Julian Assange and the Cost of Truth: How WikiLeaks Changed the World

Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon (audio)

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!

Our guest this week, Steve Poikenon can be found at his website here.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Dr Leon (00:00):
Now, usually I start this part of the show with a question or a few questions, but today I have to make a statement. After 13 years of either being held up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain, or being in Belmar Prison in solitary confinement, Julian Assange walks free. Why does this matter what led the Biden administration to finally come to its senses and accept a deal? Why should this matter to you?

Announcer (00:42):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Dr Leon (00:49):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the events and the broader historical context in which they take place. This enables you to gain a better understanding and to analyze events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issue before us is what's the significance of WikiLeaks and what's the impact on the freedom of the press? My guest for today's conversation is the host of AM Wake Up and Slow Newsday, which you can watch live on Rock Fin and Rumble, and you can listen anywhere. Podcasts are served. Steve Poin and Steve, welcome.

Steve Poikenon (01:51):
Thank you very much, Wilmer. It's good to see you not on the radio,

Dr Leon (01:57):
Man. Well, I have the perfect face for radio from what they tell me, and it's great to see you to be able to put a face with a voice. We've been talking for a couple years now, and it's finally great to be able to put a face with a voice. So footage tweeted by WikiLeaks, I think Julian Assange's wife showed him walking up the stairs onto an aircraft bound for Sipan in the US administered Mariana Islands. He has agreed to plead guilty to one count under the espionage act of conspiracy to disseminate national defense information. Steve, what were your thoughts when you first heard the news that Julian Assange was free?

Steve Poikenon (02:44):
I was a little stunned. This is something that we've discussed on and off over the last couple of years, and certainly in the last couple of months there have been substantiated rumors that the Biden Justice Department was preparing some sort of plea deal, whether or not the Assange team was going to accept it. That was the thing that we didn't have any certainty about whatsoever. They obviously have gone forward with accepting the deal. He should be, at this point, touching down or walking into the courtroom in the Marianas Islands says a lot about the state of the US empire that we even have a district courthouse in the Mariana Islands. That's just wild to me to begin with, but from the best that I can tell, and Wilmer, you may correct me if I'm wrong, from the best that I can tell, there's nothing in the initial plea agreement that says Julian won't be allowed near a computer or won't be able to access the internet.

(03:51)
Can't give speeches or interviews or can't have documentaries made about a situation. So by all accounts, up to this point, it appears that when he walks out of the courtroom later in the next couple of hours, he will be a legitimately free human being, and that is a win in and of itself. I'm a father. I can't imagine being taken away from my kids for making the US government angry and then having to know that they're growing up without me. And so the ability for him to take part in raising his own children, I think is the biggest godsend out of all of this. And then we can get into the implications and the impact that this is going to have on press freedom and citizen journalism and everything else going forward. But the huge win here is that he's no longer an inmate in the Guantanamo Bay of the United Kingdom where he was being held with the worst criminals on the island, having never once committed any crime of any sort of significance that would warrant that cell.

Dr Leon (05:12):
Do you have any idea in terms of why the Mariana Islands other than is the closest space that will enable him then to go from there to his home of Australia?

Steve Poikenon (05:25):
I think that was the ultimate deciding factor was proximity to Australia. It's not like the US can't construct a kangaroo court anywhere, and it's not like if they didn't have a different provisional, different courthouse, they wouldn't be going through the same sort of performative motions in the eyes of the Biden administration. I think the guilty plea is the thing that they were looking for, something that they could make at least a political, if not a legal for, and then also to not have it be an election issue going forward.

Dr Leon (06:04):
And from what I understand, this is not precedent setting because this was the result. This is the outcome of a plea deal. This did not actually come as the result of a trial.

Steve Poikenon (06:17):
If they would've gone to trial and evidence presented and a conviction was rendered and then upheld by a judge, then it would establish a legal precedent because he pled and pled out to time served for what he'd already done. The only thing that it can be used to set a precedent for is politically, or I guess emotionally or spiritually, where people are more hesitant to approach national security reporting or classified information, talk about it, disseminate any of that. And that is I think the real ultimate goal of not just the Biden administration, but the Trump administration and ultimately the Obama administration from where all of this stems is to redefine journalism in the future.

Dr Leon (07:10):
I want to read from the paragraph from the Washington Post as they reported out this story, Julian Assange's plea deal, sparks global celebration and condemnation reactions were divided as WikiLeaks. Julian Assange heads to a US Pacific territory to cement a plea deal that could soon set him free. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange's tentative plea deal with the United States, which could soon bring an end to his years long international legal legal saga, drew celebration and criticism reflecting the divisive nature of his role in obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents. A couple of things. One is the condemnation side of this. The only folks that I can see that would be condemning this deal are people that are tied to the Trump administration, people that are tied to the Biden administration. I don't understand where they get this idea that there's all this divisiveness and condemnation.

Steve Poikenon (08:23):
There were the usual, the people you just spoke of, but Mike Pence was one of the loudest. There have been a number of former Trump administration officials and a number of former Obama administration intelligence apparatus and national security apparatus officials who have expressed distaste. This now and again, realize that to be opposed to this means you wanted to see a 50-year-old man, 51-year-old man get effectively tortured to death in a US prison for the rest of his life. That's what being in opposition to this effectively means. The reasoning behind it though is because information is currency. Assange and WikiLeaks were a broker of this information that wasn't part of the sanctioned club, and so Pompeo called them a hostile rogue intelligence agency, non-state intelligence agency. If you are viewed like that amongst the apparatus that's making the national security decisions, it doesn't matter what the end result is, if it's not your wholesale destruction, they're going to be displeased.

Dr Leon (09:43):
There's another paragraph. While Assange supporters saw him as a courageous whistleblower of government misdeeds, his critics saw him as a self-promoter oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause, oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause. There has not been one shred of evidence presented to show that any harm other than embarrassment by Hillary Clinton and some of the other government officials who were identified through these WikiLeaks releases, maybe their egos were damaged. But short of that, there's been no harm. WikiLeaks publication of the Afghan War logs did not obscure the names of Afghan civilians who provided information to the US military and omission that dismayed human rights groups and national security officials. Who are they talking about? Steve?

Steve Poikenon (10:49):
Okay, so when they say that the harm that they're talking about, it's not just their ego, it's their ability to continue to spy on their friends and allies that was harmed. It was the harm that was done by letting people know what the US government is doing with our tax dollars and our names. But Wim

Dr Leon (11:07):
Steve, it's not as though the allies did not know that they were being spied on. Remember what happened with Bill Clinton and Angela Merkel's? I think it was the Clinton administration and Angela Merkel's cell phone. I mean, it's not as though we don't know. We don't know Israel. It's not as though we don't know that Israel is spying on us. I mean, it's the game that they play.

Steve Poikenon (11:31):
It is the game that they play, but we're not supposed to know. And the rest of the diplomatic core is all that operates on the pretense and the fiction that it's not happening. That everybody's there to politely try to sort out the ills of the world and that all of the espionage going on in the background is never to be brought up. It doesn't have to stop. You just can't talk about it. If you bring it to light, then the whole operation gets blown up. And that's why WikiLeaks is parent company is called the Sunshine Press. The whole point of it is to bring it into the daylight, that kind of stance from a political point of view, from a journalistic point of view that's going to get you targeted, which is as we saw exactly what happened leading to 13 years of illegal and arbitrary detention.

(12:29)
Just one quick point to what you were talking about though, when you see major press outlets come out now in defensive Assange, these are, and you had mentioned it, I think even this morning, some of these instant outlets that are reporting on it are outlets that shared the same information. Are these guys then going to look at the plea agreement and go, golly, if Julian Assange isn't being charged as a journalist, does that mean that everyone who has ever shared a piece of classified information can be charged under the Espionage Act? Because Wilmer, I don't know about you. When I read the plea, when I read the plea deal, they're charging Assange as a private citizen. They're not charging 'em as a publisher. They're not charging 'em as a government contractor or a government employee. And those are prior to this, the only people that could get a charge for conspiring to disseminate classified information in this manner. So is that saying that Nick, the janitor or Dan the trucker or whoever your English teacher is now susceptible to Espionage Act charges?

Dr Leon (13:48):
Well, I think one of the reasons why they're not charging him as a journalist, because that was one of the issues that was being presented in his defense, is that as a journalist, he has the right to disseminate this information. So if they charged him as a journalist, then I think that would probably throw a wrench in their own argument. But to your point, one of the ironies here is when you read the Washington Poll story and the New York Times reporting out on this is that they were complicit in disseminating the information that he made available. Hence during the Obama administration, they called it the New York Times conundrum, and many say that the reason the Obama administration didn't charge him is because Barack Obama didn't want to open up that can of worms.

Steve Poikenon (14:45):
Well, certainly the idea that the Biden administration would try to with less competent people than were in the Obama administration is somewhat ridiculous. The only reason they could get a plea deal out of the guy is because they'd been torturing him for five years on top of the seven and a half, eight, almost eight years of being confined to one and a half rooms in the most spied on building in London, which is saying a lot because London has more cameras per capita than any other major city. But more cameras were pointed at the Ecuadorian Embassy than anywhere else in London for a very long time. That kind of constant surveillance is going to wreak havoc on an individual. And I got to tell you, Wilmer, it really did surprise me seeing the video, the very brief videos that we have seen of Julian, the last I had heard, he had been in very poor health. He had suffered a stroke or a mini stroke 18 months ago, 20 months ago, something like that. So to see him moving that rapidly, being able to stand walking

Dr Leon (15:59):
Up the stairs to the plane,

Steve Poikenon (16:01):
Being able to stand that upright when we had all been told that his back was wrecked and stuff like that, I'm really, really taken away by that. And I can only hope that he remains in that good of health or gets a little bit better shape from here on out because I was imagining the worst I was. And we haven't seen that. So that's very heartening.

Dr Leon (16:32):
This some will say is a very obvious question, but I think it still needs to be asked and answered Why this deal? Why now? Because when I look at, when I read the plea, when I see what the Biden administration got out of this, could have done this five years ago, he's out on bond. They could have allowed bond five years ago. He could have, instead of being tortured in solitary confinement in Belmar prison, he could have been walking the streets of Piccadilly Circus. So why now?

Steve Poikenon (17:14):
There's a number of different factors, and one is that it does get eliminated as an election year issue. Trump, regardless of the reality that he's the guy who had Julian arrested was able to successfully run on, we love the WikiLeaks. Have you seen the WikiLeaks? Can't get enough of the WikiLeaks. He was able to gain a lot of ground with that. So it is popular among Americans to want to at least think you have some sort of transparency with your government or think you might be able to have some sort of citizen accountability with your government, which is one of the benefits that WikiLeaks provided. So that's off the table, the Biden administration, because people have goldfish, brain can try to spin it as well. Donald Trump's the guy who had 'em thrown in jail and we're the guys who let him out. Well, you didn't let him out.

(18:11)
You made him plead guilty to something he didn't do after torturing him for five years and threatening every one and everything that he held dear, that's coercion. That's not a liberation. That's coercion. That's not a victory in any way, shape or form. And I've seen some on the progressive left already try to be like, Hey, man, Trump locked him up, bite him, let him out because he forced him to plead guilty to something that he didn't do. I think we all just need to keep circulating that last part until it sinks in. But we discussed for a number of years on the critical hour how it is a huge problem for the Biden administration or any administration to have Julian Assange on American soil even if the trial takes place behind closed doors in the Eastern District of Virginia, because then you are really putting the press on trial in America for everyone to be forced to pay attention to. And that's something that not Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, definitely not Merrick Garland is capable of dealing with or quelling in a manner that doesn't look like a total brutal dictatorship. And that's what it was going to turn into.

Dr Leon (19:35):
We have been saying for a couple of years, the one thing, the Biden, for all of the discussion about extradition and all these appeals and the United States sending attorneys to London and going through the barrister and all of that stuff that they were doing, we kept saying, they do not want this man on American soil. They were trying to kill him through the process. Let's drag this thing out for as long as we possibly can and hope the man dies in Belmar prison. We were saying the last, in fact, I remember having a very extensive conversation with you where I was saying, I think the time has come for the Assange Camp to flip the script and take the deal. Tell Merrick Garland, we want to come to the United States. Please extradite us. We want to be on American soil. And we kicked that around for a while.

Steve Poikenon (20:41):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the last thing that any government wants to deal with is having all of its media suddenly turn against it. And in the US, even though the mainstream media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state, there are people who are allowed to operate with a little bit more freedom. And those are the people who usually command the largest audiences because they're allowed to show a little bit of authenticity on mainstream airwaves, and people are desperate for that. So they don't want their press turning on 'em. They don't want free Assange banners every time they pan into the crowd at a sporting event. They don't want free Assange banners signs every time they go do a man on the street interview. They were in the worst possible position you could be having to make up your case entirely. And having a still somewhat engaged public to where they could mount not just a resistance, but a real jury nullification campaign and a real on the ground, real time education of exactly what their government is trying to do. Via the prosecution of Julian Assange, again, under the Espionage Act of 1917, we're going to take an Australian citizen with a publishing company, publishing outlet, registered in Iceland, give him fake charges in Sweden, imprison him in London and have a Icelandic FBI snitch, make up a whole bunch of stories about him, then recant his testimony. I think Aile, because that's the thing that happened. Pedophile. Yeah, a convicted, convicted pedophile.

Dr Leon (22:40):
And you haven't even gone through what we did as it relates to Ecuador and what we did in terms of the Ecuadorian election to be, now I'm drawing a blank on the president.

Steve Poikenon (22:51):
Lennon Moreno was more Moreno. Yeah.

Dr Leon (22:55):
We didn't even go through what the machinations that the United States went through to get Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Steve Poikenon (23:05):
Yeah. Or touch on the security company that was there at the embassy, uc Global, which was hired first by the Ecuadorian government to provide security then by the CIA via a spook convention effectively at one of Sheldon Adelson's casinos, who was one of Trump's biggest donors at the time, where the head of the security company wound up getting arrested, trying to flee the country after it was discovered that he had had this double dealing with the CIA. And then it was revealed that because of the illegal spying equipment morales's company had placed in assange's rooms at the embassy that led to a planning session with the American CIA where they were plotting out how to kidnap and murder Julian Assange. That was Mike.

Dr Leon (23:56):
They

Steve Poikenon (23:56):
Came to,

Dr Leon (23:57):
That was Mike Ell at the time. And so what folks, and you laying this out, what folks really need to understand is this is not some tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. All you got to do folks is Google it. It's there in mainstream press that this is what the United States went through trying. These are the illegal machinations that the United States government went through in order to try to get this guy.

Steve Poikenon (24:28):
Absolutely. And people feel certain ways about the gray zone or what, you don't have to read the initial reporting that Max Blumenthal did based off of the reporting that the Spanish outlet El Pais did. Michael Isikoff, two years later, 18 months later, Michael Isikoff through Yahoo News, did the same story, picked it up and took out some of the more poignant points so that he could fit it into a Yahoo story and put out that version of it. But it's there in several mainstream outlets everybody should know. Mike Pompeo tried to have a journalist and publisher assassinated or kidnapped and then assassinated just to prevent him from being able to testify in his own defense is all you can really assume at that point. You're trying to take him out while you have him basically captured. You want to make sure he never works a day in his life again, and you damn sure want to make sure that he doesn't testify because then it becomes part of a court record and then somebody can sue to have that court record or it'll be public

Dr Leon (25:40):
As a wrap up to this part of the conversation. So I never thought I'd see, this day I thought Julian Sal was going to die in Bell Marsh. What do you see as being the more immediate impacts to this as it relates to press freedom and journalism and some of the longer term impacts? And some of that, I know we won't really know until we hear from him, but your thoughts,

Steve Poikenon (26:10):
I hope it inspires people to kind of see where the new limits are, because most journalists have just been not necessarily holding back, but the amount of leak based journalism has basically vanished the amount of journalists truly going out there and trying to bring to light some major problems. Boeing comes to

Dr Leon (26:35):
Mind. Investigative journalism.

Steve Poikenon (26:37):
Yeah. I want to believe that Julian Assange breathing air again will be a beacon to people to do investigative journalism more often, better than they have been, however you want to frame it. I want that to be a spark that pushes the current boundaries and hopefully pushes 'em back a little bit because it's been relatively restrictive over the last several years.

Dr Leon (27:08):
There's another issue related to this. It was in consortium news, help us fight theocracy Psychological operations or PSYOPs are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations and groups and individuals. William Casey, the CIA director under Ronald Reagan said, we'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And what happened with Julian Assange, I think is a perfect example of this type of behavior by the American government.

Steve Poikenon (28:02):
It is. And if you look at the amount of government shenanigans that have occurred in the last four, five years since they yanked Julian out of the embassy, there we're seeing more and more lawsuits being brought against major pharmaceutical companies for vital information that they withheld during the last several years were we found out that a lot of what we were originally told about the January 6th incident, and a lot of what happened then was not necessarily true. There's been multiple court cases that have kept political parties from taking part in the American political process. They've kept, Lawfare has been levied against everyone from the aru, the Aru fellas,

Dr Leon (29:07):
Mali. Yes.

Steve Poikenon (29:09):
Yeah, I can never, I know, yes. Ella is something that is just not chambered for me. It's not. But from those guys to, like Alex Jones has been a victim of lawfare. Donald Trump has been a victim of Lawfare, and the entire time there hasn't been a really adversarial reporting outlet with the international foundation that WikiLeaks has with the international audience, that WikiLeaks has to mount a citizen and open source intelligence challenge to any of this and the myriad ways, not just through the restrict Act or the new antisemitism bill or a number of the different laws in Europe and Europe, has the internet been shrunk down significantly? But Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter stating that he wants to turn it into WeChat where your entire internet based existence is on through this one app. I would imagine that Julian Assange would have a lot to say about what Elon Musk has been up to.

(30:24)
He'd have a lot to say about what happened with the WHO or the NIH over the last several years, but we haven't had that opportunity. And that to me is something that the US government can put as a Big W in their column. That's something that MI six could put as a Big W in their column and really goes right back to those forward documents where they were outlining the plan for what they wanted to do with WikiLeaks. They didn't get to scatter the organization to the winds the way they necessarily described 14 years ago. But when's the last time we got a WikiLeaks drop?

Dr Leon (31:07):
Well, and for folks that may not understand the significance of this, of course, it was the shooting of the civilians, the murder of the civilians in Iraq and the journalists in Iraq that were shot during the war. And WikiLeaks put that footage out for everybody to see the war crimes that were being committed. So if WikiLeaks had been allowed to continue to operate, I would think our understanding of Ukraine would be different. Our understanding of what's being done in Taiwan would be different. Our understanding of what's being done or trying to be done in North Korea would be different. We would have a lot more insight and information into the illegalities, whether they be international law, whether they be American law, whether they be war crimes, that the United States and its allies have been engaging in these various engagements around the world.

Steve Poikenon (32:15):
You're correct. And let's also recall that WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks alone disclosed the transpacific partnership. They were the outlet that that agreement came to. They published it, people looked at it and went, no, you want to do what? No, no. And those kinds of trade agreements being disclosed that were done in the dark, away from the eyes of the American public with zero opportunity for public comment or any sort of pushback that made WikiLeaks more dangerous in my opinion, then disclosing video of something that according to even the guys in the helicopter was like a three times a day event in Iraq. And it's something that people in the military kind of shrugged off like, well, yeah, that's what we do. But to the average citizen, it's shocking and horrifying, but not as shocking and horrifying as the United States government wants to set up a corporate court, and it will be a couple of CEOs that determine your future. And if you say something untoward about them on the internet, then they're appointed magistrates from the corporation will decide your faith. That's what the TPP was promising. And any outlet that is going to disclose information like that is suddenly become the most dangerous organization on the planet.

Dr Leon (33:49):
And when you said that, that I'm drawing a blank on his name, the attorney that sued ExxonMobil in Brazil,

Steve Poikenon (33:58):
Steven Inger,

Dr Leon (33:59):
Steven Inger, and how Mobil ExxonMobil was able to use a judge. I mean, they just flipped that whole thing. Don Zinger on behalf of the Indians in Brazil, sues ExxonMobil wins an ungodly amount of money, and he winds up going to jail and ExxonMobil because of what they were able to do with the judicial system in New York, it was criminal. So when you talk about a corporate magistrate, Don Zinger is what popped into my head.

Steve Poikenon (34:42):
And it was because of an agreement that happened during the Trump administration that that was even possible. And they basically dismantled the TPP, they put certain parts of it into different trade agreements and provisions, and then they got the quasi corporate court because the judge, I believe had been a former Chevron attorney. Correct. And that's how that may even be how he got his judgeship was Chevron bought his way into the judgeship. And that is kind of ordinary corruption, but it's ordinary corruption that also has multinational trade agreements codifying it. And again, in the absence of a WikiLeaks or an organization like it, disclosing these kinds of agreements on the regular, you're not going to get the rapid dissemination of that information amount, a successful pushback in time to stop it. You're not going to be able to get people on the same page understanding it because there's no trust with a number of these.

(35:48)
All of these other outlets are so disparate, nobody's really consolidated in a way that will lend the immediate mass public trust in what you're doing. Like Lit WikiLeaks had built up over a number of years to the point that when 2015, they disclosed the tpp, people from all over the world held rallies immediately, and there were people out in the streets immediately, and it became an election year issue and it wasn't. And people had to change their tone on it and say to the point where Donald Trump even won a lot of people over by saying, it's a bad deal. It's bad. I don't want to be any part of it. Hillary Clinton had to answer for it. They all had to answer for it. On that debate stage back in 2016, it became a real issue. And so if we don't have these kinds of things moving forward, we're going to be in a significantly less informed spot than we were a decade ago. And in the internet age, that should not be how information is progressing.

Dr Leon (36:51):
And final point here, and I want to go back to this William Casey quote, and this is the former director of the ccia A and Ronald Reagan will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And that takes me, you've heard me say this too many times, Edward Bernas and the book Propaganda folks, you need to get a copy and you need to read Propaganda by Edward Bernas because that's to a great degree what Bill Casey was talking about. And this whole idea, the whole idea of psychological operations, PSYOPs and the PS ocracy.

Steve Poikenon (37:47):
Yeah. And fifth generation warfare is an asymmetrical warfare conducted on the citizenry, and that's conducted via all elements of propaganda. We're 12 years into living in a reality, a post Smith month modernization act reality. When the Smith Modernization Act passed and went into effect, government propaganda, military propaganda, and government analysts and experts became part and parcel of the media the better part of a halfway through a generation's worth of 24 hour, seven day a week asymmetrical warfare where the vast majority of the people walking around don't even know that they're at war, let alone with their own government, nor that their own government openly declared war on them. That's how good the propaganda is. Everybody should study Bnes. Everybody needs to internalize that the United States is the most propagandized country on the planet. And the only way that we can get out of that is if we understand the landscape that we're standing on and we start to look at how not necessarily individual people that make up that landscape operate, but the institutions that allow for those people to move freely on that landscape operate. And those institutions, we've been shown over and over and over again to be untrustworthy, to be acting not in our interest, to be acting at the behest of not even people in their own country. And yet for some reason, we still get Berna back into thinking that you can vote your way out of an oligarchy

Dr Leon (39:44):
And so quickly am wake up slow news day. Where do people go? What do they get when they listen to it?

Steve Poikenon (39:50):
You can go to am wakeup show.com for absolutely everything. We are live Monday through Thursday from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific us. There's content on the channel pretty much all the time. We stream out live on Rock fin and Rumble, and then you can catch them pretty much anywhere and everywhere else. And yeah, just thank you so much for having me on. I really have always enjoyed our conversations. Very glad to do your show.

Dr Leon (40:22):
Well, I got to thank you my guest, Steve Kin, for joining me today. I greatly, greatly appreciate you giving me time out of your schedule, and I always look forward to the conversations that we have and look forward to having many more with you here on Connecting the Dots. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Poikenon (40:37):
Thank you, Wilmer.

Dr Leon (40:39):
And thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon, and Steve mentioned the Smith Mut Act, M-U-N-D-T Act. You all can Google that. Look it up. But simply put, for about 60 years that act prohibited the United States Department of State and the broadcasting Board of Governors from disseminating government produced programming within the United States over fear that these agencies would propagandize the American people. However, in around 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which now has led to this big heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse. Folks, stay tuned for new episodes every week and follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, make a contribution. We would greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it. Doing this every week is not an inexpensive venture. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below to the show. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics and culture and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out

Announcer (42:20):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.