Sharyl Attkisson: How I Discovered That Obama Hacked My Computer

0:01 11 years ago I think last week CBS announced my computers as as CBS News investigative correspondent had been breached in an unauthorized way they had gotten into the whole CVS system the forensics showed that the government IP addresses that were Uninvited and my computer spying on me for a long period of time had a keystroke monitoring program activated Skype to listen in on conversations when it doesn't look like Skype is even on had access Fast and

0:30 Furious files where I was covering a scandal the government was very sensitive to um had just done many things to me and the CBS system and and that of my family I thought it would be easy I never suspected this by the way because this is before we knew they've been doing this to journalist was on the front edge of all that I got tipped off by two people in the intelligence communities and then someone offered to

0:52 look at my computer I didn't even never even heard of such a thing that they'd be in your computers and when the evidence came back positive and now we've had many friends exams and independent exams that confirmed it and identified the IP addresses and so on I thought okay naively they'll apologize in Department of Justice government and you know fire whoever did it I didn't realize they would spend taxpayer money going on 10 years now to fight me in court to do

1:19 anything other than let this go to court where there can be redress to do anything other than give the documents that will prove who ordered the Operation I I've come to understand that'll never happen and although I've I've won a small victory a Clerk's default against one ex agent that confessed being involved in conjunction with an ex secret service agent also on the team who was in prison for other charges when we got his name and he was

1:44 identified to us other corruption um the clerk's default I want against this ex agent well we should have a damages trial soon not that he has money or that I would ever see money but it's the point of holding trying to hold someone accountable he would have been able to theoretically testify about the higher ups who he had said in previous conversations ordered this and was doing it to other journalists and other citizens but he has now disappeared

2:10 slash died so you know that's kind of where it's going to end I guess I will have a damages trial that won't go anywhere I can't get to the higher ups because the courts require you to have all the proof about the higher ups before you can get Discovery to get the documents about who ordered it like it's a weird Circle you have to have so wait so okay you have to have the proof before you can do discovery which is the

2:38 process of of uncovering all the connections on the basis of uh reasonable or probable cause or something to that that's right my attorney said this is one of the little known conundrums of Courts today it's been turned into sort of this joke system where they can do that they basically say the b what you have I have no ability to force someone to give me depositions and evidence but they're sort of like going to someone who's a

3:05 murder of family of a murder victim and telling them gather all the evidence before we can charge the person that we think that you have some evidence did it you have to get the fingerprints you have to get the interview with him and he's just going to say no and how do you get the fingerprints if you have no right to go in the building so they want you to have stuff before you can get the

3:26 documents that would prove the stuff that would get you to trial so I've I've of given up hope that we're going to get the names I know some of the names because I had good sources but I can't prove those names I don't have anything on paper that proves these people did it um I just have the names of these lower level agents that took part in the operation for people who aren't familiar with or maybe were too young to be

3:49 paying attention to such things real quickly what was fast and the furious and what what was your role in in reporting on that like many stories I hear about something from a whistleblower or a source and I think that can't be true there's no way that's true and then often it turns out to be true and in this case I got a tip about the government literally under the Obama Administration although a bit was done even under the Bush Administration prior

4:19 to them see this this government establishment runs regardless of who's President by the way yeah but I got a tip that the government was intentionally allowing guns to be sold and putting them in the hands thousands of them of Mexico's drug cartels and it just seems so outlandish until I got sources who were currently doing it for the government including one who went on camera because the government denied it oh what fantasy haha what what is Sheryl

4:46 talking about and he went on camera sitting federal agent and looked in the camera and said I've been doing it every day since I've worked here you tell me I haven't been doing it he had videos he had evidence it broke this Global story and the government was really mad at me because the goal is to you know stop the reporter not stop the problem so they initially denied It ultimately admitted It ultimately apologized but that was

5:13 over a long probably year process under which Eric Holder and the Department of Justice gave false testimony gave false information to Congress he was held in contempt for not turning over documents I think the first time an attorney general was held in contempt of congress and when the documents were finally leaving the White House which initially said it knew nothing about it they went from saying it was a little local operation nobody knew we kept tracing it

5:38 through documents all the way up to the White House discussing it and then President Obama for the first and only time of his presidency declared executive privilege to keep the document secret so we'll never fully know all of the thinking behind what they were doing with putting these weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels all right real quick this clip is actually part of an exclusive interview that you can only see over at Daves am.com that's our new substack so

6:05 if you want to see more head over and subscribe and now back to the clip how has your um philosophy changed over time um I mean broadly it could be a political philosophy or could be like a more like a way you see the world can can you speak to that can you speak because you you have gone through on a on a serious Journey from you know career-wise and you have taken slings and arrows from the heights of power

6:36 right up to the president functionally how has that changed the way you look at the world I'm pretty skeptical um but I think in a reasonable way I I'm a I'm a very optimistic person so I don't walk around angry and you know threatened but I feel I feel smart like sometime it's it's almost like every time I I hear something and I sense something wrong or there might be an agenda and I do a little digging and

7:02 I find it I'm like I knew it so I kind of like that it's kind of a fun thing what's more important about my job now than than it used to be is unearthing information that the censorship complex doesn't want you to have I think it used to be I just like to inform people and explain complicated things and put information out there I think it's never been more important to find that information that matters that other

7:25 people aren't going to tell you about I mean I just I I'm really worried about the fact that people are talking about censorship and the media is defending it I mean 10 years ago let's see until about 2015 nobody was talking like that and the fact that the media's bought into it there are people that want to restrict the Free Press and your free speech and change the thing that this country is supposed to be about

7:51 it's not for anybody's good and once we cross over a certain line like if Elon Musk hadn't bought Twitter and loosened that up again a bit we're we're very close to being in a precarious situation where all of our information is like North Korea where I imagine in North Korea as bad as things are if they have TV and you were to watch the Nightly News if they had Nightly News they'd all be told how wonderful it is in their country every

8:16 day and everyone I picture would be like living in squal or knowing better but with the utter inability to do anything about it and I really don't think we're all that far from that there's an epic battle going on around the world between people like me and people that want to rise up against this and the establishment politicians in all parties who want really not to have people like Robert F Kennedy Jr or Donald Trump or

8:42 frankly even Bernie Sanders in a position outside of the establishment listening to people and bringing forth what the people want versus what this establishment has built itself into I'm very concerned what do you think is at the root of today's Journal Jal ists becoming advocates for Less information for the public and that that seems to I mean one recent example is there were people who call themselves journalists who were celebrating that Camala Harris was not

9:13 doing interviews with the media that's right so I don't know if you're you're just a party hack but there does seem like there's almost a philosophical change where do you place the root of this this like censorious media it seems against the interests of you as a profession to be censorious but so this was a campaign that was launched in 2015 I believe I traced in my last book The smear or the one before that slanted where I was able to

9:43 pinpoint efforts by well funded billionaires behind the scenes working to form all of these journalism nonprofits and to fund all these fake factchecking groups that didn't exist all for the goal of getting us where we are today I remember in 2016 not long before the election President Obama gave a speech at Carnegie melon and talked about this was foreign until this moment that someone would need to develop some sort of curation system for news and

10:14 information in this what he called wild west media environment and I remember going what curation of information and I thought it was strange but I knew that's an initiative you don't just a president just doesn't make that remark in an off-handed way and then all the fake fact checking came up the use of fake news which was not invented by Donald Trump I traced the origin of that phrase in its modern context to a nonprofit called first draft started at the start

10:43 of the 2015 election cycle and its whole goal was to talk about fake news and I noticed initially it was always pinpointing Republican or prot Trump news as being fake and sometimes it was but never the liberal news which sometimes was fake so I'm like okay there's some agenda here who's behind this nonprofit first draft who's a resource for all journalists and journalists are such Lemmings they just go oh this is a great resource first draft I should get all my fact checks

11:12 from first draft there's a lot of organizations like it they didn't have their tax forms filed yet so I called and asked them where their money came from Google Google was run by was owned by alphabet run by Eric Schmidt Hillary Clinton's one of her top boosters at the time as she was running for president against Donald Trump no accident that this organization started and began controversial ising Donald Trump calling for censorship and factchecking or what

11:37 I call fake fat checks and accusing anyone who is not anti-trump of being fake news that's when it started and Media Matters this left-wing smear group profarma group Media Matters they're internal documents where they're bragging about getting Facebook to start these fake fact checks and to start censoring data and information so you can trace this effort really to the entry of trump on the stage but a lot was going on in that time period and um

12:05 that's that's when things changed practically overnight there was all already some of this creeping into our landscape but there was a big change starting around that time period final question I ask this of every guest you know we call this show Dad Saves America because I I believe that's a role we can play as men that is essential to the future of our country to you know it starts in the home and it expands out to

12:26 the country um how do you think about your role in the American story what I would like people to say about me someday is that without fear or favor she tried to put forth information for the public to be able to make up their own minds about important things that's I don't think it's any more complicated than that that's what I see as my role