Essential Greg Palast

Q: What does it take for a complete blackout of like the one we're getting on, say, the U.S. spying on the United Nations delegates?

A: Official denial. American newspaper reporters and outlets will not run a story which has undercover information which is officially stone-blank denied. Now that story, for example, of spying on the U.N., that's my newspaper by the way, The Observer, and those are my friends -- who are now, by the way, facing jail time for that story, under the Official Secrets Act ...

If I printed everything I wanted, if I printed the American edition in Britain, I would be jailed. One of my sources has already spent six months in jail. It's just horrendous without a First Amendment. I mean, unfortunately we in the U.S. don't use our First Amendment. Like I say, if Britain needs a First Amendment they can use ours because we're not. It's a nightmare in both countries. There, the nightmare is the law. There, editors are afraid, justly afraid, of the law. Here, editors are afraid of their shadows. As I say, Bob Woodward, editor of the Washington Post, would never run the Watergate story today. It was an unnamable source versus an official denial. He would not run it now. No way. And that's why I'm "in exile."

And where is Norman anyway?

... the other is Norman Schwarzkopf. You have to understand that after Gulf War One, the Bush family cashed in like crazy, and Schwarzkopf said we didn't send half a million kids into the desert so the Bush family could cash in. And you hear how much he's been out front now, right? You'd think they would wheel out their big hero.