As we’ve been reporting on previous episodes…”As part of an operation dubbed Fast and Furious, an ATF whistleblower contends at least 1,800 firearms illegally purchased in the U.S. were allowed to “walk” across the border…”
Well tonight, Mike has issued a “ten-thirteen” – a police radio call signifying that an officer is in serious trouble. And Mike is close to a meltdown over this story.
Tonight, we’re rejoined by Bill Conroy from Narco News to go over the latest in the story, and to cover his latest:
“Glide”, from Mark’s ongoing album project. Buy all 9 tracks here for as little as 2 smackers, and help the project continue:
<a href=”http://markmarshall.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-for-4-project” _mce_href=”http://markmarshall.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-for-4-project”>The Four For 4 Project by Mark Marshall</a>
Tonight, we interview Author T.J. English about his devastating article that details the horrendous drug-related violence that plagues the U.S. / Mexican border. The article is in the February 2011 issue of Playboy magazine.
“If there was doubt before, there is no longer: The killings represent a tipping point. What was viewed by some U.S. citizens and public officials as mostly a Mexican problem is now an American problem, with American victims. No one is immune. And no one is safe.”
About the guest:
Thomas Joseph “T.J.” English comes from a large Irish Catholic family of ten brothers and sisters. Early in his writing career, English worked as a freelance journalist in New York City during the day and drove a taxi at night. He often refers to cab driving as a metaphor for what he does as a writer – cruising the streets, interviewing strangers, exploring the unknown, reporting on what he sees and hears from his sojourns in and around the underworld.
In 1990, English published his first book, The Westies, an account of the last of the Irish Mob in the infamous Manhattan neighborhood known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The book was the result of a series of reports English wrote for a weekly Irish American newspaper based in New York…
His second book, Born to Kill (1995), was an unprecedented inside account of a violent Vietnamese gang based in New York’s Chinatown, that operated up and down the East Coast. In 2005, English published Paddy Whacked, a sweeping history of the Irish American gangster in New York, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, and other U.S. cities. Most recently, English published Havana Nocturne (2008), an investigative account of U.S. mobster infiltration of Havana, Cuba, in the years before the Revolution swept Fidel Castro into power.
As a journalist, English has written for many magazines and newspapers including: Esquire, Playboy, Irish America, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times…
In the mid-1990s, he wrote a three-part series for Playboy entitled “The New Mob” that explored the changing face of organized crime in America. His work as a writer has taken him to Cuba, Jamaica, Hong Kong, Mexico, Ireland, and all around the U.S… Most of his articles are on the subject of crime and criminal justice, though English writes on a wide variety of subjects including music, politics, and movies. He has published full-length interviews with Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, actor Bill Murray, director Martin Scorsese, and comedy legend George Carlin, to name a few.
In addition, English is a screenwriter and has penned episodes for the television crime dramas “NYPD Blue” and “Homicide,” for which he was awarded the prestigious Humanitas Prize.
His next book, THE SAVAGE CITY – Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge, is coming out this March.
Tonight’s show is a smorgasbord… from violence & US weapons in Mexico, to corruption in the U.S., to a resolution ensuring that citizens retain a right to videotape law enforcement pros on the job.
Our favorite reporter Bill Conroy joins us to discuss these and more…
About the Guest:
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.
Plunder: The Crime of Our Time is a hard-hitting investigative film by Danny Schechter. The “News Dissector” explores how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity uncovering the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed.
The film opens with the conviction of Ponzi King Bernie Madoff, whose acknowledged criminality drove a $65 billion dollar pyramid scheme. It argues that the wrong doing committed by a few individuals distracts from the real story, implicating the best-known institutions that financed and profited from fraudulent sub prime lending. This connection is now being investigated by the FBI as part of a probe into what it calls a “fraud epidemic.”
PLUNDER shows how these firms created special securities to repackage and resell these dubious loans after they were re-rated as Triple A. These firms then bet against many of these toxic assets with credit default swaps and other insurance scams. By leveraging these investments, they recklessly put trillions of dollars and the world economy at risk.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Danny Schechter about the film, media and about 20 other things…. a great, freewheeling conversation with the “Uber-investigative-journalist.”
More on the film at the Plunder website – or click on the cover above to purchase.
About the guest:
Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, television producer and an independent filmmaker who also writes and speaks about economic and media issues.
He is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues online network, and recipient of many awards including the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2001 Award for Excellence in Documentary Journalism.
His latest films are “Barack Obama, People’s President [2009], an examination of how Obama won and “IN DEBT WE TRUST: America Before The Bubble Bursts,” [2007] an investigation of the impact of credit and debt on American society.
In Debt We Trust was one of the first films or media coverage to expose subprime lending and warn of an economic crisis. He was a director on “Viva Madiba,” a feature-length biopic tribute to Nelson Mandela on his 90th Birthday. (2008).
He is the author of nine books.
Schechter is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company now in its 21st year. He founded and executive-produced the TV series “South Africa Now” and co-produced the series “Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.”
Schechter has specialized in investigative reporting and producing programming about the interface between human rights, journalism, popular music and society. His career began as the “News Dissector” at Boston’s leading rock station, WBCN. Later, he moved into television as an on-camera reporter for WGBH (Channel 2) in Boston and then as a producer for WLVI (Channel 56) and WCVB (Channel 5).
Schechter then joined the start-up team of CNN and later became a producer for ABC News 20/20. He produced 50 segments for ABC News, winning two national Emmys and nominated for two others.
He has produced and directed many TV specials and documentary films. click here for a full listing. He has spoken at scores of universities – from Harvard to Hamline, from Minnesota to MIT, NYU to Georgia State, Santa Monica to the University of Hawaii, Princeton to Cornell.
A Cornell University graduate, he received his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969. After college, he was a full time civil rights worker and then communications director of the Northern Student Movement, and worked as a community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program. Then, moving from the streets to the suites, Schechter served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant.
Schechter has reported from 61 countries. He was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and taught investigative reporting at the New School. Schechter’s writing has appeared in leading newspapers and magazines including the Newsday, Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Media Studies Journal, Detroit Free Press, Village Voice, Z, Mediachannel.org, OpedNews.com, ZNET, Creative1, Global Research, Alternet and many others.
A targeted assassination on the Texas border… Corruption in a New Mexico drug task force… How safe IS the Canadian border… and the U.S. Military has Special Ops Boots on the Ground in Mexico…
All border stories, plus an amusing piece from Slate.
This is a jam-packed show with Bill Conroy of Narco News, covering the above and more.
About the Guest:
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.
The House of Death 12, Plagiarism, and the Rick Horn Case.
The House of Death is the story of how an informant for Homeland Security, working “undercover” under the direct control of a Bush appointed United States Attorney, participated in a macabre house of horrors in which more than a dozen people were tortured to death. There have been a continuing series of articles at Narco News on the subject, reported by Bill Conroy, who has been a frequent guest.
In previous broadcasts, for the first time anywhere, Bill Conroy brought us the voice of the informant himself. Now, after an extended court battle, that informant has won the right to stay in the U.S. – as extradition to Mexico would certainly result in his death.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Bill Conroy about the House of Death and this informant – and also about how another online organization has taken to plagiarizing Bill’s work on the subject. See below for details.
Lastly – we discuss the latest in the Richard Horn case.
About the Guest:
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.
To the Reader: This article was first published in 1997, four years prior to 9/11. Imagine what a difference it might have made if mainstream media had really played its “watchdog” role and forced Congress to demand the best from our first line of defense, instead of their looking the other way at the kind of ineptitude exposed here…and only here.
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I think he’s from the CIA
At this moment the next big and terrible secret that our CIA and some of their shills in congress and the media are scrambling to keep under wraps is that for the past eight years, they have been protecting and covering up for yet another world class drug trafficker while he and his family amassed a colossal fortune by flooding American cities with drugs. Ex- President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, linked to a half billion dollars in suspected drug money is now in hiding,[1] only I’m betting that my own government sources are right when they say that he is in daily contact with his CIA handlers.
KING RAT[1]
The American Justice System – Where the Rat is King.
by Michael Levine
“Gentlemen, in this business, you’re only
as goodas your rats.”—Lecture on the Handling of
Criminal Informants (CIs) from U.S. Treasury Law
Enforcement Academy, August, 1965
“I’m looking for Mike Levine, ex-DEA,” said the man’s voice.
“How’d you get this number?” I said. It was close to midnight and my wife and I were in a San Francisco hotel on business.
“Man, you don’t know what I went through to find you.”
The voice belonged to a well known California defense attorney who said that he’d tracked me through my publisher.
“I’m in the middle of trying a case,” he said. “I need you to testify as an expert witness. The judge gave me over the weekend to find you and bring you here—”
“Whoa! Whoa!” I said. “Back up. I’m not a legal consultant—”
The Election, an alleged McCain assault and a HOD update
and MORE…
Tonight, we speak with Robert Parry from Consortium News about the election, candidates and more, Elliot D. Cohen about an alleged John McCain assault on the family of a POW, and Bill Conroy from Narco News about the latest in the House of Death case – and more.
About the Guests:
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It’s also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’ We STRONGLY URGE YOU to support the work they’re doing over at Consortium News
Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D. is a political analyst and media critic. His most recent book is The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government are turning America into a Dictatorship. He is the first prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award. Find him at ElliottDCohen.com
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.
In September 1975, Dominic Amorosa personally led the federal prosecution of Frank Lucas – a hardcore heroin kingpin – and 18 co-defendants.
Imagine his surprise when the film American Gangster was released, and it not only portrayed Lucas as some kind of antihero – but it showed the arrest of Lucas as being accomplished by New Jersey law enforcement authorities, when, in fact, it was it was DEA, together with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which apprehended, prosecuted and tried Frank Lucas and his suppliers.
Further – American Gangster goes on to portray a vicious and brutal search, indicates that the officers involved were associated with New York City’s Special Investigations Unit (which was admittedly corrupt, but had long since been disbanded), that Frank Lucas smuggled in heroin in the coffins of dead Vietnam G.I.s, and, finally, states that 3/4 of New York DEA agents were prosecuted for corruption as a result of Lucas’ testimony – none of which never happened.
These are but a few of the outright fabrications in American Gangster. And Dominic Amorosa is but one of the folks who are not content to sit back and watch it happen.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with yet another front-line guest, to get the REAL story about the Frank Lucas investigation and prosecution – and defend some honest law enforcement folks in the process.
About the Guest:
From 1972 through 1974, Dominic Amorosa was an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey where he prosecuted numerous criminal cases.
From 1974 through September 1981, Mr. Amorosa was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York where for several years he was assigned to the Fraud Unit. He later became Chief of the Narcotics Unit from 1979 to 1980 and Chief of the Organized Crime Unit from 1980 to 1981.
From September 1981 to the present, Mr. Amorosa has been in private practice specializing in complex litigation cases.
He also represents Gregory Korniloff, a former New York City DEA Agent. Mr. Korniloff was the case agent for DEA on Lucas’ federal case and personally participated in the search of Lucas’ house conducted in January 1975 pursuant to a valid federal search warrant, and the arrest of Lucas on that same day. During this search $585,000.00 in currency was seized, which was later physically introduced into evidence during Lucas’ federal criminal trial in the Southern District of New York in September 1975.
As we’ve been reporting on previous episodes…”As part of an operation dubbed Fast and Furious, an ATF whistleblower contends at least 1,800 firearms illegally purchased in the U.S. were allowed to “walk” across the border…”
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
In 1990, English published his first book, The Westies, an account of the last of the Irish Mob in the infamous Manhattan neighborhood known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The book was the result of a series of reports English wrote for a weekly Irish American newspaper based in New York…
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It’s also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’ We STRONGLY URGE YOU to 
Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D. is a political analyst and media critic. His most recent book is The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government are turning America into a Dictatorship. He is the first prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award. Find him at 
