Frank Gaffney (00:10):
Welcome back and a very special welcome to our guest, a regular feature of this program about this time, And that would be Bill Walton, a recovering master of the universe on Wall Street, these days the host of a terrific television podcast program, The Bill Walton Show. You can find it among other places at the CPAC channel. We're wanting to talk with Bill about a very important interview that I had the privilege of sharing with him in his studio the other day with Benjamin Weingarten, a man no stranger to this program as well, but a really formidable intellect, as well as duty expert on so many of the public policy challenges of our time.
(00:54):
Bill, I wanted to thank you for having been on and to visit with you a little bit about some of the really important takeaways from that conversation with him about this cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency within the Department of Homeland Security, what it's up to and what should be a grave concern to all of us.
Bill Walton (01:14):
Well, Frank, I was delighted you could join because you've got such subject matter expertise. This is one of the really terrific deep dive shows I've done, and thanks in part to you. But Ben testified in front of Congress a couple of weeks ago to one of the subcommittees, Homeland Security subcommittees, and the topic was what's happening with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, fondly known with another acronym in Washington CISA.
(01:45):
Homeland Security, as we know, has experienced massive mission drift, turning its attention from foreign enemies to what they now perceive as domestic enemies. Essentially, they're aiming at, a shorthand way of putting it, Trump voters.
(02:06):
We've heard about the Twitter files and the fact that Twitter had visitors from FBI and all the other security agencies during the last four or five years to coordinate what the social media companies were doing at the behest of the Biden White House and the rest of administration.
(02:29):
Well, CISA has been all in, not as well known, but they've been a convening agency for a lot of the meetings that have been held with all of the other security agencies in the government and the social media companies. One of the very chilling things that they've done is ... To legitimize the attack on so-called domestic terrorists, they've taken their mandate, one of which is protecting the infrastructure of the United States, and they've declared that the American mind is part of the American infrastructure.
(03:10):
This is directly from Jen Easterly, who now heads it. She calls it our cognitive infrastructure, and she's using it as an excuse to protect such infrastructure from bad thought. As you heard-
Frank Gaffney (03:24):
Disinformation, misinformation-
Bill Walton (03:27):
... I'm interested in [inaudible 00:03:28]. This is really straight out of-
Frank Gaffney (03:28):
... and malinformation.
Bill Walton (03:30):
I'm sorry, Frank. Go ahead.
Frank Gaffney (03:31):
No, no. I just wanted to capture the breadth of this. There's disinformation and misinformation and malformation that was all the sort of thing that the American mind and cognitive infrastructure now needs to be protected against. Now, Bill, we were hearing some time ago about this disinformation governance board, and with some fanfare that was interred. But it sounds as though CISA is simply packaging up that old wine in new bottles, if you will, and that we're looking at a similar kind of governmental involvement in censorship of the American people.
Bill Walton (04:13):
Well, they disbanded that board, but they quickly recreated a new one. I'm looking in my notes as to what euphemism they've called it. But they have another disinformation board that they're standing up, which has roughly the same agenda, or essentially almost entirely the same agenda, but I don't think they're going to pick the Mary Poppins impersonator to run it.
Frank Gaffney (04:37):
Yeah, let's hope.
Bill Walton (04:38):
That was a bad PR move.
Frank Gaffney (04:40):
Let's hope.
Bill Walton (04:41):
But it's not a joke. I mean you talk about misinformation, disinformation, malformation. These are the terms that they use to so-called protect America from bad actors. Malinformation, I think, is the most pernicious, which they call ... It's based on fact, but it's used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate. So in other words, we can be reporting out facts on our Twitter feed or Facebook or any of other platforms, but even though we're talking about facts, if we put it in a context that CISA doesn't think protects the American people, they'll shut it down.
Frank Gaffney (05:19):
Bill, this is extremely chilling, and it gives a focus to what I wanted to talk about briefly. We talk about China a lot on this program with you because you've really developed a great expertise on the subject. We'll do more of that in the second block.
(05:34):
But I just wanted to say by way of a segue, a woman who really was a prime example of getting factual information to the American people fearlessly, whether it was speaking truth to power about what was going on inside her own government or, very commendably, what she would report about what foreign tyrants, whether it was Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or their predecessors, she was extraordinarily formidable as an exemplar of what I think journalism should be. Her name was Claudia Rosett. She was for many years an author, a writer, an editorialist, an essayist for much of her career with the Wall Street Journal. We just lost her, I'm so sorry to say, over the weekend, to, I think, cancer.
(06:39):
As you talk about what journalism has become these days, in partnership with these disinformation, malformation, misinformation, censoring organizations within the United States government, which the last time I checked is absolutely unconstitutional, and yet too many in the media, particularly in the social media, have been playing along, have been doing the bidding of the government, and I think the cognitive infrastructure of the United States is considerably worse as a result.
(07:17):
Bill, I want to give you a chance to just say a word about that, but it's going to be on the other side of a very short break. Bill Walton is with us, the host of The Bill Walton Show, friend and colleague who had, I'm very pleased to say, a segment with me, not only with Ben Weingarten but about our new book. Did I mention it yet? No, I don't think I did. The Indictment. Bill, thank you for that as well.
(07:41):
When we come back, we'll talk China, as well as a woman who was exposing a tenement as well as elsewhere what was really going on inside that new evil empire. We'll be right back with more right after this.
