli soldiers who come forward, including high ranking officers, colonels. You have former hostages who've come forward and said that in fact, most of the death that occurred in the kibbutzes were a result of the IDF shooting on their own people to make sure they weren't taken across the border into Gaza as hostages. That's what the Hannibal directive is. And of course, the American corporate media has completely ignored that story. I just like to hear your opinion about that.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: All right, do you want to address that quickly?
[00:55:25] Speaker B: We did talk about, I totally agree. The gray zone is a, is a, is one of many that have brought debunked a lot of that those stories. And yeah, Israel actually killed their own soldier one time because they didn't want him to be taken hostage. No, they have that Hannibal directive. It's, it's, I mean it's proven quite a, quite a lot. And a lot of the stuff after October 7th was exaggerated, especially the rape allegations that the New York Times, the New York Times had to kind of rescind their story because that wasn't true. They made up the family said no, this is their, their own daughter was, was killed and they said no, she wasn't raped. That was, she was, I think, you know, bombed or something. Anyway, it was a lot of that has been found out. So the caller is totally correct as far as I know. And I think the gray zone has really debunked as has electronic into fad. And there's a few other sites, independent news sites that have really our mainstream news though, unfortunately, is not good. New York Times. They've made up stuff.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: Well, I do appreciate you being on the show. I wish we could keep talking about this. One of the things you just said about how long it takes to make changes and then you talk about these people that are being appointed with no experience in running a large organization and they're going to run thousands of people a department of that size and completely change it, which is absurd to begin with. So I was going to hope we had some time to talk about that, but maybe at another occasion, we're all going to be tuned in to what's going to be happening, happening, I'm sure, over the next years ahead of us. And I appreciate people like you who are, who are working to keep people informed and fight against some of these policies that really are ridiculous. So thanks so much for making the time to be with us. Colleen Rowley, again, you can check out the group that, that she's involved with, the Women Against Military Madness. Great title. Been going on an organization that's been around for a long time. I hope you're getting some younger women in there to keep it going.
And this has been global stuff. My name is Jimmy Derschlag. Thanks to Dennis for engineering. Thanks to the callers. Until next time, this has been a.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: KMUT podcast to listen to other shows and more episodes of this show. Find us on all the platforms where you get your podcast and also on our website, kmud.org.
