PEERS Founder Fred Burks: How I Became a Presidential Interpreter and White House Insider
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Dear friends,
A series of small miracles led me to the White House, where I eventually served as interpreter for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. I was amazed that it
all happened pretty much without even trying. I later became a whistleblower as the result of this important work and even ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
But before beginning the story, it's important to mention that since age 19, I have been deeply committed to doing what's best
for all and to opening fully to divine guidance in my life. The
chain of small miracles that led me to the White House is only one example
of the many amazing miracles I've experienced since embracing these
empowering life
intentions.
"You've
got to go with me, Fred, or I'll never fulfill my dream of living in Japan,"
John exclaimed with frustration. In 1979, I was an energetic 21-year-old college student living in a fun dormitory
on the beautiful campus of UC Santa Cruz in California. One calm autumn evening,
my roommate, John, asked me to go with him to a meeting put on by Volunteers
In Asia (VIA). VIA is a non-profit educational exchange organization that
sends college undergrads to Asia to experience life in a foreign culture while
teaching English there.
Besides being
very busy with studies that evening, I wasn't at all interested in leaving
college or living overseas. At first, I told John I just didn't have time.
But after several sincere appeals, I had to agree that John was shy and
that there was no way he would go alone. Only because I knew it might really
change his life, I reluctantly agreed to accompany him.
At the meeting,
VIA volunteers recently returned from teaching English in Asia excitedly shared colorful slides and fascinating stories about their transformative cross-cultural experiences
in Asia. I was surprised to soon find myself captivated and even infected by their incredible vibrance and passion. Their vivid descriptions were filled with enthusiasm, joy, and powerful
awakenings.
The lives of these young adventurers had clearly been dramatically
enriched by their rich journeys. The end result was that though John never went
to Japan, I, having been dragged most reluctantly to this meeting, ended up
going to live in Asia as a volunteer English teacher!
On applying to VIA for a volunteer position, I requested
Japan as my first choice, as I had to pay my own plane fare
and Japan was the least expensive of the countries served. But I told them that I would go anywhere
they sent me if the few available Japanese positions filled. They chose
Indonesia for me, which at the time I didn't even realize was a country.
I had thought it was a small group of islands somewhere in the Pacific. I
fully trusted, though, that I was being guided to the right place for me.
In Indonesia,
I lived for the entire year of 1981 on the west side of the vast island of Borneo with
the warmest, most wonderful Muslim family in the world. As my newly adopted
father was an MD, he supported his parents and a couple siblings and in-laws
and their children, so that in all, we had an extended family of 20 people
living under one roof! My adopted mother there was one of the kindest,
most saintly women I've ever met. I had countless amazingly rich experiences
with this gentle, loving family and the warm, welcoming people of Indonesia.
Even with
all of the constant activity of my large, adopted family and home, for the entire year abroad I
found myself studying the Indonesian language like a maniac – two to three
hours almost every day. I knew that language
was crucial to diving into the culture, but I was way overboard in how much
I studied. I made over 6,000 flash cards and even memorized every word in a couple small dictionaries. Yet somehow, I sensed there was a greater reason for it all. By the end of my year there, I was quite fluent.
In early 1986, five
years after my time in Indonesia, I had just come back home from two intense
years of teaching English at a college in communist China, again as a VIA
volunteer. My time in China was filled with rich, sometimes challenging adventures
quite different than Indonesia. Living in Wuhan (a city of six million about
which few have ever heard), I had been the first foreigner in the
city to be allowed to live together with local Chinese in a teachers dormitory.
I managed to become fluent in Chinese, too. Yet now that I was back home, it was time to finally look for some income-producing
work to feed my nearly empty bank account.
A VIA friend
of mine told me about an interesting job as a language interpreter taking
influential foreign visitors on one-month study tours of the U.S. for the Department
of State. I had never seriously considered being an interpreter, but this
sounded quite interesting. They just happened to be interviewing near my home a month after I heard about the job. So thanks to all those hours studying like a
maniac in Indonesia, I ended up with a great job as an Indonesian interpreter
where I was paid to travel and study all over the U.S. with my distinguished
Indonesian guests!
By the end
of my first month in this fascinating new job, I realized I was a natural
at interpreting. I was soon whispering simultaneously into the ears of my
Indonesian visitors as our American hosts conversed with them. I saw that if I was
willing to study more, I could become a really good simultaneous interpreter
and possibly even interpret for top government officials some day. After opening to divine guidance, however, I became clear that I wanted to focus my time and
energy on other, more meaningful matters. I chose not to spend too much time on
language skills, and was perfectly content to continue as a low-level interpreter.
In 1992 (six
years later), now working only part time as an interpreter and part time with
cancer patients as a registered nurse, I took an assignment as the administrative
interpreter supporting two simultaneous interpreters at a government-sponsored
seminar in Washington, DC. Because of the intense concentration needed, simultaneous
interpreting requires two interpreters who switch off every 20 to 30 minutes.
As the logistical support interpreter, I was out running errands for a few of the visitors when the seminar started.
When I came
back a few hours later, the group was on a break. As soon as he saw me, Dan, one
of the interpreters, grabbed me and franticly asked, "Can you do any
simultaneous interpreting?" The other interpreter had fallen ill and had
to go home.
Dan had been interpreting simultaneously for almost three hours without a break,
which is almost unheard of. So even though I wasn't officially qualified,
I stepped in, did great, and finished out the remainder of the week-long seminar
as a simultaneous interpreter. On hearing about this, my boss at the State
Department called me in to congratulate me. At his suggestion, I took and
passed the test to become officially qualified as a simultaneous interpreter.
It turns
out that Indonesian interpreters are in great demand – especially simultaneous
Indonesian interpreters. Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the
world (population 220 million), yet very few Americans ever learn Indonesian
(the national language). So in 1995, three years after qualifying as a simultaneous interpreter, out of the blue I received a call from
the State Department asking me to travel to Copenhagen to interpret for Vice
President Al Gore at a UN Conference! Even though I wasn't officially qualified
for high level interpreting, they couldn't find anyone else. So I went, had
a great time, and shortly thereafter qualified at the State Department's highest
level.
Before my
resignation due to excessive secrecy nine years later in 2004, I had interpreted for President
Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Vice Presidents Gore and Cheney, Secretaries
of State Albright and Powell, and numerous other presidents and officials from
many countries. Whenever present in high-level meetings, I did my best
to open to divine guidance, and to send out lots of love, support, and wishes
for what's best to all present.
At key summit meetings, I even invited
many friends to take a moment in silence and join me in inviting our world
leaders to open to what is best for all who share our world. I have no doubt
that this is why I was led to this fascinating work. And after witnessing undeniable deceit and manipulation towards the end of my State Department career, I was eventually led to become a whistleblower, even finding my whistleblowing activity reported on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. That's another fascinating story you can read about here.
It's pretty
amazing that without putting any effort in that direction, I ended up as the State Department's
top Indonesian interpreter. It's even more amazing when you remember that
I did not choose Indonesia and was dragged most reluctantly to that first VIA
meeting years ago! There are many more little miracles to this story that,
for reasons of space, I didn't include. For me, all of this shows that the
more I open to divine guidance and to what's best for all, the more filled
with miracles my life becomes. I give thanks for these many miracles and for
all that I have been given. And thank you, my friends, for reading and sharing
in this piece of my life.
Note: The same spiritual guidance that brought me to the White House eventually led me to found and develop the network of inspiring PEERS websites, including www.WantToKnow.info, which is filled with reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups and inspiring ideas on how we can build a brighter future.
More on My Interpreting Adventures
To read some of the fascinating stories from my high-level interpreting
experiences:
https://www.WantToKnow.info/ 050418fredburksinterpretingsto ries
https://www.WantToKnow.info/
To read
the inspiring results of inviting our world leaders to open to what's best:
https://www.WantToKnow.info/ presidentialsurprises
https://www.WantToKnow.info/
To read about
my resignation because of excessive secrecy in November 2004:
https://www.WantToKnow.info/ fredburksresigns
https://www.WantToKnow.info/
For the story
of how speaking truth led to my being a celebrity for a week:
https://www.WantToKnow.info/ 050129fredburkscelebrity
https://www.WantToKnow.info/
To read an
empowering essay I wrote on my life intentions titled Simple Keys to a Fuller Life:
https://www.weboflove.org/ keystolife2
https://www.weboflove.org/
See the treasure trove of resources in our Inspiration Center
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Coronavirus vs. the Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses the Greater Threat?
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Fighting the coronavirus epidemic has given China the perfect excuse for unleashing the full force of its surveillance and data collection powers. The problem, as Eamon Barrett acknowledges in Fortune magazine, is what happens after: “Once the outbreak is controlled, it’s unclear whether the government will retract its new powers.”
Dear friends,
The below article by esteemed Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead raises serious questions about how the Coronavirus is being handled. China has taken near-complete control over its citizenry. How will other countries respond to this and future threats? How much are we willing to give up our freedoms for safety offered by those who rule us?
Remember that fear, polarization, and secrecy are means used by the power elite of our world to get those they rule to willingly submit to their control. How much are you living in fear? How much have you succumbed to the intense polarization going on? Read this article and consider how much you are willing to surrender to dictates of those who govern and their mandates based on "national security" which continually erode our privacy and freedom?
With best wishes for a transformed world,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info White House interpreter and whistleblower
Note: The original article can be found on this webpage. Explore how the Coronavirus is being exploited through excessive fear mongering in this well researched essay.
Coronavirus vs. the Mass Surveillance State:
Which Poses the Greater Threat?
By John W. Whitehead
March 03, 2020
Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be – civil unrest, the national emergencies, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters – as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.
Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.
I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?
For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China – our role model for all things dystopian – where the contagion started.
In an attempt to fight the epidemic, the government has given its surveillance state apparatus – which boasts the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system in the world – free rein. Thermal scanners using artificial intelligence (AI) have been installed at train stations in major cities to assess body temperatures and identify anyone with a fever. Facial recognition cameras and cell phone carriers track people’s movements constantly, reporting in real time to data centers that can be accessed by government agents and employers alike. And coded color alerts (red, yellow and green) sort people into health categories that correspond to the amount of freedom of movement they’re allowed: “Green code, travel freely. Red or yellow, report immediately.”
Mind you, prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese surveillance state had already been hard at work tracking its citizens through the use of some 200 million security cameras installed nationwide. Equipped with facial recognition technology, the cameras allow authorities to track so-called criminal acts, such as jaywalking, which factor into a person’s social credit score.
Social media credit scores assigned to Chinese individuals and businesses categorize them on whether or not they are “good” citizens. A real-name system – which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries – coupled with social media credit scores ensures that those blacklisted as “unworthy” are banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Among the activities that can get you labeled unworthy are taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.
That same social credit score technology used to identify, track and segregate citizens is now one of China’s chief weapons in its fight to contain the coronavirus from spreading. However, it is far from infallible and a prime example of the difficulties involved in navigating an autonomous system where disembodied AI systems call the shots. For instance, one woman, who has no symptoms of the virus but was assigned a red code based on a visit to her hometown, has been blocked from returning to her home and job until her color code changes. She has been stuck in this state of limbo for weeks with no means of challenging the color code or knowing exactly why she’s been assigned a red code.
Fighting the coronavirus epidemic has given China the perfect excuse for unleashing the full force of its surveillance and data collection powers. The problem, as Eamon Barrett acknowledges in Fortune magazine, is what happens after: “Once the outbreak is controlled, it’s unclear whether the government will retract its new powers.”
The lesson for the ages: once any government is allowed to expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to pull back.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the government thus far has limited its coronavirus preparations to missives advising the public to stay calm, wash their hands, and cover their mouths when they cough and sneeze.
Don’t go underestimating the government’s ability to lock the nation down if the coronavirus turns into a pandemic, however. After all, the government has been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now.
The building blocks are already in place for such an eventuality: the surveillance networks, fusion centers and government contractors that already share information in real time; the government’s massive biometric databases that can identify individuals based on genetic and biological markers; the militarized police, working in conjunction with federal agencies, ready and able to coordinate with the federal government when it’s time to round up the targeted individuals; the courts that will sanction the government’s methods, no matter how unlawful, as long as it’s done in the name of national security; and the detention facilities, whether private prisons or FEMA internment camps, that have been built and are waiting to be filled.
Now all of this may sound far-fetched to you now, but we’ve already arrived at the dystopian futures prophesied by George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report.
It won’t take much more to push us over the edge into Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, in which the majority of humanity is relegated to an overpopulated, diseased, warring planet where the government employs technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace.
Mind you, while these technologies are already in use today and being hailed for their potentially life-saving, cost-saving, time-saving benefits, it won’t be long before the drawbacks to having a government equipped with technology that makes it all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful – – helped along by the citizenry – far outdistance the benefits.
On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are – their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.) – in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
Consider all the ways you continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:
By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go. By churning through all of the detritus of your life – what you read, where you go, what you say – the government can predict what you will do .
By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists – and in turn, the government – will soon know what you remember. By mapping your biometrics – your “face-print” – and storing the information in a massive, shared government database available to bureaucratic agencies, police and the military, the government’s goal is to use facial recognition software to identify you (and every other person in the country) and track your movements, wherever you go. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.
Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.
Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.
Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ramifications of a government – any government – having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.
Imagine what a totalitarian regime such as Nazi Germany could have done with this kind of unadulterated power.
Imagine what the next police state to follow in Germany’s footsteps will do with this kind of power. Society is rapidly moving in that direction.
We’ve made it so easy for the government to watch us.
Government eyes see ... what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
[You are] being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
Chances are, as the Washington Post has reported, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat assessment score – green, yellow or red – so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.
In other words, you’re most likely already flagged in a government database somewhere.
The government has the know-how.
Indeed, for years now, the FBI and Justice Department have conspired to acquire near-limitless power and control over biometric information collected on law-abiding individuals, millions of whom have never been accused of a crime.
Going far beyond the scope of those with criminal backgrounds, the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database (NGID), a billion dollar boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s ID database from a fingerprint system to a vast data storehouse of iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.
Launched in 2008, the NGID is a massive biometric database that contains more than 100 million fingerprints and 45 million facial photos gathered from a variety of sources ranging from criminal suspects and convicts to daycare workers and visa applicants, including millions of people who have never committed or even been accused of a crime.
In other words, innocent American citizens are now automatically placed in a suspect database.
For a long time, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s biometrics and DNA and use it against them.
That is no longer the case.
The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. The nation’s courts are also doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. And of course Corporate America (including Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) has made it so easy to use one’s biometrics to access everything from bank accounts to cell phones.
We’ve made it so easy for the government to target, identify and track us.
Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare.
This is the kind of oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick.
Remember, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be – and has been – perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence.
This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.
It turns out that we are Soylent Green.
The 1973 film of the same name, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, is set in 2022 in an overpopulated, polluted, starving New York City whose inhabitants depend on synthetic foods manufactured by the Soylent Corporation for survival.
Heston plays a policeman investigating a murder, who discovers the grisly truth about the primary ingredient in the wafer, soylent green, which is the principal source of nourishment for a starved population. “It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people,” declares Heston’s character. “They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.”
Oh, how right he was.
Soylent Green is indeed people or, in our case, Soylent Green is our own personal data, repossessed, repackaged and used by corporations and the government to entrap us.
Without constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights when power, technology and militaristic governance converge, it won’t be long before we find ourselves, much like Edward G. Robinson’s character in Soylent Green, looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted, and go where we wanted without those thoughts, words and movements being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
We’re not quite there yet. But that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.
In the meantime, we’ve got an epidemic to survive, so go ahead and wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. And stock up on whatever you might need to survive this virus if it spreads to your community.
We are indeed at our most vulnerable right now, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s the American Surveillance State – not the coronavirus – that poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact staff@rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission.
Note: The original article can be found on this webpage. Explore how the Coronavirus is being exploited through excessive fear mongering in this well researched essay.
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