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Tonight’s guests:
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
His investigative reporting over the past five years has focused on corruption and discrimination within federal law enforcement agencies.
He is also a journalist for Narco News. His investigative pieces, particularly those on the House of Death, have made him our most-favored guest.
Stephan Salisbury is the senior cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he has been a reporter for three decades.
He has won numerous awards for his work and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize as part of an Inquirer investigative team looking into local election fraud.
He is author of the recently published Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland published by Nation Books.
Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, is founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, executive editor of the New Paradigm book series, a founding board member of the Epic of Evolution Society, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, The International Society of Human Ethology, and the Academy of Political Science. He has been featured in every edition of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering since the publication’s inception.
Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, an internationally recognized expert on intelligence, is the President and CEO of the Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, a national security education, training and consulting company.
From 2002-2005, Dr. Lowenthal served as the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production and also as the Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National Intelligence Council. Prior to these duties, he served as Counselor to the Director of Central Intelligence. Dr. Lowenthal was the staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 104th Congress (1995-97), where he directed the committee’s study on the future of the Intelligence Community, IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century. He also served in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), as both an office director and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and has been the Senior Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.
Dr. Lowenthal has written extensively on intelligence and national security issues, including five books and over 90 articles or studies. His most recent book, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Congressional Quarterly Press, 4th ed., 2009), has become the standard college and graduate school textbook on the subject. He has also written a fantasy novel, Crispan Magicker, published in 1978. Dr. Lowenthal is a frequent public commentator on intelligence issues. He has appeared on each of the major networks, the Lehrer Newshour and Charlie Rose; his op-eds have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Dr. Lowenthal received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. He joined the adjunct faculty of the Johns Hopkins University in 2008, after 14 years as an adjunct at Columbia University. He is the Executive Director of the International Association for Intelligence Education and a Chairman Emeritus of the Intelligence Committee for AFCEA.
In 2005, Dr. Lowenthal was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Intelligence Community’s highest award. In 2006, he received AFCEA’s Distinguished Service Award for service to the Intelligence Community. In 1988, Dr. Lowenthal was the Grand Champion on Jeopardy!, the television quiz show.
Photo by Charles Miller
LESLIE KEAN is an independent investigative journalist with a background in freelance writing and radio broadcasting. She has contributed articles to dozens of publications here and abroad including the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Providence Journal, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, Sydney Morning Herald, Bangkok Post, The Nation, and The Journal for Scientific Exploration. Her stories have been syndicated through Knight Ridder/Tribune, Scripps-Howard, New York Times wire service, Pacific News Service, and the National Publishers Association. While spending many years reporting on Burma, she co-authored Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity (Aperture, 1994) and she has contributed essays for a number of anthologies published between 1998 and 2009. Her freelance journalism has been supported by grants from numerous foundations including the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation, The Fund for Investigative Journalism, and the Nation Institute.
Kean was also a producer and on-air host for a daily investigative news program on KPFA radio, a Pacifica station in California. She began covering the UFO subject in 2000 with a feature story in the Boston Globe, and followed with additional mainstream stories. In 2002, she co-founded the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi), an independent alliance advocating for greater government openness on information about UFOs, and for responsible coverage by the media based on a rational and credible approach. As director of the CFi, she was the plaintiff in a successful, five-year Freedom of Information Act federal lawsuit against NASA. In 2007, she co-organized a landmark Washington DC international press conference on official UFO investigations, which received media coverage around the world.
In light of the now decade-long war in Afghanistan, and the rapid-fire political and societal changes sweeping through the world, it helps to understand how we got here… what forces played a part in setting it up – and continue to exert their influence to this day.
Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald have been writing and researching the subject for over 30 years. Their valuable insight – not just with regard to the situation on the ground, but the political machinations and power players behind the scenes – sheds a sorely-needed light on these subjects.
Tonight, Mike and Mark talk with them about this, propaganda, the media and more.
About the guests:
Gould & Fitzgerald have been involved in the Afghan debate for over thirty years. Their books, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story (2009) and Crossing Zero – The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire (2011) have been praised internationally by numerous news, foreign policy and military experts.
Their involvement in Afghanistan began in 1981 when they were the first journalists to gain access through diplomatic channels at the United Nations following the expulsion of 1135 western journalists one month after the Soviet invasion. Contracted to CBS news, they found a stark contrast to the picture that was playing on the evening news. In 1983 they invited Roger Fisher, director of the Harvard Negotiation Project to return with them to assess the chances of getting the Soviets to leave Afghanistan. Contracted to ABC Nightline, Roger was told by the Soviets that they wanted to go home. Nightline skewed the story away from negotiation. Over the years they saw efforts to negotiate a resolution in Afghanistan consistently overruled by forces who always managed to undermine peaceful solutions. Cold War journalism still haunts the Afghan story to this day.
Tonight, we have an in-depth discussion about intelligence, training and recruitment of intelligence agents – in both analysis and operations – and the crucial subject of human intelligence.
Joining Mike and Mark is Dr. Mark Lowenthal – someone who has not only worked in the intelligence community, but in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 104th Congress (1995-97).
Dr. Lowenthal is the author of Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy – which details how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. With his friendly prose, he demystifies a complicated and complex process. Rich with examples and anecdotes, Intelligence also includes bolded key terms, an acronym list, suggested readings and websites, and a list of major intelligence reviews or proposals.
The fourth edition highlights many crucial recent developments in reforms, ethics, and transnational issues, including:
-the actual implementation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) reforms and their successes and strains;
-the ongoing legal, operational, and ethical issues raised by the war against terrorism;
-the growth of transnational issues, such as WMD;
-fresh coverage of analytic standards and analytic transformation;
-more in-depth explanation of geospatial, signal, and human intelligence;
-a new discussion of the lessons of 9/11;
- and, the growing politicization of intelligence in the United States, specifically through the declassified use of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs).
It’s a fascinating conversation about where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.
About the guest:
Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, an internationally recognized expert on intelligence, is the President and CEO of the Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, a national security education, training and consulting company.
From 2002-2005, Dr. Lowenthal served as the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production and also as the Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National Intelligence Council. Prior to these duties, he served as Counselor to the Director of Central Intelligence. Dr. Lowenthal was the staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 104th Congress (1995-97), where he directed the committee’s study on the future of the Intelligence Community, IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century. He also served in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), as both an office director and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and has been the Senior Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.
Dr. Lowenthal has written extensively on intelligence and national security issues, including five books and over 90 articles or studies. His most recent book, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Congressional Quarterly Press, 4th ed., 2009), has become the standard college and graduate school textbook on the subject. He has also written a fantasy novel, Crispan Magicker, published in 1978. Dr. Lowenthal is a frequent public commentator on intelligence issues. He has appeared on each of the major networks, the Lehrer Newshour and Charlie Rose; his op-eds have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Dr. Lowenthal received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. He joined the adjunct faculty of the Johns Hopkins University in 2008, after 14 years as an adjunct at Columbia University. He is the Executive Director of the International Association for Intelligence Education and a Chairman Emeritus of the Intelligence Committee for AFCEA.
In 2005, Dr. Lowenthal was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Intelligence Community’s highest award. In 2006, he received AFCEA’s Distinguished Service Award for service to the Intelligence Community. In 1988, Dr. Lowenthal was the Grand Champion on Jeopardy!, the television quiz show.
Links: “A Secret Life” – book referred to by Dr. Lowenthal in the broadcast.
“The Liberty City Seven, the Fort Dix Six, the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy, the Newburgh Four—each has had their fear-filled day in the sun. None of these plots ever came close to happening. How could they? All were bogus from the get-go: money to buy missiles or cell phones or shoes and fancy duds—provided by the authorities; plans for how to use the missiles and bombs and cell phones—provided by authorities; cars for transport and demolition—issued by the authorities; facilities for carrying out the transactions—leased by those same authorities. Played out on landscapes manufactured by federal imagineers, the climax of each drama was foreordained. The failure of the plots would then be touted as the success of the investigations and prosecutions.”
The above is from Stephan Salisbury’s amazing article “Stage Managing the War on Terror“, which details just how bad the situation of informant handling has become… and how it puts us at risk. Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Salisbury about this incredibly well-researched piece.
About the guest:
Stephan Salisbury is the senior cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he has been a reporter for three decades.
He has won numerous awards for his work and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize as part of an Inquirer investigative team looking into local election fraud.
He is author of the recently published Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland published by Nation Books.
The 100 Years Episode – 4 Federal Agents talk about the state of Security and intelligence both in the U.S. and around the world.
Then…
We talked about the story last week – but this week, we got someone who is actually involved in the case. Mark interviews David Rocah, ACLU attorney for Anthony Graber – the motorcyclist who is being prosecuted for wiretapping after he posted a video of a law enforcement officer pulling him over on a highway exit ramp.
Here’s the video in question… the action begins at about the three-minute mark:
Unlike other accounts of the historic attacks on 9/11, Mark Gaffney’s fascinating book surveys the role of the world’s most advanced military command and control plane, the E-4B, in the day’s events and proposes that the horrific incidents were the work of a covert operation staged within elements of the U.S. military and the intelligence community. Presenting hard evidence in the form of proprietary photos taken from raw footage filmed by CNN, the account places the world’s most advanced electronics platform circling over the White House at approximately the time of the Pentagon attack. The argument offers an analysis of the new evidence within the context of the events and shows that it is irreconcilable with the official 9/11 narrative.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Mark Gaffney about this amazing book.
About the Guest
Mark H. Gaffney is an environmentalist, a peace activist, a researcher, and the author of Dimona, the Third Temple?; The First Tree of the Day; and Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes. His articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Atlantis Rising. He lives in Chiloquin, Oregon.
In the first segment, Mike and Mark discuss THIS New York Times article, but more importantly, the subject of informant handling, who does it, and who hires them.
In the second part, we speak with Celerino Castillo – Vietnam Vet and Ex-DEA agent – about Iran Contra, Death Squads, government complicity in drug smuggling, Oliver North and Cele’s recent arrest..
About the Guest:
CELERINO “CELE” CASTILLO III, is a 20-year veteran of both state and federal law enforcement with 12-year service in the U. S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration. Mr. Castillo is a highly decorated DEA agent for his undercover operations in Central and South America. For several years, he was also placed in major cities like San Francisco and New York City for deep cover operations. He is an author of “Powderburns” Cocaine, Contras And The Drug War, and is an acclaimed public speaker and educator.
COURT QUALIFIED EXPERT WITNESS: For 20 years Mr. Castillo has qualified as an “expert witness” in criminal and civil trials, both for and against various state and federal law enforcement agencies, in the following subjects: Undercover tactics, entrapment, informant handling practices and procedures, all subjects related to drugs trafficking, money laundering, and international narcotics investigations, police profiling, research on federal documentation for the defense. (Bates)
MR. CASTILLO has written several internationally known articles against federal law enforcement corruption: “Written Statement of Celerino Castillo III, for The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence” 1998. He was mentioned in several articles on Informant Handling for The National Law Journal. ABC’s Primetime Live, Dateline NBC, Discovery Channel and other numerous news magazines have done exclusive interviews on Mr. Castillo pertaining to “Outrageous Conduct” by the U.S. Government.
This week, Mike and Mark are joined by Celerino Castillo – Vietnam Vet and Ex-DEA agent – to talk about torture, the sorry state of the justice system and the “war on drugs”. Listeners will want to check out the article on waterboarding referenced in the show, by Federal Judge Evan Wallach.
About the Guest:
CELERINO “CELE” CASTILLO III, is a 20-year veteran of both state and federal law enforcement with 12-year service in the U. S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration. Mr. Castillo is a highly decorated DEA agent for his undercover operations in Central and South America. For several years, he was also placed in major cities like San Francisco and New York City for deep cover operations. He is an author of “Powderburns” Cocaine, Contras And The Drug War, and is an acclaimed public speaker and educator.
COURT QUALIFIED EXPERT WITNESS: For 20 years Mr. Castillo has qualified as an “expert witness” in criminal and civil trials, both for and against various state and federal law enforcement agencies, in the following subjects: Undercover tactics, entrapment, informant handling practices and procedures, all subjects related to drugs trafficking, money laundering, and international narcotics investigations, police profiling, research on federal documentation for the defense. (Bates)
In a work of history that will make headlines, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon investigates the investigation of 9/11 and tells the inside story of the most significant federal commission since the Warren Commission.
From the Commission’s inception, Shenon covered its workings on a daily basis, developing sources at all levels of the investigation. Now, more than five years later, he has returned to those sources and uncovered important information which casts a new light on what the Commission discovered – and failed to discover.
If a great reporter had been present throughout the workings of The Warren Commission, we might have a better understanding of the events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Philip Shenon’s book on the 9/11 Commission serves as both an essential historical record and a fascinating inside account of how our government works at the highest and most secret levels.
About the guest:
Philip Shenon is an investigative reporter with The New York Times, where he has worked since 1981. He was the lead reporter on the investigation of the September 11 commission and has held several of the most important assignments of the Washington Bureau, including chief Defense Department correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, Congressional correspondent and Justice Department Correspondent. He was one of two Times reporters embedded with American grounds troops during the invasion of Iraq and worked in pre-war Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran for Times foreign staff. This is his first book.
Marc Levin has already won almost every award there is for his documentary film and movie making. His film Blowback, done in the mid 1990s is without a doubt, the most prescient film about CIA’s heavy-handed, fraternity boyish meddling in world politics and the price Americans have had to pay in “blowback” When 9-11 finally did happen, it was no surprise.
Now Marc and his team focus their investigative efforts on THE PROTOCOLS OF ZION. A fictional propaganda creation presenting a Zionist conspiracy to take over the world, as a “Historical” document.
The POZ was created by the Russian Czarist secret service in the early 1900′s, in order to garner public support for the then ongoing murderous “pogroms” (rapes and murders) of Eastern European Jewery.
Astoundingly, to some, the “Protocols of Zion” is still a worldwide best seller, even available at Walmart’s. Marc Levin and crew have spent the last year investigating the effects of “the lie that won’t die” on all of us. The film “The Protocols of Zion” can be seen on Cinemax, and Cinemax on Demand.
A still from “Protocols of Zion”, where Marc Levin visits NaziMart™.
In late 1996 / early 1997, Mike Levine and 3 fellow federal agents with CIA, FBI and DEA, came together for a broadcast, whose purpose was to warn America that those agencies whom we were trusting to protect us against terrorism were too inept and badly run to do the job - and that mainstream media’s inability to sound the alarm and an easily manipulated congress, would ensure that ‘horrific terrorist acts and the loss of our rights as citizens, would surely follow.’ Hear those prophetic words now, because nothing has changed.
While the fidelity of the actual recording leaves much to be desired, the conversation is striking to say the least. It predicts much of what has since come to pass.
It is, in many respects, one of the most important broadcasts in the history of the show.
The three participants:
Dennis Dayle – DEA
He began his federal career working for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in Chicago, a forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he continued to distinguish himself. From the mid-1970s to 1980s, Dayle led investigations into international drug smuggling for the DEA, heading up Centac, which were chronicled in 1986 in a best-selling book, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace, by James Mills.
Ralph McGehee – CIA
a 25 year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency enlightened us with this following paragraph from his 1983 book “Deadly Deceits,” which edifies a familiar pattern of deception that we have witnessed but we never understood. He stated the following about the CIA:
“The CIA is not an intelligence agency. In fact, it acts largely as an anti-intelligence agency, producing only that information wanted by policymakers to support their plans and suppressing information that does not support those plans. As the covert action arm of the president, the CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the U.S. public, to mold opinion. It employs the gamut of disinformation techniques from forging documents to planting and discovering “communist” weapons caches. But the major weapon in its arsenal of disinformation is the “intelligence” it feeds to policymakers.
Instead of gathering genuine intelligence that could serve as the basis for reasonable policies, the CIA often ends up distorting reality, creating out of the whole cloth “intelligence” to justify policies that have already been decided upon. Policymakers leak this “intelligence” to the media to deceive us all and gain our support.”
Wesley Swearingen – FBI
Former FBI Special Agent from 1951 to 1977, M. Wesley Swearingen wrote “FBI Secrets”. This important work traces his FBI career in “domestic counter-intelligence” from the time he signed on after World War II to his retirement and beyond.
Swearingen began his career doing “black bag jobs” on Communists in Chicago. In Kentucky and New York City, he spent years doing serious criminal investigations, which had been his goal in joining the FBI. But J. Edgar Hoover fixated on the threat posed by such groups as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen – Swearingen is more explicit than most on the FBI’s unconstitutional role in an important pattern of political corruption and illegal repression of U.S. Civil Rights in the 1960s, under his one-time mentor, Hoover.
He is interviewed in the documentary films All Power to the People! and The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
The episode runs 2.5 hours, and it’s worth every minute.
“In 1996, four former agents with CIA, FBI and DEA, came together for three-hours of broadcast whose purpose was to warn America that those agencies whom we were trusting to protect us against terrorism were too inept and badly run to do the job, and that mainstream media’s inability to sound the alarm and an easily manipulated congress, would ensure that ‘horrific terrorist acts and the loss of our rights as citizens, would surely follow.’ Hear those prophetic words now, because nothing has changed.”
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
Stephan Salisbury is the senior cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he has been a reporter for three decades.
Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, is founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, executive editor of the New Paradigm book series, a founding board member of the Epic of Evolution Society, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, The International Society of Human Ethology, and the Academy of Political Science. He has been featured in every edition of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering since the publication’s inception.
Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, an internationally recognized expert on intelligence, is the President and CEO of the Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, a national security education, training and consulting company.
Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald have been writing and researching the subject for over 30 years. Their valuable insight – not just with regard to the situation on the ground, but the political machinations and power players behind the scenes – sheds a sorely-needed light on these subjects.
CELERINO “CELE” CASTILLO III, is a 20-year veteran of both state and federal law enforcement with 12-year service in the U. S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration. Mr. Castillo is a highly decorated DEA agent for his undercover operations in Central and South America. For several years, he was also placed in major cities like San Francisco and New York City for deep cover operations. He is an author of 
Philip Shenon 
Marc Levin has already won almost every award there is for his documentary film and movie making. His film Blowback, done in the mid 1990s is without a doubt, the most prescient film about CIA’s heavy-handed, fraternity boyish meddling in world politics and the price Americans have had to pay in “blowback” When 9-11 finally did happen, it was no surprise.
