Whowhatwhy's Podcasts

Some people may know where bodies are buried; Rex Bradford knows where all the papers are buried. The leading archivist and historian of the records of the JFK assassination has a lot to say in his talk with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman. According to Bradford, the recently released 19,000+ pages are interesting, but in no way dispositive. What they reveal, more than anything else, is further evidence of how so many cover-ups — for so many reasons, by so many groups, agencies, and individuals — have hopelessly muddied the waters. Bradford believes that from President Lyndon Johnson’s recruitment of Earl Warren to President Donald Trump’s holding back the release of still more documents, layer upon layer of self-serving lies have made the truth now impossible to uncover. Moreover, he argues that kicking the can down the road really does work as a way to hide what Peter Dale Scott once called “the bleak path to the truth.” Bradford points out how ironic it is that there are now over five million pages of documen

During the Cold War, our elite universities were a breeding ground for future spies. Schools like Yale and Harvard provided some of the “best and the brightest” to America's intelligence agencies. Today, the CIA and FBI are using college campuses once again to gain new recruits in the global war for clandestine information and technology. These government agencies, in many instances, are working with the full support and blessing of professors and often top university administrators, who rely on both government contracts and the maximum revenue that comes from over one million international students in US universities.     According to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Daniel Golden, the efforts range from small colleges to large state universities to Ivy League institutions. In fact, Golden tells Jeff Schechtman in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast that Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government is one of the places where spies are most actively recruited. In addition, foreign governments see US universities as an al

It may very well be that Donald Trump is president because, in the last few years, four million jobs were automated out of existence in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In Michigan alone, 40 percent of workers who lost manufacturing jobs ended up on disability. According to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, labor force participation remains low and the glowing unemployment statistics we hear are woefully out of line with what’s really going on. Every day more and more repetitive jobs, both cognitive and physical, are being eliminated. Everywhere from the factory floor to truck fleets, from radiology labs to some parts of the legal profession, human beings are being replaced by automation and AI.   According to Yang, all the talk about technology creating new jobs is misleading, as only a few new jobs are created for the thousands that are eliminated. In his opinion, this is a conversation that we have been unwilling to have. Yang tells Jeff Schechtman, in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, that the answer to

Charles Swift is director of the Dallas-based Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America. He led the defense team in the month-long Orlando trial of Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. Swift has an enviable record of success in securing justice for unpopular clients. As a Navy judge advocate general, Swift was a member of the defense bar at Guantánamo Bay, where his advocacy won freedom for a Yemeni detainee in a precedent-setting Supreme Court ruling. Following the Pulse shooting, Salman was charged with aiding and abetting, and obstruction of justice. In his conversation about the trial with Peter B. Collins, Swift details major misconduct by the FBI and prosecutors, who introduced into the record Salman’s “confession” which they knew was riddled with falsehoods. Swift says that the prosecution strategy was to put Mateen on trial posthumously, in the effort to prove that his wife helped him scope out targets for his deadly intentions. But this led to major revisions in the “

We have seen endless stories about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. We have endured two days of Mark Zuckerberg explaining the Facebook business model. Social media and its role in politics is on everyone's mind. However, none of the current clamor speaks to the broader impact of the internet, or of big tech in general. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jamie Bartlett, director of the Center for Analysis of Social Media, reminds Jeff Schechtman that the internet was supposed to be a democratizing force. The widespread availability of digital technology was to allow freedom of information and communication on a scale never thought possible before. The reality, Bartlett argues, is that every aspect of the internet and its culture is feeding the worst of humanity’s tribal instincts. It’s becoming clear, says Bartlett, that internet technology is simply antithetical to democracy. Perhaps it's no coincidence that, as the internet grows, authoritarian regimes proliferate. As tech companies get bigger, the institu

We are facing planet-wide extinction, a climate emergency — and our current course is suicidal. That is the underlying belief of author and scientist Richard Smith, who is Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. Smith believes that our current model of capitalism, with virtually unlimited growth and consumption, cannot sustain a planetary population of nine billion people. He tells Schechtman that we do not need most of what we consume, and that our current behavior must stop. But Smith’s Jeremiad goes even further. He talks about the need to stop building planes and cars, to ration air travel and fishing, to nationalize and take public control of the fossil fuel industry, to close down oil companies and many manufacturers of disposable consumer goods, and to make less stuff. He understands that this may mean putting whole industries out of business and people out of work, but he thinks it’s the only way to keep the planet habitable for humans. As just one solution, Smith talks about the ne

The evidence that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King is overwhelming. As the Washington Post recently pointed out, famed attorney William Pepper stands astride all of the information and work that has uncovered the truth. Pepper was a friend of King in the last years of his life. Some years after King's death, Pepper went on to represent James Earl Ray in his guilty plea and subsequent conviction. But Pepper believes that Ray was framed by the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police, and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, William Pepper talks to Jeff Schechtman about the totality of the case. He tells of his initial interview with Ray, 40 years ago, and why it became clear to him right away that Ray was innocent. Pepper explains that Ray had no motive for the shooting, that he acted at the direction of his handler, a man named “Raoul,” with clear ties to Hoover and the FBI. Pepper explains how, over the years, the evidence has mounted about Ho

Longtime Memphis journalist Marc Perrusquia spent years investigating the story of how a famous African American photographer, with remarkable access, played a key role in the civil rights movement, all while being an informant for the FBI. Ernest Withers’s photography captured some of the most stunning moments of the civil rights era: including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first integrated buses in Montgomery, AL, and the blood flowing into King’s room from the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, where he was assassinated. Withers had a front row seat to history, as a man trusted and beloved by the movement’s inner circle. All the while he was reporting back to the FBI. On this 50th anniversary of King’s assassination, Perrusquia talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman about Withers and the impact that his information had on both the civil rights movement and the Bureau. Perrusquia speculates that Withers, who was also a disgraced cop, may have actually been a double agent, informing both the FBI a

Be it privatizing the Veterans Administration, railing against “socialized medicine,” gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, or trying to starve public education, the proponents of these ideas all seem to be beholden to the work of Ayn Rand. Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, was published 75 years ago this month, after being turned down by 12 publishers. Yet for people like Paul Ryan, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Peter Thiel, it might as well have been a briefing paper published this morning. Even though Bill Buckley kicked Rand out of the conservative movement in the late 1950s, at a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, Paul Ryan declared, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.” Yaron Brook, the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, thinks that The Fountainhead is the classic American novel and that Rand’s ideas are at the c

Author and intelligence expert James Bamford says the reports of Russian interference in the 2016 US election, which is being treated as one of the biggest stories out there right now, are overblown. So far, Bamford argues, no evidence has been presented that this is anything other than the type of intelligence gathering or operation that countries are engaged in all the time. Bamford is critical of the hyped, 24/7 coverage of Russiagate. Indeed, he sees widespread hacking by Russia, the United States, and other online spies as old news. He has special criticism for his colleagues in the media, who have “squandered their objectivity and precious resources on a single story.” He points out that the best known use of cyberweapons is America’s insertion of the Stuxnet virus into the automated centrifuges at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program. Despite this, he notes, many American leaders present the US only as a victim of cyberattacks. In this Radio WhoWhatWhy interview, Bamford also talks about the recent fail

The Dow Jones plummeted Thursday over concerns that President Donald Trump is plunging the US in a trade war with China. Such a conflict is widely expected to harm US consumers. But what about the Asian superpower? What if the Chinese Emperor has no clothes? Remember back in the 1970s when Americans were afraid of the Japanese economy taking over? When they bought great American assets and real estate? In fact, all that fear and anxiety were misplaced. The same may be true today with respect to China. We hear breathtaking economic numbers coming out of Beijing. The consistent low unemployment rate and high GDP are often the envy of the world. But are those numbers real? And if not, does the Chinese government even know what the real numbers are? In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jeff Schechtman talks to Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Service journalist Dinny McMahon, who has spent more than a decade inside China, and who understands much about the mythology and challenges of the Chinese economy. Many

The recent revisionist history about Gina Haspel, Trump's nominee for CIA director, should make very little difference in examining the totality of her record on torture and its cover up. According to John Kiriakou, a 15-year CIA veteran, and the whistleblower on the CIA covert torture operation, Gina Haspel is the “godmother of the torture program.” Regarding ProPublica's correction of the record of her involvement, Kiriakou says that while she may not have actually overseen the torture of Abu Zubaydah, she did arrive at the secret CIA black-op site in Thailand in time for the waterboarding and torture of at least one other detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Kiriakou explains to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman how Haspel was also a key link in the destruction of the 92 tapes that contained the evidence of torture. She ordered the tapes destroyed, even though they had become federal records. They were shredded counter to the advice of White House and CIA counsel. Kiriakou reminds us that her defense of “just fol

“Israel as a country should be appreciated and celebrated,” Avraham Burg says, but it should no longer be looked upon as the land of “oranges and equality.” You might think those comments come from an anti-Israel professor at an elite US university. Instead, Avraham Burg is part of Israel’s history. His father was a member of the founding generation. Burg served as Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and in the Labor government of Shimon Peres before retiring from politics in 2004.   This personal history is why it’s so surprising to hear him declare that the Israel of 1948 is not there anymore. Burg argues in his conversation with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman, that the only guarantor of today motivations of sovereignty and security is a call for what he sees as a one-state solution. One central government and some kind of confederation of two regimes. He suggests that, in his view of the world, the Israeli-Palestinian issues are no longer at the center of global consciousness. Much of the world has moved on. Furt

Reporter A.C. Thompson details his investigation of Atomwaffen, a growing neo-Nazi and murderous white supremacist group with heavily armed members in about 20 American cities. Founded and run by young, white males, the group has expanded in the wake of the protests last year in Charlottesville, VA. One member, Samuel Woodward, is charged in Orange County, CA, with the January 2018 murder of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein — a gay, Jewish college student.   Related: What Five ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Cases Tell Us About FBI Tactics Related: Spotlight on the FBI: The Bureau’s Checkered Past and Present Thompson’s team at the website ProPublica obtained and reviewed some 250,000 chat messages exchanged by Atomwaffen (German for “nuclear weapons”) supporters, including hateful, anti-Semitic comments about Bernstein’s murder. Thompson notes that Atomwaffen is not aligned with Trump. The group’s guru is James Mason — who joined the American Nazi Party in the 1960s and wrote Siege, which is considered Atomwaffen’s manife

The media and the public focus on the school shootings that resulted in fatalities and casualties. However, many potential massacres are headed off by savvy interventions. What can we learn from those?

In this wide-ranging podcast, Barrett Brown and actor and documentary filmmaker Alex Winter talk about the complacency that ails so much of American society. They also discuss how, instead of fixing the systemic problems that plague the US, people across the political spectrum are focusing on the sideshow that President Donald Trump provides. In the meantime, however, all the institutions that are in dire need of reform are neglected — making the job of fixing them in the future even more difficult. Yet because we are now relying on some of those same institutions — like the FBI and the national security apparatus — to protect us, we might easily forget some of the institutional excesses and missteps that got us here. What we have, according to Brown and Winter, is a massive lack of appreciation for nuance, which may come to haunt us later. Brown also takes a look at the role of the internet. It was supposed to be the great liberator of individual actions, yet it has become, at least for now, the most central

The US government is currently holding about 400,000 men and women in a patchwork of immigration prisons. Some are kept in corporate facilities that are guaranteed a minimum number of prisoners daily; others are in cells leased from county jails and other lockups.  Carlos Hidalgo has spent two stretches at California’s Adelanto Detention Facility, where he witnessed food with maggots, guards having sex with inmates, easy access to drugs, and difficult access to legal counsel and family members. It’s an eye-opening look at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons in America today.  In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Hidalgo also reports that ICE guards have little training, and says they are more like mall cops than professional prison guards. With a population ranging from serious felons to undocumented people with a DUI or minor violation, the guards are outnumbered and unable to break up fights between prisoners.  And he tells of the time he spent in solitary confinement for helping others with legal pape

The traditional American notion of almost absolute freedom of speech may have run its course. Journalist and academic Damon Linker says some Americans may be having second thoughts about what we’ve come to accept as free speech. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, he talks to Jeff Schechtman about his recent analysis that found free speech is under siege from all sides. Linker notes what’s happening on college campuses, where arguments over diversity are polarizing students and faculty, and, on the political right, where state power is being marshaled to suppress “unpatriotic” speech. The result, according to Linker, is a potential constriction of public dialogue and a clear decline in democratic values. Civics classes once taught that untrammeled freedom of speech would allow the truth to triumph. But does this work when propaganda, multiplied many fold by social media, drowns out other voices in a blare of noise? In his conversation with Schechtman, Linker digs deep into the many complexities of the issue a

Coleen Rowley is a former FBI special agent whose bravery as a whistleblower exposed many of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures. She was named one of Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. This week she talks with Jeff Schechtman about the recent shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  Rowley accentuates two problems with the FBI. One, that local threats — even in high schools — are not the province of the FBI. It would, however, have been the bureau’s job to make sure that local law enforcement was aware of the tips it received.  The second problem she identifies is that too much information is coming into the bureau. Ever since 9/11, and particularly since the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, we know that giant sweeps of “national security data” are producing more information than the government can process, no matter how many analysts are employed. She claims that, at this moment, there may be over one hundred million names on a government watch list.  Rowley’s biggest concern, tho

To understand the plundering of Iraq’s oil wealth, we have to look first at the original sin of the invasion itself. Blueprints showing how oil could help rebuild the country were drawn up post Desert Storm in the 1990s and resurrected in 2003. It never happened.     Journalist Erin Banco explains why, as she talks to Jeff Schechtman in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. She laments the dashed hopes of the Kurds and the Iraqi people. She explains the hapless actions of the Bush and Obama administrations, the real role of big oil and the damage done by tribal rivalries in Iraq.   She tells the story of the Talibani and the Barzani families, and how they got rich — along with oil company executives, government staffers and political parties. Meanwhile, the Iraqi people, who knew very little about what was happening, ended up with virtually nothing.   Banco says that for years Iraqi journalists have been killed in Iraq for even trying to report this story. Today, with entirely different players, the corruption and