The Hatchet Man Speaks
Alex Gibney interviewed by Kim Hill
Radio NZ National, Saturday 13 July 2013, 8:10 a.m.
Alex Gibney interviewed by Kim Hill
Radio NZ National, Saturday 13 July 2013, 8:10 a.m.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-13072013/#comment-662336
Fans of Kim Hill’s TV and radio interviews have been treated to some pretty interesting characters over the years. There was JEFFREY ARCHER in 1994, screaming furiously: “I’ve been warned about you!” There have been the slightly sad, unintentionally funny ones, such as
the witless, under-prepared U.S. ambassador CHARLES SWINDELLS….
AMBASSADOR SWINDELLS: Errrrrr… Iraq is a terrorist state.
HILL: [patiently but insistently] What’s the link? ….[Long, awkward pause]… AMBASSADOR: We are attacking terrorism on all fronts. HILL: Well, no you’re not. When are you going to attack Saudi Arabia? …[Long, embarrassing pause]… AMBASSADOR: Uh…..
HILL: [patiently but insistently] What’s the link? ….[Long, awkward pause]… AMBASSADOR: We are attacking terrorism on all fronts. HILL: Well, no you’re not. When are you going to attack Saudi Arabia? …[Long, embarrassing pause]… AMBASSADOR: Uh…..
Then there are the more malevolent, sinister ones. For some reason,
Hill’s most rancorous, rankly hypocritical interviewees have mostly been
Englishmen. Who could ever forget the thuggish Blair cabinet minister GEOFF HOON nervelessly insisting that “weapons of mass destruction
will be found in Iraq”? And nobody who heard it will ever forget that
neo-conservative apologist and pompous blowhard WILLIAM SHAWCROSS
frothing with anger after Hill confronted him with his own
hypocrisy in 2004….
KIM HILL: As you eloquently say in your book, a lot of Saddam
Hussein’s atrocities were committed with the sanction of the United
States.
SHAWCROSS: [erupting] I DID NOT SAY THAT!
HILL: [coolly] No-o-o-o-o-o?
SHAWCROSS: [gibbering with fury] This is an ABSURD interview! I did NOT say that! I did NOT say that!
SHAWCROSS: [erupting] I DID NOT SAY THAT!
HILL: [coolly] No-o-o-o-o-o?
SHAWCROSS: [gibbering with fury] This is an ABSURD interview! I did NOT say that! I did NOT say that!
(FACT: He DID say that.)
She also has interviewed, and generally got the better of the slimy careerist PETER HAIN, the hapless former Australian prime minister JOHN HOWARD and the buffoonish, ignorant, malicious restaurant critic-cum-political commentator A.A. GILL.
This morning, however, she interviewed someone who for sheer malice and hypocrisy makes Archer look like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Hain like Nelson Mandela, Hoon like a choir-boy and Shawcross like Albert Schweitzer. Her guest was the unspeakable ALEX GIBNEY, the director of We Steal Secrets, an Obama-friendly Soviet-style hatchet job on dissenter Julian Assange.
I’ll let Gibney speak for himself now. Unless you are an inveterate worshipper of his heartless documentaries, and a motivated hater of Julian Assange, you will not fail to notice how flippant and cynical–as well as unfunny—so many of his little wisecracks are. Nor will you fail to be shocked by the dark, Swiftian irony of some of his observations—all of it unintended by Gibney, of course….
ALEX GIBNEY: Ahhhhh, if you have a significant amount of street cred, you ahhhhhhm feel entitled to be bad. It’s like going for a jog and then coming back and having fast food!
About Father Murphy, who got away with abusing deaf children until they exposed his crimes…..
GIBNEY: People who do nasty stuff like to find rationalizations for their behavior and then that lets them walk round feeling good about themselves.
GIBNEY: People who do nasty stuff like to find rationalizations for their behavior and then that lets them walk round feeling good about themselves.
About the deaf children who exposed Father Murphy….
GIBNEY: What attracted me was their heroism. They showed this was part of a systematic ahhhhhhhhhm…
KIM HILL: Cover-up?
GIBNEY: Yeah, cover-up.
GIBNEY: What attracted me was their heroism. They showed this was part of a systematic ahhhhhhhhhm…
KIM HILL: Cover-up?
GIBNEY: Yeah, cover-up.
About Pope Benedict XVI….
GIBNEY: Ratzinger used to be in the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Inquisition. …. A trail of coverups. That is the REAL crime. A systematic program of covering up. The Archbishop turned on the children and told them, “YOU are to blame for bringing shame on the Church!”
GIBNEY: Ratzinger used to be in the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Inquisition. …. A trail of coverups. That is the REAL crime. A systematic program of covering up. The Archbishop turned on the children and told them, “YOU are to blame for bringing shame on the Church!”
KIM HILL: This Kafkaesque nightmare when nobody believed them.
GIBNEY: Yes, that’s absolutely true.
GIBNEY: Yes, that’s absolutely true.
KIM HILL: As you say, “Deny, minimize and blame” has been the modus operandi of the Catholic Church. Has it changed?
GIBNEY: [gravely, with utmost compassion in voice] I fear not.
GIBNEY: [gravely, with utmost compassion in voice] I fear not.
….[Long, pregnant pause]….
KIM HILL: Let us turn to Julian Assange. The Assangeists, as you call them, have said it’s a very unfair attack.
GIBNEY: Well I think it’s religious. Ahhhh, ha ha ha ha ha ha! The Assangeistas’ have this blind faith. What my film does is to look at the way an individual has become corrupt. It’s this noble cause corruption I was talking about….. Assange was mendacious, fundamentally wrong. He was so rigid and ideological as to endanger people’s lives. His original sin was the Swedish case. He purposely conflated it with Wikileaks, said it was a put-up job by the CIA. Now, I admit that there is no evidence that anyone was hurt by the release of the Afghan war logs. I disagree with the U.S. government on this. He was reckless to publish them without redaction. This separated him from the Guardian and the New York Times. Assange was on the moral low ground just to be “pure” to his “ideals”.
KIM HILL: Is it impossible that there was a conspiracy?
GIBNEY: Anything is possible! Martians might invade! But it’s quite clear this is a matter between one man and two women. Everybody was saying to him, take care of it. He made a calculated decision.
KIM HILL: There’s no hero in this story. Certainly you don’t think Julian Assange is a hero but neither do you believe Bradley Manning was a hero either.
GIBNEY: I think he was a kind of hero. He was naive—he didn’t think through what he was doing. Bradley Manning is an “everyday” hero, not someone like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, but an everyday hero. …. Let’s be honest. …[snicker]… I don’t think we’d like to be in a world where soldiers routinely gave up information they had sworn to keep secret.
GIBNEY: Well I think it’s religious. Ahhhh, ha ha ha ha ha ha! The Assangeistas’ have this blind faith. What my film does is to look at the way an individual has become corrupt. It’s this noble cause corruption I was talking about….. Assange was mendacious, fundamentally wrong. He was so rigid and ideological as to endanger people’s lives. His original sin was the Swedish case. He purposely conflated it with Wikileaks, said it was a put-up job by the CIA. Now, I admit that there is no evidence that anyone was hurt by the release of the Afghan war logs. I disagree with the U.S. government on this. He was reckless to publish them without redaction. This separated him from the Guardian and the New York Times. Assange was on the moral low ground just to be “pure” to his “ideals”.
KIM HILL: Is it impossible that there was a conspiracy?
GIBNEY: Anything is possible! Martians might invade! But it’s quite clear this is a matter between one man and two women. Everybody was saying to him, take care of it. He made a calculated decision.
KIM HILL: There’s no hero in this story. Certainly you don’t think Julian Assange is a hero but neither do you believe Bradley Manning was a hero either.
GIBNEY: I think he was a kind of hero. He was naive—he didn’t think through what he was doing. Bradley Manning is an “everyday” hero, not someone like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela, but an everyday hero. …. Let’s be honest. …[snicker]… I don’t think we’d like to be in a world where soldiers routinely gave up information they had sworn to keep secret.
Re Adrian Lamo, who betrayed Bradley Manning….
GIBNEY: He’s a narcissist, I think that’s clear. Manning had to reach out to someone, and he reached out to someone who turned him in.
GIBNEY: He’s a narcissist, I think that’s clear. Manning had to reach out to someone, and he reached out to someone who turned him in.
KIM HILL: Assange asked you for a million dollars for an interview.
GIBNEY: That reveals his character. … He has defiled his own cause… I think the idea of Wikileaks in its purest form is brilliant…. Assange was overcome by narcissism and noble cause corruption. That’s what the U.S. government does: “We stand for democracy and freedom, so shouldn’t we be able to waterboard a few terrorists?” NO! No, we shouldn’t!
GIBNEY: That reveals his character. … He has defiled his own cause… I think the idea of Wikileaks in its purest form is brilliant…. Assange was overcome by narcissism and noble cause corruption. That’s what the U.S. government does: “We stand for democracy and freedom, so shouldn’t we be able to waterboard a few terrorists?” NO! No, we shouldn’t!
The interview finished, thankfully, soon afterward, and the music of the great Richard Thompson soothed the outraged sensibilities of the listeners.
Then, straight after the 9 a.m. news, listeners heard this….
KIM HILL: Lots of responses to the interview with Alex Gibney. Morrissey writes, in an outraged fashion: Alex Gibney called Julian Assange “mendacious, fundamentally wrong”, “rigid” and “ideological.” He sniggered at the “talkshow hosts and senators calling for drone strikes against Assange”; he mocked Assange for thinking “I have terrible enemies and they are coming after me!”, he coldly and calculatedly compared Assange to scientologists.
If he had any integrity, Gibney would have made a documentary in cooperation with the Catholic Church, pouring scorn and heaping abuse on the deaf children who exposed the crimes of Father Murphy.
But that would not have got him lionized in Washington, of course.
Yours in disgust at fawning liberal hypocrites….
Hmmmm…. interesting logic, Morrissey.
RESULT!!!!!
Alex Gibney is the director of Silence in the House of God, a documentary about a priest who abused deaf boys, and We Steal Secrets, a government-approved character assassination of Julian Assange. Both films are showing in New Zealand soon.
