Jesse Ventura visited Google's Santa Monica office on April 13, 2011 to discuss his new bestseller:  "63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read."

This is, we're excited today to welcome Jesse Ventura to Authors at Google in Santa Monica.

Jesse is a former Navy SEAL and professional wrestler.

And I have to say, I was lucky enough to see him wrestle live back in the day a few times.

And I especially used to love watching him as a commentator on television, because he was always astute and funny.

And he used to say he was the only commentator who told it like it is.

And I have to say, he's still telling it like it is throughout his career.

He has gone on to become a well-known actor and TV personality, governor of Minnesota, visiting fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a best-selling author.

His best-selling books include, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me and American Conspiracies.

He's the host and executive producer of the TV series Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.

And today, he's going to be talking about his latest best-seller, 63 documents the government doesn't want you to read.

So please join me in welcoming Governor Jesse Ventura.

First, I'd like to state so you know a little about me.

And I have never owned a cell phone in my life, nor will I ever now.

I think that if I survive maybe another 25, 20 years on this planet, I can put it on my gravestone and I'll be the only 1 who will be able to do that.

I've already instructed my wife if I go first, I want, he never owned a cell phone.

Put on it because, and so I'm kind of a dinosaur, I guess.

But I enjoy it because I'll tell a funny story first.

I bought my dream car back in 2003, a twin turbo X50 Porsche, 450 horsepower, 6 speed that is so fast today I've never floored it.

When you order a car like that, you have to get a slot number because they're made by hand in Germany.

And when you get your slot number, you have to order what you want.

And my car salesman, who I'd previously probably bought a half a dozen cars from through the years, because my wife and I, I enjoy Porsches and she likes Audis.

And they're basically under the same roof.

And my salesman, Rob, is going through the list and he didn't even ask.

He just looked at me and said, And where would you like your cell phone?

And I looked at him and I said, I don't want a cell phone.

You would have thought I was ordering a car without tires.

He gave me a look, unbelievable, but then I said, but you see that 6 CD player, the thing you can stack 6 CDs in?

The reason I don't want a cell phone in my car, my Porsche, is because first of all, it's a manual transmission six-speed, which requires you to use both feet and both hands at the same time.

So therefore, where's the cell phone gonna fit in?

And Also because when I drive that car, it's the enjoyment of driving, not the enjoyment of talking on a phone.

Which I always laugh when I come out here and see all the exotic cars.

You can't get past 40, but I got a Ferrari.

The last book I wrote was called American Conspiracies where we went down basically from Abraham Lincoln and moved forward and talked about conspiracies and wrote about the conspiracies from the conspiracy side, basically.

Naturally, I took a great deal of heat for it.

It seems today that if you would all question your government's story, you're a conspiracy theorist, which means you believe in anything.

You're out in left field and all this stuff and green men are coming from Mars and everything like that which I think is highly unfair.

So, in light of that book which was a bestseller and by the way, I might add, Conspiracy Theory spent 7 weeks on the New York Times top 10 bestselling list and yet was not reviewed by 1 mainstream media in the United States of America, including the Times itself, that it was on their list top 10 for 7 weeks.

Why if not just to say the book's a piece of crap in the end?

So Dick Russell, my co-writer and I, we decided, well, Let's take a different approach with this next book.

Let's do a book that they can't put any blame on us for, for theories or what I might think.

And so we chose, and this was before WikiLeaks.

We started this project a couple, 3 months before WikiLeaks even happened.

And we said, let's do government documents.

That way, the government documents speak for themselves and they're real.

So this book has nothing to do with any type of theory, conspiracy theory.

Every document that's in this book is reproduced.

We wanted to do that to where I just don't tell you about the documents and give you my opinion, which I do do.

But the documents are all reproduced in full so you yourself can read them and judge for yourself what the document says.

And we tried to go basically through my lifetime and I will be 60 this summer so we go back that far and we progress forward to the modern time and we hit documents all the way along the way.

We didn't break anything top secret or that hadn't been unclassified.

And I will tell you this, this book to me is terrifying.

And I have the rare privilege that not too many people can say, my father was a World War II veteran and so was my mother.

Not many people can say their mom was a World War II veteran.

My father had, I think, 6 or 7 bronze battle stars in World War II over in Europe.

And my mother was a nurse in North Africa during World War II.

And not too many people can say your mom is buried in a national cemetery.

So that's why the book was difficult because this book tried my patriotism and it stretched it to thin, to a string.

Because as I went through these documents and looked at the behavior of my country, it was appalling.

It was shocking that we are involved in the things that we've been involved in over the last 50 years.

In fact, I got chastised for bringing up a word that I find ironic, I guess you're not supposed to use.

When you read this, what bothered me, but I'll use it.

I believe in many instances in this book you can substitute the word Nazi and it works.

There's behavior in this book that is as you'd expect it from the Nazis.

Now, people say, you know, documents are secret.

What right do you, who's got the damn cell phone?

Anyway, these documents are appalling and our behavior has been appalling in reading these documents of the things that my country has done.

And yet, in most cases, no 1 has ever been prosecuted.

No 1 has ever been tried for any of the stuff in the book.

Now, let me move forward quickly to Wikileaks for a moment if I can.

I think Wikileaks is a hero because of the fact that Last year, in 1 year, our country declared, top secret,

million documents that you and I are not allowed to see in 1 year.

I had to figure that must be just about everything they do.

I don't know how many documents they would have.

But I find it interesting that when I was in the military as a Navy SEAL, I had a top secret security clearance.

And I've been a mayor and I've been a governor.

At what point do I lose my top secret security clearance?

How am I any different today than I was before when it comes to security?

And yet, because I become a civilian or a citizen, now I'm not allowed to know things that I could know as a governor, that I could know as a SEAL.

But I guess being a civilian puts you at the bottom of the food chain or a citizen of knowledge.

Now, The thing that you'll see in the book that I dedicated the book to Congressman Ron Paul.

And I did that because he was the only person in our Congress when WikiLeaks happened that stepped out on the floor of Congress and gave what I thought 1 of the greatest speeches I had heard when he stated unequivocally that WikiLeaks has killed no 1.

How many people have been killed from the lies, the false intelligence and the deception we got to put us into the Iraq war.

Also, the fact that, I think what he said that was extremely important was that in a free country like ours, when telling the truth, people accuse you of being a traitor or treason, when the truth equals treason in a free society, then we're hurting.

When telling the truth means people accuse you of being a traitor.

When I ran for governor, I never used a prepared speech for anything to win because I ran under the premise of, if you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory.

I always remember, I was in my first debate and I sat down and there were like 7 candidates then and a black woman civilian was sitting to my left and they all walked in.

They're carrying books, spin papers, all this stuff.

And this woman had 1 of those legal pads, you know, with the yellow paper and a pen.

And she set it on the table and she slid it over to me.

And she said, "'Well, don't you think you'll need that?' And that's when I told her.

I said, "'Ma'am, when you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory.'" And I'll never forget the smile she gave me and nodded.

She got it then, you know, that I'll tell the truth.

And I made the biggest mistake in the debates you could possibly make in a political debate.

I was asked a question on TV in a debate And I simply said, I don't know.

There was like this deadened pause of 2 seconds and the crowd erupted into cheering and applause.

And then I, when that was subsided, I said, but if it's important, I'll learn.

Well, I think the people appreciated honesty and I think the people appreciated hearing someone running for office that didn't claim to know everything.

And I think that they realized at that point that truly honesty was more important to elect somebody.

Now, the state of our country today, we're in a mess.

They have been in charge for my entire life.

I am an independent, dyed in the wool, true and true.

I'm an equal opportunity despiser of both our political parties.

We are a two-party dictatorship in this country.

See, I not only talk about things, sometimes I give solutions.

I believe it's as simple as the nose on your face, if I can use that cliche or another 1, but unfortunately we can't see the forest for the trees.

Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans.

You're there to vote your heart and conscience for the candidate you believe fits your values the most and who you believe in.

And if you do that, you have voted correctly.

Wasting your vote is trying to pick a winner.

So we can all brag and say, yeah, I voted for this candidate and he won or she won.

But to me, that's not doing your civil duty, your civic duty.

And a way we can start, a way we can immediately start to take our country back?

I no longer believe in the third party movement.

The Democrats and Republicans have corrupted the system so badly that any third party in which to survive will have to corrupt itself.

Well, you've already got a two-headed monster.

I now advocate the abolishment of all political parties in the United States of America, turn them into political action committees, which is what they are anyway, certainly they can endorse.

And on every ballot in the United States of America, here's a simple thing we can do.

Remove the party designation and put down only the name.

If you're conservative, you don't need to know anybody's name.

If you're liberal, you don't need to know a name.

By only putting down the name would then require you as a voter to educate yourself.

Because you wouldn't have that crutch in there that would tell you conservative or Democrat.

And then there's 1, and you in California can get away with this stuff because you got that nonsense where you can put everything on the ballot.

How about on every state, local, and national ballot, we offer the final choice at the bottom that you can vote for none of the above?

Now, people laugh at that, but what that truly is is a vote of no confidence in government.

Because imagine for a moment, let's say I'm a Democrat and I defeated my Republican opponent for Congress, but I lost to none of the above.

More people cast their vote for none of the above than what I got.

Wouldn't that make them go out there with a change of attitude?

Yes, you're the congressman or the congresswoman, but you lost to none of the above.

And I'm willing to bet right now there are elections in this country where none of the above would prevail.

A vote of no confidence, that would send a huge message, huge, to every elected official.

Imagine these ideas coming from a pro wrestler.

I didn't, I'm not a political science major and I'm certainly not a lawyer.

Imagine that, all these ideas that this pro wrestler comes up with.

But anyway, those are a few of the things.

And as you look into this book, and we'll open up here for questions in a minute because that's usually the best way.

I don't wanna just lecture, lecture, lecture.

I'd like to answer questions of what's on your mind.

But as you look through this book, I hope it does frighten you.

I hope that you will be engaged citizens.

Because right now, we're a country full of lemmings.

We get marched right off the cliff and we don't even look left or right.

It's the dumbing down of America because of our media.

Our media was supposed to be the fourth branch of government.

They were supposed to be the watchdog of the other 3 to report back to us.

Cases in point, what's the top story this last 3, 4 weeks?

You can't turn the news on now without hearing a report on Charlie Sheen.

But he hardly deserves but maybe a mention at the end of the news, not a lead story.

And what was it a year, year and a half ago?

The main story, the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

Every day they're doing mobile, sending down mobile reporters outside the hotel.

Well, we're down here in wherever she was, the Bahamas or whatever the hell had happened.

And we're in front of the hotel where Anna Nicole Smith that, hey, I was alive in 63 when John Kennedy was assassinated.

Anna Nicole Smith got way more press in the end than the assassination of our president.

Some judge made a ruling to give her house to her boyfriend or something.

It's like when I was supposed to have a television show on MSNBC, but that's a whole other matter.

They tried to tell me what I was supposed to cover every day.

And at the time, do you recall, you'll recall, remember the murder you had here where the guy killed his wife out in the boat or whatever it was a couple years ago?

Well, they were shoving that down my throat every day to cover that.

Now it might be important to all you Californians because you live here.

Why do we need to know about yours?" And yet, every night, every night, day in and day out, that is the dumbing down of America by our news media.

Because we like this titillating journalism.

And you know what the downfall was to our news?

Up until that point in time, pre-60 Minutes, the news departments lost money.

So they would make it up in the entertainment division because they felt, well, we'll lose money but it's our job to inform.

Lo and behold, it goes to number 1 in the ratings.

The bean counters upstairs, the light goes off.

You mean we can make money with the news?

There was your downfall Because from that point on, the news became about making money, not informing you.

It became the ratings rather than information to smarten you up.

Now, you have, and here's the dangerous part, because of that, you now have the news, they're into creating the news, not into reporting it.

And that's very, very dangerous in my opinion.

So, it's up to us to be vigilant citizens.

Tom Jefferson said, dissension is the greatest form of patriotism and I believe that and I endorse that completely.

There's nothing wrong with holding elected officials' feet to the fire.

If you don't, you will get bad government.

I hope that you'll digest the documents that are in it.

I hope you're as shocked as I am about what some of the documents are.

And if there's any in particular that you see and would like to ask me about as you look into the book, feel free to do so.

I won't go into them now because reading is supposed to be pleasure and it's supposed to be you doing it.

So I'm not going to, unless you ask me specifically, I'm not going to go into the things that are in the book.

I opened and closed the book, more or less, with 2 quotations.

The first quotation comes from my particular favorite president my whole life, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And here's what President Kennedy said to us.

There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

And there is a very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment." Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Then I like to finish off also just to show it runs through our entire country's history.

Most of us remember Patrick Henry as saying, give me liberty or give me death.

But he also said this, Patrick Henry, quote, "'The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." And I think that you know those are 2 real great Americans.

And the words they speak are, in my opinion, very true.

So on that note, I'd like to say thank you, Google, for having me here.

It's kind of a remarkable company I heard that feeds you.

They used to feed me 3 hots and a cot all the time.

I was at the Naval Amphib base, Coronado, California.

And we won best Chow Hall for like 11 years in a row in the 11th Naval District, every Thursday we would have steak and lobster in the Navy.

And I was on what they call comrades because commuted ration type thing because our jobs take us away from the base so often as a SEAL that they pay you money.

So you have to eat at the, pay to eat at the chow hall when you're there.

And, because, but it was, I think lunch was 65 cents and you'd get steak and lobster.

Of course, then again, let's remember this was way back in the early 70s when the economy was much different, but so was my salary.

Because when I joined the Navy, initially, I made

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