➡ Chris Ferrell, host of the Judicial Watch podcast, interviews journalist Kathryn Herridge about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They discuss Kirk’s impact, his authenticity, and the shock of his murder. Herridge also talks about the role of the internet in radicalizing individuals, comparing it to the radicalization of Americans to al Qaeda after 9/11. She suggests that online communities can become echo chambers, intensifying extreme views and potentially leading to violence.
➡ The text discusses the impact of echo chambers, where people only engage with ideas they’re comfortable with, leading to a lack of open-mindedness and civil discourse. It also touches on the consequences of free speech, using the example of Jimmy Kimmel’s case where his show was cancelled due to his controversial statements. The text further delves into the author’s personal experience with CBS, where her job was eliminated and her reporting records seized, which she believes was due to her getting too close to sensitive information. Lastly, it mentions the importance of protecting confidential sources in investigative journalism.
➡ The article discusses a situation where numerous subpoenas were issued as part of an investigation, including to conservative groups and individuals. The author suggests that this could be seen as either a thorough investigation by the Biden Justice Department and the FBI, or as an overreach and misuse of power. The author also discusses their career in journalism, their transition to independent work, and the changing landscape of the media industry. They highlight the importance of using documents and records in reporting, and the shift towards a “show me” society where people want to see evidence.
➡ The speaker, a seasoned investigator, launched their own platform after a long career in enforcement. They had to learn new skills, like setting up a business and becoming more tech-savvy. They now focus on investigative stories, often involving documents and high-risk subjects. One of their notable stories involved a young soldier who suffered severe reactions to the COVID vaccine, leading to heart attacks and a mini-stroke. The soldier’s case was initially ignored, but after the story was published, she received back pay and medical care. The speaker also mentioned investigating other significant stories, including IRS whistleblowers and unresolved issues related to 9/11.
➡ The text discusses various topics, including the 911 Commission Report, the role of intelligence agencies, the state of corporate media, and the importance of journalistic integrity. It also touches on the challenges faced by independent journalists, the impact of personal bias in reporting, and the influence of social media on information dissemination. The speaker also mentions a legal case they’re involved in, related to the protection of confidential sources. Lastly, the text explores the manipulation of narratives on social media by adversaries and the importance of trust in journalism.
➡ The journalist discusses their experience with misinformation and the pressure to report on unverified intelligence. They highlight the importance of due diligence in journalism and the need for accountability in reporting. They also mention their upcoming streaming show and the potential for independent journalism, despite its challenges.
➡ The speaker discusses the challenges faced by young journalists entering the market, suggesting the formation of news consortiums to provide support. They also propose the idea of an investigative lab, a charity that could fund smaller organizations’ investigative journalism projects. The speaker emphasizes the importance of detailed, on-the-ground reporting, sharing a personal anecdote about a journalism professor who taught them the value of attention to detail in reporting.

Chris. I’m Chris Ferrell and this is Judicial Watch. Welcome to Onwatch, everybody. The Judicial Watch podcast where we go behind the headlines to cover news and information that the old legacy media really does not want you to know about. We try to recover some lost history and explain the inexplicable. And there’s nobody more qualified today as our guest to explain the inexplicable and recover lost history than my friend and colleague, Kathryn Herridge. Kathryn, welcome to Onwatch. Thank you very much for having me. As we sat down, I was trying to remember when we first sort of our craw.

Conspired. That’s right, when we first conspired. And I think it’s got to be 20 years. Yeah, it’s a long time. We were child prodigies at that time. That was just out of high school. Exactly. And for our viewing and listening audience, let me tell you something. Kathryn is a very rare breed. She’s almost on the verge of extinction. She’s the only real journalist. Well, not the only. There’s like a handful, maybe like three real, real, authentic, genuine journalists. Well, that’s a compliment. Thank you. You practice an art that is, it’s very rare indeed. There’s a few other folks, we all know their names, but you are head and shoulders above me.

Well, thank you. You have our great respect for doing that. And I say that because this is very rare. I’m holding the pad and paper. I know this is not my natural posture right here. We usually dig up some document and we do some analysis on it. And then you say, hey, what does this mean and how did you get it and why did you ask for it and all those sorts of things. So this is fun. This is a great opportunity to have a chat. Not just about 20 years of working together in friendship, but also really important stuff that doesn’t normally get sort of a long form discussion.

And so we’ll take advantage of that today. The thing dominating the media and news reporting and social media and every other conversations among people. I was just on vacation for two weeks and even hanging out at the beach, people were just talking, consumed with this topic. And the topic, of course is Charlie Kirk and the murder. The assassination of Charlie Kirk. What was your instant reaction? What was your impression when hearing about this brutal murder? Well, when it all unfolded, someone who I work with part time doing digital strategy for, you know, the investigations on X called me and said there’s been a shooting at Charlie Kirk’s event and it really looks bad.

Right? Like it really looks bad. And There was just a kind of frantic tone in his voice. I didn’t have a personal relationship with Charlie Kirk, but I certainly was familiar with his work. I respected the fact that he was going on to college campuses and engaging with students. And he was using really the force of his words and the force of his ideas, not violence, to open people’s minds. And I think this whole concept of civil discourse has really been lost in the last few years. So I had a lot of respect for him for taking that on.

And just a lot of. I wouldn’t say shock is an overused word, but it was. It was kind of mind blowing in a lot of ways because he was exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech. And for that, based on what we’ve seen in the court record so far, he was gunned down at that event. Right. I cannot claim close friendship with them, but I was a halfway decent acquaintance. I met him a few times at different conservative functions and events and, you know, enough to smile and wave and say hi. And I was always struck with the great thing about Charlie Kirk.

And as you well know, there’s tons of people, whether it’s in journalism or public policy, you know, they’ve got their on air public face and Persona, and then as soon as the camera’s off or as soon as they leave the stage, they’re a very different person. Usually not. Usually not too good. Well, I’ve seen that myself, but I can tell you for a fact that Charlie Kirk, what you saw was what you got. Well, he was. I think one of the things I’ve learned over time is that the camera has this incredible ability to see through people.

So I’m sure everyone’s had this experience where they’re watching, you know, network TV or cable or even online and they’re watching somebody and the sound is even off and they’re thinking to themselves, this is not a genuine person. Probably there are other adjectives that are going through their mind, but there’s something about the camera that really does see through people. And he had an authenticity. I think people are really looking for authenticity in my line of work. I think it’s about authenticity and credibility and your reputation, really. So there’s repercussions. Right. There’s like second and third order consequences, you know, reverberations.

Sure. What are some of the things that you’re sort of detecting or sensing about the consequence of a brutal murder like Kirk’s? Well, one of the things that I did immediately is when you’re in an environment where there’s a lot of information flying around and you’re not really sure what’s real and what’s not. And I think this is especially so if you’re on a platform like X, because it’s sort of being flooded with data and you’re not sure about some of it, is that I always revert to the court records to see what in fact the allegations that the government is making and what the strength of their evidence is.

So by the end of last week, if my timing’s right, there was an affidavit of probable cause. And as you know, that is the government’s sort of first blush at what they think the evidence is against them. And then there were a series of holding charges against Tyler Robinson. And it seemed pretty clear to me that. It seemed pretty clear to me that we’re talking about sort of a process of radicalization in terms of extreme points of view that then crosses the threshold to violence. And you and I, years and years and years ago, you know, sort of worked together.

You guys got documents. I was sort of doing the reporting about this whole group of Americans who were radicalizing to al Qaeda after 9 11, which was sort of unheard of at the time because you didn’t understand how you could have been in New York or Washington or Pennsylvania and suddenly just a few years later be joining Al Qaeda and being willing to, you know, become a suicide bomber, for example. And at the time, the view among government officials is that you had to have this kind of in person contact, kind of like what we’re having today.

Correct. Sort of a mentoring relationship in order to cross that threshold to violence. And I made the argument, based on our reporting and a lot of the records that you were able to get through Judicial Watch, that in fact something else was going on, that this generation that grows up online is able to establish a more intimate relationship with people that they’ve never met. And that in fact, that relationship can become so powerful and such a driving force, they then cross the threshold to violence. And at the time I was roundly criticized that the Internet doesn’t make people do things.

Chat rooms don’t make people do things. And I think this mechanism we saw after 911 is probably similar to the mechanism that we’re seeing today in the Tyler Robinson case. It’s a little bit of a false choice narrative because the criticism that they leveled was the Internet doesn’t make people do bad things. You know, but what they leave out of that equation is there may be an initial contact on the Internet, but then there are Also people who are then moved to an alternate form of communication. Correct. And so that in the. This is a. Not really a good description, but the dark web, right.

Or even other impersonal means of communication where they are receiving instruction and they are receiving sort of motivational training and they are radicalized. And so they’re very simplistic. The Internet doesn’t make people violent or crazy. That is, I think, sort of dissent disingenuously, cartoonishly simplistic. And it doesn’t, I agree. It doesn’t explain the progression that does occur. Well, what we saw really for the first time then, and this is, you know, over 10 years ago now, is that people who had, were like minded, were able to form a community where they weren’t exposed to ideas that challenged their point of view.

They were never made uncomfortable about their points of view. And it became very reinforcing. And to me it almost becomes an echo chamber where the ideas really intensify, like almost pouring gasoline on a fire. And when you’re surrounded by people who are like minded, have a propensity to violence, I think it becomes sort of an ideological accelerant. And looking at just the affidavit of probable cause now, the apparent role of discord and this sort of small group on discord, what people may or may not have known leading up to that, it’s that echo chamber again. It’s allowing people to just only surround themselves with ideas that they’re comfortable with, not really being open minded to other points of view and certainly not engaging in any kind of civil discourse with other points of view.

And it’s not just the idea of going back and forth, forth and finding people that are like minded. Then the next step beyond that is to get people organized, sometimes in a very sort of non threatening way. We saw this with the Virginia paintballers where people would go from this sort of clandestine relationship to now an overt relationship and an overt relationship that allowed them to meet and do stuff together, which actually is another step in radicalization. Right. Allows them to organize. And so I think you’re seeing this also in this discord group with regard to the shooter.

And they’re going to be hearings on the Hill. I think the House Oversight Committee has announced a hearing for early October with the different platforms like Discord, like Twitch, Steam, like Reddit, which I think is probably fairly constructive. But it brings me back to this sort of central question which we started with, which is this exercise of free speech. There’s been so much discussion with the Jimmy Kimmel case this week. He’s absolutely free to say what he wants on his show. He was free to say what he wanted. That was not backed up by the facts of the case.

It was not a MAGA person who assassinated Charlie Kirk. But free speech has consequences and he found out the consequences in this case is that these, these Nextar stations, I guess St. Clair stations as well, didn’t want to put on the show. And then ABC essentially canceled. Yeah. Pulled the plug. And there’s been a whole discussion over whether this is a violation. It’s not a violation of his free speech rights. He’s free to speak as he will. But I know as someone who’s worked in this industry, I’m sure he has a contract which is what they call a pay or play contract which says that his employer’s only obligation to him is, is to write a check every week.

That is it. They can bench him if they wish and they have discretion as to whether they’re going to put his show on the air. That’s it. And yeah, I mean, which leads me to. It’s a similar but not exact related topic. I know. I’ll let you answer however much you wish to. I know there’s times when you’ve had very good, excellent, well sourced reporting and various persons would say pick another topic. Catherine, we’re not gonna. Don’t talk about this. Or we’re not comfortable. Or we’re making. We’re exercising our editorial discretion. Right. Do you have anything.

I think you’ve sum that up pretty well. I don’t really think there’s much more I need to add. I need to add to that. But it’s pretty horrible me to bring that up. No, that’s okay. But that’s a fact though. If you’re a person on television, of course. And they just don’t want to hear that. No. Well, I have my own experience with cbs. You know, last year, for your viewers who may not have followed this, I had my job eliminated. They said it was for cost cutting reasons, but I was probably the highest performing correspondent and who won the most awards in the Washington office.

So there was kind of a disconnect. But if they don’t want you to work at their company, that’s their right. They have to meet the contract obligations. But the tell, of course, is that they seized my reporting records and. Which had confidential source information. And this is off the charts when it comes to. It was very irregular. It was very highly irregular. Highly irregular. My experience is that. And there’s sort of a legal basis for this. But when you leave an employer, you take your records with you. Because if you, if there is any litigation in the future, sort of the first line of defense is the reporter.

The courts go to the reporter first. And if they can’t get it resolved with the reporter, then they fall back to the corporation. So if the corporation keeps all your records, then they have no first line of defense. So it doesn’t even make sense from a corporate point of view. And it’s. I’m not going to say a lot more about it, except I have a very good idea what records they were looking for. I had been assigned to the Hunter Biden case. I clearly had gotten too close to certain things and there was a decision at some level just to shut me, to shut me down.

And so they, I mean, they came into your office. I mean, there’s these little elements, right? These are loaded with goodies sometimes, right? There’s all sorts of little notes and things, but they. So they gobbled up or they boxed up all your notes. It was actually a little more straightforward than that. I got a call, I guess on Monday or Tuesday, I can’t recall exactly, but there was a company wide email that went out saying that today’s the day that we’re going to have to lay off a number of employees. It’s all part of this restructuring that we’re doing in advance of this potential merger with Skydance, which has now gone through.

And I then, within just a couple of minutes, got a text message from my bureau in chief and my husband said to me, what are you doing today? And I said, I think I’m being laid off. My calendar just. My calendar got open. And so I was on this zoom call and they announced that they had locked me out of the office and they’d locked me out of the computer and they’d essentially shut down my phone. And, you know, that’s fine. I felt I was only guilty of the crime of committing journalism at that point. That’s very dangerous.

That’s a very dangerous thing. A couple of days passed and they said, we’re going to return, you know, your personal effects from the office. And a couple of days went by and a courier showed up with just two very small boxes. And I said, where’s the rest of my stuff? And they said, if you have any questions about the rest of your stuff, you have to talk to them. And, you know, I, I’ve worked at a lot of different places. Like, I, I have respect for my employers, but when you have the network of Walter Cronkite sees your investigative reporting files.

That is an attack on investigative journalism. And I eventually testified to Congress about this and called it a journalistic rape. Right. Which it was. It was. And I mean, because you, for people that would just want to kind of walk and talk through this for a second, so you’ve got a source who has information. I’m thinking about, like even whistleblowers, right, who have tried to exercise the system and have gotten jammed for doing it. And in order to provide you with factual, truthful information and to corroborate other sourcing, there’s times when you have to give an express premise of confidentiality.

You’re going to say, look, I’m not going to tell anybody about this or where it came from. And it’s kind of a. It’s a cornerstone. It’s a foundation for use of reporting. I have to. I can’t really say a lot about my handling of confidential sources because I’m in the federal courts right now defending my protection of confidential sources. But what I would say generally is that if you don’t have a credible pledge of confidentiality to your sources, and I’ve testified to this, then your toolbox as an investigative journalist is empty. Right. And I’m saying this, I’ll recharacterize it so no one takes it the wrong way.

I’m saying this in my work here at Judicial Watch, which is its own form of journalism, but I taught journalism law at George Mason for five years. And I mean, this is what I would teach students, and I gave them case examples and discuss it with them. But reporting relies very often upon someone believing and trusting that the information that they’re providing is not going to be used as a weapon back against them. Right. And so I thought your testimony was very powerful up on the Hill. It was important because you talked about stuff that we see the impact of it often and we’re seeing more and more of it.

And this kind of segues nicely, I think, into something called Arctic Frost. You’ve been reporting on it. It’s not a popsicle. By the way, where do these names come from? I really. It’s like the nail polish or lipstick people. There’s some little secret room where they’re coming up with these names. Well, a lot of the ones in my past life experience, they were generated from nsa. They gave a list of names that you could assign to things. But Arctic Frost sounds like it’s made up by somebody at the FBI, which it was. And so not everyone’s going to Be up to speed.

Our viewers and listeners will have an appreciation that there was a lot of crooked bad targeting going on. What was this thing? Arctic Frost? So I got some records earlier this week which were produced to Senator Grassley, who has been a huge champion for whistleblowers. And these were legally protected whistleblower disclosures. And it was what’s called a subpoena tracker. And it showed how many subpoenas had been filed and what their status was, you know, in process or rolling subpoenas. So records over time or whether it had been completed. And Arthur Frost, I mean, there were several hundred groups that had been subpoenaed as part of this investigation, almost 100 conservative groups, including Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirsten, including Tom Fitton being subpoenaed at his home and having to sit for a grand jury.

Right? Yep. And Arctic Frost laid the foundation for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s electors case. But when you read through the records and the subpoena tracker, what you saywhat you see is that it was either an extremely aggressive investigation by the Biden Justice Department and the FBI, or it’s the ultimate example of weaponization and overreach. I have to say, looking at the list for subpoenas, I always feel subpoenas have to be used in a very judicious way because it’s so intrusive in terms someone’s financial records, for example, or their emails. But this had the feeling of we’re going to dig and dig and dig and dig until we find the crime.

So as opposed to investigating, investigating a criminal act, it was more an investigation that was about finding criminal activity. And that sort of turns everything on its head, which normally in American jurisprudence is anathema. It is an unbelievable abuse. It’s literally Stalinist, where he’d say, you know, show me the person, I’ll give you the crime. Right. And so the notion that we’ve had a crime committed and therefore we must now look for evidence, it was the other way around. So I posted that. This is, I think, a good example of how powerful these platforms are. Now I posted it on X.

It’s got over a million engagements at this point. A million is a big number. When you look at major newspapers or large websites, this is a very large number, even in comparison. And when you start reading through the comments, what you start to see is that there are people who read this list and said, wow, I had no idea that they had subpoenaed my financial records or my emails. Maybe they didn’t receive proper notification. Usually and you’re more of an expert than I am. But my understanding is that if they subpoena your records, there has to be a required notification within a certain period of time.

Sometimes though, it’s very delayed. Could be a year, could be 18 months or two years. So people were posting online. Oh my gosh, I had no idea that they subpoenaed the records for my small, you know, my small, you know, sort of community organizing group. There were a few, A few like that. Right. You know, I want to compliment it could be your individual personal genius or whoever you’re using for designing social media. But I love the stuff that you post and how you post it because it’s show me, right, it’s documents. Well, it’s receipt driven journalism.

You put up the document, get a highlighter, you mark the side of it. You can see literally, I mean, I know your handwriting. You’re saying, you know, look at this, whatever. So it’s very. It’s an infographic, right? Yeah, that’s one way to look at it. So it’s, look, people lie, records don’t usually, sometimes let records lie, but usually not. And so here it is, you look at it, you tell me what it means. Right. Which is a very powerful way of reporting. So when I got onto X, then Twitter about six years ago now, I started with the documents because that’s kind of always been my thing is relying on documents.

And I say this with some humility. I feel very, very pleased when I start scrolling through X and I see other people posting documents with their own highlights on it. It’s very ubiquitous now. You find it and I think it’s because people want that kind of show me evidence or they want to see receipts. And sadly, I think this goes to the larger mistrust in the media. It’s not a take my word for it society anymore, it’s a show me society. Yeah, I mean I remember very clearly days when we reporter would get up and tell you something.

You’d never see a document, you’d never see an interview, you wouldn’t see. It was just a narration, you know, anyway. So to your credit, you made very strong, you always have made very strong use of records and documents to show stuff, improve stuff. And so you have moved. So obviously there was years at Fox, there was a period at cbs and you are, you’ve branched out, you’re doing a solo operation. I am, and I think with enormous success, at least that’s my impression. Well, you know, just to give people a little bit of a backstory I’ve worked at ABC first, and then I worked at Fox, and then I worked at cbs.

And when my job was eliminated, I thought, I’m going to take a little bit of a pause to figure out what I’m going to do next. I don’t think, what do I want to do when I grow up? Right. So I don’t think many people realize that in that month of February 2024, I had my job eliminated. I was sort of publicly humiliated by cbs. I felt that was their objective. Sure. They seized all my records. And then within two weeks, I was held in contempt of court for refusing to disclose confidential source resources as part of a series of national security stories.

I mean, that’s pretty. Pretty brutal for anybody. All in the course of one week. One week. One month, rather. It felt like a week, but it was. Yeah, that is a very miserable. I was gonna say 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, punch. Well, one of my special forces friends called me up sort of a few weeks, you know, into this, and he said, I’m just. I’m doing a morale check. I see how you’re doing. And I said, oh, you know, I’m doing okay. I’m sort of figuring out. Figuring out my way. And he said, well, you know, in my line of business.

They shot at you and missed. That’s right. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed. I said, oh, okay, I’ll remember that. Maybe in a few weeks time. I thought I heard a bee suddenly go by my ear. I was. You know, I say this with gratitude. I had some job offers immediately, but I thought I would wait and try and figure out what would make sense. And I was given some advice by an entrepreneur who said, don’t go back. Go forward. Now you have enough of a sort of name recognition and a brand that you should really be your own brand now.

And the more I started educating myself about the platforms, the more I saw that in fact, this is the next iteration of journalism. And as this was happening to you, at least my review on this actually, the one world was actually kind of turning underneath you. Yes, I agree. The environment, the media environment, really changing separate of what you were experiencing, the situation and circumstances around you were changing radically. Well, we’re in the middle, I think, of a mini industrial revolution when it comes to the media. I mean, we’ve seen for years that traditional corporate media, even cable outlets, the audiences have been getting progressively older and then also have been shrinking.

And 10 years ago, if you didn’t like what you watched, you didn’t have a lot of choices. There was kind of a cost of exiting. Now there’s so many exit ramps to alternate sources of information that people are switching very, very quickly. And when I decided that I would do a newsletter and then I would do these investigations on X, it was very much an unknown to me. For, for example, would the government, would government authorities engage with me in the same way, for example, or would they sort of blow me off and dismiss me because I didn’t have a big corporate name behind me? If I was able to effect some kind of change, how quickly would it come and what would it take to do that? And I am so pleased at how much change we’ve seen as a result of some of these investigations.

I would argue, because the investigations are on these platforms and they’re more accessible to decision makers, that things happen actually much faster than when I even worked at CBS News. And we did some, you know, as much as I’ve criticized them in this conversation, we really did some very, very impactful journalism, especially for service members. I mean, we affected the benefits of like a million service members when I was there through our reporting. But you’re right, it’s like the ground beneath me was really, was really shifting. So you kind of, you have your trademark, right. Anybody in Washington, D.C.

in the intelligence, national security, law enforcement world, that’s a pretty big world. They know who you are, they know your history, your track record, your accomplishments. You’re not just somebody showing up with a notepad saying, hi, I’d like to ask you a question. And so you have your own brand that you kind of bring with you, thank God, because you also, you enter the marketplace or enter the competition at an elevated status to begin with. Not that this is, you know, it’s what I jokingly call, it’s a 30 year overnight success story. Right? You pour your guts into this for 30 years and then surprise, surprise, there’s a payoff.

So you enter at a much better place than somebody who would just be starting out. But what did you have to learn to launch your own kind of platform on X? How. I’m guessing that was quite a, it was a very steep learning curve. Very steep learning curve. So what were some of the things? Well, I had to become, set up my own business, which I did. And that was an entirely new experience to me. I had to become much more fluent with the, the technology than I’d ever been before in terms of what the requirements were.

Because as I said, we do these investigations with, I do Them with two other people, but on a part time basis. So by the time we do an investigation, I’ve done really all the editorial heavy lifting for the story. And a lot of them are very document driven stories and some of them are, you know, potentially high risk stories because of the subjects that I’m. That I’m taking on. But I decided that when I did this, I would tell the stories I couldn’t tell before, which is another way of saying I’m going to tell the stories where I encountered blocks at my old employer.

So, for example, we started with a story about COVID vaccine injury in the U.S. military. And when I was still at CBS, I heard the story of this soldier who’d had a really terrible reaction to the MRNA vaccine, multiple heart attacks and a mini stroke, and needed a pacemaker in her early 20s. I was going to say this is a young lady, she’s like 23 years old. 23 years old. And the thing that really stood out about her case is that it wasn’t just her saying, this is my experience. She actually had paperwork from the army where the army was making this connection to the MRNA vaccine.

And so her heart injury was in the line of duty because the vaccine was required. So to me, this was, for lack of a better term, a huge smoking gun document, really. So that was a story that CBS was not interested in COVID vaccine injury stories. And I did something else related to the National Guard, but on my own, I thought this was really maybe the story to start with. Yeah. And I was, I think it did like 4 million or something like this. We’ve had other investigations that have done 15 million. I mean, the numbers are really like humbling and shocking all at the same, at the same time.

So this young female soldier was obviously had this horrific reaction, right. Heart attacks at 23 or something. That’s insane. Right. And she’s medically discharged by the army, is that correct? Well, she was thrown off or. And part of the legal question here is that she should not have been thrown off orders. She should have been kept on orders until she was sort of ready to return to service. I see, right. So when she was thrown off orders, she lost a lot of her medical coverage. So she had 70,000 in medical debt and she was homeless for a while because she was thrown off orders.

So part of what we did with our story was she got the two years of back pay that she was owed when she was thrown off orders. And she’s still trying to resolve the medical costs. But what’s her current Status. Her current status is that she’s. I don’t want to say she’s. She’s not on orders, I don’t think anymore. But I want to give you bad information. What I know is that she got her two years of back pay as a result of our reporting, and she’s receiving appropriate medical care at the cost of being. She’s had pacemaker and I believe that she’s eligible now for coverage.

But again, I don’t want to get too far into the weeds if I give that information. I just, in a case like that, the Department of now, the Department of War, they just had a meeting. Actually. They just to their credit, she was at the Pentagon recently and she was meeting with some members of Seattle senior leadership, along with others who were COVID vaccine injured about the reinstatement process, the loss of pay, the loss of health insurance. And that was a huge step forward to have that kind of recognition. Yeah. So I was pleased to see that it was one of those cases where we were able to tell her story.

And then there was a. To the Army’s credit, there was a response. They did the two years of back pay, and now the new administration is listening to these people and they’re trying to reinstate or make it right for them. And then there’s the IRS whistleblowers. Yes. I mean, so it isn’t like you sat around saying, gee, oh, well, what will I go out and report on? You were very busy. So this first case concerning the young lady with DOD and the vaccine injury, but go to the, go to the IRS whistleblower. Well, I think of all the stories that I was sort of part of the team on was the IRS whistleblowers.

And I give CBS a lot of credit because I think that reporting on CBS really completely sort of cracked open that whole case with Hunter Biden because it really took it into the mainstream. After that, I found that there was a lot more resistance to doing that story. I’m not going to get into all the details. And you’re saying CBS leadership was not thrilled? Well, it was. We did. I don’t know how many people know this, but In October of 2020, I was asked to get verified reporting from Hunter Biden’s laptop. And I was able to get a handful of records with a lot of due diligence.

I felt very confident were authentic records. And I provided them to leadership and they just kind of disappeared into a black hole. And this was, this was at the same time that Leslie Stahl was interviewing President Trump saying We can’t verify the laptop. And I remember just feeling a little sick when I watched this because I thought, well, wait a second. Does the left not know what the right hand is doing? Like, how does that. Right. I’m sure Leslie Stahl has issued her apology to the President. Well, you know, regardless of that, we eventually did a forensic review of the laptop on cbs.

I took a lot of heat for that because people said, you’re so late to the game. But what they didn’t know is that in fact, two years earlier, I’d had some of the goods on the. And no one wanted to listen to it. No. But after that, we did a very, very careful forensic review. And I had been very determined to get the exact data that was provided to the FBI so there would be no legal exposure for cbs. It was going to be totally locked down, that story. And the. The forensic review turned up a lot of other leads.

For example, there were about a half dozen personal email addresses that appeared to be to have been used by Joe Biden, then Vice President Joe Biden. And I thought those were definitely worth the story because when you think back 2012, 2014, not many people had six or seven personal email accounts. Maybe they had a work account, maybe they had like a Hotmail account, but that was about it. They didn’t have like all of these different iterations, but this was a story that they didn’t want to pursue. Disturbingly, it seems the current Justice Department’s not very interested in pursuing it either.

I mean, to me, there’s all these leads that are hanging out there, you know. Right. There’s a great meme on X now. It says, you know, it lists all the scandals and all the controversies, and then it says arrests. Right. And it’s just a string of zeros to me. There are so many sort of unresolved hanging out there, lingering issues. Well, you know, either the interest level or the energy or the horsepower is not there. Well, you have to pick and choose what you’re going to do. There’s no question. But when you start talking about stories that are unfinished, look at 9 11.

No one has ever been prosecuted for 9 11. Right. Not even at Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay. They’re still sitting there. I did some reporting for the 911 anniversary about two Saudis who I think are overlooked, key players in the attack who are part of what appears to have been an advanced team. They arrived in December of 1998, which really moves the timeline back. And it, I think, really challenges the 911 Commission Report. And this Is the video of them out scouting? Yeah. Right. And you know, we don’t have time to get into all of it here, but sure we do.

I’m joking. I think there was an opportunity to surveil them, gather additional information and even potentially bring charges against them for material support. But that seems to have been thwarted by one of our intelligence agencies. And we can never underestimate stupidity because as you. Well, that’s true. Has these surveillance logs of Anwar al Awlaki as he’s wandering around Northern Virginia. And Anwar Locky, for most people who don’t know who he is, was kind of the point of contact in Virginia for the hijackers prior to 911 and the spiritual guidance or leader of the hijackers. But the FBI surveillance team tracks him right into the Pentagon, where he goes to lead a luncheon discussion in the Secretary of Defense’s dining room on the very same day that they issue a be on the lookout notice, a BOLO notice for his arrest.

Right. The left doesn’t know what the right is. I mean, that’s true. That’s certainly true in some cases. Yeah. So there’s occasionally just stupid error, but then there’s also a lot of sort of willful blindness at that kind of occasion. So you were asking me, you were asking me sort of what’s happening with corporate media. I think that’s what you were kind of to sort of back up to, that maybe, you know, we’re in the middle of this sort of mini industrial revolution. We’re moving to these smaller newsrooms, we’re moving to more independent journalists. I did a lot of advocacy last year for the Press act, which would have created a lot of very strong protections for confidential sources and especially investigative reporters.

Because my concern has always been that, you know, a small digital operation and independent, like a sole, you know, proprietor, just can’t withstand the legal pressure of a big litigation over confidential sources. You know, in my particular case, you know, thank goodness Fox has been willing to really stand up and mount a very, very strong, robust, and I’m sure expensive legal defense of this First Amendment principle. You look at what’s happened in the last six months, these other big corporate outlets, when they’ve been sued by President Trump, they folded. Well, they also happen to be wrong.

Well, okay. Which is, I mean, that’s the other part of the equation. Well, I think, you know, on the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview, I havemy view on the interview is that the edit was heavy handed and it was a foul because my training is that the Final interview should reflect what actually happened. Exactly. I’m sorry. The final broadcast segment should reflect the quality of the overall interview. I think that 60 Minutes could really have done themselves a favor by having like one little line of track using one of her kind of awkward word salad answers, and then one live track that said, if you were confused by that answer, so were we.

It was kind of a nod to the audience that it wasn’t. Yeah, this is. Doesn’t make sense. Yeah, because there’s errors or weirdness that happens in interviews where, you know, you’re asking me a question and about halfway through the question, I have a little coughing fit. I have to get water. Well, you’re not going to air that. It’s ridiculous. Right. But there’s also. We’re prevaricating and double talking like mad. You are going to air that. You would. I mean, just to show that, in other words, there’s errors or there’s unfortunate sort of of sequence of events that are non substantive and then there’s actual a disaster.

Well, I think the standard for a major newsmaker, like someone who’s running to be president of the United States is very high. Right at sort of the height of the Kamala Harris controversy, we, our team did an interview with Secretary Rubio and we made a decision to do it live to tape so we would release the full unedited interview. And that’s a real high wire act for the journalist. Sure. Because every. You have to make decisions in real time. Any misstep is, you know, amplified in that format. But I thought it was worth making the point that a good journalist can do this and that you have nothing to hide with your work.

You should stand behind the full unedited conversation. But what I was going to say about 60 minutes and Kamala Harris is I’m not sure if that had gone into litigation and had gone to trial, whether President Trump would have succeeded. Because you have to show where sort of the financial harm was in this. I’m not sure that that would be so easy to demonstrate. To demonstrate. But CBS didn’t really defend it in the end and we saw the same thing with abc. Now, George Stephanopoulos made comments which were just wrong. Like, I understand that. And a lot of times, frankly, it’s willful.

I mean, their personal agenda gets so rolled into their on camera Persona, they can’t help themselves. I mean, they become consumed with advancing their agenda over their ethical obligation as a journalist. Well, next time you see an interview like that, I think you need to ask yourself, are These reporters being triggered, some of them seem like they’re very triggered in these interview segments, whether it’s the topic or it’s the person they’re interviewing. And that’s just not professional. You can see the change in their demeanor. I mean, literally their eyes, the set of their jaw. They become physically not everybody, but I think some people allow their personal feelings get the better of them.

I’ll put it that way. I’ve seen enough. Let me ask you a question about. You can discuss this as much as not. You mentioned briefly in passing that Fox had offered a very vigorous defense with respect to legal actions. You want to talk about that anymore or do you just want to let it go? I think I really, out of respect for the courts, can’t say a lot about that case. I can tell you what the status is right now. I was held in contempt of court by a federal court here in Washington in February of 2024.

And fortunately the court paused the fines, $5,000 a day, if I remember correctly, and can escalate over time pending the appeal. And we had oral argument in November at the appellate court here in Washington, D.C. you know, it’s pretty sobering to be in a court of that stature to hear people arguing your case because the decision that’s made, made about the protection of confidential sources in this case will have a ripple effect on every single working journalist in the United States. And we’re still waiting for a decision from the appellate court. This is a case where I was ordered to disclose confidential source or sources relating to a series of national security stories that I did back in sort of 2017, 2018, which had to do with military service members.

And the allegation was that the person who ran the school had lied about their military service in the Chinese Communist Party and also their membership in the party. What is your impression of. You’re one of the few reporters who I think really has a very deep and well grounded appreciation for intelligence operations. What is your impression of our adversaries use of social media with respect to sort of active measures, campaigns, sort of influence operations seeking to manipulate or in some way advance either disruptive information from false information? I think it’s profound. I’ll tilt my hand. And the answer on this I think that there’s very sophisticated, very slick efforts to manipulate and push certain narratives on social media.

And I think that it’s caveat emptor when it comes to going on social media and consuming a lot of information. I think that’s why your reporting is so important, because People can trust you, but when they see stuff, they shouldn’t always just take it hook, line and sinker. I think one of the biggest casualties of the whole Russiagate story is people miss the point that Russia’s really not for one party and against another party. They’re really about, you know, creating a cancer within a our institutions so that weour confidence is undermined in the democratic process, in the systems of government, in the courts, the electoral process.

I mean, that’s the goal in the end. You know, the expression is, you can’t defeat America from the outside, you can only defeat it from the inside. Correct. And that Russiagate story, just from the very beginning in 2016, was just so confounding to me. I, you know, typically what would happen is that if someone’s breaking something, you know, related to intelligence, my job was to get my own reporting on it for Fox, which is where I worked, and, you know, either to match or confirm the reporting or find out something different. And I remember when the first stories broke about the Steele dossier and the reporters were quoting, I think it was like a Western, Western European intelligence official or former intelligence official.

And I looked at it and I said, wow, that’s crazy sourcing. That is not. That’s not Washington, D.C. sourcing. That’s. But there’s people that still believe it. Okay, well, sitting here right now today, there’s people that still think Russia, Russia, Russia is 100%. It was such a disservice to the public. I remember at the time, I, you know, I. I would say that I was a pretty hyperconnected journalist at that time. I probably spoke to close to a dozen people, current and former, and I was trying to figure out, where is this information being briefed from, like, who owns.

Who owns this intelligence. I couldn’t find anyone. And one of my sort of superiors at FOX wanted an update. And I said, I remember exactly. I said, I can’t seem to get it. I don’t think it’s real. That’s what I said. I don’t think it’s real. And there was tremendous pressure to match that reporting. Then finally, I can’t remember how far into it we were, but Adam Schiff gave kind of a sort of news conference, a scrum with all these reporters. And he said, you know, on the record, you know, there’s, you know, there’s, you know, overwhelming circumstantial evidence.

I can’t talk about, like, the whole thing. And I thought, wow, he’s got access to intelligence. I don’t even know where that’s coming from. And of course, now we know that it just made up. It wasn’t real in the end, but it was such a, really, such a disservice, divided the country. I think many reporters unfortunately trusted the sources that they were working with and didn’t do that extra due diligence to understand really what was backing that up. And, you know, you know, they got played too. Some of them, I think, were sort of willful in that.

Yeah. Others were not. I think others were really sort of double crossed. In hindsight. You look back, it was an incredibly dumb lie. I mean, like, it’s the same people that said the Russians blew up Nord Stream 2. Why would they do that? But it just, it is at face value, it’s ridiculous, but people were just so anxious to believe it. Well, one of the things that we’ve really seen with these, you know, we’ve had this sort of cascade of records that had been declassified by DNI Gabbard, the CIA director, John Radcliffe and Cash Patel at the FBI is the scope of this was so much broader than I ever imagined in terms of.

There was a couple of tracks here. There was this internal track which was, was to sort of change the conversation about the 2016 election, to turn it into, they wanted to help Trump win versus they never altered any of the votes. Now, actually, the two things can also be true, but once you put the emphasis on one versus the other, you change the public conversation. Right. And then the other were clearly what were strategic media leaks from the FBI to different reporters. I was not one of them. And they were using these media stories to then cite the media stories and justify different actions they were taking in the court, such as the surveillance warrants.

So it. And you know, the reason why you were not used as a conduit. Well, what do you think? I was not hurt by this. It would have blown up in about 30 seconds. You would have looked at it, and then I would have taken additional steps to understand it. I would have said, okay, that’s a very charitable explanation. You would have called BS in about 30 seconds and the story would have really spun out. It would have been very difficult to advance it. It’s the same reason. In a way. There’s a parallel to my friend Journal, Mike Flynn.

They had to remove him as the DNI in like 11 days. National Security Advisor. I’m sorry, National Security Advisor. They just gave him a promotion. They had to remove him as the national security advisor in 11 days because they could not have him sitting atop what was going on because he would have looked into it and said, well, wait a minute, what do you. And it would have come apart at the seams. They had to decapitate and remove him because I couldn’t have somebody knowledgeable. I mean, we cannot underestimate the sort of professional political class of the careerist intelligence officers of all different flavors and stripes running around Washington, D.C.

and it is. It’s a class unto itself. And, you know, someone like Trump and someone with an agenda like Trump is an abomination to them. They can’t stand it. Well, just to kind of sort of lay out both sides of this is that, you know, to me, what’s missing in the reporting is traditional accountability, you know, really holding people to account. And so we’re talking a lot about stories which are clearly favorable to this administration, but people never talk about the fact that. That I got the audio tape of President Trump talking about the Iran documents at his golf club.

Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s what good reporting does, is that it has accountability on both sides. And I think that there is, unfortunately, too little of that today. Yeah. And to your credit, getting that audio. I mean, and I don’t think he should have done that necessarily. But I can also. I don’t know Trump that well. I know him bit. A little. Little bit. But he’s going to say, I’m the president. So I made a judgment call, and it’s okay. These people have argued that both ways. Yes. Right. But. Well, I don’t think it’s ever right to be talking about classified records about Iran with people who really don’t have a need to know.

Right, right. Well, he gets to make that judgment call as well, which is another thing that irritates people. But it’s true. It is true. I agree with you. Not a good idea to discuss classified information with persons not authorized. Oh, my gosh. We’ve almost run out of time. Almost run out of time. I’ll keep harassing you for a couple more minutes. Let me do two things. Number one, I want you to tell our viewers and listeners how they can follow you. And of course, they must. This is a requirement. If you’ve seen or heard the show, you’re required to subscribe to Kathryn’s reporting.

So how can they do that? And how can they. So I’ve really got sort of two platforms. I have a newsletter which is@katherineheridgereports.com and that comes out once a week on Sunday evenings. And I try and provide exclusive reporting or Insight that you’re not going to find somewhere else. And you can subscribe on the website. You can also receive it free, but you don’t receive as much of the content. If you. And that’s fine, too. If you can’t afford the $7 and you want to just be a free subscriber, that’s good, too. I think the $7 is worth it.

And then on X, you can subscribe on X. And I do the same thing once a week. I do sort of a newsletter, and I also do sort of additional sort of premium content from our investigations. I often do something called the Backstory, which takes you sort of to the original reporting and how we got to it and then how we developed it, which to me is actually often more interesting than the reporting itself. Well, thank you for that. That’s just true. I’m just telling you it’s true because it’s the whole. Okay, I got it. Something weird happened.

But how the hell did this ever even come about? Right. So that’s always more interesting to me. So. But the Independent is Catherine Heritage. Sorry, I’m sorry. I just want to recap it. Yep. Katharineheridgereports.com and then C doubleherridge on X. On X. Okay, so you know where you’re supposed to go as soon as you finish watching this or listening to it, we’re going to post that in the show notes also to this episode. So you know where to go. Okay, so where are we and where are we going to go? What’s the current state of affairs? What are you most interested in pursuing and looking at right now? And what does the future hold for us? Well, I’m not going to give away too much, but I’ve recently done a partnership to do a streaming show which will be announced soon.

That’s very cool, which is great. I’m very grateful for that. I think that especially the Sunday shows are very old, very stale, very predictable, and I think all, like 14 people in the country are watching it. I mean, the viewership is. Yeah, there’s more people watching cooking shows than there are people. Well, it’s definitely. I think there’s a real opportunity on these new platforms to do that. And, you know, I’ve got a couple of investigations in mind. I don’t want to give away too much about that. Sure you do. No, but what I would say is that independent journalism is very hard.

I think I’ve done quite well in order, you know, to go basically from a standing start to where I am today day. Because you’ve Got to feed your family and you’ve got to pay your rent and you’ve got to do all these things, and you’re going to have a period of time where you’re going to. You’re not making any money. You have to really invest. I worry that still the threshold is too high to enter the market. I think that I entered the market as someone who had 30 years of experience. I had a known name and a brand, and then I was able to set something up.

If you’re a young journalist, I think it’s very, very challenging to do that. And what I would like to see in the next year or two years is really the growth of what I’ll call news consortiums, where you bring together maybe a dozen independent journalists and they have a hub where they’re able to get some support, for example, legal review if they need it, research support if they need it, Liability coverage is part of a pool where they need it, and it would give them a foundation. I’m happy to say that here at Traditional Watch, we’ve done that with a couple of young solo investigators and reporters where they’ve had a great idea about something and we’ve done FOIA work for them, or we’ve helped them perfect stuff to get records and documents, or also just to be a sounding board, because in the course of doing what we’re doing, even on the show, we like to cover stories that everybody’s kind of, you know, they don’t worry about, but, you know, incredibly important stuff.

And so we’ve done that, and we will continue to do that because there are some. And some of them have really suffered. One of them was debanked for daring to ask unpleasant questions. So, anyway, we, we, we support that. I, I agree with you 100% about the need to encourage the solo operators out there trying to do, I think, very important work. Very important work. I think so. So that’s what I would like to see. And I would also like to see almost more of an investigative lab. I don’t know whether that looks like a 501 charity where people can donate money and then it can essentially do grants to different organizations, smaller, smaller stations that don’t have the money to run investigative journal journalism sort of projects within the station, but maybe there is a project they want to do and they want to assign some of their staff to it, but they need that sort of seed money to get started.

And I think that’s also an opportunity to really teach some of these skills. I’m getting more and more requests to teach journalism. I’m sure you are. And I’m surprised at some of the basics that I took for granted. I’m not so sure they’re being taught in the same way. They certainly didn’t take my class. I just want to tell you a funny story in closing. I had a journalism professor called Dick Blood who was a legend at the Columbia Journalism School. And that was his real name, by the way. That wasn’t his like. Wasn’t he New York Daily News? He was, yeah.

New York Daily News, legend with the City desk. And, you know, he would say, just because your mother says she loves you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out. Okay. So that was sort of the introduction to him. And there’s a story. I’m not sure I’m going to get all the details right, but I’ll try my best. And he was a city editor, and in those days, it was like the 70s, and it was just crime on every street corner. And the Daily News was probably the biggest paper in the country. Country may have been at that time.

And he had a cub reporter who was, if I recall correctly, was the daughter of someone important to the newspaper. So he didn’t like that. He objected to that, just in principle, because he’d. I think he had been. He’d been in the Navy for sure and had really worked his. Worked his way. Came up the hard way. Came up the hard way. And he. She came to work, as I recall, in a fur coat. And he said, I’ve got the story for you, which is like this, you know, quadruple homicide in the Bronx. And so she takes the train up to the Bronx, probably never been on the train.

And as she goes up there, it starts raining. So she comes back and she really, you know, it’s a wet fur collar. Too much for the fur collar. And in those days, she would say to your editor, you know, this is what I got. And they would help you craft the lead. And she goes through everything. And he says to her, well, how many bullet holes were there in the windshield? She’s like, I don’t know if he goes back to the Bronx. So he sends her back again. And now, of course, it’s all great stories now.

The weather’s turned very cold, you know, suddenly. And now the coat’s like icicles anyway. And she comes back and I think, you know, she leans over his desk. It’s like there were eight bullet holes in the windshield. And then they have this, you know, I don’t know, you know, quadruple you know, Bronx bloodbath. I don’t remember what the, what the heading was, but he always said to me, he said, you know, detail matters in good reporting. And he died a few years ago. I don’t want to get too choked about it, but I saw him before he died and I said, you know, Professor Bled, you always said that I was wasted doing television and I should have gone into prison.

I want you to know I wrote a book and I made an honest woman of myself. He goes, oh, thank God you were redeemed. Yeah. And I read him part of the reporting, which was actually at Guantanamo Bay, and I remember him saying, that’s detail matters and good reporting. And that’s one of the things that’s missing today is good detail on the ground reporting. Yep. I agree with you 100%. It also it a reader knows it’s true when they get detail, when they just get kind of a once over, a quick headline when they’re reading and there’s that level of specificity and attention to detail.

It resonates with the reader’s sense of. It’s that authenticity meter. Yeah, that’s what it is. Yeah. So Katharine Harris says, nobody more authentic than you. There’s no better journalist that I can think of. All the good and all the bad. Well, mostly good stuff. And so we really appreciate you coming in. Thank you spending time with us. Some great stuff we talked about. I know that this will be enormously popular with our viewers and listeners, and thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. Thank you. I’m Chris Farrell Judicial Watch.
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