“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:
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.
An expert in the field asks whether they should be called The “Federal Bureau of Invention”.
After repeatedly fingering the “wrong guy”, the final FBI investigation of an incident that terrified an already-terrified nation leaves more questions than it answers.
It was, by many accounts, the most extensive investigation in the history of the FBI – but there are many, including members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, who aren’t satisfied with the final result.
“…the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a ‘lone nut.’ The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins’ RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were “ruled out” as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy…”
This from Dr. Meryl Nass – an expert in the subject.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Dr. Nass about the case.
Professional chronology:
BS Biology 1974, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Lab Technician 1974-1976, Immunology Department. John Curtin School of Medical Research, Canberra, Australia
MD Degree 1980; attended New Jersey Medical School 1976-78, attended University of Mississippi Medical School, 1978-80
Birth of two children, 1980 and 1981, with part-time work as medical consultant for Social Security Disability, 1980-1982
Internal Medicine Residency 1982-5, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi
Emergency Room Physician 1985-1999, Parkview Hospital, Brunswick ME (2 years), Wing Hospital, Palmer MA (10 years), Farren Hospital, Turners Falls MA (1 year) , Franklin Medical Center, Greenfield MA (1 year)
Instructor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Department of Internal Medicine, 1989-1993
Internal Medicine Physician 1993, Kaiser Permanente, Amherst Massachusetts; 1999-2002 solo practitioner, Freeport, Maine
Removal of spinal cord meningioma 2002, necessitating closure of my solo practice
Internist and Hospitalist 2003-present, Mount Desert Island Hospital, Bar Harbor, Maine
Continue reading The Anthrax attacks and the FBI investigation
The U.S. domestic War on Drugs is still being waged IN YOUR NAME with numerous atrocities and injustices that would shock you, except that no one is paying any attention. Do not miss the major new article by T.J. ENGLISH entitled DOPE in the Dec. ’09 issue of Playboy. The article details the story of Lee Lucas, a corrupt DEA agent who framed innocent people on narcotics charges and is soon to go on trial in Cleveland for civil rights violations, falsification of evidence and other criminal charges. It is a story that you should know about if you care about issues of criminal justice and the drug war, America’s longest-running war (now going on 40 years!).
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with T.J. English about this devastating article.
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.
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.
“It may become one of the great historical mysteries, leaving future scholars to scratch their heads over how someone with as few qualifications as Geroge W. Bush came to lead the world’s most powerful nation at the start of the 21st century.”
“Historians may ponder why so many Americans thought that an enterprise as vast and complicated as the US government could be guided by a person who had failed at nearly every job he ever had. Why did so many voters believe that a little-travelled incurious and inarticulate man of privilege could lead the planet’s only superpower in a world of daunting challenges, shifting dangers and sharpening competition….”
These are the first two paragraphs of a book that should be read by everyone who votes. It answers the questions it poses….
This interview is in three segments. In part three, we also take a look at competing agencies taking credit for solving the Oklahoma City bombing.
American citizen Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran a year ago during a March 8-9, 2007 business trip to Kish Island.
Mr. Levinson’s wife Christine, his son and sister-in-law visited Iran in December in an effort to gather information about his disappearance and press the Iranian government on his case. While the Iranian authorities guaranteed the security of the family during their journey, they provided few details from their investigation.
Tonight, we talk with Christine Levinson about the disappearance of Bob Levinson, and his family’s efforts to bring him home safely.
Then, we talk with Bill Conroy of Narco News about the latest in the House of Death and CIA plane stories.
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.
“Sometimes, the truth is right in front of us, even if it comes in the form of a seemingly misspoken sentence.
During the political storm that erupted in early 2006 over the Bush administration’s plans to turn over port security to a United Arab Emirates-based company, the president was quoted on Fox News saying the following on March 12 of that year:
“People don’t need to worry about security. This deal wouldn’t go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America.”
Apparently, if we are willing to heed the story of a former West Wing lead mailroom assistant, Laura C. Jones, the president’s gaff underscores another truth: that his staff isn’t concerned about White House security either. ”
(From the Bill Conroy Narconews Article)
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Ms. Jones, and her counsel Mike McCray of the No Fear Coalition about this amazing story.
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.
Bill Conroy has worked as a reporter or editor for the past eighteen years at newspapers in Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas.
Professional chronology:
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.
American citizen Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran a year ago during a March 8-9, 2007 business trip to Kish Island.
Philip Shenon 
“Sometimes, the truth is right in front of us, even if it comes in the form of a seemingly misspoken sentence.
