Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Bennett, former US army psychological warfare officer and counter-terrorism analyst in San Francisco, to discuss a report saying that American intelligence agencies have been spying on Russian President Vladimir Putin for over the past twenty years.
Following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: How do you think Russia will respond to spying on Vladimir Putin?
Bennett: Well I think Vladimir Putin is probably the best thing that has happened to Russia in a hundred years. He is the equivalent of what Ronald Reagan was to the United States. Reagan took America out of a deep depression and economic stagnation and Vladimir Putin did the same thing.
Of course they have been watching him since the early 80s when he was high up in the intelligence apparatus of Russia and they have continued that listening and watching throughout the 90s. But the accusations that he stole and robbed this country are ludicrous. I do not think a more patriotic figure with a greater love of country and people than Vladimir Putin exists because we saw in the 90s when Soviet Union started to fall apart, Vladimir Putin took the side of Russians and loved his country and his people when the United States was actively trying to sabotage and scuttle and destroy Russia. And they revealed that they despise Russia and Putin now is because it is a conservative God-fearing, family-loving country which the American people are as well. It is sadly only the Obama administration which has become anti-family, anti-marriage and is gone on this maniac crusade around the world to cultivate hegemony and start wars in Ukraine and start wars in Libya and start wars in Iraq and trying to start wars now in Syria with the ultimate goal of going into Iran.
So I think they are very nervous and angry and do not know what to do with Vladimir Putin because he is the smartest guy in the room. He can speak fluent languages. Obama can hardly speak English. And President Putin knows his people and also has a diplomatic gift where Obama has nothing but arrogance and presumption that the rest of the world needs to bow down to the American empire as colonies under Rome.
So I think all of that is catching up to the American political system now and the American people are beginning to wake up and there is a slow revolution in this country that has started to pick up since the September 11 attacks were revealed as false and very engineered and curious with some other parties specifically the Zionist Israeli intelligence apparatus having a hand in it. And the more Americans pick up and learn that, I think the more they are going to be looking for refresh friendships and relationships with Russia, Iran and China and throwing overboard this arrogant regime that we have with John Kerry, with President Obama and with some of these old men that really have taken America on the course that its people do not want. So I think Russia will have a positive effect on this.
Press TV: But can legal action be taken against the United States for this illegal spying activities not only on the US but on other countries as well?
Bennett: Well certainly I think there is a case that the Russian authorities can take to the European Council and the Human Rights Court and claim all sorts of legal infractions and violations of treaties and that is precisely what they should do. If we were a world of law and order, then present the violations of law to the other bodies in Europe and the world to show clearly that the United States under the Obama administration and under the Bush administration has been violating the rights of citizens and violating the integrity of national borders and illegally collecting information.
Press TV: And of course being a psychological warfare officer, do these spying activities give the United States the upper hand?
Bennett: Well it depends on how it is used. And sadly I saw in my time a lot of very dumb, dull and stupid people who had no creativity or flexibility or adaptability, whatsoever, working in the intelligence sectors or the psychological warfare community. I saw far superior people in the Russian, Ukrainian in foreign establishment that I did not in the United States and that was very upsetting to me and it was one of the reasons that I was targeted as a whistleblower and I underwent extraordinary persecution by the Obama administration.
That is really illegal and still in the court systems and it is still being challenged but it is an indicator that the psychological warfare community theoretically could use the material it has on Putin if it had the brains and understanding how to use it. I am sad to say they just do not have the brains. They do not know how to properly use it. All they have is a biography and a lot of accumulated data but they do not know how to manipulate it into any sort of diplomatic leverage or information operations that can be used. If I was working in the intelligence sectors, I be looking recruit people from inner circles, I be looking to cast doubt on inter relationships and splinter operational effectiveness within the political high level military connections in Russia and I just do not think they are thinking that far ahead.
The United States under the Obama administration is much more obsessed with doing what the American Israeli political action committee tells it to do which has specifically created ISIS, created ISIL, created these rabid Wahhabist Salafist entities in the Middle East using Saudi money that is coming through Union Bank of Switzerland, HSBC, … and create a torrent, a hurricane of chaos that can be spread up into Assad and from there it can then penetrate deeper into Russia and eventually into Iran.
Now I think that is going to have an enormous blowback. I do not think there is going to be anything good from that because all of the human wreckage that we are seeing coming out of that policy is going to Europe. It is going into Germany, into United Kingdom, into Italy, into France and those countries are having an enormous right-wing backlash.
Their indigenous people are refusing admittance into their country of this tsunami of refugees because they do not have the social services to support them and they do not have the political will to have them in their country because it is a giant flotilla of human refugees that are all the fruit of American imperial ambitions in the Middle East. It is tragic.