Exposing Suppressed News
An Interview with Fred Burks, founder of WantToKnow.info
My guest today is Fred Burks, former presidential interpreter and whistleblower who founded WantToKnow.info in 2003.
"WantToKnow.info presents this information as an opportunity for you to educate yourself and others, and to inspire us to join in working together for the good of all. We shine light into the unconscious shadows of ourselves and our world with the intention of inviting us both individually and collectively to make more conscious choices which allow us to step ever more fully into our magnificence and to build a brighter future for us all."
--www.WantToKnow.info
Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Fred. Let's aim for a bit of backstory so that those who are unfamiliar with you and your website will have a good sense of who you are and how you got there. What caused you to become an activist in the first place?
Fred Burks: Thanks for inviting me, Joan. The path that led me to this important work has been quite fascinating. One startling event in July of 2001 changed everything for me. At the time, I had enjoyed working 15 years as a language interpreter for the U.S. Department of State, where I had become their top Indonesian interpreter. I felt honored to interpret for the likes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in the White House.
During those 15 years, I had not seen any clear evidence of major cover-ups in my work. I had a housemate who spouted conspiracy theories to me, yet I quietly laughed at his level of paranoia.
Everything changed that July when a trusted friend sent me a video tape of a press conference held two months prior at the prestigious National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In this astonishing video, 22 high ranking military and government witnesses each testified about their personal experiences in a major cover-up of which I was completely unaware.
By the end of the video, my jaw was on the floor in disbelief. If it had been only a few officials, I might have dismissed it as aberrant paranoid thinking, but with 22 high-level officials of the kindfor which I often interpreted, I had no doubt that what they were reporting was undeniably real.
This eye-opening video testimony caused me to question everything about what was really happening behind the scenes in our world. I set out on a quest to find reliable information on all that was being hidden from us.
I was soon able to find lots of verifiable information on a number of websites supporting not only the claims of the witnesses in that video, but also raising many other very serious questions on other huge cover-ups. Scouring the Internet and voraciously reading books filled with solid information compiled by those whose eyes had been similarly opened, I found an amazing amount of reliable information which dramatically changed the way I looked at the world.
Yet even though the astounding evidence of all I found was readily available and easily verified using respected sources, the information was scattered across a variety of websites focused on individual topics. I couldn't find a single website which did a good job of putting together all of the wide range of undeniable evidence from reliable sources that I had found.
As a result, I founded WantToKnow.info in 2003, with the primary mission of using reliable, verifiable information to expose all of these major cover-ups of which few are aware. I collaborated with a rich variety of experts who helped to put all of this mind-bending information into a greater context in order to help people understand how all of this was possible.
JB: How's it going?
FB: I'm incredibly grateful that since then, the website has received over 20 million visits from nearly every country around the globe, including a number of insiders who have shared valuable information with me. I regularly receive grateful messages from readers for helping them to understand what is really going on behind the scenes.
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