[MUSIC PLAYING]
KEITH WRIGHT: So Michael has had
a very wild, I'd say, history,
especially early
on in his career.
You were sort of exposed to
staggering levels of corruption
straight out of college,
first in Washington, DC,
here domestically, when you
were working on K Street,
and then in the UN, more
on a global scale, when
you were working on one of the
largest humanitarian operations
in human history.
And then you decided to
become a whistleblower
based on some of the stuff
that you were exposed to.
I mean, it's pretty crazy story.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: It's not
a normal career track.
I know.
KEITH WRIGHT: And
then you decided
to write a book about it.
The book's called
"Backstabbing for Beginners."
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT: An
appropriate title.
And then it was
picked up and turned
into a movie, which was recently
released by A24 starring
Ben Kingsley as your
boss, Theo James
is yourself, and then Jacqueline
Bisset as well, right?
So yeah, I'm very happy
to have you here today.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Thank you.
KEITH WRIGHT: We're
going to be talking
about some very light subjects.
[LAUGHING]
I'm just joking.
We'll talk about a couple
of different topics
on global corruption, what that
means on a global scale, how
it's related to us here at home,
and a number of other things.
So the Oil for
Food program, this
was happening before and
after the war in Iraq.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT: It dealt
with Saddam Hussein.
After you released some
information through,
I believe it was an op
ed with "The Wall Street
Journal," it sort of exposed
corruption on a global scale,
involving over 2,500
companies around the globe
and over 66 countries as well.
And there's definitely
some very sketchy
powerful political figures that
were involved on both sides.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Very well-known.
Yes, sir.
KEITH WRIGHT: So I guess
my first question to you
is like, how similar
is the film to reality?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Well, it's more
similar than I'd like it to be.
The most similar
thing, of course,
is that I was exactly as
cute as Theo James is.
[LAUGHING]
No, seriously.
There were far more explosions.
There were far more people
that disappeared or found
themselves investigated.
You know, the judge
investigating the corruption
that had gone on in Iraq for
years was blown up in a car
after the war.
The CIA, the KGB.
Everybody knew about it,
was involved to some extent
in abetting it.
And it was one big open secret.
Just to take you back a
little bit, when I was 17,
I came to my dad and
had written a script.
And my dad was a writer in
France and he said, no, no, no.
You should not be a writer.
It's too risky.
You should be a lawyer.
You should be an
international lawyer.
So I go to Brown, and we
had a fantastic president,
Vartan Gregorian,
who then encourages
us to go out there and make
a difference in the world.
So I'm thinking, OK.
Let's find ourselves a good
law firm and get some practice
and go to law school.
And so I land on K Street
at a law firm that belonged
to the father of Bill Gates.
So I thought, cool.
I'm safe this is probably
going to be straight shooting
law practice.
The head of our client group
was called Jack Abramoff.
Nine years later, Casino
Jack, as he came to be known,
ended up on the cover of
"Time" magazine as the man who
bought Washington.
So when I went to
the UN, I was really
trying to flee this
aspect of politics.
And I was ecstatic,
because I had
landed a job in what
would be the largest
humanitarian program
in the UN's history.
And then things started to
become a little clearer to me.
Why was it the largest
humanitarian program
in UN history?
Because we had destroyed
the entire infrastructure
of a warm, hot in
some areas, country
that relied entirely on oil.
But we came up with a solution.
The solution was not
to lift the sanctions,
because we didn't trust Saddam
to not rebuild an arsenal.
The solution was to
let them sell oil,
to take the money
into UN bank account,
and from there, to oversee
all of the purchase
and import of all
of the products
that the population needed.
So when I was sitting
with a spreadsheet,
that's the fate of an
entire country there.
You're 24 years old.
And if you made
a mistake, that's
people not eating for a month,
and some of the eighteen
[INAUDIBLE] that were Iraq.
We quickly noticed that
there was one party that
didn't have a seat at the
table, in the Security
Council or anywhere, and
that was the Iraqi people.
And that made it possible for
2,300 international companies,
including big companies--
Siemens, Volvo,
Mercedes, Texaco,
the people who yielded as part
of the Bush administration
team.
Every party in the Russian Duma
got funding from Vladimir Putin
through this program in
the form of kickbacks
in the sale of under-priced oil.
So what we saw,
essentially, was that we
were able to get some
food and some medicine
to the population.
But the cost of it
was that they were
getting the worst type
of expired medicine,
food fit for dogs--
and that's a quote
from an Iraqi person--
at the time.
Because we were observing them.
We had UN observers drive
around Iraq and ask people,
did you receive your
food basket this month?
And a food basket, it
wasn't that the basket from
[INAUDIBLE].
It was really a ration
in an old oil tank.
And we treated, basically,
an entire population
as animals in a farm.
KEITH WRIGHT: Was
this only Iraq,
or was it surrounding
countries as well?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
No, this was Iraq.
Iraq was under the most
stringent sanctions
ever imposed on a country
that had just been bombed back
to the pre-industrial age.
And our job was to get the
civilian population back
on track.
So we were lobbying
the Security Council
to loosen the restrictions
and allow more goods.
And there was enough money.
There was more money than
the UN had ever seen.
Our quarterly budget was bigger
than the UN's entire budget.
Oil money lead to those sums.
It was also very slippery money.
So on this sale of
oil and on the import
of humanitarian goods
in Iraq, profits
were made illicitly through
corruption and kickbacks,
and funneled back into people
like the ambassador of France
to the UN.
People we knew.
People we saw everyday.
People that are the
heads of large companies.
In Denmark, Novo is a big
pharmaceutical company.
They were also involved in it.
So in these 2,500 companies and,
basically, this is my world.
This is the corporate
world as I know it,
as it existed at the time.
So, of course, it wasn't
the most comfortable thing
to be in a position to know
that this was going on,
and to know that the whole
counsel knew about it too.
But Saddam a very
wily character.
He liked to keep lists
of who he was corrupting.
And after the war, that list was
passed on to me and to others,
and found its way to a free
Iraqi newspaper that had just
emerged, and they published it.
And then, phones started
ringing in all the intelligence
headquarters of every country
that had overseen this.
And there was general
global panic, the likes
of which I've never seen.
The big question was,
was the list real?
And on that list was a name
that sounded a bit too familiar.
It wasn't spelt exactly
like it should be spelt,
but it was spelled
the way Iraqis would
pronounce our big boss's name.
He was the boss of my boss.
He had taken me under his wing.
I liked him, and his
name was on the list.
He had also received kickbacks.
So the undersecretary general
of the United Nations,
the man associated with
the-- the man in charge
of the whole program had
apparently taken kickbacks.
I couldn't believe it, and
I wanted an investigation,
because I thought
it would clear him.
It turned out that Kofi
Annan's son, Kojo, was also
involved in a company that had
gotten some favorable deals,
and so Kofi Annan had no choice.
Once I came up with
an op ed, being
the first member of
the UN to actually say,
the cat's out of
the bag, we need
to have a completely independent
investigation of this,
then he took up that cause.
And Paul Volcker, who is the
former head of the Federal
Reserve, who is, by the
way, 7 feet tall and super
intimidating, walked into the
Security Council and asked him,
are you are you sure you want
me to investigate this stuff?
And they didn't
have instructions
from their headquarters,
and they passed a resolution
saying yes.
And suddenly, we had 60
Scotland Yard FBI forensics
investigators taking all of our
computers, all of our files,
and looking through
everything from companies
from all over the world, and
they uncovered everything.
So this was the first time such
an investigation on corruption
had been done on a global scale.
And I think one of the
reasons we're here today
is to try to draw some lessons
and understand why it matters.
Because--
KEITH WRIGHT: Can you
actually talk a little bit
about the op ed that you wrote?
Where it was released, and how
you sort of went about that?
Because it sounds like that
was a moment in time when
the whistle was sort
of blown, right?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
You could say that.
There were some
investigative journalists.
There were some
investigations in Congress,
but nobody at the UN
had opened their mouth
and said this is true,
and we knew about it.
And they knew that I was
not an enemy of the UN,
or wanted harm to
the organization,
so it had a certain
amount of credibility.
And the cat's out of
the bag is also language
that people with a decent
amount of intel training
recognize as the code
word for the secret's out.
And so I think it had an impact.
It's a request I
had made internally.
I had called him up.
I wasn't working there anymore.
I had quit.
And I told them, guys, you
need to investigate this.
And they're like,
oh, it'll blow over.
KEITH WRIGHT: There was this
pin drive involved in the film,
that it seemed like you were
sort of kind of running around
from country to
country, and you were
able to get back to the States
with this list on this pin
drive.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
So that's the film.
In reality, there was a Kurdish
spy, as there is in the film.
That person did nearly get
blown up in the car bomb attack.
There were other players.
I mean, this was a spy's nest.
There was so much
money to be had.
We were getting
lunch all over town,
just to get information
about, how do you
work through this program?
Because it was lucrative.
Now the point was, of
course, to be humanitarian.
And that's where you have
the great imbalance that
reminds us of
Puritan art history,
like colonization, where
the white man's burden was
to go around and help these poor
people while we were stealing
their mineral resources.
The same logic applies to
all sorts of corruption,
and we're going to get to some
of them later, that affect us
today in ways that we do not
understand the importance of.
We should be a lot more
frightened than we are.
But let me just
give one example.
After we invaded
Iraq, liberated Iraq--
and it was, in the beginning,
seen as a liberation
by a lot of Iraqis.
But these same
Iraqis had grown up
for 13 years between
two wars looking
at what was going
on around them,
looking at where their
natural resources were going,
and looking at what
they were getting.
And they saw the West being in
cahoots with their own dictator
at their own expense.
So how hard was it
for ISIS and al-Qaeda
to recruit these young guys
and make a complete mess out
of the country for 10 years?
It was very easy because
the entire ideology of ISIS
and of al-Qaeda--
first of all, very
similar ideologies.
They're just competing groups.
But their ideology is
based on the notion
of Western corruption.
Boko Haram, which is the African
part of the terrorist networks,
now growing at a very rapid
pace in sub-Saharan Africa,
means rejection of
all things Western.
Literally, the words mean that.
They feel that the West has
corrupted their righteous place
in the world, that there was
a golden age of their culture,
and that we have, in
cahoots with dictators,
that we imagined were
loved by their people,
because the people didn't
have no choice but to cap--
every time Saddam was
at his balcony shooting
his gun, what do you do?
They were very dangerous.
I saw the Mukhabarat
at work, and they
were extremely dangerous
people, and fear
prevailed in those countries
like nothing I've ever seen.
Suddenly you open that
up, and the reactions
are very interesting.
People become tribal.
People then-- but the same
thing happened in Russia,
and the same thing
is happening in a lot
of places in transition.
When I graduated
from college, it
was a very interesting
time in the world.
Walls were going down.
Democracy was progressing across
the board, across the world.
Tiananmen Square,
the Berlin Wall.
It just looked like there
would be no end to things.
People talked of
the end of history.
People thought, OK, this is it.
Capitalism and democracy
are going to prevail,
and we don't have
to lift a finger.
The problem is that corruption
can very, very easily
erode the progress of
freedom and democracy the way
we understand it today.
And too easily.
It's as if dark
matter and light are
in some sort of competition,
and if the light
doesn't shine brightly
enough, if transparency is not
strong enough, if we stop
trusting our institutions,
which today is I
think a current topic,
and if we don't use our
institutions properly
or in new ways and
strengthen them,
then the dark matter
rolls back the gains.
We now have in
Europe countries that
used to be democracies that
have turned into strongmen
countries, and that
includes countries
in the middle of Europe.
And I think we're seeing
a global map here.
I work sometimes with
Transparency International,
and there's something
strange about that
map that I just want to
point out, to start us off
in a wider discussion
that maybe touches us more
directly as people here today.
Notice-- so you
can figure it out.
Right?
The least corrupt
countries in the world
are in lighter shades, and
the most corrupt countries
are in darker shades.
That would be ideal, an
ideal picture of the world,
if it wasn't for the very
definition of corruption.
Corruption is the abuse
of power for private gain,
the abuse of power at the
expense of the powerless.
Now look at the map again.
If the most powerful countries
in the world are not corrupt,
then how come we
have a picture where
the poorest countries in
the world are corrupt,
and we're not?
If it's the powerful
abusing those
without power on a global scale,
this map becomes interesting.
These countries did not
become corrupt by themselves.
We play an enormous
role in corrupting them.
We work with their regimes
to funnel money off
to offshore accounts, and
it used to be Switzerland,
but after 9/11, Switzerland
became a bit iffy.
But the use of front
companies, as was
revealed in the Panama
Papers across the globe,
allows for this.
So we make deals
with the dictators
at the expense of the people.
And so the resources of
these countries, of course,
are funneled to us at the
expense of the general welfare
of the population, creating
the type of resentment
that leads to extremism.
The extremism leads
to civil wars.
Civil wars leads to
immigration and refugees.
Today, there are more refugees
in the world than there
was even after World War II.
Sex slavery is at its
apex, and new routes
are being uncovered every day.
Some of my courageous friends
at CNN went down to Libya
and saw how sex slaves from
several countries in Africa
were being directly
funneled, traded, and sold,
and sold onwards to Italy.
There is sex trade
also from Asia.
North Korea has been exporting
girls for a long time.
This corruption, we
can ignore it, and just
think that it's out there.
It happens far away
from where we live.
And as long as we're not
directly a part of it,
we can live in good conscience.
But I would challenge
that notion.
I think that it is a
frightening situation.
And in the very
current situation
we have with the current
presidency and the questions
that have been raised
about corrupt money funding
his entire business empire,
and the entire US intelligence
community agreeing that
these same powers have aided
and abetted his campaign,
not always in straight ways,
manipulating such thing
as what we thought
were genuine
grassroots movements.
You know, they've infiltrated
Black Lives Matter.
They infiltrated even
the gun lobby guys.
I thought that was funny.
But they understand how to play
our system to create confusion,
to create a
demoralizing pattern.
This is an old plan.
That was an old KGB plan
that was shaped in the 1950s
to demoralize us and
eventually to use
corrupt patterns to confuse us
and leave us in a place where--
"The Economist" wrote last week
that America is a country where
votes don't seem to count.
It's the only country where
you elect a president not based
on the majority, but based
on an electoral college that
was shaped when?
During the time of slavery, when
they were trying to make sure
slave-owning states had
an equal enough force
to defend themselves.
We are dealing with
a constitution that
wasn't perfect, that has
been amended, obviously,
for such things as free
speech, to begin with,
the abolition of slavery.
We have a Supreme
Court that used to be
wrong about some major issues.
They were wrong about slavery.
They upheld slavery
100 or so years ago.
And more recently, they upheld
a case called "Citizens United,"
which allows unlimited
amounts money to be funneled
into political campaigns.
They argued that
money is speech.
Now, I can show you $1.
$1 is $1.
Words are words.
Money is not speech.
I come from a country
that's very, very yellow.
Maybe it was part of
why I reacted the way I
did to some of what I saw.
I adopted America as the
country where I wanted to live.
I thought it stood
for certain values
that I strongly believed in and
continue to believe in today.
But when I look at that
little country, Denmark,
which ranks as the least corrupt
country in the world, and also
the happiest, despite
really bad weather--
KEITH WRIGHT: I think
Denmark is the least corrupt
on this entire list.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Yeah, I mean, we've
got some competition from
Norway, you know, sometimes.
But why is it?
What can we learn from
the country that's
least corrupt in the world?
Well, there's no
campaign finance.
You're not allowed to
give money for campaigns.
Money for campaigns
is taken out of taxes.
It's not much.
You have to go on the air, and
you have to make your case.
And we debate laws before
they pass, not after.
Because there's been a
shooting in a supermarket,
hence the news forgets
about, oh, there's
a legislative process that
is about net neutrality,
is an actually a
super important issue.
We should debate.
We should have polls.
People should argue their case.
No.
Laws are passed in silence, in
the corridors of power, where
the lobbyists, whom
I first met when
I was too young to be there,
at about 21, 22, operate.
And now we've entered a world
where, at the same time,
we have power of
access to information
we never had before.
In the last 10 years,
the power to organize
through social media are
powers we did not have before.
But--
KEITH WRIGHT:
Talking about power,
I mean, looking
again at this map,
you have the dark
red countries, which
are considered the
most domestically
corrupt governments.
Right?
And the light yellow
countries, the least.
And Transparency international
defines corruption
as the powerful taking
advantage of their power
for personal gains.
So looking at these
dark red countries,
they have some of the smallest
GDPs or economies of the world.
They're not very
powerful countries.
So is this actually
telling an accurate story
of what's actually going on,
on a global corruption scale?
Or is there another map that
should be kind of drawn,
because if we look at
some of the light colored
countries that are the most
powerful in the world, maybe
they have some sort of role in
terms of instigating corruption
that happens at a domestic level
in some of these Third World
countries.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: I mean,
it's a very good question.
And the reason it's
a good question
is that corruption
works a bit like magic.
We were just talking
about, before we walked in,
diversion is a very important
part of how corruption works.
Corruption is not easy to hide.
It involves envelopes
at the end of the day,
even if it's large
diplomatic pouch
envelopes, such as the
ones that were flying
from Baghdad to Moscow
in diplomatic planes
during the sanctions.
All the kickbacks were literally
put in diplomatic pouches.
The map, to me, is funny.
Even Denmark has
companies like Maersk,
which does most of the
shipping around the world.
They have enormous
pharmaceutical companies.
They have-- all of these
companies were named and fined
as part of the UN aid scandal.
But the companies
that were stationed
in Panama or other less
accountable countries
were, of course, left alone.
The whole point of democracy--
I mean, if there
wasn't democracy,
we wouldn't be talking
about corruption.
Because what is a state?
The definition of a
state is the entity
that has a monopoly over this
use of power over a given area.
So as much as we like to
call politics is science,
the only scientific
truth about politics
in the history of our
species is the theory
of hegemonic stability.
There is stability when there is
a hegemon, one powerful force,
that can keep some peace
because it is simply
too strong to challenge.
With democracy came
a new definition
of what the state is.
Instead of just being
a central mafia,
it is a system of
checks and balances.
And what are they for?
The whole point of democracy is
to keep a check on corruption,
so that people are not
completely screwed out
of their earnings, and that
some social justice can prevail,
and that people can
emerge through the system,
instead of just being kept
down, in the most extreme cases,
as slaves, or now
in other cases,
as people that are so indebted
that their children cannot get
a better education than
they can, and so on.
This is the story that's coming
out of rural America today
also.
We had a protest
vote in this country.
I don't know how they decided
that Mr. Bananahead reality
TV was going to
be their champion,
but somehow, it
was a protest vote,
which means that they
feel disenfranchised.
And we can't ignore this.
We also, we can't ignore
that this guy has tendencies
to like dictators, to be more
friendly with Little Rocket man
and other people like that
than he is with our allies.
What have we done to ourselves,
and how has it happened?
It wasn't just a mistake.
There was a plan.
It's being unveiled
now by Robert Mueller.
I'm beginning to be familiar
with how investigations work,
and this one is working.
September is going
to be a storm.
The big question for us--
let's hope so.
But even if Democrats have a
majority of the votes, the way
the system is rigged and
the electoral college
means that they may have
the majority of the votes
and still not take the House.
They have to get
above 56% majority.
So why are we not challenging
these old electoral college
rules?
Why are we not--
why do we allow a
Congress to try 35 times
to abolish Obamacare when
the public overwhelmingly
is in support of Obamacare?
How do these things happen?
In the dark.
It's because we have
inherited a democracy,
but we're not working
to strengthen it.
I think that we're
sitting here at Google,
so obviously, we're talking
about the digital space.
That's where the
power struggle will
happen, one way or another.
And they're playing the
game on the other side,
and not just with cyber attacks
and disruptive messaging,
and what both sides
called fake news.
When both sides call
everything fake news,
we get confused, right?
What's the good
source of information?
And how easily are our
media bought by advertisers?
I write for some of these, so
I don't want to knock them.
But you open "Time"
magazine, and there's
an advertisement for Boeing.
Now I don't have enough
money to buy a Boeing plane,
so I'm like, what's this
advertising doing there?
It's a place holder
in case there's
a story they don't like.
They withdraw the advertising.
The editor jumps.
And yeah, our
freedom and our press
will live or die together,
was the big quote by Pulitzer,
or at least something like it.
I think we're facing this
kind of situation right now.
And in the digital space is
where the battle will play out.
KEITH WRIGHT: So
you're basically
saying that corruption is
fought through democracy.
Strengthening democracy.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT:
Upholding, you know,
the principles of a
democratic nation?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
And fighting for them.
KEITH WRIGHT: Yeah.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: I
mean, we have values.
They mean something.
They're not just words.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well, if America
is sort of like, the poster
child of democracy, a
democratic nation for the world,
like how do you think that--
how resilient do
you think our system
is today in the face of some
of these new challenges?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: I just listened
to the former head of the CIA
give an interview
in which he said
he was frightened to death.
So I'm not in a position
to disagree with that.
The system would be resilient
if the year was 1950.
And even then,
there were issues.
The military industrial
complex, et cetera,
they had too much power.
Eisenhower tried to
warn us about it.
But there's always
going to be clusters
of power in a given society.
And there are always going
to be efforts to lobby.
The question is, what laws
do we have in place, and our
we enforcing these laws?
We have anti-corruption
laws that, if enforced,
would stop half of US trade
with some of these most
corrupt countries.
So it's selective enforcement.
It's selective awareness.
We have a public that
knows how to organize
a protest, like
Occupy Wall Street,
but does not know how to make
demands or vote in a way that--
we can learn a little bit from
the 1968 generation, I think,
when it comes to
rocking the boat.
Because I'll predict right now
that this is a boat, that if we
don't rock it, it's not
going in the right direction.
KEITH WRIGHT: So talk
about rocking the boat,
going back to the whole
whistleblowing story--
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Well, I was young,
and I didn't understand the
repercussions of pissing off
the KGB and the CIA at the same.
And I was also lucky
because they didn't know
where to peg me, in a sense.
I was told by a person in
the know later on that I was,
in fact, extremely lucky,
because the Russians thought
I was a CIA plant, and the CIA
thought I was a French plant,
and nobody quite
knew where to put me.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well, you
sort of blew the whistle
before it became, I guess,
popular on a mainstream level
with Edward Snowden, right?
Edward Snowden happened
in, I think, 2013.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
Bad things happen
to whistleblowers.
I had made a
transition to writing.
KEITH WRIGHT: Yeah
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: I'm
sitting in Hollywood,
writing screenplays, because
that's one of the best ways
to communicate stories about
our true life, right now,
is through drama apparently,
because people have given up
on the news.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well,
we've had this upswing
in whistleblowing, right?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Yeah, so that's--
KEITH WRIGHT: We had it
kicked off with Snowden,
and we also had--
I think his name's Christopher
Wiley from Cambridge Analytica,
which really--
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
And some girl [INAUDIBLE]
was called Faith Justice,
or something like that?
Always funny names.
KEITH WRIGHT: So
my question to you
is, there might be many
other people out there
in a tough position, where
they have certain very
valuable information that they
think that the public should be
aware of, and if they were
to disclose that information,
it could sort of rock
the boat, but possibly
in the favor of democracy,
is what they might be hoping.
So do you have any
advice to them?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
I do, because I'm
forced to give it all the time.
They'll get in touch with me.
They read the book,
or they see the film,
and they want to figure out
how they can do something.
You know, the old saying
is, when you see something,
do something.
But we all know that
that's not always possible.
You've got to pick
your battles in life,
and you've got to survive.
And now, I'm with two
children in Hollywood.
Do I see corrupt practices?
Yeah.
But like, am I rocking the boat?
No, I'm trying to make
a new career, right?
So we all have times
in life when we were--
KEITH WRIGHT: You're trying
to make a new career?
Because you sort
of had to abandon--
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Well,
diplomacy is out for me, yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT: Right.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: But the big
job of a diplomat, they say,
is to go abroad and lie
on behalf of your country.
But the real biggest job of
a diplomat is to shut up.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well, it seems
like these whistleblowers
are sort of left in
these dire situations.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
They send me e-mails.
They send me e-mails.
I send them over
to my ProtonMail,
and then I ask them to explain
what it is they've got,
and who--
you know, it's a
question of strategizing.
You don't need to put your
own career on the line
to get information out.
You can work from the inside
there are sometimes-- you know,
there have been reforms.
And the UN invited me
back to brief them about,
how do we treat--
the whistleblowers are usually
some of the top performing
staff.
They're not just some person
sitting at a desk somewhere.
So how can we use these
whistleblowers to actually
improve our management?
OK.
And you're like,
is this blah, blah?
Or is this-- you know, it's
still a risk to speak up,
and we all know it.
The question is when to
speak up for maximum effect
and how to play the politics.
The op ed was in "The
Wall Street Journal"
because "The Wall
Street Journal"
wanted an anti-UN in peace.
My book came out through
Nation books from the left,
because I didn't
want to be identified
with this sort of war on the EU.
I was a journalist by training.
I was able to play that game.
You can leak
information, but you
need to create a trustworthy
relationship with a journalist
that has a track record.
Now, one person tried this.
It was Edward Snowden.
I don't know if some
of you have seen
the documentary of him
meeting these guys in a hotel
room in Hong Kong?
He was the quintessential
sacrificial Christ-like
whistleblower.
He knew his life was
over, that if he merely
survived giving his warning--
and his warning to us,
by the way, was serious.
He warned us that the
systems were in place,
so that if a wrong
government came to power
and just assigned certain
tasks to cyber command,
we would be facing something
he called turnkey tyranny.
And we're just going about
our business, turnkey tyranny,
yeah.
We have to be a little careful.
We have to think.
We have to read through the
lines when we read the news.
And we have to choose our cause.
We can all fight every cause.
But I think people that
are inside government
is the most important.
Because if you're in a
corporation and something
is wrong, it's also business.
You can move on with your life.
You can do other things.
My biggest advice
to whistleblowers,
and they come to me a lot, is
to first protect themselves.
Have a plan, because if
you're sacrificing yourselves,
you're not helping the
fight against corruption.
You're just committing suicide.
And unfortunately,
if that worked,
I would be like, OK, go ahead.
But it doesn't.
And what really works
is to rock the boat.
What really works to electrify
bureaucrats into action
and shine light on certain
aspects of how our world works.
Because when some
things come to light,
suddenly they become scandals.
And when things become
scandals, bureaucrats
have to figure out, well,
how do I keep my seat?
I'll be on this side of the
investigation, or I'll be--
there's a political
logic to all of it.
But if we're not able to use
the tools at our disposal
to shine light on some of
the greatest inequities
and acts of corruption
in the world,
then we're simply not
using our medium correctly.
They have a purpose other
than to entertain us.
And it is, in fact, very
entertaining to see bureaucrats
electrified.
I promise you.
It's actually
quite entertaining.
Because seeing people
having to defend
the indefensible is comedic.
Try interviewing a BP
official while there's
a gusher in the
Caribbean and say,
we have the situation
under control.
And on the other split screen,
they're like [MAKING NOISES]
It's funny.
And it makes for
good news, and we
have to understand what
the news people want.
We have to play their
game, because they
have our attention.
And so I think good
whistleblowing, in general,
means getting the right kind
of attention on an issue.
Figure out where the story is,
why that story is entertaining.
Because we have ADD as a
people, as a generation.
And if we're not
entertained, we don't care.
KEITH WRIGHT: So you say
use tools at your disposal.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT: If you look at
a lot of those tools today--
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
And entertainment is
a big one of them.
I mean, entertainment
got Trump the Presidency.
Entertainment is power.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well,
a lot of these tools,
they're sort of born or
developed in the digital space.
Right?
In here--
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Yeah.
KEITH WRIGHT: --they are
conducting a Google Talk.
Many of the people
in the audience
are working in
the digital space.
I'm curious to know,
do you have any sort
of advice for people working
in the digital space?
Is it sort of good
news, bad news?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: No, I think
there's opportunities here.
I've seen-- really.
I've seen cases of
employee activism
that have made enormous changes
in the decisions of higher
ups in the corporate structure.
The problem of the
corporation per se
is that it always looks for
profit and satisfying board
members.
But now we've talk
about corporate social
responsibility.
Are we paying lip service
to it, or are there
are certain values that are a
little bit more crystal clear
than that, and who is in
charge of identifying them
and of defending them.
There's always a gap
somewhere in the loop,
because money talks.
The only thing that
can stand up to money
is humor and entertainment.
We've got now late
night shows that people
watch more than they
watch the nightly news.
That says something about
where our society is.
We don't get our news
from World News Tonight.
We get it from the guys
making fun of what's going on,
because we're actually
learning something.
And they're unafraid,
and they're unafraid
because they get laughs.
Entertainment and, of
course, mobilizing and so on,
we're in a state of
flux here, because we
don't know whether the digital
age will be the end of us,
because the logarithms that
say, this is your past,
and this will be your
future, will kind of command
and control our actions
and limit our freedom,
or whether we will be
empowered in the digital space
to be individuals,
to be organized,
and hopefully to
not be infiltrated.
When people start a movement
like Black Lives Matter,
they don't want Russian
agents going in and messing up
their messaging.
And that's what's coming
out from this investigation.
So we live in incredibly
interesting times right now.
I just happen to have dipped
in the corruption soup a bit
early, but it took me a
while to think about it,
and what it means, and
why it's important.
And I'm sitting before you
today, dead frightened.
KEITH WRIGHT: I think
that's a great note
to end on, and open it
up to audience questions.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: I'm sorry.
I don't mean to scare you.
KEITH WRIGHT: I don't know
if anybody has any questions,
but if you do, you can go
ahead and step up to the mic.
AUDIENCE: Thanks a lot
for taking the time.
I just read Bill Browder's
book, "Red Notice,"
about the guy who came up in
the Trump-Putin summit that
lobbied for
sanctions [INAUDIBLE]
to sanction the
individuals that were
responsible for his lawyer's
death in prison in Russia.
I'm just curious what you think
about this law as an approach,
the idea of sanctioning people
associated with an oligarch
or a dictator as a
disincentive for corruption.
Do you think this is an
effective tactic that
should be more adopted
throughout the EU
and other countries, or
is it more of a symbol?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Targeted sanctions
can be effective,
because they attack
the people around a dictator.
These are his support
systems, his people.
And why do you think Putin
wanted Hillary to lose so bad?
It was effective.
Yeah.
You know, we have to
be careful with when
applying any type of sanctions.
We have to not apply
sanctions that that
harm entire populations.
There's really never
much gain from there.
We have to apply sanctions
that target leaders.
Because corruptions is like, the
fish rots from the head, right?
Without democracy, there would
be no talk of corruption.
If the King is the King and
has all the power, what he does
is not corrupt.
It's legal.
And we have to also see the
distinction between legality
and moral corruption.
Somehow, this country
thought that slavery was not
only legal, but moral
based on the Bible,
and some like, real mind-bending
sort of arguments at the time,
not so long ago.
And some people spoke up.
The biggest
bestseller in America
was called "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The media can change
the path of a nation.
Lincoln credited Harriet
Beecher Stowe and other people
with changing the public's
mind about the biggest
issue of the day.
But democracy does not
advance without a fight.
On the beaches of
Normandy, my dad
took me there when I was young.
He was a journalist.
And I didn't know
what he was doing.
And he just took
me there and showed
me all the tombstones of the
people who had died that day.
And he just said-- and I'm
nine years old and he said,
this is why you're free.
Wow, well, I don't want
to be dead, but OK.
You know, but it's a fight.
It's a fight, and
together we're stronger.
So the individual
whistleblower like Snowden,
it pains me to see that, of all
places, he's stuck in Russia.
You know?
In an odd twist of fate.
But if he had
stayed in Hong Kong,
he would have turned up
dead in a garage somewhere.
It's quite clear.
But laws like
this, yeah, they've
lobbied hard to try to lift it.
And they hate the
people that imposed it.
And no, I think if
there's no consequences--
but that's us trying to
teach a dictatorship how
to be less corrupt.
We're only going to be
that successful at that.
We have to look
inside a little bit.
We have to look at how much of
an example are we to the world?
Because people look at us,
and during the Arab Spring,
how did the Arab Spring start?
As a movement
against corruption.
Some poor man's-- he was
a fruit/vegetable salesman
in the street.
His cart was turned over,
and he didn't pay his dues.
And the whole
country went aflame
because they thought
this was so unfair.
And the entire Arab Spring
was about corruption.
But since they had seen
us being in cahoots
with their former
leaders, and not
be sure about who we support
in each one of these conflicts,
then the young people are
attracted to the extremists
that tell them--
the first thing they do
when they come into a town
is they say, what are
the problems here?
Boom, boom, boom, you die.
They seem like our
version of your fired.
Right?
Somebody who's going to come
in, and get order, and restore
order and, restore
some sense of justice.
And that dynamic is very
important to understand.
People want justice.
People want a system
that is just, that works.
So we can lecture
other countries,
or we can sanction
other countries.
But we got to look first and
foremost at our own processes.
That's where we're going to
make the biggest difference,
and that's where we'll set
the example that others
will eventually copy when they
get in a position to do so.
When they overthrow
their regimes,
they've got
somewhere to look to.
Last time they overthrew their
regimes, they looked to us.
They were like, they don't care.
OK.
Let's figure it out
among ourselves.
And it was civil war.
So I think, yeah, I think that
smart, targeted sanctions are
a good means to
attack the problem,
but we've got to look at
our own mechanism first.
There's a lot of work.
KEITH WRIGHT: Do you
have any other questions?
AUDIENCE: So it
seems like you're
advocating for media as a way
to sort of fight these problems,
but it's also become clear
that like, media and telling
stories works on both sides.
And there's propaganda
on both sides.
So what are your thoughts
on this, and how we can make
sure that the
stories that we tell
and the stories
that are told are
things that are
actually accurate,
and it will actually
help the world?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Well, this
is a very good question,
because we're not
only participating
in telling stories, we're
also story consumers.
So when we click on
click bait that's
like somewhere between
an ad and a slide show,
we are participating
in the telling of news
that is going to be, at
some level, manipulative.
Even if it's just
to sell a shampoo,
it's still going
to manipulate us.
If we seek out
sources of news that
are what I would call
hard news, then yeah,
we're going to get
the information,
but we won't be as entertained.
We can entertain ourselves and
click ourselves into tyranny.
There is no guarantee that
at the end of this century,
we're going to be living in
what we call today a democracy.
If we click the wrong
buttons, it has consequences.
Now, it's a game.
To prevail, the greater values
have to be more entertaining.
The stories have to be more
entertaining, more engaging,
than the other side's stories.
And I think that's where
I pitch the battle.
KEITH WRIGHT: So I think we
have time for one more question.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, thanks
again for taking the time.
Just curious how you're thinking
about your own personal safety
and security?
Now, obviously,
Saddam Hussein himself
is obviously not a threat.
But there's still
a lot of people
who are associated with many
of the people who were involved
with the case that
you whistleblew on,
who were still out there,
that there's a lot of interest
just in the general, you
know, exposure to things
that could be [INAUDIBLE].
Aren't you concerned about your
own-- like when you travel?
MICHAEL SOUSSAN:
Well, there were
times that were more dangerous.
But once things come to
light, the danger is on them.
And the truth is, once the
light shines on the problem,
they invite you back to give a
talk at their corporate retreat
to their ethics group
that they just set up
after they paid a huge fine
of, you know, $30 million
to the US government, none
of which went back to Iraq,
by the way.
But no, you can
change the dynamic.
Shedding light does
change dynamics.
People who know that they
are part of a system that
is doing something wrong
are afraid of the truth
and of transparency.
And when it is occurring,
they switch sides.
And just like a normal
person would do,
you play with the winning team.
I was shit scared at
some point in my life,
but I had to PTSD
my way out of that.
KEITH WRIGHT: Well,
I think with that,
we'll go ahead and wrap up.
But thank you, Michael,
so much for coming.
MICHAEL SOUSSAN: Thanks.
KEITH WRIGHT: We appreciate it.
It's a powerful
message [INAUDIBLE]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, everybody.
