[Peace-discuss] Fwd: WBAI's Randy Credico subpoenaed in Russia Investigation

Tue Nov 28 23:41:16 UTC 2017

Wow. Yeah, it sounds like they are trying to get to Assange.

-karen medina

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 9:41 AM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Article from Max Blumenthal.   An activist and comedian, Randy Credico, is
> to be subpoenaed by the House Intelligence cmte for the investigation of
> Russian influence.
>
> Credico suspects the purpose is to gain information about Julian Arrange -
> whom Credico knows - and discredit Arrange and Wikileaks.
>
>  -- Stuart
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen at mindspring.com>
> Date: 11/28/17 07:27 (GMT-06:00)
> To: actiongreens at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [ufpj-activist] WBAI's Randy Credico subpoenaed in Russia
> Investigation
>
> Grayzone Project <https://www.alternet.org/grayzoneproject/>
>
> *House Intel Committee to Subpoena Leftist Comedian and Civil Rights
> Activist Randy Credico in Russia Investigation *The renowned activist
> says he is under suspicion for his contacts with Wikileaks founder Julian
> Assange.
> *By* *Max Blumenthal* <https://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal> /
> AlterNet <https://alternet.org>
> *November 27, 2017, 7:32 AM GMT*
>
> 143 COMMENTS
> <https://www.alternet.org/comments/grayzone-project/intel-committee-subpoena-randy-credico-russia-investigation#disqus_thread>
> [image: []]
> The House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation has taken an
> unexpected turn, with investigators homing in on a New York City-based
> comedian, radio host and renowned civil rights activist named Randy Credico.
>
> Credico received a letter this month from the Committee ranking Democrat,
> Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Michael Conaway, the Republican leading the
> investigation. The lawmakers requested that Credico "participate in a
> voluntary, transcribed interview at the Committee's offices" during the
> first half of December.
>
> Credico informed the House committee through his legal counsel that he
> would not submit to the voluntary interview. Soon after, his lawyer told
> him that the committee planned to issue a subpoena.
>
> Credico is among the unlikeliest characters to have surfaced as a player
> in the ongoing Russiagate drama. For over two decades, he split time as a
> comedy professional while waging a tireless crusade against the war on
> drugs. The former host of a radio show on the Pacifica affiliate WBAI,
> Credico came into the company of high profile dissidents. Today his friends
> include the transparency activist targeted for arrest and prosecution by
> the US government: Julian Assange.
>
> The Wikileaks founder was recently accused
> <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-director-pompeo-calls-wikileaks-hostile-intelligence-service-n746311>
> by CIA Director Mike Pompeo of overseeing a "a non-state hostile
> intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia." Meanwhile,
> Hillary Clinton has suggested without evidence that Wikileaks collaborated
> <https://mashable.com/2017/10/15/hillary-clinton-julian-assange/> with
> the Russian government to subvert the 2016 presidential election in Donald
> Trump's favor.
>
> This year, the Trump administration expanded
> <https://www.ft.com/content/000ce526-2629-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16> the
> federal grand jury seeking the arrest of Assange to cover the Wikileaks
> release of thousands of documents on CIA hacking tools. However, there is
> no claim so far that grand jury covered the release by Wikileaks of the
> Democratic National Commitee's emails in 2016. A United Nations working
> group ruled
> <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012>
> that Assange was being arbitrarily detained. It has been seven years since
> he lost his freedom, and has been confined to a series of small rooms ever
> since.
>
> According to Credico, he and Assange held "three meetings that were two to
> three hours each" at the Ecuadoran embassy in London where the online
> activist has received diplomatic asylum. They took place on September 6,
> and the 13th and 16th of November of this year. Credico said he traveled to
> London this November to attend the hearing of Stefania Maurizi, a
> correspondent from Italy's La Repubblica who had filed a Freedom of
> Information request demanding
> <https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2017/11/10/news/seven_years_confined_how_a_foia_litigation_is_shedding_light_on_the_case_of_julian_assange-180733751/?refresh_ce>
> the press's right to access documents regarding his case. (He showed me a
> photograph of himself with Maurizi in London to prove his point).
>
> "I was just there to support [Assange] as a wing man," Credico commented
> to me. "I don't agree with him on everything — it's the fact that he's a
> journalist and a publisher and has not put anything out that's false. I
> don't know anything about technology and he didn't give me any secrets."
>
> The letter Credico received from the House Intelligence Committee did not
> specify what it suspected him of doing, stating only that his interview
> could cover anything within the parameters of "Russian cyber-activities
> against the 2016 US election, potential links between Russia and
> individuals associated with political campaigns, the US government's
> response to these Russian active measures, and related leaks of classified
> information."
>
> However, Credico is convinced that he is being used to undermine Assange.
> "This is about chilling Wikileaks and that starts with intimidating anyone
> who has met with Julian [Assange]," he stated.
>
>
>
> *Satirist and civil rights crusader *Credico first appeared in the
> national spotlight in 1984 when he trashed Reagan's Central American proxy
> wars during a comedy set on the Tonight Show. A look of severe discomfort
> could be seen on Johnny Carson's face when Credico likened Reagan's
> neoconservative UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick to Eva Braun. Though he
> was never invited back on the show, the comic's uncanny impersonations and
> incendiary political satire won him the admiration of peers like Larry
> David, Barry Crimmins and Jack Black.
>
> During the 1990s, Credico became outraged about the disproportionate toll
> the war on drugs was taking on the poor and people of color. He launched a
> furious crusade against New York State's draconian Rockefeller Laws,
> howling outside courthouses across the city about the evils of mass
> incarceration, cops he branded "slave catchers" and proceedings he
> denounced as "modern-day slave auctions." When he wasn't screaming in the
> streets, he was behind prison walls, befriending inmates and working the
> phones to get reporters interested in their cases.
>
> The New Yorker's Jennifer Gonnerman estimated that Credico had "generated
> more than a hundred news stories, largely by inviting reporters to his
> events and introducing them to the families of inmates." Crediting him
> <https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-man-who-screamed-so-loud-the-drug-laws-changed>
> for helping force the New York legislature to rewrite the Rockefeller drug
> laws in 2004, Gonnerman branded Credico, "The Man Who Screamed So Loud the
> Drug Laws Changed."
>
> Credico's efforts to expose the drug war's injustices culminated in Tulia,
> Texas, where a corrupt undercover narcotics officer had railroaded
> <https://www.aclu.org/other/racist-arrests-tulia-texas> some 10 percent
> of the town's African American population into lengthy jail sentences for
> drug crimes they did not commit. Credico's agitation resulted in a wave of
> national media attention
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/opinion/kafka-in-tulia.html> and in
> 2003, the full acquittal of the 38 prisoners with sentences up to 90 years.
> His efforts were honored by the NAACP and became the subject of several
> documentaries, including "60 Spins Around the Sun
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96cUhhiUhw4>," an award winning
> biographical chronicle financed by Jack Black.
>
> In 2009, Credico quit his job as the director of the William Moses
> Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and launched a long-shot senate campaign
> against Chuck Schumer, slamming the omnipotent Democratic senator for his
> role in mandatory minimum sentencing and pro-death penalty legislation.
> "You have to take a look at his record," Credico said
> <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-wells/randy-credico-to-challeng_b_564039.html>
> of Schumer at the time. "And that's a really racist position as far as I am
> concerned. Yes, it is about race."
>
> In the end, Credico won one percent of the vote. But he soldiered on,
> running for mayor in 2013, then the governor's office a year later. All
> along, he was dogged by drug and alcohol addiction, which he has been
> public about. His penchant for drunken late-night tirades began to alienate
> his allies and even led him to contemplate suicide. An intervention in 2014
> by his friend, the comedian Crimmins, pulled Credico back from from the
> brink and helped him kick his self-destructive habits.
>
>
>
> *Meetings with Assange, conspiratorial rumors *Credico's sobriety
> coincided with intensive advocacy for the community of national security
> whistleblowers that emerged after 9/11 to expose secret government torture,
> assassination and mass surveillance programs. In August 2015, he hosted
> Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for an interview on "Live on the Fly," his
> former show at the Pacifica radio affiliate, WBAI. Several interviews
> followed over the coming months, including a series, " Assange: Countdown
> to Freedom <https://www.wbai.org/recentprogram.php?recentid=72>," that
> featured high-profile whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Jesslyn Raddack
> advocating for Assangeâ€™s release.
>
> "I had to build an audience at a moribund station and I got 65 percent of
> the traffic," Credico remarked. "I had a popular international show because
> it was tweeted out by Wikileaks and Anonymous Scandinavia and I got a huge
> international following."
>
> The relationship with Assange eventually developed into a series of
> meetings at the Ecuadoran embassy in London. These encounters fueled online
> rumors
> <https://storify.com/italkyoubored/theory-that-roger-stone-s-go-between-for-wikileaks>
> accusing Credico of serving as a courier between the notoriously
> Machiavellian former Trump campaign advisor, Roger Stone, and Assange.
>
> This September, Stone testified before the House Intelligence Committee,
> which sought to scrutinize his claim to have communicated with the hacker
> known as Guccifer 2.0, his contacts with Wikileaks, and a tweet that seemed
> to suggest he had advance knowledge of the release of the emails of Hillary
> Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta. Before the committee, Stone
> angrily denied having colluded with the Russian government and claimed
> <https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/352467-roger-stone-testifies-hes-been-falsely-accused-of-collusion>
> that all of his contacts with Assange were conducted through "an
> intermediary."
>
> For his part, Credico freely acknowledged that Stone had been a guest on
> his WBAI show and the two had cooperated on a few oddball political
> initiatives over the years. But he contended that "Roger Stone is just a
> whipping post for the committee but the one they're after is Assange
> because they want to quiet him."
>
> "They're looking for a way to do in Assange," Credico emphasized, "and I'm
> the only American in the press that has visited him outside of a reporter
> from the New Yorker, and he's not going to talk to anyone else."
>
> Credico also insisted that despite his well-known dislike for Hillary
> Clinton, he would not have lifted a finger to help the Trump campaign: "I
> hate Trump. He's got ethnic cleansing going on with the deportation of
> Haitians and Latin Americans and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions is the
> worst nightmare I've ever seen."
>
> Asked if he would comply with the House Intelligence Committee, Credico
> sounded a defiant tone. "I'm a journalist with a radio show and there's
> nothing [the committee] can elicit out of me because I'm covered by the
> First Amendment. And everything I've talked to Assange about has been on
> the show, and everything else is in my fucking notes. Would any journalist
> give them their notes?"
>
> With his "interview" just days away, Credico exuded confidence. "I've
> worked strip joints in Florida filled with Marines that wanted to kill me
> for attacking their war in Grenada," the former comedian remarked.
> "Congress is no problem. I've worked much tougher rooms than that."
>
>
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-- 
-- karen medina
"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark
Twain
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