In this episode we welcome Peter McKillop, the founder and CEO of our new partner, Climate & Capital Media.
Peter is the founder of Climate & Capital Media. Climate & Capital Media is a mission-driven information platform exploring the business and finance of climate change.
Climate & Capital delivers original reporting, intelligence and insight from our global network of journalists, researchers, and investors with a focus on climate-related businesses, technology, and public policy, particularly for the emerging generation of economic leaders who will shape tomorrow’s global agenda.
Prior to Climate & Capital, Peter McKillop was a Managing Director at BlackRock, where he was responsible for leading the firm’s strategic communications and messaging for its iShares ETF and Indexing business. He has also held senior communication leadership positions at J.P. Morgan, KKR, UBS, and Bank of America. Before entering the financial communications field, Peter was a senior correspondent and bureau chief for Newsweek in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
Our discussion ranges across the following topics, among others:
· Why it’s especially important and vital to have good oversight over the hundreds of billions of dollars of climate money about to be spent?
· Our goals for this new oversight collaboration between Climate Money Watchdog and Climate & Capital Media
· How the climate community will react to the idea of needing oversight unemployment money and the need to police itself.
· What we should do as climate money watchers when the climate deniers try to use spending failure and scandals to discredit all climate work.
· How important sources, especially inside sources within the climate effort are to finding out what is going wrong
· Why we are concerned about whistleblowers in the past who have dumped un-vetted, un-redacted into the public arena. How practices of people like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning can hurt the communities they’re trying to help.
· As a long-time journalists, what concerns us now about the state of journalism, it's sustainability, and its ability to do oversight.
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gregory A. Williams (00:10):
Thanks for joining us for another episode
of climate money watchdog wherewe investigate and report on how
federal dollars are being spenton mitigating climate change and
protecting the environment.
We're a private, nonpartisan,nonprofit organization that does
not accept advertisers orsponsors. So we can only do this
work with your support. Soplease visit us at climate money
(00:30):
watchdog.org To learn more aboutus and consider making a
donation. My name is GregWilliams, and I learned to
investigate and report on waste,fraud and abuse on federal
spending while working at theproject on government oversight,
or Pogo 30 years ago, I learnedto do independent research as
well as to work withconfidential informants or
whistleblowers to uncover thingslike overpriced spare parts,
(00:54):
like the infamous $435 hammers,and expensive military weapons
systems that didn't work asadvertised. I was taught by my
co host, Dina razor, who foundedPogo in 1981, and founded
climate money watchdog with melast year, Dina has spent 40
years investigating andsometimes recovering billions of
(01:15):
dollars wasted by the DefenseDepartment and other branches of
government. She did this atPogo, as an independent
journalist, and as an author,and professional investigator.
Dana, would you'd like to say afew words before I introduce
introduce tonight's guest.
Dina Rasor (01:33):
Well, I'm delighted that we're having Peter
MacKillop with us from climateand capital, and I will be able
to announce that we are going tobe affiliating with them and
taking over doing their podcastsand have to so we'll have two
platforms for our podcast. Andwe're working towards an
(01:54):
affiliation where we becometheir investigative unit. And it
climate and capital, which Petercan tell you more about is
looking at the business side ofclimate money. And that's
perfect for us. Because we lookat the business side too. And
every, every business, and everybusiness that's getting this
(02:19):
money from the federalgovernment definitely needs a
private watchdog looking overthem. So we're going to be
working on that lurking withsources and whistleblowers. So
I'm delighted to do this podcastwith him and that we're going to
be able to join forces and reacha much bigger audience.
Gregory A. Williams (02:40):
Peter, would you like to say a few
words about yourself aboutclimate? In capital? Yes, great.
Peter McKillop (02:45):
Well, thank you.
We are as well delighted. Westarted climbing capital for
four years ago, right, it reallyduring almost the beginning of
the pandemic. And we felt therewas a gap in the amount of
information about climate andbusiness and finance, which
interestingly now is actuallyquite the rage is as people move
into the new clean economy. Andas we've had incredible
(03:09):
milestones like the Biden, youknow, half a trillion dollar
climate funding. But having saidthat, and the reason that we're
partnering with every with youguys is that we think that how
you spend that money is asimportant as how you get the
money. And as we all know, thebest way to make sure that you
(03:31):
spend it correctly is to keep itreally tight watchdog kind of
status. And I think Dina andGreg, you guys have done a
terrific job of that over thelast couple of decades, with
some of the biggest, you know,biggest divisions of the
government. And I really thinkthat holding people accountable
on everything isn't just howthey spend the money, but how
(03:55):
they're actually attackingclimate action is kind of at the
core of what we do. Simply welike to follow the money.
Gregory A. Williams (04:04):
So how do you think the climate community
will react to the idea ofneeding needing oversight? And,
and, and, and the idea thatsomebody needs to police
themselves?
Peter McKillop (04:16):
Well, you know, it's funny that I'm sure it'll
be mixed. And the idea thatsomehow they're like the Defense
Department, I'm sure is, willsurprise them. But I think we've
learned the hard lesson evenwith climate, that, that it
doesn't matter what the how goodthe cause is, there's still
always going to be plenty offraud and plenty of waste. And I
(04:38):
think that the concern I haveperhaps a legitimate concern is
that this this kind of, youknow, focus on fraud and waste
will be politicized and is beingpoliticized by by the
Republicans who want to cut anykind of climate funding. But I
think that kind of comes withthe turf. And I'm sure it was
(04:59):
probably What the Conservativeswere saying about the Defense
Department four decades ago. ButI think the reality is that
money is money. How it's spentis is real. And I think everyone
has to be held accountable fordoing that. And I think there's
a way to be absolutely, youknow, straightforward and honest
about that, and not in any wayundermine the ultimate cause or
(05:22):
mission. In fact, it's theopposite. The Republicans are
you are looking for anopportunity to attack it. And as
people may remember, theSolyndra scandal where and they
use that as a way to reallyundermine a lot of Obama,
President Obama's climateagenda. So in a way, this kind
of inoculate inoculates the thekind of the spending, if they
(05:47):
know that they're getting veryrigorous oversight.
Dina Rasor (05:52):
It's always been a problem. An any thing that I've
ever investigated were thepeople who actually have the
federal money, or the companiesOh, don't do this, because this
will make us look bad. And I'malways like, hey, it's gonna
come out, it's gonna come outeventually. And so I think
(06:14):
that's really important. It'svery frustrating, because I know
there's going to be people, aswe get more and more into this
are going to be a fearful thatwe're giving anti climate people
fuel to criticize us. But I'vealways found this true in almost
every endeavor, right? I'vebeen, if you're doing good
(06:35):
government, work and stuff, doyour own policing, do your own
policing, because if you find itout, and you try to fix it, and
you voted to go, but if you tryto hide it, and they find it,
then you're gonna get theequivalent of you know, 15
Benghazi hearings, oversomething, and so that it always
makes sense, it's much morecredible, if the group that is
(06:58):
advocating for the money andgetting the money the climate
community which is very broadnow with a lot of business
people and a lot of activistsand everybody else if you don't
point out your own false and,and police your own, that their
own companies and investmentsand everything else. This is not
just federal but investments andeverything else. Then you're
(07:22):
you're setting yourself up to bethe horse whipped a lot more
than if you just state we'redoing this we this was bad
actor, we did it, we got it out,you know, it's a classic thing
in Washington, get it you be thefirst person to get out your bad
news.
Gregory A. Williams (07:37):
I think it's worth reminding people that
some of the most powerful alliesthat we could always count on
it, Pogo were the most highlydecorated, then living American
soldier, the most accomplishedfighter pilot, the person
responsible for completelyoverhauling our, our, our
defense doctrine, the person whodesigned the most effective Air
(08:01):
to Air weapon in history, and aguy who designed three of the
most effective fighter planes inthe history of the United
States. So you don't have to bean opponent to something to, to
want to see it done. Well.
Peter McKillop (08:17):
On that point, and I think Dena was great to
point this out, you know, backin, when Obama was president,
there was another massive spendby the government following the
great financial crisis of 2008.
And nine, the American RecoveryAct, and both parties were
acutely aware of just howpolitically unpopular that was.
(08:37):
So both parties, or at leastObama came up with a plan that
created a very kind of rigorousoversight that was led, by the
way by Vice President Joe Biden,and putting together a kind of
oversight board, which reallyplayed that kind of that
government watchdog role, kindof at a very kind of multi. It
(09:01):
looked across all the agenciesrather than what you had. And I
think, you know, I think we'd bewe're far better at explaining
that.
Dina Rasor (09:13):
Well, I here's my frustration about it is that is
that it was it was put in place.
It was they did a rat, what ratbar, which was a group of IGS,
they put a really tough IG guyin there. They had oversight,
but they also had built in allthis, you know, database so that
(09:34):
every average person can go andlook in their community where
the federal money is going andwhat's being spent on. And it
wasn't 100% success, but theamount of fraud was much lower
than expected. You know, I don'tknow if I totally agree with the
government things but usuallyyou expect, but they say, two to
8%, but I'd say more like 20%and According to the government,
(09:59):
the Obama administration, it wasless than 1%. And no, no, you
know, I think that's but stillit shows that it worked. But my
frustration is that this, Bidenwas just bird dog in this like
crazy because he had these IGSboard and he had this other and
(10:20):
everything else. And he wasdoing it with Ron client. Who
was it his time that that timethe Deputy Chief of Staff, I
mean, no, the chief of staff toVice President. And so these two
put this together, because theyknew this is going to be a
problem. But then when we passedthis climate bill, which is just
so important, and so importantnot to be encumbered with, you
(10:44):
know, all the usual politicalnonsense, they didn't put the
same kind of language in. And Iwas astounded because it
happened after, you know, ithappened before I was actually
in the mix and looking at it.
And I asked someone who knowsthe inside of it. And I said,
(11:04):
Why, why would they not put inthe same kind of things that
were so successful with the withthe gun rack? And they said,
well, they got mad because theysaved all this money, and they
kept all this fraud, but theydidn't get credit for it. But
well, maybe they didn't getcredit for it. But if you do
(11:24):
have a big scandal andeverything else, you don't you
need something to point to. Sothis is this was my frustration.
When I when Greg and I weresitting there, saying, you know,
somebody's got to look at this.
And so we are, we are hopingthat that kind of oversight,
gets some traction in the in theCongress now. And that that's
(11:45):
points out the most importantthing about having independent
watchdogs, because when you did,they're doing an independent
watchdog, and they know it, thenthey're more likely to, to make
sure that something embarrassingdoesn't come out.
Gregory A. Williams (12:04):
So I just wanted to take a moment to
explain for our listeners whoaren't yet fascinated with
government oversight, that an IGis an inspector general, this is
an independent senior officialin each of the major executive
branches, defense, agriculture,energy, and so forth, whose
entire job is to investigate howbusiness is conducted within
(12:26):
that department. And so, bycoordinating among them, Biden
created this very powerful teamof people who could oversee the
entirety of all of that recoveryspending. And Inspector
Dina Rasor (12:42):
General is outside of the ministration, they're
considered independence, so theycan't get that political
pressure.
Peter McKillop (12:49):
I wanted to pick up on the important point Dina
made about the need for theprivate watchdog as well. And
I'll quickly I'll hand it overto you first, but the idea that,
you know, you can't just have agovernment out, you know,
overseeing itself, for obviousreasons. And there being a can
go into kind of reasons why, andsome examples why. But having
said that, it's really, reallyimportant to give insiders in
(13:14):
the government a place wherethey can kind of go, that is not
a government site. And I knowthat's what y'all have been
working on for the last coupleof decades. So perhaps you can
say, talk a little bit aboutthat balance, getting a private
eye, as well as a governmentoversight.
Dina Rasor (13:32):
When we were doing the Department of Defense, the
Department of fence got alldefensive to use punting, but
about what we were doing andwhat we were putting out. And so
they beefed up their hotline.
Oh, trust us, you can call useverything else. And you know,
when we started really lookingat it, it was more of a sting
operation. Who is it out theretalking? And so I said, Don't
(13:52):
call the hotline, do all thereporting that you have to do in
the federal government, to theright people, but don't call the
hotline. And because anythingthat you say or send to them,
they they would actually give tothe company that you sent it
about? Like if you sendsomething in from Lockheed, they
give it to Lockheed say, What doyou think? So the lucky wouldn't
(14:12):
take a rocket scientist, butlucky to figure out who this
was, and then go after him. Sothe best thing that we were able
to do in the government and inbusiness, is to get an informal
group of sources and not reallywhistleblowers because they
didn't know public, if you canget inside sources, to work on
(14:33):
stuff with you who arefrustrated, leak you documents,
they sit in on the meetings, Imean, when a whistleblower comes
out, sets their hair on fire,and then they're completely
blocked from all theirdocumentation, and everything
else of what's going on. Theyalways come back say, well, we
fix that now. We fix that now.
(14:55):
But I had sources in there foryears that would sit in two very
important meetings of how todeal with whatever we were
exposing. And so I usually knewwhat they were going to say
before they said it. So theythey live, they live to, you
know, keep on leakingresponsibly. And we and I've
(15:16):
never had anyone caught andfired. I was and proud of that
because No, no story is worththat kind of thing. But that's
the way I think that the dothat. And then there's one other
point I wanted to say on that isthere the climate, I've noticed
that the climate startups andthe climate companies and
everything else, there are a lotof millennials and Gen Z's who
(15:41):
are quitting their tech jobs.
Because they say this is themost important thing in my
lifetime. And I want to work onit, you know, I have the I have
the skills, I have the whatever,and they're gonna go in there.
And they are idealistic aboutthe fact that they're going to
go in there and help us keepfrom having a climate disaster.
The problem with this is thatthey don't really realize how
(16:02):
they're going to run up againstmoney. I think they understand
it from being fossil fuel, but Idon't think they are going to
understand it once thesetechnologies start competing
together. And they're going tostart promoting technologies
that really aren't going to doanything. And these people are
going to get disillusioned. AndI think they're absolutely right
to be sources, to come to theoutside in companies and tell
(16:26):
you what's going on.
Gregory A. Williams (16:30):
So I think it's important to say early on
that all of the work that Denaand I have done has been
releasing information strictlywithin the boundaries of the
law. And I think something thatDena rightfully takes a lot of
pride in is that she has neverhad a whistleblower exposed. And
she's never asked awhistleblower to break the law.
(16:52):
And so there's this very narrowand difficult path that most
people don't even know about, orthink about when they they, they
start to think about not beingable to solve problems within
their job and needing someoutlet for for addressing the
(17:13):
terrible things that they'reseeing. So what, you know what,
why don't you say a few wordsabout, you know, appropriate
leaking inappropriate leakingvetting of sources? And see
where that takes us?
Dina Rasor (17:27):
Yeah, well, the thing about it is that I find
that they're, they're people,the people who want to do the
right thing there in thecompany, they see the bad thing
coming. They're worried aboutit, they're worried about their
job, they're worried about theirlivelihood, but they just can't
live with it. And I was callingthe Boy Scouts, I guess I should
add Girl Scouts now too. But thefact is, these are people that
(17:48):
were told from very honestpeople, if you tell the truth,
you won't get spanked as achild. And then they go out and
they say, Well, all I got to dois expose this, and everyone is
going to be just as appalled asI am. And I'm going to be, you
know, protected, and bizarre andall this kind of stuff. And
they're shocked when the weightof the world falls in on them.
(18:09):
And I always try to get sourcesand whistleblowers before they
do it. So you can tell them,this will work, this won't work.
This is how you best you know,each each source is different.
And how to protect themselveshow to take information out
without breaking the law, how tomake it so it's not traceable.
(18:30):
And so it really and I alwayssay to everybody who ever comes
to me about investigations, Ialways say investigations are
like bank robberies, much moresuccessful if it's an inside
job. And so I, I look for theinside jobs, I want to talk to
the mayor looking from theoutside in unless you file a
(18:52):
court case, it's really hard toknow what's going on in that
company. And so I'm really, I'mreally pleased that we're going
to be looking at that kind ofthing. And the Department of
Defense. They didn't classify asmuch as they do now. But I never
accepted a classified document.
And yet I was able to get to,because I was a small
(19:13):
organization back then. And Ididn't have the lawyers, even if
I wanted to, but I didn't wantto because I didn't want to be
discredited for you know, youthink climate stuff is going to
be a lot less national securityoriented.
Gregory A. Williams (19:36):
So I know we we spoke about the
distinction between the kind ofwhistleblowers that we've worked
with, versus ones like JulianAssange and Chelsea Manning,
without meaning to make anyvalue judgment about those two
individuals. I think it's worthsaying a few things about the
difference between what theydid, and the work that we
(19:59):
typically do. With withwhistleblowers.
Dina Rasor (20:03):
Yeah, want to take that, Peter?
Peter McKillop (20:05):
Yeah, I mean, I, it seems obvious for someone
who's done a blissful blow, orthat there's a very clear
distinction between someone whowill just like to share and
others Manning who just takewholesale dump of confidential
document and puts them on theworldwide web without any which
(20:29):
in dangers, not just nationalsecurity, which actually you
should be worried about, butalso the lives of people who are
potentially in those documents,and sources, that is exactly not
what I think should be done.
What needs to be done is kind ofwhat y'all have done over the
years, which is this idea ofbeing a confidential source for
it, which is exactly the wayjournalism operates. For these
(20:52):
whistleblowers, who know thatand have the confidence that
they can come to someone likeyourself, who will then be able
to translate and to make surethat this important information
gets into the right hands,whether that's a congressional
subcommittee or a newspapereditor. That, to me is the right
way, the wrong way, is just thiskind of almost nihilistic dump
(21:16):
of information that ultimatelydoes more harm than good.
Dina Rasor (21:25):
But yeah, and in getting documents, actually a
lot easier than it used to beused to be, I have to copy them
somewhere. And they put countersand they put counters and tabs
and secret tabs on the Pentagonthings. And so I would get a
document and I'd have to cut offthe corners and make sure
there's, you know, white out ona doesn't show the drum and
(21:47):
everything else. Now, peoplelike Assange and Chelsea
Manning, they stick a thumbdrive in, and they'll suddenly
they get a third thumb drive ofa million documents. And I don't
blame Chelsea Manning, I thinkChelsea Manning was incredibly
badly advised. And so was, sowas Edward stone with snip
(22:07):
Snellman. He wanted to Snowden,he wanted to vet stuff, but they
were all pushing him to, youknow, release and release. And
then they tell him to go to HongKong, China, and then go to
Russia, on the way to Ecuador.
And I'm like, what hoops tellsomebody to do something like
(22:29):
that. So these were badlydecided, but Assad is just
actually the Washington Post inthe New York Times came to
massage and said, you've got ahuge amount of documentation
here. It needs to be vetted,because so much of it has our
secret sources around the world,to names on it. And we have
(22:50):
these big legal departments. Andwe can do this and we can vet
this to make sure nobody getskilled. And he Nope, just
released it all, he would nottake advantage of these offers
that these journalism now I'mnot a big fan, completely of all
journalism. But in thissituation, that's what you have
to do if you're going to dosomething that on the edge, a
(23:13):
life and death kind of thing.
You better vet every singlething you can. And it all you
know, it's just good. It's justgood journalism. And when he
didn't do it, and he put thatout. There's lots of journalists
that defend him. But after 40years of investigation, I don't
(23:37):
because it was proven thatpeople were killed. And no
story. No experts say nothing.
And they didn't really need toput those names in there to make
the same points. But no, nothingis worth that. I have walked
away from whistleblowers whohave really good information,
but they're gonna get discoveredand I figure out that they just
(23:57):
don't have the, the they'rethey're very moral people, but
they don't have the strength topossibly lose their job, lose
their family lose theirlivelihood, and end up driving a
taxi somewhere. And I say tomyself, these people don't can't
go the full distance. So it'snot worth exposing that because
I can't hide it well enough tohave them not get caught. And it
(24:19):
was it's been frustrating, butthis is a this is serious stuff.
And there's going to beironically, you know, they took
Solyndra and use that, as youknow, the bloody shirt a
cylinder every time you know,they didn't like something. And
cylinder was really I know thisbecause we did a podcast with
(24:41):
the former Treasury InspectorGeneral, who was in charge of
kind of pulling the messtogether. That was a loan
guarantee. That loan guaranteeprogram actually made money for
the federal government in wholebut in cylindre Because Obama
was pushing so hard and wantedthis out, the Department of
(25:03):
Energy did not do the duediligence. On the loan
guarantee, it wasn't really a,it was more of a waste thing
than a fraud and abuse thing.
They just didn't do their jobbecause the politics wanted to
get it out there. And it turnsout that cylindric really didn't
(25:25):
have the goods to goods in the,in the organization to do it. So
yes, that was a huge half, youknow, half a million, half a
billion dollars loss. But thatlow income loan thing ended up
making more money for thefederal government than it
costs. But that's lost once youhave a whipping boy.
Gregory A. Williams (25:47):
Yeah, so maybe just a fill out a few of
the details for people who arenot, who aren't familiar with
this lender case. So first ofall, a loan guarantee is an
attractive arrangement for thegovernment because it allows
them to steer money in thedirections that are consistent
with with policy withoutactually costing any government
(26:08):
money, assuming things go well.
Now, the way you ensure that nogovernment money is is expended
in the case of a loanguarantees, you make sure that
you don't have to pay off on theloan guarantee. And the way you
do that is by having a verydiligent evaluation of what
you're giving the loan for. Andso in this case, you know,
(26:30):
ordinarily, you know, the thekind of information you ask for
is, is essentially a businessplan, what are you going to do
with this money? And, in thecase of Solyndra, they basically
skip that step. They were soeager to get money into the
hands of people who needed it inorder to achieve the policy
(26:50):
goals. That they said, Well,it's a it's a company making
solar panels, how could thatpossibly go wrong? Well, it can
go wrong if you don't have aplan for how you're going to
spend the money. And so aprivate bank made the loan, the
government guaranteed, and whenthe loan couldn't be paid back,
the government had to pay backthe loan. So you know, it wasn't
(27:11):
a case, as far as we can tell afraud, but just the case of how
money can be wasted if you don'tfollow the rules and, and
conduct effective oversight.
Dina Rasor (27:26):
And I just want to point out and ask Peter, this,
that's why I'm so pleased aboutthis collaboration is, here's
the situation of waste, here'ssituation of doing something
that every businessman knowsabout every businessman and
businesswoman who are going togo and get a loan from anybody,
they have to you know, andeverything, they're the bank or
(27:48):
whatever they get alone venturecapital, there is so much due
diligence done. And thegovernment, for political
reasons skipped over that, andthat, that really hurt solar,
you know, solar manufacturing,for, you know, almost almost a
decade. So I also wanted to ask,Peter, you know, how, you know,
(28:10):
one how having business,talking, having a business bent
and dealing with business andbusiness money, and everything
helps your organization, and howit will work with the new
oversight collaboration, I'mhoping that you have great
business people that when wefind a problem, we can go in
there and say, This isn'tworking. I mean, you know,
(28:31):
there's a problem here.
Peter McKillop (28:32):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the key
there is to make is tounderstand and do to do the
forensics. And there's plenty ofpeople who who have worked for
banks, and for companies who cando look at a balance sheet and
look at a loan and kind of find,particularly if we're getting
some sort of some sort ofguidance and some sort of, you
know, some of the realdocuments. So I think that would
(28:54):
be very, very important. Andit's absolutely critical because
the to be able to maintainsupport, particularly among the
average American voter, it iscritical that they trust, how
that money is being spent. Atthe end of the day, people still
(29:16):
trust the US Department ofDefense, and that's because they
believe that they're doing agood job, when it comes to
defending the country, whetherthey like it or not, but there
has been horrendous race, wasteand fraud as you have pointed
out over the years. Ideally, wewould be in a stalemate, similar
situation, that we will see thatthe benefits ultimately of, of
having government subsidize theclean energy economy will be
(29:42):
will be as important and we'llbe able to overcome any kind of
any kind of setback from frompointing out fraud and abuse. In
a way you kind of wish this hadbeen done with the fossil fuel
industry, which kind of had kindof how to have the best of all
whorls, which was all thesubsidies and all the tax
(30:02):
credits they could ever possiblyimagine, with absolutely no
oversight. And ironically,interestingly enough, not even
the private sector tried to goin there and, and, and root it
out. So hopefully, in this case,it'll be a best practice going
forward.
Dina Rasor (30:22):
Yeah, I think that fossil fuel people who are
literally picked up the PR planfor tobacco, tobacco survived.
Oh, well, and we don't know ifit causes cancer. Oh, no, who
knows, you know, kind of dothat, that kind of thing. The
difference between theDepartment of Defense spending
and spending on climate is youhope with the Department of
(30:45):
fence with all their waste alltheir fraud, make, make weapons,
bend metal, as they call it,make weapons, and hope they
rust, hope you don't have to goto war. And especially when you
know, ground forces have becomemore important now. But back in
there, when I did it, it wasmore of a you know, we're gonna
(31:07):
push, everybody's gonna push thebutton and no one's gonna care.
And there's never going to be aninvasion of Europe and all this
kind of stuff. But you have, itwastes a lot of money. And it
also gives them a false sense ofwhere, how well the weapons
work, and whatever. But theclimate spendings different
because you aren't going to justlose the battle, or, you know,
(31:33):
rattle your sword and not beable to deliver, or it just
enormous amount of waste. Theyreally didn't ever want to go to
war. They just wanted to havethe weapons for war. You know,
every time that anybody, BushObama, anybody came and said,
when sent troops? And they'relike, oh, no, oh, no, yeah,
because it takes out of theweapons budget. So I always had
comfort in that. Because it'slike, they don't really want to,
(31:56):
they don't, they want to saythey have four aces in their
hands, and they really don'twant to lay their cards down.
But with climate, it'sdifferent. If we screw this up,
and it becomes seen as awasteful boondoggle, then
there's no do overs, we're runout of time, you can't see, you
know, weapons systems take 10years to produce, and you can
(32:18):
work on that. And you can try tosee, do that. This is it, man,
we, you know, the difference iswe're going to lose the battle,
we're going to lose, we're goingto have the earth burn up. And
anybody who doesn't believe thatmay, you know, be fine. And I
always keep telling people ifyou're not for climate change,
because you're don't worry aboutco2, at least be for climate
change. Because the more fossilfuel and plastic we don't make,
(32:42):
the more likely you're not goingto get canceled. You know,
there's there's also thepollution part of it. But I just
think it's so much moreimportant than the department
defense because it's there is nodo over.
Peter McKillop (32:55):
Yeah, there's also the we may be spending it
in the wrong ways. And thatwell, that's obviously open to
interpretation. We can there aresome obvious places and recently
that the example we've beenfocusing on is Bill Gates, his
so called an atrium project,which is a an attempt by him to
resurrect the idea of a sodiumcooled nuclear reactor. This is
(33:18):
a reactor that had been provenvery dangerous over the years
and had been, in fact, banned orhad been stopped by Hyman
Rickover, the founder of thenuclear energy program for
submarines had every country butChina and Russia had kind of
walked away from thistechnology, Bill Gates for
whatever reason, decided heliked it, but then he was able
(33:39):
to use his influence in theDepartment of Energy to get them
to, to kind of match his $2billion, or at least he thought
they were and then shortly tunewas discovered that the only
place you can get that fuel isguess what, Russia, which is not
going to happen. So so thecombination of that that was
(34:00):
pretty overwhelming. And guesswhat the you know, the
government kind of pull back.
But that in partly was done byyou know, diehard whistle
Maximus whistleblowerwhistleblowers, but but nuclear
experts who understood what wasgoing on and have been kind of
raising this issue in the publicfor the last, I guess, one and a
half, two years and obviouslyonce Russia invaded Ukraine, it
(34:23):
became a pretty embarrassingsituation for for the Department
of Energy. However, that hasn'tstopped gates from continuing to
use his influence. It continuedwith this project.
Dina Rasor (34:37):
You can afford to you can afford to play around
and whatever playground he wantsto. And we've been looking we've
been looking at carbon capture,not there's some innovative
carbon capture stuff startingout now but the original idea of
carbon capture that we're goingto build pipeline bigger than
the oil pipeline United Stateswe're going to dig out dig out
(34:58):
the fossil fuel burn it captureit in the smokestacks put it in
a pipeline pressure, I sent itall over the country and then
put it back in the ground. Andit was and then how much they
lied about the percentage,already the percentage of what
they capture. And it's gonethrough several iterations,
including at the end of theObama administration totally
(35:19):
failed. And yet, that has beenthat has been very popular. And
one of the problems is, ofcourse, is that it's popular
because it gives license for bigfossil fuel to keep doing what
they're doing. There was that,you know, well, we'll just
capture it and put it back inthe ground, you know, crazy.
Peter McKillop (35:38):
There was another classic example. And
the, some of us will rememberthe 1970s, there was this, which
was our last great energycrisis, this idea that we were
going to create so calledsynthetic fuel. And that was a
massive government projectbecame hugely subsidized. And
ultimately, it was a completefailure. So again, if there had
(36:00):
been more, more oversight onprojects like that, perhaps we
wouldn't have made that kind ofmistake.
Gregory A. Williams (36:06):
Yeah, the other quirk, let's say, of the
carbon capture business that Ilike to point out is that in
some respects, is just a way ofputting more money back in the
pockets of, of the fossil fuelextractors. Much of what is done
with with the captured carbon isto simply use it to pump into
the ground to force more oil outof the ground. So you know,
(36:29):
these oil companies that havebeen capturing this carbon
dioxide for decades, and usingit this way, and now they get a
big, fat government subsidy todo that, you know, nevermind the
fact that they're not pumping itinto the ground to get it to
stay there. It comes up alongwith the the oil when they
extract the oil. And so theyjust keep, you know, capturing,
(36:51):
extracting, and then pumpingback into the ground, again, the
same co2 over and over again, atthe cost of these these fat
subsidies that are paid for bythe taxpayers.
Dina Rasor (37:02):
Yeah, and I'm one of the things I want to look at,
you know, as soon as we get alittle bit more established and
going is, I think, you know, Ihave these things people say to
me, how do you know there'sgoing to be fraud there, and I
say, Well, it's kind of like,just a Stewart Potter on
pornography, I can't define itby not want to see it. And the
(37:22):
thing that I see in the horizonis the tax credits, the tax
credits are going to be socheated. And these are the big
companies. And they're alreadyplanning to do all this kind of
stuff, where they don't evenknow the technology is going to
work. But they're alreadypromising that they're going to
have X amount of savings and taxcredits, and they don't even
(37:43):
know what percentage of their ofcarbon they're going to be able
to save. And so I think that'ssomething where I'd love to find
somebody who really understandsvery well to who really knows
what the scam on that is. Andthat's by the way, that's that's
a source that's just asimportant as a whistleblower,
somebody who's a scientist, orsomebody who is an accountant,
(38:05):
or somebody who can tell youwhat, you know why this is all
folly. And of course, you haveto check them who they are and
everything, but I've had, I'vebeen able to figure that out.
And it but it just to me, I justknow that that's where the bad
business people are going tostart cheating.
Gregory A. Williams (38:25):
So another thing that I wanted to bring up
as a practice that was reallyimportant at Pogo, and I'm sure
it still is, is that the rankand file journalists is under
tremendous deadline pressure.
And as newsrooms get smaller andsmaller, and the deadlines get
faster and faster, it's verydifficult to develop any sort of
strong understanding of highlytechnical matters. And so a big
(38:48):
part of what we did at Pogo wassometimes with whistleblowers,
but sometimes just on the basisof government documents, do the
kind of background research thatthe typical modern journalist
doesn't have time to do. So thatwhen they go to press, you know,
they're not, you know,scrambling to understand the
(39:10):
mechanics of carbon capture howphotovoltaic cells work, how
energy is transmitted over longdistances, you know, that's
something we can take the thedays, the weeks, the months,
whatever it takes to packagethat research and, and and make
it available. But with thatsaid, I'm curious, Peter, to
(39:31):
hear your take on, you know,what the state of modern
journalism and what the biggestchallenges are, you
Peter McKillop (39:40):
know, it's really it's particularly
important, because so much ofthis funding is going to be
happening in this at the stateand local level. And that's
where we've seen the greatestdamage in the journalism
community, where you've lostclose to 70% of good journalist
in the last 30 years and you'veseen Ain't you're seeing, you
(40:00):
know, one to two kind ofnewspapers clothes a month, the
there's a real crisis of kind ofjournalism at that local level.
And as a result, there's goingto be even less oversight than
there was, at a time whenthere's never, it's never been
more important. So having theability to go to someone like
(40:21):
yourselves, who can understandand support and even get those
stories into those localpublications, is going to fill a
gap that that's desperatelyneeded.
Dina Rasor (40:34):
Yeah, and local locally, that advocacy groups
are really important, the localgrassroot people on the ground
who know what's going on. And alot of times they know what's
going on. They kind of know howto investigate it, but they
don't know what to do with whatthey have. And, you know, that's
where I want to start. We'vealready had people on from local
(40:57):
advocacy groups and stuff,because they're taking, they're
sort of taking over thejournalist. Now, granted,
they're an advocacy group. Soyou have to take what they say,
a grain of salt, and you know,they have to get documentation
and everything else. But they'reon the ground there. And they
understand the dynamics. And Ifind that that is another area
(41:18):
that we would like to work with.
Because once that we can thenshow them how to responsibly
investigate this and expose itwithout having people say, Oh,
you're just an advocacy group?
Yeah, that's correct.
Gregory A. Williams (41:40):
Yeah, I'd like to say that local
journalism is sort of the the,where local politics thrives,
it's sort of the natural habitatof, of political engagement. And
for me, there's no greaterexample of of, you know, near
extinction or threatening aspecies, through the, through
(42:01):
the process of habitatdestruction, then there is, you
know, local politics, you know,basically being driven to
extinction through thedestruction of its habitat,
namely, these these localnewspapers.
Dina Rasor (42:14):
And then you also have to worry about the problem
of all this money coming in fromthese dark sources. You know,
basically laundered by bigfossil fuel going into these
communities and saying, Oh, youdon't want to have a solar farm,
because they're going to, it'sgoing to cover up the farmland,
and a lot of times they put iton farmland, nobody's using any
(42:35):
way. But it's going to it'sgoing to leak cadmium into it,
and it killed all the cattle,you'll never be able to use this
again for growing crops. Theysay the same thing about the
windmills. You know, Trump justsaid the other day, oh, if you
want to see dead birds go lookit under a windmill. And they go
on and on about this stuff. Andthey went so when they local,
(42:55):
the local initiatives of peoplecoming in and wanting to do big
solar prop things and bringingjobs into rural areas that Biden
wants to do, they tried to dothat in Ohio. And they were run
out. I mean, if there werefarmers that wanted to have, you
know, had fallow fields thathadn't really been useful
forever. And they wanted to dothis, they wanted to be molded
(43:16):
in the local people got thiswrong information. And everybody
in the town had a fight and andthese things are getting getting
stopped this clean energy thingsare getting stopped by that. And
the ironic part about that is isthat they're they're they're,
you know, cutting off their noseto spite the face. It's so badly
(43:37):
that I think it's California andMichigan and New York have
passed laws saying that thestate can override that. And
normally, I don't like statesoverriding local. But if the
local people are being undulyaffected by fossil fuel money to
try to hurt clean energy,because it's their competition.
That's something that needs tobe explored and pointed out.
Gregory A. Williams (44:00):
Well, I think it's, it's great to see
that we all have lots todiscuss. But I want to be
careful not to try to covereverything in our first meeting.
So I look forward to morepodcasts with with the two of
you. But unless there's anythingelse that you desperately want
to cover tonight, why don't weWhy don't we call it rap and
(44:24):
look forward to the nextopportunity to speak together?
Peter McKillop (44:29):
I look forward to that. And I think it should
be a great partnership.
Dina Rasor (44:33):
Yeah, sounds good.
And I I'd like to have Peter ononce a month. So we can get
because you know, he's got he'sdealing constantly with the
business side to get a feel ofwhat's going on. You know,
what's going on?
Gregory A. Williams (44:48):
All right.
Well, here's to a fruitfulpartnership. And thanks again
for being with us tonight. Thankyou
Thanks for joining us for another episode
of climate money watchdog wherewe investigate and report on how
federal dollars are being spenton mitigating climate change and
protecting the environment.
We're a private, nonpartisan,nonprofit organization that does
not accept advertisers orsponsors. So we can only do this
work with your support. Soplease visit us at climate money
(00:30):
watchdog.org To learn more aboutus and consider making a
donation. My name is GregWilliams, and I learned to
investigate and report on waste,fraud and abuse on federal
spending while working at theproject on government oversight,
or Pogo 30 years ago, I learnedto do independent research as
well as to work withconfidential informants or
whistleblowers to uncover thingslike overpriced spare parts,
(00:54):
like the infamous $435 hammers,and expensive military weapons
systems that didn't work asadvertised. I was taught by my
co host, Dina razor, who foundedPogo in 1981, and founded
climate money watchdog with melast year, Dina has spent 40
years investigating andsometimes recovering billions of
(01:15):
dollars wasted by the DefenseDepartment and other branches of
government. She did this atPogo, as an independent
journalist, and as an author,and professional investigator.
Dana, would you'd like to say afew words before I introduce
introduce tonight's guest.
Dina Rasor (01:33):
Well, I'm delighted that we're having Peter
MacKillop with us from climateand capital, and I will be able
to announce that we are going tobe affiliating with them and
taking over doing their podcastsand have to so we'll have two
platforms for our podcast. Andwe're working towards an
(01:54):
affiliation where we becometheir investigative unit. And it
climate and capital, which Petercan tell you more about is
looking at the business side ofclimate money. And that's
perfect for us. Because we lookat the business side too. And
every, every business, and everybusiness that's getting this
(02:19):
money from the federalgovernment definitely needs a
private watchdog looking overthem. So we're going to be
working on that lurking withsources and whistleblowers. So
I'm delighted to do this podcastwith him and that we're going to
be able to join forces and reacha much bigger audience.
Gregory A. Williams (02:40):
Peter, would you like to say a few
words about yourself aboutclimate? In capital? Yes, great.
Peter McKillop (02:45):
Well, thank you.
We are as well delighted. Westarted climbing capital for
four years ago, right, it reallyduring almost the beginning of
the pandemic. And we felt therewas a gap in the amount of
information about climate andbusiness and finance, which
interestingly now is actuallyquite the rage is as people move
into the new clean economy. Andas we've had incredible
(03:09):
milestones like the Biden, youknow, half a trillion dollar
climate funding. But having saidthat, and the reason that we're
partnering with every with youguys is that we think that how
you spend that money is asimportant as how you get the
money. And as we all know, thebest way to make sure that you
(03:31):
spend it correctly is to keep itreally tight watchdog kind of
status. And I think Dina andGreg, you guys have done a
terrific job of that over thelast couple of decades, with
some of the biggest, you know,biggest divisions of the
government. And I really thinkthat holding people accountable
on everything isn't just howthey spend the money, but how
(03:55):
they're actually attackingclimate action is kind of at the
core of what we do. Simply welike to follow the money.
Gregory A. Williams (04:04):
So how do you think the climate community
will react to the idea ofneeding needing oversight? And,
and, and, and the idea thatsomebody needs to police
themselves?
Peter McKillop (04:16):
Well, you know, it's funny that I'm sure it'll
be mixed. And the idea thatsomehow they're like the Defense
Department, I'm sure is, willsurprise them. But I think we've
learned the hard lesson evenwith climate, that, that it
doesn't matter what the how goodthe cause is, there's still
always going to be plenty offraud and plenty of waste. And I
(04:38):
think that the concern I haveperhaps a legitimate concern is
that this this kind of, youknow, focus on fraud and waste
will be politicized and is beingpoliticized by by the
Republicans who want to cut anykind of climate funding. But I
think that kind of comes withthe turf. And I'm sure it was
(04:59):
probably What the Conservativeswere saying about the Defense
Department four decades ago. ButI think the reality is that
money is money. How it's spentis is real. And I think everyone
has to be held accountable fordoing that. And I think there's
a way to be absolutely, youknow, straightforward and honest
about that, and not in any wayundermine the ultimate cause or
(05:22):
mission. In fact, it's theopposite. The Republicans are
you are looking for anopportunity to attack it. And as
people may remember, theSolyndra scandal where and they
use that as a way to reallyundermine a lot of Obama,
President Obama's climateagenda. So in a way, this kind
of inoculate inoculates the thekind of the spending, if they
(05:47):
know that they're getting veryrigorous oversight.
Dina Rasor (05:52):
It's always been a problem. An any thing that I've
ever investigated were thepeople who actually have the
federal money, or the companiesOh, don't do this, because this
will make us look bad. And I'malways like, hey, it's gonna
come out, it's gonna come outeventually. And so I think
(06:14):
that's really important. It'svery frustrating, because I know
there's going to be people, aswe get more and more into this
are going to be a fearful thatwe're giving anti climate people
fuel to criticize us. But I'vealways found this true in almost
every endeavor, right? I'vebeen, if you're doing good
(06:35):
government, work and stuff, doyour own policing, do your own
policing, because if you find itout, and you try to fix it, and
you voted to go, but if you tryto hide it, and they find it,
then you're gonna get theequivalent of you know, 15
Benghazi hearings, oversomething, and so that it always
makes sense, it's much morecredible, if the group that is
(06:58):
advocating for the money andgetting the money the climate
community which is very broadnow with a lot of business
people and a lot of activistsand everybody else if you don't
point out your own false and,and police your own, that their
own companies and investmentsand everything else. This is not
just federal but investments andeverything else. Then you're
(07:22):
you're setting yourself up to bethe horse whipped a lot more
than if you just state we'redoing this we this was bad
actor, we did it, we got it out,you know, it's a classic thing
in Washington, get it you be thefirst person to get out your bad
news.
Gregory A. Williams (07:37):
I think it's worth reminding people that
some of the most powerful alliesthat we could always count on
it, Pogo were the most highlydecorated, then living American
soldier, the most accomplishedfighter pilot, the person
responsible for completelyoverhauling our, our, our
defense doctrine, the person whodesigned the most effective Air
(08:01):
to Air weapon in history, and aguy who designed three of the
most effective fighter planes inthe history of the United
States. So you don't have to bean opponent to something to, to
want to see it done. Well.
Peter McKillop (08:17):
On that point, and I think Dena was great to
point this out, you know, backin, when Obama was president,
there was another massive spendby the government following the
great financial crisis of 2008.
And nine, the American RecoveryAct, and both parties were
acutely aware of just howpolitically unpopular that was.
(08:37):
So both parties, or at leastObama came up with a plan that
created a very kind of rigorousoversight that was led, by the
way by Vice President Joe Biden,and putting together a kind of
oversight board, which reallyplayed that kind of that
government watchdog role, kindof at a very kind of multi. It
(09:01):
looked across all the agenciesrather than what you had. And I
think, you know, I think we'd bewe're far better at explaining
that.
Dina Rasor (09:13):
Well, I here's my frustration about it is that is
that it was it was put in place.
It was they did a rat, what ratbar, which was a group of IGS,
they put a really tough IG guyin there. They had oversight,
but they also had built in allthis, you know, database so that
(09:34):
every average person can go andlook in their community where
the federal money is going andwhat's being spent on. And it
wasn't 100% success, but theamount of fraud was much lower
than expected. You know, I don'tknow if I totally agree with the
government things but usuallyyou expect, but they say, two to
8%, but I'd say more like 20%and According to the government,
(09:59):
the Obama administration, it wasless than 1%. And no, no, you
know, I think that's but stillit shows that it worked. But my
frustration is that this, Bidenwas just bird dog in this like
crazy because he had these IGSboard and he had this other and
(10:20):
everything else. And he wasdoing it with Ron client. Who
was it his time that that timethe Deputy Chief of Staff, I
mean, no, the chief of staff toVice President. And so these two
put this together, because theyknew this is going to be a
problem. But then when we passedthis climate bill, which is just
so important, and so importantnot to be encumbered with, you
(10:44):
know, all the usual politicalnonsense, they didn't put the
same kind of language in. And Iwas astounded because it
happened after, you know, ithappened before I was actually
in the mix and looking at it.
And I asked someone who knowsthe inside of it. And I said,
(11:04):
Why, why would they not put inthe same kind of things that
were so successful with the withthe gun rack? And they said,
well, they got mad because theysaved all this money, and they
kept all this fraud, but theydidn't get credit for it. But
well, maybe they didn't getcredit for it. But if you do
(11:24):
have a big scandal andeverything else, you don't you
need something to point to. Sothis is this was my frustration.
When I when Greg and I weresitting there, saying, you know,
somebody's got to look at this.
And so we are, we are hopingthat that kind of oversight,
gets some traction in the in theCongress now. And that that's
(11:45):
points out the most importantthing about having independent
watchdogs, because when you did,they're doing an independent
watchdog, and they know it, thenthey're more likely to, to make
sure that something embarrassingdoesn't come out.
Gregory A. Williams (12:04):
So I just wanted to take a moment to
explain for our listeners whoaren't yet fascinated with
government oversight, that an IGis an inspector general, this is
an independent senior officialin each of the major executive
branches, defense, agriculture,energy, and so forth, whose
entire job is to investigate howbusiness is conducted within
(12:26):
that department. And so, bycoordinating among them, Biden
created this very powerful teamof people who could oversee the
entirety of all of that recoveryspending. And Inspector
Dina Rasor (12:42):
General is outside of the ministration, they're
considered independence, so theycan't get that political
pressure.
Peter McKillop (12:49):
I wanted to pick up on the important point Dina
made about the need for theprivate watchdog as well. And
I'll quickly I'll hand it overto you first, but the idea that,
you know, you can't just have agovernment out, you know,
overseeing itself, for obviousreasons. And there being a can
go into kind of reasons why, andsome examples why. But having
said that, it's really, reallyimportant to give insiders in
(13:14):
the government a place wherethey can kind of go, that is not
a government site. And I knowthat's what y'all have been
working on for the last coupleof decades. So perhaps you can
say, talk a little bit aboutthat balance, getting a private
eye, as well as a governmentoversight.
Dina Rasor (13:32):
When we were doing the Department of Defense, the
Department of fence got alldefensive to use punting, but
about what we were doing andwhat we were putting out. And so
they beefed up their hotline.
Oh, trust us, you can call useverything else. And you know,
when we started really lookingat it, it was more of a sting
operation. Who is it out theretalking? And so I said, Don't
(13:52):
call the hotline, do all thereporting that you have to do in
the federal government, to theright people, but don't call the
hotline. And because anythingthat you say or send to them,
they they would actually give tothe company that you sent it
about? Like if you sendsomething in from Lockheed, they
give it to Lockheed say, What doyou think? So the lucky wouldn't
(14:12):
take a rocket scientist, butlucky to figure out who this
was, and then go after him. Sothe best thing that we were able
to do in the government and inbusiness, is to get an informal
group of sources and not reallywhistleblowers because they
didn't know public, if you canget inside sources, to work on
(14:33):
stuff with you who arefrustrated, leak you documents,
they sit in on the meetings, Imean, when a whistleblower comes
out, sets their hair on fire,and then they're completely
blocked from all theirdocumentation, and everything
else of what's going on. Theyalways come back say, well, we
fix that now. We fix that now.
(14:55):
But I had sources in there foryears that would sit in two very
important meetings of how todeal with whatever we were
exposing. And so I usually knewwhat they were going to say
before they said it. So theythey live, they live to, you
know, keep on leakingresponsibly. And we and I've
(15:16):
never had anyone caught andfired. I was and proud of that
because No, no story is worththat kind of thing. But that's
the way I think that the dothat. And then there's one other
point I wanted to say on that isthere the climate, I've noticed
that the climate startups andthe climate companies and
everything else, there are a lotof millennials and Gen Z's who
(15:41):
are quitting their tech jobs.
Because they say this is themost important thing in my
lifetime. And I want to work onit, you know, I have the I have
the skills, I have the whatever,and they're gonna go in there.
And they are idealistic aboutthe fact that they're going to
go in there and help us keepfrom having a climate disaster.
The problem with this is thatthey don't really realize how
(16:02):
they're going to run up againstmoney. I think they understand
it from being fossil fuel, but Idon't think they are going to
understand it once thesetechnologies start competing
together. And they're going tostart promoting technologies
that really aren't going to doanything. And these people are
going to get disillusioned. AndI think they're absolutely right
to be sources, to come to theoutside in companies and tell
(16:26):
you what's going on.
Gregory A. Williams (16:30):
So I think it's important to say early on
that all of the work that Denaand I have done has been
releasing information strictlywithin the boundaries of the
law. And I think something thatDena rightfully takes a lot of
pride in is that she has neverhad a whistleblower exposed. And
she's never asked awhistleblower to break the law.
(16:52):
And so there's this very narrowand difficult path that most
people don't even know about, orthink about when they they, they
start to think about not beingable to solve problems within
their job and needing someoutlet for for addressing the
(17:13):
terrible things that they'reseeing. So what, you know what,
why don't you say a few wordsabout, you know, appropriate
leaking inappropriate leakingvetting of sources? And see
where that takes us?
Dina Rasor (17:27):
Yeah, well, the thing about it is that I find
that they're, they're people,the people who want to do the
right thing there in thecompany, they see the bad thing
coming. They're worried aboutit, they're worried about their
job, they're worried about theirlivelihood, but they just can't
live with it. And I was callingthe Boy Scouts, I guess I should
add Girl Scouts now too. But thefact is, these are people that
(17:48):
were told from very honestpeople, if you tell the truth,
you won't get spanked as achild. And then they go out and
they say, Well, all I got to dois expose this, and everyone is
going to be just as appalled asI am. And I'm going to be, you
know, protected, and bizarre andall this kind of stuff. And
they're shocked when the weightof the world falls in on them.
(18:09):
And I always try to get sourcesand whistleblowers before they
do it. So you can tell them,this will work, this won't work.
This is how you best you know,each each source is different.
And how to protect themselveshow to take information out
without breaking the law, how tomake it so it's not traceable.
(18:30):
And so it really and I alwayssay to everybody who ever comes
to me about investigations, Ialways say investigations are
like bank robberies, much moresuccessful if it's an inside
job. And so I, I look for theinside jobs, I want to talk to
the mayor looking from theoutside in unless you file a
(18:52):
court case, it's really hard toknow what's going on in that
company. And so I'm really, I'mreally pleased that we're going
to be looking at that kind ofthing. And the Department of
Defense. They didn't classify asmuch as they do now. But I never
accepted a classified document.
And yet I was able to get to,because I was a small
(19:13):
organization back then. And Ididn't have the lawyers, even if
I wanted to, but I didn't wantto because I didn't want to be
discredited for you know, youthink climate stuff is going to
be a lot less national securityoriented.
Gregory A. Williams (19:36):
So I know we we spoke about the
distinction between the kind ofwhistleblowers that we've worked
with, versus ones like JulianAssange and Chelsea Manning,
without meaning to make anyvalue judgment about those two
individuals. I think it's worthsaying a few things about the
difference between what theydid, and the work that we
(19:59):
typically do. With withwhistleblowers.
Dina Rasor (20:03):
Yeah, want to take that, Peter?
Peter McKillop (20:05):
Yeah, I mean, I, it seems obvious for someone
who's done a blissful blow, orthat there's a very clear
distinction between someone whowill just like to share and
others Manning who just takewholesale dump of confidential
document and puts them on theworldwide web without any which
(20:29):
in dangers, not just nationalsecurity, which actually you
should be worried about, butalso the lives of people who are
potentially in those documents,and sources, that is exactly not
what I think should be done.
What needs to be done is kind ofwhat y'all have done over the
years, which is this idea ofbeing a confidential source for
it, which is exactly the wayjournalism operates. For these
(20:52):
whistleblowers, who know thatand have the confidence that
they can come to someone likeyourself, who will then be able
to translate and to make surethat this important information
gets into the right hands,whether that's a congressional
subcommittee or a newspapereditor. That, to me is the right
way, the wrong way, is just thiskind of almost nihilistic dump
(21:16):
of information that ultimatelydoes more harm than good.
Dina Rasor (21:25):
But yeah, and in getting documents, actually a
lot easier than it used to beused to be, I have to copy them
somewhere. And they put countersand they put counters and tabs
and secret tabs on the Pentagonthings. And so I would get a
document and I'd have to cut offthe corners and make sure
there's, you know, white out ona doesn't show the drum and
(21:47):
everything else. Now, peoplelike Assange and Chelsea
Manning, they stick a thumbdrive in, and they'll suddenly
they get a third thumb drive ofa million documents. And I don't
blame Chelsea Manning, I thinkChelsea Manning was incredibly
badly advised. And so was, sowas Edward stone with snip
(22:07):
Snellman. He wanted to Snowden,he wanted to vet stuff, but they
were all pushing him to, youknow, release and release. And
then they tell him to go to HongKong, China, and then go to
Russia, on the way to Ecuador.
And I'm like, what hoops tellsomebody to do something like
(22:29):
that. So these were badlydecided, but Assad is just
actually the Washington Post inthe New York Times came to
massage and said, you've got ahuge amount of documentation
here. It needs to be vetted,because so much of it has our
secret sources around the world,to names on it. And we have
(22:50):
these big legal departments. Andwe can do this and we can vet
this to make sure nobody getskilled. And he Nope, just
released it all, he would nottake advantage of these offers
that these journalism now I'mnot a big fan, completely of all
journalism. But in thissituation, that's what you have
to do if you're going to dosomething that on the edge, a
(23:13):
life and death kind of thing.
You better vet every singlething you can. And it all you
know, it's just good. It's justgood journalism. And when he
didn't do it, and he put thatout. There's lots of journalists
that defend him. But after 40years of investigation, I don't
(23:37):
because it was proven thatpeople were killed. And no
story. No experts say nothing.
And they didn't really need toput those names in there to make
the same points. But no, nothingis worth that. I have walked
away from whistleblowers whohave really good information,
but they're gonna get discoveredand I figure out that they just
(23:57):
don't have the, the they'rethey're very moral people, but
they don't have the strength topossibly lose their job, lose
their family lose theirlivelihood, and end up driving a
taxi somewhere. And I say tomyself, these people don't can't
go the full distance. So it'snot worth exposing that because
I can't hide it well enough tohave them not get caught. And it
(24:19):
was it's been frustrating, butthis is a this is serious stuff.
And there's going to beironically, you know, they took
Solyndra and use that, as youknow, the bloody shirt a
cylinder every time you know,they didn't like something. And
cylinder was really I know thisbecause we did a podcast with
(24:41):
the former Treasury InspectorGeneral, who was in charge of
kind of pulling the messtogether. That was a loan
guarantee. That loan guaranteeprogram actually made money for
the federal government in wholebut in cylindre Because Obama
was pushing so hard and wantedthis out, the Department of
(25:03):
Energy did not do the duediligence. On the loan
guarantee, it wasn't really a,it was more of a waste thing
than a fraud and abuse thing.
They just didn't do their jobbecause the politics wanted to
get it out there. And it turnsout that cylindric really didn't
(25:25):
have the goods to goods in the,in the organization to do it. So
yes, that was a huge half, youknow, half a million, half a
billion dollars loss. But thatlow income loan thing ended up
making more money for thefederal government than it
costs. But that's lost once youhave a whipping boy.
Gregory A. Williams (25:47):
Yeah, so maybe just a fill out a few of
the details for people who arenot, who aren't familiar with
this lender case. So first ofall, a loan guarantee is an
attractive arrangement for thegovernment because it allows
them to steer money in thedirections that are consistent
with with policy withoutactually costing any government
(26:08):
money, assuming things go well.
Now, the way you ensure that nogovernment money is is expended
in the case of a loanguarantees, you make sure that
you don't have to pay off on theloan guarantee. And the way you
do that is by having a verydiligent evaluation of what
you're giving the loan for. Andso in this case, you know,
(26:30):
ordinarily, you know, the thekind of information you ask for
is, is essentially a businessplan, what are you going to do
with this money? And, in thecase of Solyndra, they basically
skip that step. They were soeager to get money into the
hands of people who needed it inorder to achieve the policy
(26:50):
goals. That they said, Well,it's a it's a company making
solar panels, how could thatpossibly go wrong? Well, it can
go wrong if you don't have aplan for how you're going to
spend the money. And so aprivate bank made the loan, the
government guaranteed, and whenthe loan couldn't be paid back,
the government had to pay backthe loan. So you know, it wasn't
(27:11):
a case, as far as we can tell afraud, but just the case of how
money can be wasted if you don'tfollow the rules and, and
conduct effective oversight.
Dina Rasor (27:26):
And I just want to point out and ask Peter, this,
that's why I'm so pleased aboutthis collaboration is, here's
the situation of waste, here'ssituation of doing something
that every businessman knowsabout every businessman and
businesswoman who are going togo and get a loan from anybody,
they have to you know, andeverything, they're the bank or
(27:48):
whatever they get alone venturecapital, there is so much due
diligence done. And thegovernment, for political
reasons skipped over that, andthat, that really hurt solar,
you know, solar manufacturing,for, you know, almost almost a
decade. So I also wanted to ask,Peter, you know, how, you know,
(28:10):
one how having business,talking, having a business bent
and dealing with business andbusiness money, and everything
helps your organization, and howit will work with the new
oversight collaboration, I'mhoping that you have great
business people that when wefind a problem, we can go in
there and say, This isn'tworking. I mean, you know,
(28:31):
there's a problem here.
Peter McKillop (28:32):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the key
there is to make is tounderstand and do to do the
forensics. And there's plenty ofpeople who who have worked for
banks, and for companies who cando look at a balance sheet and
look at a loan and kind of find,particularly if we're getting
some sort of some sort ofguidance and some sort of, you
know, some of the realdocuments. So I think that would
(28:54):
be very, very important. Andit's absolutely critical because
the to be able to maintainsupport, particularly among the
average American voter, it iscritical that they trust, how
that money is being spent. Atthe end of the day, people still
(29:16):
trust the US Department ofDefense, and that's because they
believe that they're doing agood job, when it comes to
defending the country, whetherthey like it or not, but there
has been horrendous race, wasteand fraud as you have pointed
out over the years. Ideally, wewould be in a stalemate, similar
situation, that we will see thatthe benefits ultimately of, of
having government subsidize theclean energy economy will be
(29:42):
will be as important and we'llbe able to overcome any kind of
any kind of setback from frompointing out fraud and abuse. In
a way you kind of wish this hadbeen done with the fossil fuel
industry, which kind of had kindof how to have the best of all
whorls, which was all thesubsidies and all the tax
(30:02):
credits they could ever possiblyimagine, with absolutely no
oversight. And ironically,interestingly enough, not even
the private sector tried to goin there and, and, and root it
out. So hopefully, in this case,it'll be a best practice going
forward.
Dina Rasor (30:22):
Yeah, I think that fossil fuel people who are
literally picked up the PR planfor tobacco, tobacco survived.
Oh, well, and we don't know ifit causes cancer. Oh, no, who
knows, you know, kind of dothat, that kind of thing. The
difference between theDepartment of Defense spending
and spending on climate is youhope with the Department of
(30:45):
fence with all their waste alltheir fraud, make, make weapons,
bend metal, as they call it,make weapons, and hope they
rust, hope you don't have to goto war. And especially when you
know, ground forces have becomemore important now. But back in
there, when I did it, it wasmore of a you know, we're gonna
(31:07):
push, everybody's gonna push thebutton and no one's gonna care.
And there's never going to be aninvasion of Europe and all this
kind of stuff. But you have, itwastes a lot of money. And it
also gives them a false sense ofwhere, how well the weapons
work, and whatever. But theclimate spendings different
because you aren't going to justlose the battle, or, you know,
(31:33):
rattle your sword and not beable to deliver, or it just
enormous amount of waste. Theyreally didn't ever want to go to
war. They just wanted to havethe weapons for war. You know,
every time that anybody, BushObama, anybody came and said,
when sent troops? And they'relike, oh, no, oh, no, yeah,
because it takes out of theweapons budget. So I always had
comfort in that. Because it'slike, they don't really want to,
(31:56):
they don't, they want to saythey have four aces in their
hands, and they really don'twant to lay their cards down.
But with climate, it'sdifferent. If we screw this up,
and it becomes seen as awasteful boondoggle, then
there's no do overs, we're runout of time, you can't see, you
know, weapons systems take 10years to produce, and you can
(32:18):
work on that. And you can try tosee, do that. This is it, man,
we, you know, the difference iswe're going to lose the battle,
we're going to lose, we're goingto have the earth burn up. And
anybody who doesn't believe thatmay, you know, be fine. And I
always keep telling people ifyou're not for climate change,
because you're don't worry aboutco2, at least be for climate
change. Because the more fossilfuel and plastic we don't make,
(32:42):
the more likely you're not goingto get canceled. You know,
there's there's also thepollution part of it. But I just
think it's so much moreimportant than the department
defense because it's there is nodo over.
Peter McKillop (32:55):
Yeah, there's also the we may be spending it
in the wrong ways. And thatwell, that's obviously open to
interpretation. We can there aresome obvious places and recently
that the example we've beenfocusing on is Bill Gates, his
so called an atrium project,which is a an attempt by him to
resurrect the idea of a sodiumcooled nuclear reactor. This is
(33:18):
a reactor that had been provenvery dangerous over the years
and had been, in fact, banned orhad been stopped by Hyman
Rickover, the founder of thenuclear energy program for
submarines had every country butChina and Russia had kind of
walked away from thistechnology, Bill Gates for
whatever reason, decided heliked it, but then he was able
(33:39):
to use his influence in theDepartment of Energy to get them
to, to kind of match his $2billion, or at least he thought
they were and then shortly tunewas discovered that the only
place you can get that fuel isguess what, Russia, which is not
going to happen. So so thecombination of that that was
(34:00):
pretty overwhelming. And guesswhat the you know, the
government kind of pull back.
But that in partly was done byyou know, diehard whistle
Maximus whistleblowerwhistleblowers, but but nuclear
experts who understood what wasgoing on and have been kind of
raising this issue in the publicfor the last, I guess, one and a
half, two years and obviouslyonce Russia invaded Ukraine, it
(34:23):
became a pretty embarrassingsituation for for the Department
of Energy. However, that hasn'tstopped gates from continuing to
use his influence. It continuedwith this project.
Dina Rasor (34:37):
You can afford to you can afford to play around
and whatever playground he wantsto. And we've been looking we've
been looking at carbon capture,not there's some innovative
carbon capture stuff startingout now but the original idea of
carbon capture that we're goingto build pipeline bigger than
the oil pipeline United Stateswe're going to dig out dig out
(34:58):
the fossil fuel burn it captureit in the smokestacks put it in
a pipeline pressure, I sent itall over the country and then
put it back in the ground. Andit was and then how much they
lied about the percentage,already the percentage of what
they capture. And it's gonethrough several iterations,
including at the end of theObama administration totally
(35:19):
failed. And yet, that has beenthat has been very popular. And
one of the problems is, ofcourse, is that it's popular
because it gives license for bigfossil fuel to keep doing what
they're doing. There was that,you know, well, we'll just
capture it and put it back inthe ground, you know, crazy.
Peter McKillop (35:38):
There was another classic example. And
the, some of us will rememberthe 1970s, there was this, which
was our last great energycrisis, this idea that we were
going to create so calledsynthetic fuel. And that was a
massive government projectbecame hugely subsidized. And
ultimately, it was a completefailure. So again, if there had
(36:00):
been more, more oversight onprojects like that, perhaps we
wouldn't have made that kind ofmistake.
Gregory A. Williams (36:06):
Yeah, the other quirk, let's say, of the
carbon capture business that Ilike to point out is that in
some respects, is just a way ofputting more money back in the
pockets of, of the fossil fuelextractors. Much of what is done
with with the captured carbon isto simply use it to pump into
the ground to force more oil outof the ground. So you know,
(36:29):
these oil companies that havebeen capturing this carbon
dioxide for decades, and usingit this way, and now they get a
big, fat government subsidy todo that, you know, nevermind the
fact that they're not pumping itinto the ground to get it to
stay there. It comes up alongwith the the oil when they
extract the oil. And so theyjust keep, you know, capturing,
(36:51):
extracting, and then pumpingback into the ground, again, the
same co2 over and over again, atthe cost of these these fat
subsidies that are paid for bythe taxpayers.
Dina Rasor (37:02):
Yeah, and I'm one of the things I want to look at,
you know, as soon as we get alittle bit more established and
going is, I think, you know, Ihave these things people say to
me, how do you know there'sgoing to be fraud there, and I
say, Well, it's kind of like,just a Stewart Potter on
pornography, I can't define itby not want to see it. And the
(37:22):
thing that I see in the horizonis the tax credits, the tax
credits are going to be socheated. And these are the big
companies. And they're alreadyplanning to do all this kind of
stuff, where they don't evenknow the technology is going to
work. But they're alreadypromising that they're going to
have X amount of savings and taxcredits, and they don't even
(37:43):
know what percentage of their ofcarbon they're going to be able
to save. And so I think that'ssomething where I'd love to find
somebody who really understandsvery well to who really knows
what the scam on that is. Andthat's by the way, that's that's
a source that's just asimportant as a whistleblower,
somebody who's a scientist, orsomebody who is an accountant,
(38:05):
or somebody who can tell youwhat, you know why this is all
folly. And of course, you haveto check them who they are and
everything, but I've had, I'vebeen able to figure that out.
And it but it just to me, I justknow that that's where the bad
business people are going tostart cheating.
Gregory A. Williams (38:25):
So another thing that I wanted to bring up
as a practice that was reallyimportant at Pogo, and I'm sure
it still is, is that the rankand file journalists is under
tremendous deadline pressure.
And as newsrooms get smaller andsmaller, and the deadlines get
faster and faster, it's verydifficult to develop any sort of
strong understanding of highlytechnical matters. And so a big
(38:48):
part of what we did at Pogo wassometimes with whistleblowers,
but sometimes just on the basisof government documents, do the
kind of background research thatthe typical modern journalist
doesn't have time to do. So thatwhen they go to press, you know,
they're not, you know,scrambling to understand the
(39:10):
mechanics of carbon capture howphotovoltaic cells work, how
energy is transmitted over longdistances, you know, that's
something we can take the thedays, the weeks, the months,
whatever it takes to packagethat research and, and and make
it available. But with thatsaid, I'm curious, Peter, to
(39:31):
hear your take on, you know,what the state of modern
journalism and what the biggestchallenges are, you
Peter McKillop (39:40):
know, it's really it's particularly
important, because so much ofthis funding is going to be
happening in this at the stateand local level. And that's
where we've seen the greatestdamage in the journalism
community, where you've lostclose to 70% of good journalist
in the last 30 years and you'veseen Ain't you're seeing, you
(40:00):
know, one to two kind ofnewspapers clothes a month, the
there's a real crisis of kind ofjournalism at that local level.
And as a result, there's goingto be even less oversight than
there was, at a time whenthere's never, it's never been
more important. So having theability to go to someone like
(40:21):
yourselves, who can understandand support and even get those
stories into those localpublications, is going to fill a
gap that that's desperatelyneeded.
Dina Rasor (40:34):
Yeah, and local locally, that advocacy groups
are really important, the localgrassroot people on the ground
who know what's going on. And alot of times they know what's
going on. They kind of know howto investigate it, but they
don't know what to do with whatthey have. And, you know, that's
where I want to start. We'vealready had people on from local
(40:57):
advocacy groups and stuff,because they're taking, they're
sort of taking over thejournalist. Now, granted,
they're an advocacy group. Soyou have to take what they say,
a grain of salt, and you know,they have to get documentation
and everything else. But they'reon the ground there. And they
understand the dynamics. And Ifind that that is another area
(41:18):
that we would like to work with.
Because once that we can thenshow them how to responsibly
investigate this and expose itwithout having people say, Oh,
you're just an advocacy group?
Yeah, that's correct.
Gregory A. Williams (41:40):
Yeah, I'd like to say that local
journalism is sort of the the,where local politics thrives,
it's sort of the natural habitatof, of political engagement. And
for me, there's no greaterexample of of, you know, near
extinction or threatening aspecies, through the, through
(42:01):
the process of habitatdestruction, then there is, you
know, local politics, you know,basically being driven to
extinction through thedestruction of its habitat,
namely, these these localnewspapers.
Dina Rasor (42:14):
And then you also have to worry about the problem
of all this money coming in fromthese dark sources. You know,
basically laundered by bigfossil fuel going into these
communities and saying, Oh, youdon't want to have a solar farm,
because they're going to, it'sgoing to cover up the farmland,
and a lot of times they put iton farmland, nobody's using any
(42:35):
way. But it's going to it'sgoing to leak cadmium into it,
and it killed all the cattle,you'll never be able to use this
again for growing crops. Theysay the same thing about the
windmills. You know, Trump justsaid the other day, oh, if you
want to see dead birds go lookit under a windmill. And they go
on and on about this stuff. Andthey went so when they local,
(42:55):
the local initiatives of peoplecoming in and wanting to do big
solar prop things and bringingjobs into rural areas that Biden
wants to do, they tried to dothat in Ohio. And they were run
out. I mean, if there werefarmers that wanted to have, you
know, had fallow fields thathadn't really been useful
forever. And they wanted to dothis, they wanted to be molded
(43:16):
in the local people got thiswrong information. And everybody
in the town had a fight and andthese things are getting getting
stopped this clean energy thingsare getting stopped by that. And
the ironic part about that is isthat they're they're they're,
you know, cutting off their noseto spite the face. It's so badly
(43:37):
that I think it's California andMichigan and New York have
passed laws saying that thestate can override that. And
normally, I don't like statesoverriding local. But if the
local people are being undulyaffected by fossil fuel money to
try to hurt clean energy,because it's their competition.
That's something that needs tobe explored and pointed out.
Gregory A. Williams (44:00):
Well, I think it's, it's great to see
that we all have lots todiscuss. But I want to be
careful not to try to covereverything in our first meeting.
So I look forward to morepodcasts with with the two of
you. But unless there's anythingelse that you desperately want
to cover tonight, why don't weWhy don't we call it rap and
(44:24):
look forward to the nextopportunity to speak together?
Peter McKillop (44:29):
I look forward to that. And I think it should
be a great partnership.
Dina Rasor (44:33):
Yeah, sounds good.
And I I'd like to have Peter ononce a month. So we can get
because you know, he's got he'sdealing constantly with the
business side to get a feel ofwhat's going on. You know,
what's going on?
Gregory A. Williams (44:48):
All right.
Well, here's to a fruitfulpartnership. And thanks again
for being with us tonight. Thankyou
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