Expert Witness Radio Show Mike Levine and Mark Marshall at http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/site/
THE MEXICAN DIPLOMAT, STRATFOR AND WIKILEAKS PART TWO.
On the heels of our last show with Narco News’ Bill Conroy about revelations that came to light through a Wikileaks document dump, Bill has released another piece detailing alleged collusion between the U.S. & Mexican Governments and Mexican drug cartels.
This week, Mike and Mark talk with Bill about the latest story, and do a fair amount of ranting all on their own.
Bill’s latest story:
US, Mexican Officials Brokering Deals with Drug “Cartels,” WikiLeaks Documents Show
Revelation Exposed in Email Correspondence Between
Private Intelligence Firm and Mexican Diplomat
The New Yorker article “Throwaways” that Mike referenced.
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.
Extra news – Mike’s legendary book The Big White Lie is now available in e-book format.
THE TERROR FACTORY
At the end of last year, Project Censored published their yearly top 25 censored stories list.
Well, Number 4 caught our eye pretty fast:
“4. FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has embarked on an unusual approach to ensure that the United States is secure from future terrorist attacks. The agency has developed a network of nearly 15,000 spies to infiltrate various communities in an attempt to uncover terrorist plots. However, these moles are actually assisting and encouraging people to commit crimes. Many informants receive cash rewards of up to $100,000 per case.”
The main Mother Jones article they cited was the work of Trevor Aaronson – whose subsequent book “The Terror Factory” nails the whole story.
Longtime listeners know that this has been one of our pet peeves forever – the financial and societal cost of mishandling informants.
Back in August of 2010, our “Stage Managing the War on Terror” episode with Stephan Salisbury covered some of the same cases we talk about tonight.
So we were only too pleased when Trevor agreed to have a talk with us about the subject.
About the guest:
Trevor Aaronson is author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism (Ig Publishing, January 2013). He is also co-director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.
Aaronson was a 2010-11 fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he produced an award-winning project about FBI counterterrorism operations for Mother Jones.
Previously, Aaronson was an investigative reporter and editor for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, where his stories ranged from local government investigations to reporting in Asia, Africa and South America. He was also formerly a staff writer for Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach.
A two-time finalist for the Livingston Awards for journalists under the age of 35, Aaronson has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including the Molly Prize, the international Data Journalism Award and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
Closing music: “Man Walking” from Mark’s New Eye album.
Below: A superinformant at work.
SUBVERSIVES
The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power
“In 1977, The Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student paper, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents bearing on FBI surveillance in Berkeley during the 60’s and early 70’s. In 1981, Seth Rosenfeld, then a Daily Cal reporter, started reading those files that the FBI turned over. He published some initial reports. Later that year, having observed how many files were missing or blacked out (“I wondered whether the bureau was America’s biggest consumer of Magic Markers,” he writes), he filed an additional request for “any and all” records on former UC President Clark Kerr, former Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio, and more than a hundred other individuals, organizations, and events. Five lawsuits, many more Magic Markers, and 30 years later, he had succeeded in retrieving more than 300,000 pages of records, a federal judge having ruled that the FBI had no legitimate law enforcement purpose in keeping them secret.”
-Todd Gitlin, FDL Book Salon
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Seth Rosenfeld, who spent 30 years researching and writing this groundbreaking book.
Subversives traces the FBI’s secret involvement with three iconic figures at Berkeley during the 1960s: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the fierce but fragile radical Mario Savio, and the liberal university president Clark Kerr. Through these converging narratives, the award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld tells a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance, illegal break-ins, infiltration, planted news stories, poison-pen letters, and secret detention lists. He reveals how the FBI’s covert operations—led by Reagan’s friend J. Edgar Hoover—helped ignite an era of protest, undermine the Democrats, and benefit Reagan personally and politically. At the same time, he vividly evokes the life of Berkeley in the early sixties—and shows how the university community, a site of the forward-looking idealism of the period, became a battleground in an epic struggle between the government and free citizens.
Part history, part biography, and part police procedural, Subversives reads like a true-crime mystery as it provides a fresh look at the legacy of the sixties, sheds new light on one of America’s most popular presidents, and tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of secrecy and unchecked power.
About the guest:
Seth Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco. He was aninvestigative reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle and has won the George Polk Award and other journalism honors.
When the Obama administration sent 24 Navy SEALs into Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, “Geronimo” was the code name for the mission. It was also the code the SEALs used to alert their commanders that they identified their target; and finally “Geronimo-E KIA” was the coded message to confirm that they had killed Bin Laden.
Tonight, Mike and Mark speak with Professor Jim Craven / Omahkohkiaaiipooyii (Big Bear Speaks), a life-long Native American activist, a Professor of Economics at Clark College, Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences about the Obama Administration’s use of “Geronimo” as a code word for Osama Bin Laden, and its’ historical significance.
Professor Craven also talks about cultural differences between China and the U.S., their attitudes towards each other, and the issues that keep the two in a very unsteady balance.
Then: When ex-marine Jose Guerena, a two-tour veteran of Iraq, was shot 60 times on May 5th by an Arizona SWAT team, the Pima County Sheriffs Department immediately made the Search Warrant for marijuana that led to the slaughter of this young man a “secret.” We’ll explore the questions about this warrant that mainstream media is afraid to ask.
About the guest:
Professor James M. Craven, a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen, is a veteran of the U.S. Army and a member of the Blackfoot Nation. His Blackfoot name is Omahkohkiaaiipooyii. For more than 30 years, he has taught economics, geography and ethnology from undergraduate to post-doctoral levels. A professor of economics at Clark College, Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii is a consulting and visiting professor of economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he serves on the editorial board of the journal “International Critical Thought.”
Additionally, he has been a guest lecturer at Yunnan University in the province of Yunnan and at the Minzu University of China. Located in Beijing Minzu University has been described as the most prestigious of China’s 13 “minzu,” or “nationalities” institutions, serving students from minority groups. Founded in 1911, Tsinghua University, China’s second oldest and largest university, is considered by many to be the premier sciences university in the country. Its graduates include many members of China’s current leadership.
Meeting with members of the Government of China as well as leading Chinese educators, Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii has participated in discussions related to international education, national minorities in China, and U.S.-China relations.
He served as a Tribal Judge dealing with Indian Residential Schools atrocities (of which his own mother was a victim) on a UN-NGO-supported Tribunal in Canada, and has represented Blackfoot in Canadian courts.
Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii has taught in the United States, Europe, India, Puerto Rico, Canada and parts of Asia. In addition to English, he speaks six languages and is currently learning Mandarin Chinese. He has been featured in various Marquis ”Who’s Who” publications including “The World”; “America”; “The West”; “Science and Engineering”; “Finance and Industry”; and “American Education.”
Related links:
What inspired Hitler – a column by Jim Craven
The Killing of Jose Guerera – an expert commentary by Mike Levine