WATCH: Fighting US Extradition for Training Chinese Pilots

John Kiriakou and Australian Senator David Shoebridge join CN Live! to discuss an Australian pilot’s fight against extradition to the U.S. as the U.S. maneuvers Australia to see China as the enemy. Cathy Vogan reports.

By Cathy Vogan
in Canberra, Australia
Special to Consortium News

Former U.S., now Australian pilot Dan Duggan this month appeared in Australian federal court to appeal his extradition to the United States on a charge of giving flying lessons at a South African flight academy to Chinese nationals more than ten years ago. 

Duggan’s strange case is playing out as the U.S. has been maneuvering Australia in recent years away from good relations with China to instead view it as an enemy.

Duggan was an elite U.S. Marines pilot until 2002 when he emigrated and settled in the Australian state of Tasmania, fathered six children and became an Australian citizen in January 2012, giving up his U.S. citizenship. There he ran a business of joy rides for tourists called “Top Gun Australia,” and took on a few casual gigs training test pilots.

For one of these jobs a secret U.S. grand jury empaneled in November 2016 indicted Duggan for allegedly not obtaining a U.S. State Department license: delivering advanced flight training to Chinese pilots in 2012. The charge is that that was in violation of a U.S. arms embargo against China and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Duggan faces up to 65 years in a U.S. prison.

The indictment against him was filed and sealed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia in September 2017. Duggan is charged with conspiracy, money laundering and criminal forfeiture. The indictment alleges that:

“Beginning in or around November 2009, and continuing up to and including on or about November 27, 2012, within the District of Columbia and elsewhere, DUGGAN did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate and agree with others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to

(a) commit offenses against the United States, that is, to export, attempt to export, and propose the exportation of defense services to the People’s Republic of China in violation of an arms embargo imposed upon that country by the United States, and without having first obtained the required license from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, United States Department of State … and

(b) defraud the United States government by interfering with and obstructing a lawful government function, that is, the enforcement of laws and regulations relating to the export of defense articles and defense services from the United States, by deceit, craft, trickery, and dishonest means, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.”

The indictment alleges that as early as 2008 Duggan was asked to register with the State Department in order to train a foreign air force and never did. 

It also accuses him of failing to obtain a license to re-transfer to the South African flight school its acquisition of a U.S. T-2 Buckeye (“T-2”) plane to be used in “aircraft carrier approach and landing training to PRC military pilots.”

Duggan’s lawyers contend Duggan only trained Chinese civilians — not military pilots — on how to cope with difficult conditions, such as engine stall and landing in mountainous areas such as Tibet. His defence team also argues that a Chinese aircraft carrier that was allegedly used for Duggan’s training was still under construction, thousands of miles away, at the time he gave his lessons.

No Longer a U.S. Citizen

His lawyers also say Duggan was no longer a U.S. citizen when he conducted 18 hours of training exercises in March 2012 and November 2012, meaning he was no longer subject to U.S. law that prohibited ex-servicemen from training “foreign forces” without permission from the U.S. State Department. Duggan denies delivering defense services.

Duggan, 55, ceased being a U.S. citizen on Jan. 26, 2012, Australia Day, when he became Australian. The indictment alleges that the conspiracy to give the flight lessons began while he was still American, “in or around October-November 2010.” But his lawyers argue that his pilot’s logbook shows he only gave flying lessons in mid to late 2012. Before then he had only been at “meet and greet” gatherings with representatives of the South African school.

The indictment also alleges Duggan trained Chinese pilots in “March 2012, November 2012, and other times” after he gave up his U.S. passport. 

In their written submission to the court, Duggan’s defence team, led by Bernard Collaery, a former attorney general of the Australian Capital Territory, argued that as an Australian citizen, not only did the U.S. lose sovereign control over him but that what he’s alleged to have done was not a crime in Australia at the time he allegedly did it.

What he is accused of doing had to have been a crime also in Australia at the time in order for Duggan to be extradited to the United States, according to the principle of dual criminality outlined in the 1988 U.S.-Australia Extradition Treaty. Other Australians who conducted the same kind of training of Chinese pilots in 2012 have never been charged with a crime.

The Act & the Treaty

There is, however, a discrepancy between the treaty and the Australian act of parliament implementing the treaty. The treaty says dual criminality must exist at the time of the alleged offence, in this case 2012. The act says it must exist at the time that an extradition request is received, which in this case was December 2022.

Australia passed a law in 1995 prohibiting any former Australian Defense Force (ADF) service member from training members of a foreign military force. Duggan never served in the ADF so this law does not apply to him. That means there was no dual criminality in the U.S. and Australia for training a Chinese military pilot in either 2012 or 2022. Neither the treaty, nor the act apply to Duggan as someone who has committed an extraditable offense.

In apparent reaction to the Duggan case, the Australian Parliament amended the law in July 2023 to prohibit all Australians from training foreign military, not just former ADF members. That would cover Duggan, except that it wasn’t the law when he either allegedly committed the offence, or when the extradition request was received. The law was changed too late to ensnare Duggan.

“There’s no compelling reason that was put forward to change the laws at the time. I think that’s a mystery that’s still yet to be explained,” said Australian Senator David Shoebridge in this episode of CN Live!

Despite what the law apparently says, that it was not against Australian law at the time of the indictment or the extradition request for Duggan to give flight lessons even to a member of the Chinese military, the Australian attorney general in December 2022 still approved Duggan’s extradition to the United States.

At the initial extradition hearing in Sydney on Dec. 16, 2022, then Duggan lawyer Dennis Miralis told reporters there was no equivalent Australian law to the U.S. charges. “Australia does not have an arms embargo on China, Australia has not sanctioned China, therefore the extradition should fail on the basis it does not meet the requirements of dual criminality,” said Miralis, who added the charges were a “political” exception to the extradition treaty. 

The Geopolitics of the Case

Duggan’s indictment came five years after the alleged crimes took place. It might be put in the context of the U.S. maneuvering Australia to view China — its number one trading partner with whom it had good relations — as an enemy.

Australia enjoyed such good relations with China in 2012 — at the time that Duggan trained the Chinese pilots — that on May 17, 2012 the Australian navy conducted “Rim of the Pacific” joint exercises with China. But that began to change with the Trump and Biden administrations, which began turning Australia against China. The U.S. has been installing new military bases in Australia. The biggest symbol of the aggressive move against China is the AUKUS project to build submarines for Australia.

“We live in an incredibly benign part of the world. So … the only way we can be at risk in a military conflict with China is if we invite that conflict to Australia,” Shoebridge told this episode of CN Live! “Make us a target, actively make us one of your enemies. And the only way I know how to do that would be for us to position a whole lot of United States military bases on our shores, which might be used by the United States if they wanted to have a war with China.”

“That would be the only way of putting us at risk,” Shoebridge said. “And that’s exactly what we are doing. These bases aren’t to protect us. These bases are to protect the United States’ interests.”

[See: A Sane Voice Amidst the Madness – Ex PM Paul Keating opposes warmongering on China]

Duggan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in a July 2023 telephone interview from prison: “This is … signal sending. It has nothing to do with me personally. It’s more to do with the signal that they want to send in a geopolitical sense.”   

His attorney, Collaery, told the ABC “he believed the charges were politically motivated amid tensions between the United States and China. He claimed Australia, as an ally of the US, had a conflict of interest.”

John Kiriakou, the C.I.A. whistleblower who has given an affidavit in the Duggan case, told CN Live!: “This is about China. This is about a political scalp to show that we’re tough against China.'”

Outside the federal court on Oct. 16, Saffrine Duggan, Duggan’s wife, told supporters:

“He is being used as a pawn in an ideological war between the United States and China and the Australian government agencies have allowed this to happen and are willing participants. My husband broke no Australian law and he was an Australian citizen when the alleged pilot training occurred.”

The Arrest

VIDEO: Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, and three of their children outside federal court in Canberra on Oct. 16. Video by Cathy Vogan for Consortium News

The circumstances surrounding Duggan’s arrest are controversial.

Duggan had been living in China since 2014, working there as an aviation industry consultant. After a business associate of Duggan was convicted of hacking in the U.S., the Chinese government prevented Duggan from leaving China for seven years. Shortly after his passport was returned, he left the country.

In a written submission to the court, Duggan’s lawyers chastised the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, for telling Duggan in a written communication to delete previous messages from them, messages the lawyers say Chinese intelligence would have surely seen.

There is no evidence tying Duggan to the hack or to espionage. He says his activity there included aviation consultancy and the delivery of motivational talks and workshops for the staff of corporate clients.

Duggan returned to Australia on Sept. 1, 2022 to reunite with his family and find new work. His wife Saffrine and the younger children who had been with him in China had come back earlier. Before he left, ASIO had renewed and sent Duggan his aviation security clearance to fly in Australia. However, within a few days ASIO revoked his clearance.

Seven weeks later, on Oct. 19, 2022 media in Britain and Australia reported China was recruiting Western pilots: 

“The [Australian] Defence Department has launched an urgent investigation into whether Australian pilots have been lured by China to train their personnel, including teaching them how to shoot down Western aircraft.

The British government revealed overnight Australian time around 30 former British fighter pilots have been training Chinese pilots at a flight school in South Africa, and there are fears Australians may be involved in the program.”

Two days later, on Oct. 21, 2022, Duggan was arrested at a supermarket near his home in Orange, New South Wales, pursuant to an American arrest warrant. 

Duggan had no idea why he was arrested for more than 50 days until the 2017 indictment was unsealed on Dec. 13, 2022. On Dec. 28, 2022, Australia’s then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus approved the U.S. extradition request.

Duggan was placed in solitary confinement for the first 19 months in a two-metre-by-four-metre cell at Sydney’s Silverwater Jail as a high risk prisoner, though he is an alleged non-violent offender. A clinical psychologist who examined Duggan in prison “described his conditions of detention as ‘extreme’ and ‘inhumane’, and that – having never had mental health issues previously – he was now at risk of a major depressive disorder,” The Guardian reported on Feb. 26, 2023.  [Duggan was sent back to a maximum security prison with hardened criminals on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Duggan family said,]

In a speech five days earlier, Mike Burgess, ASIO director-general, said a “small but concerning” number of Australian military veterans were putting “cash before country.”

“These individuals are lackeys, more ‘top tools’ than ‘top guns.’ Selling our war-fighting skills is no different to selling our secrets – especially when the training and tactics are being transferred to countries that will use them to close capability gaps, and could use them against us or our allies at some time in the future,” Burgess said.

At a July 25, 2023 court appearance, Duggan’s lawyers requested a delay until the inspector general of ASIO investigated whether the intelligence service had lured Duggan back to Australia to be arrested after it issued and then lifted his security clearance.

On March 6, 2024 the ASIO inspector general cleared the spy agency of trying to lure Duggan back to Australia in order to be arrested, though the IG said an ASIO activity did transcend “the bounds of propriety in one respect,” but what that was will remain classified.

The Appeal

Duggan appeared in federal court on Oct. 16 seeking to overturn the extradition order. Defence oral arguments, presented by barrister Christopher Parkin, focused on the absence of “contemporaneous” dual criminality as a deal-breaker. 

“The decision … by the attorney-general [to extradite] is void,” Parkin declared. 

Defending its extradition order, the Australian attorney general’s office sent ten lawyers into the cramped courtroom in which Consortium News was present.

Trent Glover, barrister for the United States, asserted it was irrelevant that there was no contemporaneous dual criminality, citing cases involving other countries.

“It is for the other country [the U.S.] to determine guilt or innocence,” he told the court.  Collaery, Duggan’s lawyer, complained in a submission that at a hearing last year, an attorney for the U.S. tried to claim Duggan is still a U.S. citizen though he has the documents to prove he hasn’t been since 2012.

Glover ignored the incarceration of a still innocent man under Australian law for three years while extradition was considered on the basis of a ‘no evidence’ claim by a foreign power. That means the U.S. is not required under its treaty with Australia to provide any evidence to back up its extradition request. 

Duggan’s attorney Parkin responded that the only thing that matters is that the attorney general erred in not adhering to the terms of the Treaty. And he called on Parliament to amend the Act to bring it back in line with the Treaty. 

Justice James Stephen Stellios has reserved his judgement.

If Duggan is sent to the United States as someone who had acted as a foreign national outside the U.S. at the time of the alleged crime, he may not be entitled in court to U.S. constitutional protection according to “long-established law,”  as articulated by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2020.

This means, for instance, that Duggan would not have the protection of the U.S. Fifth Amendment, which establishes that a suspect had to know beforehand that he actions could be illegal. This could be why the indictment says that Duggan was informed in 2008, while still a U.S. citizen, that he needed a license from the State Department.

However in 2012, his fellow Australian trainers who taught the same courses at the same time at the same academy were not charged with any crime.

This absence of constitutional rights in a U.S. court is what led to the collapse of the U.S. extradition case against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and the plea deal that ultimately freed him. Duggan’s lawyers referred to the Assange case in this regard in making this argument in written submissions to the court. 

Timeline

A timeline following the twists and turns in this unusual case:

2002 – Duggan moves to Tasmania and starts a joyride business for tourists.

2008 – U.S. says a letter was sent informing Duggan he would need a licence to provide training to foreign forces.

November 2009 – Defense says Duggan only met with the  South African training school as a “meet and greet.” The indictment accused Duggan, among other things, of “proposing” to break the law, which the U.S. could argue took place at that meeting.

Jan 26, 2012 – Duggan becomes an Australian citizen and obtains a certificate of loss of U.S. citizenship. He obtains further documentation in 2016 from the U.S. embassy in Beijing that back dates his loss of citizenship to 2012.

March 2012 and November 2012 – Defense says Duggan trained Chinese civilian pilots for a total of 18 hours in these two months. The indictment accuses him of training Chinese military pilots in these months.

Nov. 3, 2016 – Grand jury is empaneled in Washington, D.C.

Sept. 12, 2017 – Duggan is indicted. Indictment remains sealed until 2022.

Sept. 15, 2021 – AUKUS is announced by U.S., British and Australian leaders.

Sept. 1, 2022 -Duggan arrives back from Australia from China where he had lived since 2014.

Oct. 19, 2022 – Media campaign in Britain and Australia about China recruiting Western pilots.

Oct. 21, 2022 – Duggan is arrested at a supermarket near his home in Orange, New South Wales, pursuant to an American arrest warrant. 

Dec. 9, 2022 – Australia received an extradition request from the U.S. for Duggan.

Dec. 13, 2022 – Indictment is unsealed.

Dec. 16, 2022 – Court hearing on the request is held in Sydney, after which then Duggan lawyer Dennis Miralis told reporters there was no equivalent Australian law to the U.S. charges. “Australia does not have an arms embargo on China, Australia has not sanctioned China, therefore the extradition should fail on the basis it does not meet the requirements of dual criminality,” said Mifralis, who added the charges were a “political” exception to the extradition treaty. 

Dec. 28, 2022 – Then Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus approves Duggan extradition to the U.S.

July 24, 2023 – Duggan talks to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Says he will not get a fair trial in the U.S. Describes the harsh conditions he is being held under.

July 25, 2023 –  At court appearance defence requests delay until the inspector general of ASIO investigates whether Duggan was lured back to Australia to be arrested after ASIO issued Duggan a security clearance for a job interview and then lifted his clearance days after his arrival.   

March 6, 2024 – The ASIO inspector general clears the spy agency of trying to lure Duggan back to Australia in order to be arrested, though the IG says an ASIO activity did transcend “the bounds of propriety in one respect,” but what that was will remain classified.

Jan. 14, 2025 – Duggan family to challenge extradition in federal court. 

Oct. 16, 2025 – Duggan appears in federal court in the capital, Canberra, to request a judicial review of the extradition process. He is forbidden from arguing the facts of the case in an Australian court to disprove allegations against him.

Joe Lauria contributed to this report. 

Cathy Vogan is a filmmaker and executive producer of CN Live! 

Here is the transcript of the new episode of CN Live! with C.I.A. whistleblower John Kiriakou and Australian Senator David Shoebridge discussing the Duggan case:

Transcript 

Welcome to Consortium News‘ CN Live! I’m Cathy Vogan.

And I’m Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News.

We’re back again to discuss the case of Dan Duggan, an Australian pilot, former U.S. marine aviator who the United States wants Australia to extradite for allegedly breaking a U.S. arms embargo against China. A secret Grand Jury indictment, filed and sealed in 2017 and discussed on the occasion of Antony Blinken’s October 2023 visit to Australia, accuses Duggan of providing “military training to PRC [People’s Republic of China] pilots” at the Test Flying Academy of South Africa, without obtaining permission from the U.S. State Department.

The indictment also accuses Duggan of involvement in a conspiracy to transfer the ownership of a plane, a 1960s era T2 Buckeye, to the Academy, where it would be used for training aircraft carrier landings. Duggan’s lawyers say this happened way before Duggan’s training was conducted. The indictment lists multiple offenses, including money laundering from the proceeds of his alleged crime.

Duggan left the U.S. Marines in 2002 and moved to Australia, where he set up a business of joyrides for tourists called Top Gun Australia. Ten years later, he became an Australian citizen and abandoned his U.S. citizenship on Australia Day, January 26th, 2012. Duggan claims and his flight log allegedly shows that his casual training gigs for the South African School – a total of 18 hours work – took place after he ceased being a U.S. citizen.

It is also claimed by the defense that the “impugned” school’s curriculum is entirely comprised of open source material, that Duggan was training civilians on how to cope with difficult conditions, such as engine stall and landing in mountainous areas such as Tibet. Most surprisingly, the defense reveals that the alleged Chinese aircraft carrier used for Duggan’s training was still under construction thousands of miles away.

At the time of his lessons. Consortium News reported live from the Duggan courtroom last week, where his defense argued that because what he’s alleged to have done was not a crime in Australia at the time the lessons were conducted, that it should prevent the Australian Attorney General from sending Duggan to the United States, because Australia’s extradition treaty with the U.S. requires such dual criminality.

None of Duggan’s fellow Australian trainers have been charged with any crime in Australia, for instance. In their written submissions, the defense argued that the United States had no sovereign control over Duggan by the time he trained the Chinese pilots, because he had become an Australian citizen by then, and that his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to obtain the school’s plane was pure fiction, conveniently construed to indict him for conduct while he was still a citizen of the U.S..

Duggan was arrested and imprisoned by Australia’s Federal Police three years ago, and placed in solitary confinement for the first 19 months as a high risk prisoner. It was 62 days before he found out why. We spoke previously with Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, about the catastrophic emotional and financial impact this has had on their six children. Today we want to delve into the legal and political issues.

Please welcome the Australian senator David Shoebridge, a former barrister, and John Kiriakou, the C.I.A. whistleblower on torture who had submitted an affidavit in the Duggan case. Senator Shoebridge, Duggan’s defense has requested that the extradition be refused. They say there should never have been a Section 19 extradition eligibility hearing, because the Attorney-General should have applied the dual criminality test a long time ago and ruled out the extradition.

The defense highlighted the conflict between the extradition treaty and Australia’s Extradition Act. The treaty demands contemporaneous dual criminality at the time of the offending conduct, whereas the act demands it at the time an extradition request is issued. Why is that important to this case?

SENATOR DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Yeah, this came apart… this came about because of an amendment to Australia’s extradition laws around about a decade ago, which at the time appeared to be fairly benign. No one really noticed that it wasn’t highlighted. And that changed the moment at which you consider the dual criminality, being, you know, if somebody who is in Australia is going to be sent to another country to face criminal proceedings, which is what extradition permits, our sense of basic justice says, well, we shouldn’t be sending someone from Australia to another country to face criminal proceedings if what they’re alleged to have done isn’t a crime against Australia’s statute books.

I mean, I’ll give you a very obvious example. There are many countries around the world that shamefully still criminalize same sex relationships. And there may be countries around the world where that’s a crime. It would be, you know, appalling, an appalling concept that a country would seek to extradite or successfully extradite someone from Australia to face prosecution in a third country for the crime of being in a same sex marriage, when that is legal and 100% supported by our human rights frameworks.

So, I mean, that’s at the core of the extradition treaties that Australia enters into. There are other tests, such as, is there a fair judicial process? Can we have faith in the systems and the like? But of course, you know, things change over time. Something that wasn’t criminal 20 years ago may become criminal now. Think about how how our laws have changed to respond to increasing concerns about child sexual abuse.

There’s been a bunch of laws that have come in to deal with that. Our laws have changed in relation to a number of issues that have come about because of new technology. And so we have things that are against the law now that were not criminal 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And one of the other basic rules about our criminal justice system is, you you can only be penalized under our law for things that were criminalized at the time you did them.

So, you know, the Parliament can pass criminal laws to make conduct illegal, but it should only operate from the time the law passes into the future. You don’t retrospectively make things illegal in Australia, because you’re meant to be able to operate within the laws as we understand them. And you don’t want parliaments, I can assure you, you don’t want me and others making things retrospectively criminal, criminalizing conduct you did in the past that wasn’t criminal at the time.

So two basic concepts under the extradition laws. We’re only meant to be extraditing people when something is contrary to our law and contrary to the law of the country that’s trying to extradite them. The conduct needs to be criminal in both jurisdictions. And then there’s this absolutely fundamental concept in our law that you don’t make things retrospectively illegal.

You don’t make things illegal in the past if they weren’t at the time because people have a right to run their lives, organize their affairs in light of the laws as they stand at the time. Not what some future Parliament might judge them. But you know, what the Parliament snuck through in amendments to the Extradition Act about a decade ago was, they said, Well, look, OK, if someone’s going to be extradited, then it needs to be criminal conduct, both in the country that’s seeking the extradition and in Australia. Tick.

But we’re not going to be so troubled about whether or not it was criminal at the time the conduct happened in Australia. We’re going to let that ride and we’re going to allow the Parliament to pass new laws, make things illegal now, which weren’t illegal at the time the conduct was happened. And provided those laws have been passed by the time the third country seeks the extradition, if it’s illegal just at the time the paperwork is filed – and in Duggan’s case, it was the better part of a decade after the conduct – they said provided it’s illegal at the time that the paperwork is filed, then no worries, we’ll send them off to America.

And not only is that contrary to the treaty that we signed on extradition, it’s also contrary to that basic principle that Australia is not going to punish you for conduct that wasn’t illegal at the time you did it, according to our laws. And yet all of this has been run roughshod over in the Duggan case.

And I would have hoped the attorney general would have taken a pretty hard view on this, the former one or the current one, and said, well, actually we’re not going to be sending someone to face criminal prosecution in the United States for something that wasn’t a crime under Australian law at the time they’re alleged to have done it.

That affronts our sense of justice. I tell you that is an affront to my sense of justice. Yet that’s what’s happening in the Dan Duggan case.

CATHY VOGAN: Well, this is right. But there’s even this element in American law as well, as as John Kiriakou will be able to confirm. There has to be foreseeability that something is a crime, and there’s a parallel there between the case of Duggan and Julian Assange.

Because Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, equated to, more or less, to the Fifth Amendment does specify that somebody has to know it’s a crime before they think of conducting that behavior. The other thing, of course, is the First Amendment, and in the submissions of Collaery Law, who is defending, Dan Duggan, they mentioned these motivational talks that he gave in China in corporate environments, you know, inspiring teams to succeed, all that kind of thing.

If he went to America, that could be considered a violation of his First Amendment rights, free speech rights. But hang on a second. Duggan is exactly like Assange. He is now a foreign citizen who acted abroad. And according to Justice Kavanaugh’s rule in the Supreme Court in 2020, June 2020, he articulated what he called long established laws that foreign nationals who acted abroad don’t have rights to any constitutional protections.

So Duggan is having a really hard time. There’s no defense at the grand jury stage, only prosecutors. He’s not allowed to argue the facts of the case in Australia and then possibly over there – and why wouldn’t that be a second deal breaker? – that he wouldn’t have any constitutional rights because he’s no longer a U.S. citizen.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Well, as you know, that question of equality before the law was a key issue in the extradition of Julian Assange. His legal team said, well, if the U.S. government won’t agree that a non-U.S. citizen has access to the same constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen in criminal law proceedings, well, then that was a very potential barrier to Julian being extradited from the U.K. to the U.S., because it affronts that concept of equality before the law.

If those same concerns arise in Dan Duggan’s case, well, then you’d hope that’s a matter the courts will take into account in considering whether or not to permit an extradition in Australia, because equality before the law, you’d think, is a pretty fundamental thing. We shouldn’t be sending Australian citizens to any jurisdiction to face criminal prosecutions where they have only half the rights or a whole bunch of rights are missing to allow them to defend themselves when a citizen of the United States would have a far greater set of rights under criminal law.

So, our attorney general should never permit the extradition of an Australian citizen to the United States if the United States says send him back to our country. We’ll whack him before the criminal courts and we won’t afford them any constitutional protections. We won’t afford them the same rights that U.S. citizens have because we want to whack him in jail.

I mean, that you would think should never happen. But it doesn’t seem that those pretty fundamental issues have ever really troubled the mind of either this or the former attorney general, and I find that quite problematic.

But, you know, ultimately it’s for the courts to make these decisions based upon how they understand the law to be. I can’t, you know, I’m not going to try and substitute my personal views for the views of the court, but these are some pretty fundamental issues. Will the courts permit somebody to be extradited when the alleged conduct they’re said to have engaged in was not against Australian law at the time? I think that’s a pretty fundamental issue.

Will the court say that the Extradition Act, as passed by the Commonwealth Parliament, is a valid piece of legislation? If the act is contrary to the provisions of the treaty? Because it’s only through the treaty and the external affairs power that the Commonwealth has the power to pass this act. And if the legislation is contrary to the treaty, well, the courts are going to have to determine whether or not the legislation is valid in whole or in part to make that change.

Again it’s for the courts to make decisions on constitutional law, not for myself, but I think there is a separate political question here, which is should the attorney general, who ultimately is a politician and he’s meant to be representing Australian values, you know, in light of but making political judgments separate to the legal system, should the attorney general have ever signed, the paperwork to permit the extradition?

I think the more we look into the case, the more there are compelling reasons why that shouldn’t have happened. And of course, one of the other issues is the United States is is saying that their criminal law applies to conduct committed anywhere on the planet. And they did that in the Assange case as well.

They said, we can pass laws in relation to our national security that apply anywhere on the planet. Now, there are some areas where where states accept that extra-territoriality, like, you know, there are occasions where you need to say, well, states can have their criminal laws extend beyond their borders because there’s some conduct you you really want to capture.

And traditionally that’s been conduct like piracy. You know, piracy on the high seas doesn’t happen in any country’s jurisdiction. If you’re going to have to bring criminal proceedings to bring that to account, there you need extra-territoriality. Slavery often happens through third countries. People are transported on the high seas. You traditionally have extra-territoriality to deal with that.

But are we going to permit the United States to just say, any part of their criminal law, wherever they choose, can apply to anyone on the planet, wherever they are? You know, I think there’s got to be boundaries here. And the Duggan case again, is showing that our government should be standing up with some of those boundaries to protect Australian citizens from the imperial reach of the United States criminal law.

JOE LAURIA: Senator Shoebridge, what is going on here? Really? I have two questions. Really, how does this fit in, or does it fit in, to the continuous pressure the United States has been putting on Australia to make China an enemy, when China is not an enemy of the of Australia? And why did the Aattorney General go along with this, as you were just saying?

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Well there’s three questions really, aren’t there? Why did we change the laws? There seem to be no compelling reason to change the extradition laws to permit a Duggan extradition. Right? So I’m yet to see… That happened before my time in federal parliament but I’ve looked into it. There’s no compelling reason that was put forward to change the laws at the time. I think that’s a mystery that’s still yet to be explained.

Why does our attorney general agree to U.S. extradition requests and why do they often show so little resistance to U.S. actions? Well, I think anyone who’s observed Australia’s international relations over the last five decades would say that we are incredibly pliant to the United States.

You know, many of our foreign policy settings aren’t really set in Canberra. They’re rubber stamped in Canberra, but they’re set in Washington. And we do what we’re told. And this appears to be, you know, very consistent with that pattern. And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s Labor or the Coalition, you know, they sign on to this. Australia’s place in the world is to sort of meekly, politely and sometimes at incredible expense, follow what the United States tells us to do.

And, you know, it’s another brick in the wall that I think is being built, to make the case for Australia to have a genuinely independent foreign and defense policy and start making some of these decisions ourselves. But, you know, in the context of a lot of the rhetoric that’s been coming out of Washington, that’s been parroted in Canberra, the capital of Australia, and you hear it come from our security community, the defense and ASIO and all of our security agencies, they are desperately trying to persuade the Australian public that we should join the United States if they choose to go to war with China.

And, you know, opening up Australia’s real estate to new and expanded U.S. military bases, make our forces interoperable with the United States so that we can just slot in as a little dependent unit of a larger U.S. military deployment, make our procurement almost entirely dependent on U.S. military equipment, which of course creates a substantial sovereignty risk if the United States ever chooses not to support our defense equipment in the future, you know, there are all these decisions being made – and separate to that is this massive AUKUS mess, which is tying us into having U.S. and U.K. designed nuclear, and largely built, nuclear submarines over the next four decades at a cost, a staggering cost from an Australian perspective, of 375 billion Australian dollars.

All of these decisions are being made, and they all take us down the same path, increasing dependence on the United States, less sovereign decision-making about our future being made in Australia.

I think it’s an incredibly dangerous and reckless path that the current administration, a Labor Party, and the previous administration, the Coalition, have been taking us on for decades now.

JOE LAURIA: I don’t think there’s a good answer to this question, and it applies to a country like Germany as well, where German leaders do things that absolutely hurt German interests but serve American interests. Why are Australian leaders doing this when it hurts Australia? That’s maybe an impossible question to answer. What are your theories on it?

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: You see, you’re asking questions that never, never trouble their minds in Canberra. This is like an accepted starting point of the conversation. It’s an a priori assumption that our security and our future is intertwined and enmeshed with the United States. And you’re not allowed to question that in Canberra. I would have thought you would know this by now Joe. You’re not allowed to question that a priori assumption, because once you start doing that, once you start asking, well, hang on, why are we doing this? You know, how is this making Australia safe?

You know, we live in one of the most geopolitically benign parts of the planet, right? The only place really safer than Australia, geopolitically, is New Zealand. And that’s only because it’s on the other side of Australia. Right? Apart from that, Australia is in pretty much the most benign part of the planet. We’re surrounded by oceans. We have not just an ocean and a sea, but a massive island archipelago separating us from Eurasia, with the Pacific Ocean on one side, the Indian Ocean on the other side and Antarctica to the south of us.

The only country placed to be a kind of threat to us is New Zealand, or Papua New Guinea. Right? We live in an incredibly benign part of the world. Right? So in order for us to be at risk from some conflict with China, the only way we can be at risk in a military conflict with China is if we invite that conflict to Australia. That we actually say, hang on here, don’t forget about us. Make us a target, actively make us one of your enemies. And the only way I know how to do that would be for us to position a whole lot of United States military bases on our shores, which might be used by the United States if they wanted to have a war with China.

That would be the only way of putting us at risk. And that’s exactly what we are doing. These bases aren’t to protect us. These bases are to protect the United States’ interests. But the bases themselves now have dependence on the United States. So, you know, our unthinking support for United States military deployments in the region, they don’t make us safe.

They are the only potential geopolitical risk. They create the risk. They don’t create safety. They create risk. But even saying that, or thinking that, it’s like the third rail of Australian politics. You’re not allowed to say it. You’re not allowed to think it. You just have to believe, like you wake up in the morning and you believe in, you know, your own personal deity, your own personal saviour, you also have to believe unthinkingly and with faith in the United States a lot, because it gets a bit awkward if you start critically thinking about it.

CATHY VOGAN: Well except if you’re two former Australian prime ministers: Malcolm Fraser, who wrote ‘Dangerous Allies’, and of course Paul Keating who has spoken – and batted off all of the attacks – about us not needing these submarines at all. That in fact, a totally different strategy of defense would be more appropriate for us.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: You know, looking back on Malcolm Fraser’s time, Malcolm Fraser used to put a few of the occasional red line into our relationship with the United States. He, for example, wouldn’t let U.S. nuclear-armed B-52s come to Australia. But otherwise Malcolm Fraser had very much a pro-U.S. leaning, a pro U.S. Alliance lean, but he put some red lines in. Those red lines have been totally removed off the table by the Coalition and Labor in the decades since.

And I admire Paul Keating’s robust opposition to AUKUS. It reflects my views that it’s not in Australia’s interest and why the hell are we doing this? But unfortunately, when he was prime minister, he was also very robustly supporting and unquestioningly supporting Australia’s military alliance with the United States. You know, with U.S. military bases such as Pine Gap. I like people getting a robust sense of independence once they leave office. But bloody hell, it would be nice if occasionally they did it while they were in office as well.

CATHY VOGAN: Yes, maybe like Gough Whitlam.[Former Australian PM ousted in a C.I.A.-Buckingham Palace coup in 1973.] But look what happened to him. Thank you so much, David, for that perspective on what’s going on. Poor Dan Duggan, probably a pawn in this whole changing relationship between Australia and China. But let’s hope that we get, an outcome announced. The judgment was reserved in the court. As I said, the defense are seeking to have the extradition request overturned, but, we may see it go to the High Court if we don’t get a satisfactory response.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Well, my feeling is, either way it’s likely to find its way to the High Court. So this is round one, and you know, when I say that I just think about all of the stress and the anxiety and the cost that that puts on Dan’s family. I know his wife and his kids, they’re under an incredible amount of stress. There’s an Australian family here that’s literally been ripped apart by these proceedings as well, and we shouldn’t forget them. So, you know, I hope all Australians are thinking about that. What should our government be doing? You got a family in distress here and you would have hoped they were in an Australian families court, not in the United States military court. But you know, such is life.

CATHY VOGAN: Okay. Thank you. Thank you David.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE: Thanks. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, John. Sorry I can’t stay around, for the rest of it, but…

CATHY VOGAN: That’s okay. You’ve given us plenty of time. Well, John Kiriakou!

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Good to see you.

CATHY VOGAN: Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. You have submitted an affidavit in the Duggan case. I haven’t had time to look at it, because I just got my hands on it, but could you tell us why? What’s in there? What can you attest to?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure. Well, this actually originated because of a series of articles that I had written for Consortium News back in 2022 and 2023, about the deleterious effects of solitary confinement on the mental well-being of American prisoners.

I said that I had not been subjected to the level of solitary confinement that others, many other American prisoners had. I spent a total of nine days in solitary confinement. I needed to lose the weight anyway at the time, I joked. But the truth is, solitary confinement is used in the United States, unlike in any other country in the world. It’s used as a form of punishment.

And one thing that I think almost no Americans realize is that the concept of solitary confinement as a punishment was actually created in the United States. It was created, and I say this in the affidavit, it was invented in 1829 at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You can still go to Eastern State and take a tour.

It’s in ruins now but there were famous prisoners there, like Al Capone, and early murderers and people that we’ve read about in history books. In any event, in 1829, American politicians came up with this idea where they would build this enormous, imposing, neo-Gothic, escape proof, maximum security penitentiary made of stone. It had just tiny little cells.

The guards were in the very center. And the cells went around in spokes, like spokes of a wheel. The idea was that each little tiny cell would have nothing but a bed, a chair, a little table, a small chamber pot and a Bible, with the idea being that if a prisoner has nothing to do all day long but eat and sleep and read the Bible, that he will come out of prison at the end of his sentence as a good, law abiding Christian man.

And what they found was that instead, everybody went insane. And that’s where we first learned of these severe psychological effects that solitary confinement has. It leads to anxiety, depression, paranoia, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, suicidal actions. So we’ve known this for 200 years and we’re still using it. And when I say using it, the United Nations has declared the American use of solitary confinement to be a form of torture.

And the United Nations has urged all member countries to limit solitary confinement to a maximum of 15 days. Well, here in the United States, we’ve had people in solitary confinement for as long as 44 years. And so I gave some examples in this affidavit.

There was a prisoner, by the name of Anthony Gay. He was severely mentally ill. He was held in a prison in Colorado and placed in solitary confinement right after his conviction, rather than being placed in a mental hospital where he could have received treatment for schizophrenia, which is what he was suffering from. He was in this small six by ten foot cell, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He became paranoid. He began self mutilating. He stabbed himself in the eye with a razor blade. He cut off pieces of his own flesh and ate them. He cut out one of his testicles and hung it on on the doorknob of his cell. And then he stitched his scrotum closed with a zipper that he had taken out of his pants.

He didn’t even realize what he was doing at all. And get this. This is typical of American prisons. In all, his seven year sentence was eventually extended to 97 years because he kept doing these things and adding time. And what was his crime? In 1993, he was arrested and charged with stealing a $1 bill out of a restaurant tip jar. 97 years in prison, and he did two decades of it in solitary confinement.

So in the affidavit I wrote about six of these different cases, and I said, look, because Dan Duggan is a high profile prisoner, he’s going to be placed in either solitary confinement or in something called a Communications Management Unit, which is akin to solitary confinement, where the prisoner is completely cut off from the outside world.

And, you know, unless he’s stronger than anybody else that I’ve ever encountered in my life, this is going to have that same kind of deleterious effect emotionally, mentally, on him that it’s had on everybody else who’s gone through it.

CATHY VOGAN: Yeah. What do you think about what I was talking about before with Senator Shoebridge?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah.

CATHY VOGAN: The thing that killed the Assange case was that he would be debarred from constitutional protection by way of his nationality alone, and that was a red line for the British court.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, I think yes. That’s the strongest argument. And I would even add one. Here in the United States – and Joe, you know this as well as I do – we’ve discounted, criminal intent in this country. Did he intend to violate the law? Obviously not. He likely didn’t even know there was a law that governed this kind of thing. And even if he did, he wasn’t an American citizen.

So it seems to me, if the United States is really serious about stopping, let’s say, the training of, I don’t know, undercover Chinese intelligence officers, they would have asked the Australians to arrest everybody who worked at the flight school, everybody who was training foreign nationals to use these planes, or nobody, but to arrest and then demand the extradition of just Dan Duggan. That just stinks of politics.

CATHY VOGAN: Yes. And in fact, I believe it is the Fifth Amendment – although I’m not a total expert on American law – but the bar is “reasonable certainty” in terms of this foreseeability. You know, that any reasonable person would have known this was a crime. And in fact, there are plenty of indications for Duggan that that it is not a crime in his country of citizenship. So, no, you’re right. He may not have even known.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And, you know, another sad thing here is the Australians have been so weak in the face of U.S. demands. So willing to roll over, so far, that this man has been imprisoned now for years. For years! And he’s not even been charged with a crime in Australia.

JOE LAURIA: For three years. And I wish Shoebridge were still here to ask if – maybe you know, Cathy – why did Australia put him in solitary confinement? I would imagine the Americans asked them, but I don’t know that. Why?

CATHY VOGAN: Well, first of all, as I said in the intro, Duggan didn’t learn for 62 days why he had been arrested.

He had no clue. He was clueless, which also points towards his innocence. But I imagine that the Americans would have said he’s quite literally a flight risk, seeing he’s pilot.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Ridiculous.

CATHY VOGAN: They could have put a bracelet around his ankle, of course.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Sure, sure.

CATHY VOGAN: But I think it’s all for show. It’s all for show.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Just as an aside, Cathy, one of my cell mates at the Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania, where I was incarcerated for 23 months, was an Australian national. He was violent. He was a convicted arsonist. And not just an arsonist. He shouted to everybody in the Department of Motor Vehicles in Buffalo, New York: “I’m going to come back here and burn this place to the ground, even if people are in it”. And what did he do? He came back and he burned the place to the ground.

He was never in solitary confinement. He ran back to Australia to escape the charges. The Australians arrested him at the request of the United States. He was never held in solitary confinement. He was finally extradited to the U.S., where he was placed in a low security prison with me. And then he just quietly did his five years and went home.

So why is Dan Duggan so dangerous? When clearly he’s not dangerous.

CATHY VOGAN: Yeah, that’s right. But like Assange he is a kind political prisoner.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, this is a political case.

CATHY VOGAN: And in those cases, as Stella Assange said, the punishment is the process.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, yes. That’s exactly right.

JOE LAURIA: I want to ask you, John. It was fascinating that history you gave. 1829. I just looked up that, James Madison died in 1836. The guy who wrote the Constitution, and all the rights, that this country was going to be different from the tyrannies of Europe [was still alive]. And then in 1829, they came up with this idea. But my question is why? When they showed that they went insane and they weren’t quoting scripture when they came out, then why did they continue this? So clearly that wasn’t the real meaning.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: That’s a great question. And the answer is because they decided that [solitary confinement] was still effective as a form of punishment. Maybe the rehabilitation part didn’t work, but by God, nobody wanted to be in solitary. And so that was a good punishment.

JOE LAURIA: Had it worked as a deterrent?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Absolutely not. No, no, it’s just cruel. That’s all.

CATHY VOGAN: John, have you been following the case as it’s been going through the courts?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I have, and I’ve spoken to Saffrine [Duggan]. I’ve spoken to to Dan’s legal team in Australia and to his U.S. attorneys. I’ve met them a couple of times here in Washington. They believe that they have a very strong case, but as in the case of Julian Assange or the case of John Kiriakou or anybody else who faces long periods of time in a penitentiary, you might have a strong case, but an American jury would convicted baloney sandwich, as the old saying goes.

And you’re free to appeal, but you have to appeal post-conviction, which means you do all the time. First, while your appeal winds its way through the courts. This is a no win situation, so it has to be nipped in the bud, so to speak – three year delay in the nipping of the bud – on the Australia side. If he’s extradited to the U.S., he’s lost.

And I’ll tell you another thing too, if he is extradited to the U.S. and convicted, or extradited to the U.S. and takes a plea to a lesser charge, which would still be a felony, he would be banned from visiting the United States for the next 25 years. But he has eight brothers and sisters, and his parents are still alive, and all of them live in the United States.

CATHY VOGAN: Oh, I didn’t know that. I mean, he’s got six children as well, right? A big family.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: He has an enormous family and he would literally never get to see them again unless they visited him in Australia. And his parents are quite elderly; they’re not going to Australia.

CATHY VOGAN: Yeah.

JOE LAURIA: Let me ask you, John, two things. One, I want to ask you in general about Grand Juries, because there are some people in Australia really incensed about this. We are used to it here in the U.S., the idea of a Grand Jury, that it is a secret. It’s always secret and it always remains sealed. You’re not supposed to leak anything that happens.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Right.

JOE LAURIA: How democratic of a process [laughs] is it, a Grand jury? Why did that happen in the United States? If you know the history of that I’d be interested. And why is it so useful to the authorities?

JOHN KIRIAKOU: You know, I don’t know the history of it, but I can give you my own experience with the Grand Jury. I was arrested in January of 2012 and charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, and I hadn’t been indicted by any Grand Jury. And so when I went to meet my attorneys the first time, one of them said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what do you mean you’ve not been indicted?

And I said, no, they arrested me and they took me in for arraignment. I pleaded not guilty, but I have not been indicted by any Grand Jury. So my attorneys went to the Justice Department and said, what is this, some kind of a circus? They said, fine, you want him indicted, we’ll indict him.

This is where I learned about the Grand Jury system. They just called a group of people together. It’s like 30 people. And they laid out their case. We had no idea the Grand Jury was meeting. You’re not informed. You’re not allowed to speak. Even if you were informed, you’re not allowed to sit in. You’re not allowed to ask questions. You’re not allowed to do anything. You have no role.

They just give their side of the story and they say, okay, who wants to indict and send them to trial? Show of hands. And of course, all 30 [agree]. You’re going to say, oh, yeah, this sounds awful. Espionage. Yes. Classified information. Yes, yes. Indict. Well, they accidentally leaked the transcript of the Grand Jury to us.

And so I got to see who my friends really were and who my enemies really were. I got to see them by name. Former coworkers, colleagues, people I considered to be friends. And I got to read every single word that they said about me. Well, the bottom line is no one stands a chance before a Grand Jury. Not a chance. It was ugly.

JOE LAURIA: So when thought it was in complete secrecy, they unloaded on you.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: And you know what? One of them… I’ve become kind of well known, not just in the United States, but around the world over the last two years or so, only because I’ve somehow hit the sweet spot in the in the YouTube algorithm. I was on Joe Rogan last week and 2.5 million views. I have a couple of shorts out that have 30, 35, 38 million views… Well all of a sudden some of these people are reaching out to me: “Hey, we should do something together. We should do a speaking tour together. Why don’t we have a debate?”

It’s like, do you think I don’t know what you said about me on March the 6th, 2012? Because I know exactly what you said about me. And now you want me to be your friend? You want me to help you make money? No thank you.

JOE LAURIA: That was a unique opportunity to learn that kind of thing. Sometimes I think I’d like to die and then still be able to see what people are saying about me. Now you got that chance.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: But it’s better to see what they’re saying about you when you’re down.

JOE LAURIA: Oh, and when you’re still alive. Now you can get back at them.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, that’s right, that’s right.

JOE LAURIA: Cathy, before I turn it back to you, why did this take 15 years with Duggan? I mean, this stuff happened a long time ago. They only indicted him, like, six years after that. And then nothing’s happened until Blinken shows up. The Secretary of State! This shows how political it is. Coming to shore up Australia, that they’re not getting weak kneed against China. All of a sudden…

JOHN KIRIAKOU: That’s it.

JOE LAURIA: Unbelievable.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: That’s it right there. That’s it right there. Joe, you hit it on the head. This is about China. This is about a political scalp to show that we’re tough against China. There was an indictment here in Washington just a week ago, two weeks ago: a former, intelligence officer indicted for allegedly passing some sort of analysis to to China.

He swears he’s innocent. He was an employee of a think tank. Former, like naval intelligence or DIA or something like that. But this is about China. And another thing, too. And forgive me if if you’ve heard me say this a million times because I have said it a million times. But these attorneys, these assistant U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice, they don’t get promoted by not prosecuting you. They don’t get promoted by not trying to, you know, get you some draconian sentence. They all want to be U.S. attorney. They all want to run for Congress or run for governor or have the corner office in the A level law firm, the big law firm. And so they’re going to make that career on your back.

And I think that’s what we’re seeing here. I think that somebody just went through some old files and said, hey, I might be able to make this case. And then we can just say it’s a China espionage case, right? And so what? This guy doesn’t even love America. They probably say he gave up his American citizenship. What kind of American is that? I’m going to go after him. And to make a name for myself.

And then we have the case in. I hate to be so cynical, but, I mean, those were the attitudes that I encountered at the Justice Department.

JOE LAURIA: Yeah. Cathy.

CATHY VOGAN: Well, I don’t have anything really more to say. Let’s just wait and see what the result of this federal court hearing is. We had a strange argument going on there about when the dual criminality kicks in, or the absence of criminality kicks in. The prosecution was saying, oh, it doesn’t matter. We can let somebody languish in prison for two years before even having an eligibility hearing. Don’t matter, you know, whereas the defense is saying, as soon as someone is arrested it has to be deemed immediately. We’ve got to move to action straight away to determine whether this is an extraditable offense, whether this is an extraditable person, whether there’s dual criminality. So, you know, it was a very odd argument. I think that the defense did a fantastic job. And the prosecution, it was so full of sections and subsections, it was really quite difficult to follow.

But we’ll see. We’ll see presently. It might take a couple of weeks before the judgment comes out. And that judgment could be that the eligibility hearing that took place last year, a Section 19 hearing, they call it, which determined that he was eligible for extradition, that it will be overturned as the defense requests.

There’s another story here that I should tell you. It’s that Duggan had changed his lawyers. Right? And so when this Section 19 hearing came up, his new lawyers, which is Collaery Law – Bernard Collaery, the former attorney general of the Australian Capital Territory – those guys hadn’t had enough time to study the case, and they asked the judge for more time to, you know, get on top of it.

Put forward the right arguments. And the judge refused. So they they said, well, we’ve got no arguments to put forth today. And so the judge deemed [Duggan] eligible for extradition. That’s a bit weird.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: That sounds like pressure from the U.S..

CATHY VOGAN: Whatever, whatever. But it just doesn’t sound like bona fide due process to me.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: I agree.

JOE LAURIA: A scalp to show that we’re tough on China and they even get the judge or the judge goes along with this, an Australian judge. It’s beyond words. This…

CATHY VOGAN: China.

JOE LAURIA: Yeah, and a person’s life if it serves a purpose.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yeah. I want to say one other thing very quickly. I understand we’re over time, but, Saffrine, Dan’s wife Saffrine has been so steadfast in her support. How this woman has been able to support her husband with the energy that she has, raised six kids, try not to lose their farm, engage with attorneys, engage with a public relations person, find American attorneys, lobby politicians. She’s like a superwoman. And I think that when he wins this thing and I really believe that he’ll win, it’s because of her.

CATHY VOGAN: She was in a very bad way when we talked to her, just just a few days before the last hearing. When she started off, she almost broke down immediately, but she is able to pull herself together and speak sensibly and intelligently about it.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: She’s fantastic, wonderful.

CATHY VOGAN: Yeah.

JOE LAURIA: Thank you John.

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Thank you. Good to see you both.

CATHY VOGAN: Yes. Thank you. Bye.