Greg Palast fights the good fight. He will find and report the truth at any cost to himself. His latest book is Armed Madhouse which details his investigations into everything our government has pulled on our country and the world in the past few years.
Buy Armed Madhouse
Daniel Robert Epstein: How is the book tour going so far?
Greg Palast: Were number three on Amazon and The Blonde From Another Planet [Ann Coulter] was supposedly number two.
DRE: Yes, I just checked.
GP: On the other hand, she has the Fox hole covered. She has the Today Show. Shes all over and Greg Palast is just trying to report the news and Im up against the electronic Berlin Wall. I dont exist. I got on a local NPR show today where they attacked me for my message.
DRE: Which message would that be?
GP: Going undercover and not telling the truth. Mark Swedlund and I pretended that we were consultants for Enron corporation, set up a phony front and found out in Britain, how Enron is renting the government. Im wearing a wire. I got the inside documents, the secret plans for the oil deals of Iraq that the Bush administration has drafted for them by oil company executives. I said, I wore a wire. They said it was improper, NPR said that I couldnt do that. I said, I know that on National Petroleum Radio youre not allowed to keep secret recordings of oil company executives because youre not allowed to record your landlord. They didnt like that. They asked me why I recorded them. I said, Because they lie. If you tell them Im a reporter for National Public Radio. Im a very important person with these points. I put in a Freedom of Information Act request saying give me your plans for the oil fields of Iraq. They said there is no such thing. Then I wore a wire and recorded oil company executives telling me how they put it together, suddenly they said, Oh, that document. This is really what happened.
DRE: Its scary.
GP: Its what happened, man. Then the James Baker Institute, for your readers/viewers/fornicators that are tuned in James Baker represents the Exxon Corporation, represents the Saudi Arabian kingdom and he represents the consiglieres of the Bush family. His little operative threatened to sue me and so did a big oil company executive. He said he never spoke to me. So then Harpers magazine said to them, Which part of this audio tape is not you? So there you go. I do these nasty things. I go undercover. Im not embedded. I get under the covers, not between the sheets with the fed department. Thats different. NPR, doesnt mind undercover as long as its between the sheets/embedded.
DRE: Where does someone like you start your research?
GP: I watch the Presidents lips move and I say, Where did he get that lie? I begin with the basic proposition that they are complete lying scumfucks at all moments and theres never a break from it. I want to know when they come up with a figure or a concept. I say, Okay. Hit the phone. Its about the oil. Immediately. No seriously. There is never a straight word. We dont wait around for someone to call up and say, Hey. The Presidents lying. We know hes lying. Now we make a list and we start. Usually we can figure it out. If youre going to find out about Iraq, the answers about Iraq are going to be down in Houston, Texas. Thats where the oil industry is.
DRE: I actually got to speak to George Clooney about Syriana last year. I asked him, Is fighting like this futile? He said, Probably in the short term, but in the long term it makes a difference in peoples minds. I was wondering what your feeling is on that.
GP: Do we make a difference in peoples minds? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Because theres a difference between thinking that theyre fucking with you and watching the film of it. Otherwise its very abstract. Thats detective work. Thats why you get the telephoto lens. I dont like the ill feeling that they probably stole the election. Its very important for me to show you exactly how they stole the election. We begin with the assumption that theyre lying and then we go out and prove it.
DRE: Do you assume that every politician is always lying?
GP: I used to investigate corporations, including Enron, when they were called Houston Natural Gas. People say, How do you pick out your targets? I said, Name a corporation. Theyre set up to lie. The system is set up to reward mendacity. Some of these guys lie just for practice.
DRE: How long will it take for everything youve written about on this subject to become common knowledge?
GP: The general cycle is, two to four years after I report it. Fox and NPR called me a conspiracy theorist. A conspiracy nut theorist is someone who reports the news two years to four years before NPR and the New York Times. Its true. I reported the story on how Bush shoplifted the 2000 election. Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush erased several thousand black people off the voter rolls before the election by tagging them as felons. Their crime was voting while black. I could not get that in the US press for anything. People have to understand Im reporting for BBC television, not exactly some blogger in his underpants in his parents bedroom. Then it was reported by the New York Times in 2004 as a fact. They wouldnt report it in 2000 when I was reporting it as fact.
DRE: Has it always been two to four years for you?
GP: Yes. Its fascinating. Front page of the New York Times this year was a story that all over America, power companies had been collecting taxes from the public and not paying them, pocketing billions. Big story. Front page of the New York Times. Big investigation. I tried to convince the New York Times to run that story 21 years ago. That was the first time they called me a conspiracy nut.
DRE: Why do they ignore you at first?
GP: If it isnt one of their reporters doing it, they dont want it to hear it. But even more, its not from an official source. Bob Woodward wrote All the President's Men and has now become one of the presidents men. As managing editor of the Washington Post he would never in a million years run the Watergate story today. Youve got an unnamed source and official denial. Thats the end of the goddamned story.
DRE: Was it Jayson Blair that changed things?
GP: Nah. Its not Jayson Blair. By the way, NPR did ask me to comment on Jayson Blairs fabricated stories. I said, Okay. But lets talk about NPRs fabricated stories. I was yanked off the air 30-seconds before airtime. They said that it creates a problem for them. I said, Why is it a problem? How about it creates a discussion? They dont like me pulling down their pants because the problem is when youre exposing these stories, youre exposing the media not covering those stories. Youre not going to get these stories by going to press conferences and repeating press releases. If I were to use the New York Times/NPR method, rewriting the press release, their idea of investigation is they go to Bush and then they get a response from Al Gore or whatever democrat. Thats the limit of investigation. The Pulitzer Prizes only face stuff as long as government is approved. Lowell Bergman of the New York Times got a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on unsafe conditions in working places, which was a good story. Im glad they did it. They exposed companies that received fines from OSHA. How about exposing the guys that got away without receiving the fines? The government says youre correct because its already blessed. The Washington Post did cover my story of the theft of the 2000 election the week after the US Civil Rights Commission said my evidence was correct. The only reason the US Civil Rights Commission said my evidence was correct was because Bush hadnt fired them yet. Then he fired them.
DRE: I read in your book about when you encountered John Perkins and you wrote that he is quite brilliant. When I interviewed him I told him that I thought the job he had seemed like an evil job.
GP: I was on the other side when he was trying to convince government to basically throw away their money and mark themselves with the debt to corporations and banks. I was like a hippie guerrilla economist. I was trying to be all the seven samurais, but there was only one of me. Dont do it. Dont listen to this man. Hes a fraud. But he had a great smile. Hes a good friend.
DRE: Really!
GP: Real close friend. Actually today Perkins sent out a message to all his readers to please get Armed Madhouse.
DRE: Do you ever feel like youre in danger?
GP: Ive done some stupid stuff. In Venezuela I was very concerned because theres all these arms maniacs and Im on a hit list there, which you can download. So I had to keep my head down literally in Venezuela. I stop in at the presidents weekly broadcast. Hugo Chavez has like a variety show with singers, dancers and oil ministers. So Chavez recognizes me in the audience. He says Hey. Greg Palast. Come on up. It was like Lets Make a Deal or something. So here I am, Im trying to hide and Im suddenly on national TV. My staff totally flipped. They said You really just want to end up in deep trouble. On one of these grainy videos on the Internet, right? So that was a dumb one. But mainly Im worried about my sources. Ive had sources arrested, busted, lives threatened, beaten up. I will do whatever I can to protect them. I dont want to scare people now from giving me information because some sources decide they have to go public and thats just trouble. The big problem is that I dont feel endangered because they dont give a shit. They can call me a conspiracy nut and ignore me. Ann Coulter was on The Today Show yesterday, Greg Palast is on SuicideGirls but theyre not going to let me on your TV.
DRE: Whats the best way for a regular person to get educated, besides reading all of your stuff?
GP: Thats no joke though. Until Patriot Act Three, you can read books. I think that weve gotten so used to the idea that you can get this easy news injection but you might actually have to read a book. One trick is go to my website and you can get to these investigative BBC reports I do. I keep them streaming on the BBC computers. Frankly people are still watching my reports on the 2000 and 2004 election and reports on Venezuela secret oil wars, all that stuff because if you havent seen it, its news to you. It doesnt matter if it was a news report from three years ago. It was blocked on US TV and you watch it now, its news.
DRE: How do we stop them from taking the 2008 election?
GP: Youve got to turn the lights on so the cockroaches will scatter. That is when you expose the story. I really believe its important to make them feel it. I know its corny, but you better go out and vote. You better go out and get your slacker brother to register and vote because theyre going to steal five million votes this time. They stole 3.5 in the last election. Since theyre going to steal five you better get six million out there. But the other thing is that people better stop saying Oh well. Thats how it is. That doesnt have to be how it is. The other thing is people can take the shit that theyre reading right now and post it other places. Send it around. Create a truth virus. We have the Internet. Im working with musicians, Eminem did a video based on my stuff, Anti-Flag has turned my stuff and John Perkins stuff into song lyrics. I got a techno track, dance track you can download off my website. I want people to take the audio version of my book, which has people like Randi Rhodes and Larry David and all these people reading my book and remix it to some music. Send it to me at my site.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Armed Madhouse
Daniel Robert Epstein: How is the book tour going so far?
Greg Palast: Were number three on Amazon and The Blonde From Another Planet [Ann Coulter] was supposedly number two.
DRE: Yes, I just checked.
GP: On the other hand, she has the Fox hole covered. She has the Today Show. Shes all over and Greg Palast is just trying to report the news and Im up against the electronic Berlin Wall. I dont exist. I got on a local NPR show today where they attacked me for my message.
DRE: Which message would that be?
GP: Going undercover and not telling the truth. Mark Swedlund and I pretended that we were consultants for Enron corporation, set up a phony front and found out in Britain, how Enron is renting the government. Im wearing a wire. I got the inside documents, the secret plans for the oil deals of Iraq that the Bush administration has drafted for them by oil company executives. I said, I wore a wire. They said it was improper, NPR said that I couldnt do that. I said, I know that on National Petroleum Radio youre not allowed to keep secret recordings of oil company executives because youre not allowed to record your landlord. They didnt like that. They asked me why I recorded them. I said, Because they lie. If you tell them Im a reporter for National Public Radio. Im a very important person with these points. I put in a Freedom of Information Act request saying give me your plans for the oil fields of Iraq. They said there is no such thing. Then I wore a wire and recorded oil company executives telling me how they put it together, suddenly they said, Oh, that document. This is really what happened.
DRE: Its scary.
GP: Its what happened, man. Then the James Baker Institute, for your readers/viewers/fornicators that are tuned in James Baker represents the Exxon Corporation, represents the Saudi Arabian kingdom and he represents the consiglieres of the Bush family. His little operative threatened to sue me and so did a big oil company executive. He said he never spoke to me. So then Harpers magazine said to them, Which part of this audio tape is not you? So there you go. I do these nasty things. I go undercover. Im not embedded. I get under the covers, not between the sheets with the fed department. Thats different. NPR, doesnt mind undercover as long as its between the sheets/embedded.
DRE: Where does someone like you start your research?
GP: I watch the Presidents lips move and I say, Where did he get that lie? I begin with the basic proposition that they are complete lying scumfucks at all moments and theres never a break from it. I want to know when they come up with a figure or a concept. I say, Okay. Hit the phone. Its about the oil. Immediately. No seriously. There is never a straight word. We dont wait around for someone to call up and say, Hey. The Presidents lying. We know hes lying. Now we make a list and we start. Usually we can figure it out. If youre going to find out about Iraq, the answers about Iraq are going to be down in Houston, Texas. Thats where the oil industry is.
DRE: I actually got to speak to George Clooney about Syriana last year. I asked him, Is fighting like this futile? He said, Probably in the short term, but in the long term it makes a difference in peoples minds. I was wondering what your feeling is on that.
GP: Do we make a difference in peoples minds? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Because theres a difference between thinking that theyre fucking with you and watching the film of it. Otherwise its very abstract. Thats detective work. Thats why you get the telephoto lens. I dont like the ill feeling that they probably stole the election. Its very important for me to show you exactly how they stole the election. We begin with the assumption that theyre lying and then we go out and prove it.
DRE: Do you assume that every politician is always lying?
GP: I used to investigate corporations, including Enron, when they were called Houston Natural Gas. People say, How do you pick out your targets? I said, Name a corporation. Theyre set up to lie. The system is set up to reward mendacity. Some of these guys lie just for practice.
DRE: How long will it take for everything youve written about on this subject to become common knowledge?
GP: The general cycle is, two to four years after I report it. Fox and NPR called me a conspiracy theorist. A conspiracy nut theorist is someone who reports the news two years to four years before NPR and the New York Times. Its true. I reported the story on how Bush shoplifted the 2000 election. Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush erased several thousand black people off the voter rolls before the election by tagging them as felons. Their crime was voting while black. I could not get that in the US press for anything. People have to understand Im reporting for BBC television, not exactly some blogger in his underpants in his parents bedroom. Then it was reported by the New York Times in 2004 as a fact. They wouldnt report it in 2000 when I was reporting it as fact.
DRE: Has it always been two to four years for you?
GP: Yes. Its fascinating. Front page of the New York Times this year was a story that all over America, power companies had been collecting taxes from the public and not paying them, pocketing billions. Big story. Front page of the New York Times. Big investigation. I tried to convince the New York Times to run that story 21 years ago. That was the first time they called me a conspiracy nut.
DRE: Why do they ignore you at first?
GP: If it isnt one of their reporters doing it, they dont want it to hear it. But even more, its not from an official source. Bob Woodward wrote All the President's Men and has now become one of the presidents men. As managing editor of the Washington Post he would never in a million years run the Watergate story today. Youve got an unnamed source and official denial. Thats the end of the goddamned story.
DRE: Was it Jayson Blair that changed things?
GP: Nah. Its not Jayson Blair. By the way, NPR did ask me to comment on Jayson Blairs fabricated stories. I said, Okay. But lets talk about NPRs fabricated stories. I was yanked off the air 30-seconds before airtime. They said that it creates a problem for them. I said, Why is it a problem? How about it creates a discussion? They dont like me pulling down their pants because the problem is when youre exposing these stories, youre exposing the media not covering those stories. Youre not going to get these stories by going to press conferences and repeating press releases. If I were to use the New York Times/NPR method, rewriting the press release, their idea of investigation is they go to Bush and then they get a response from Al Gore or whatever democrat. Thats the limit of investigation. The Pulitzer Prizes only face stuff as long as government is approved. Lowell Bergman of the New York Times got a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on unsafe conditions in working places, which was a good story. Im glad they did it. They exposed companies that received fines from OSHA. How about exposing the guys that got away without receiving the fines? The government says youre correct because its already blessed. The Washington Post did cover my story of the theft of the 2000 election the week after the US Civil Rights Commission said my evidence was correct. The only reason the US Civil Rights Commission said my evidence was correct was because Bush hadnt fired them yet. Then he fired them.
DRE: I read in your book about when you encountered John Perkins and you wrote that he is quite brilliant. When I interviewed him I told him that I thought the job he had seemed like an evil job.
GP: I was on the other side when he was trying to convince government to basically throw away their money and mark themselves with the debt to corporations and banks. I was like a hippie guerrilla economist. I was trying to be all the seven samurais, but there was only one of me. Dont do it. Dont listen to this man. Hes a fraud. But he had a great smile. Hes a good friend.
DRE: Really!
GP: Real close friend. Actually today Perkins sent out a message to all his readers to please get Armed Madhouse.
DRE: Do you ever feel like youre in danger?
GP: Ive done some stupid stuff. In Venezuela I was very concerned because theres all these arms maniacs and Im on a hit list there, which you can download. So I had to keep my head down literally in Venezuela. I stop in at the presidents weekly broadcast. Hugo Chavez has like a variety show with singers, dancers and oil ministers. So Chavez recognizes me in the audience. He says Hey. Greg Palast. Come on up. It was like Lets Make a Deal or something. So here I am, Im trying to hide and Im suddenly on national TV. My staff totally flipped. They said You really just want to end up in deep trouble. On one of these grainy videos on the Internet, right? So that was a dumb one. But mainly Im worried about my sources. Ive had sources arrested, busted, lives threatened, beaten up. I will do whatever I can to protect them. I dont want to scare people now from giving me information because some sources decide they have to go public and thats just trouble. The big problem is that I dont feel endangered because they dont give a shit. They can call me a conspiracy nut and ignore me. Ann Coulter was on The Today Show yesterday, Greg Palast is on SuicideGirls but theyre not going to let me on your TV.
DRE: Whats the best way for a regular person to get educated, besides reading all of your stuff?
GP: Thats no joke though. Until Patriot Act Three, you can read books. I think that weve gotten so used to the idea that you can get this easy news injection but you might actually have to read a book. One trick is go to my website and you can get to these investigative BBC reports I do. I keep them streaming on the BBC computers. Frankly people are still watching my reports on the 2000 and 2004 election and reports on Venezuela secret oil wars, all that stuff because if you havent seen it, its news to you. It doesnt matter if it was a news report from three years ago. It was blocked on US TV and you watch it now, its news.
DRE: How do we stop them from taking the 2008 election?
GP: Youve got to turn the lights on so the cockroaches will scatter. That is when you expose the story. I really believe its important to make them feel it. I know its corny, but you better go out and vote. You better go out and get your slacker brother to register and vote because theyre going to steal five million votes this time. They stole 3.5 in the last election. Since theyre going to steal five you better get six million out there. But the other thing is that people better stop saying Oh well. Thats how it is. That doesnt have to be how it is. The other thing is people can take the shit that theyre reading right now and post it other places. Send it around. Create a truth virus. We have the Internet. Im working with musicians, Eminem did a video based on my stuff, Anti-Flag has turned my stuff and John Perkins stuff into song lyrics. I got a techno track, dance track you can download off my website. I want people to take the audio version of my book, which has people like Randi Rhodes and Larry David and all these people reading my book and remix it to some music. Send it to me at my site.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
orbro said:
I'm also a great Palast fan but the potty mouth stuff doesn't win hearts and minds either. I can call Cheney a fuckwad but a journalist needs to put a cap on that kinda language.
i assume hethinks that since this is an adult site that we can handle it