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4th Bill Sewell CCTV Interview on NSA Snowden Leaks & Domestic Spying on U.S. Citizens

118 views · Published 9 October 2013 · 6:21 · Indexed 1 October 2026

Channel: Michael B. Butler Books · 2013 · Entertainment

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4th Edited William Sewell CCTV interview of William Sewell, author of NonOffiical Asset: The Iran Affair and Ex-U.S. Intelligence Officer, on Biz Asia America, broadcast by China Central TV America out of Washington, D.C., on August 16, 2013 about the ongoing controversies surrounding the National Security Agency since the Snowden leak story broke in mid-June.  Sewell, who worked for a number of different agencies and foreign entities during his 30 year career, believes the NSA and other agency folks try and protect the privacy of American citizens but, as he said in this interview, these programs are designed to suck up all the information in space and the computers can't automatically tell private from public communications.  

Sewell believes the Washington Post headline that told about of the privacy violations "was designed to shock" and that his view of these privacy incursions come with the terroritory.  When working in the field, Sewell needed timely information to accomplish his mission and sometimes to survive.  

About Nonofficial Asset: The Iran Affair William Sewell 

Peyton Stone never quit his day job. But it's his other profession that might just get him killed.  Islamabad. Baghdad. Shanghai. Kazakhstan, Kabul. Langley. For Peyton Stone, that's a work commute. But his is no normal job. On the surface he's a world-renowned security expert. But his real occupation is serving as a "nonofficial asset," a contractor working for the CIA when the government needs complete deniability. While advancing American interests globally, Stone discovers that those interests can exact a steep personal price. And when his business partner is murdered in a Shanghai hotel, ominous ghosts from his past return and he's drawn deeper into the covert maze, on the hunt for a stolen nuclear weapon and the rogue Iranian admiral hell-bent on using it. In Nonofficial Asset his skills, training, tactics, mettle, and allegiance to family and country are all pushed to the limit as he races to prevent nuclear catastrophe.

A captivating international espionage cliffhanger, William Sewell's new spy thriller is not some fake fantasy conjured by an uninformed novice writer working from his safe, local Starbucks. This is an adroitly told tale of very real and likely scenarios by someone who has been in some, if not most, of these dark bunkers--and lived to tell about it. A 30-year veteran of the clandestine services, William Sewell is a communications security expert by day. But like Peyton Stone, he has another profession. Exploiting his behind-enemy-lines intelligence experience, Sewell infuses Nonofficial Asset with an authenticity that can only be gained from real-world experience in the trenches.

About William Sewell:

If William "Bill" Sewell believes in a guiding principle, it comes from world champion racecar driver Mario Andretti, who said, "If things seem really under control, you're not going fast enough." Sewell spends his life pushing to find that razor's edge between velocity and control.

Rasied in Dublin, Georgia, Sewell began his clandestine adventuring as a boy, with rifle in hand, hunting imaginary Nazis, the Japanese army, and even Yankees in the Peachtree state's backwoods. A Vietnam and U.S. Air Force veteran, Sewell left military service to become a contractor for the U.S. government. In addition to working with the Departments of State and Defense, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration, Sewell also consulted on security matters with the governments of Kuwait, Australia, India, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, China, Canada, and even with the European Council of Mayors. But Sewell also pursued an alternative profession—with the U.S. intelligence community.

"There's a thrill to participating in covert enterprises. And of course there's the patriotic aspect of doing some good for your country. Unfortunately, I'm not yet at liberty to talk about much of what we did. But we had a lot of fun. . . ."

Though his speech is carefully measured, it's clear that Sewell experienced a lot during his tenure. For example, while a contractor with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Branch, Sewell witnessed tectonic political shifts that had real consequences in the field. "The end of the Cold War was a strange time because the rules were changing in the Soviet bloc at different rates in different places. For us, the challenge was that some of the good guys became bad guys and some bad guys became good guys. It was a very fluid and uncertain situation. So to be safe, we pretty much trusted no one."

Sewell also experienced the direct effects of what can be a very dangerous business. "At the end of the first Gulf War I went over to Kuwait, working with their interior ministry. Aside from the terrible cost in lives, the war had turned Kuwait into a pile of rubble. The old bustling Suk (marketplace) ceased to exist.

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