Background Briefing: June 30, 2020

On By gram

 

Trump’s Excuses For Ignoring Intelligence Get Increasingly Lame as More Evidence Emerges

We begin with the burgeoning scandal closing in on Trump which gets to the heart of the persistent question about what kind of hold does Putin have over our president leading to the ultimate previously unthinkable question that an American president could be a traitor. Joining us to discuss the processes involved in the Presidential Daily Briefing which Trump was given on February 27 in which he was told the Russians were paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American troops is Paul Pillar who served for 30 years as an analyst at the CIA and was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. He joins us to refute the White House claim that the intelligence was not pinned down, pointing out that the intelligence on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan was not pinned down but Obama went ahead with the operation. And since House Speaker Pelosi has suggested Trump may not have been given the full picture because his intelligence briefers might be afraid that Trump would immediately tattle to Putin, the question about Trump’s loyalty to the country arises. But blaming the press and calling it all “a hoax” hardly begins to settle the matter as both Republican and Democratic lawmakers call for more intelligence briefings without the White House trying to orchestrate them.

 

The Taliban Side of the Story From Someone Who Was Kidnapped by Them

Then we examine this breaking story from the angle of the Taliban who the Russians allegedly paid to kill Americans and speak with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was held captive by the Taliban. David Rohde, an Executive Editor of The New Yorker who is the co-author of A Rope and a Prayer which is about his experience being kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and whose latest book is In Deep: The F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the Truth About America’s ‘Deep State’, joins us. We discuss how the Taliban uses criminal networks and how his captors, the Haqqani network, have ties to Pakistani intelligence which has the same strategic goal as Russia which is to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan in a humiliating defeat.

 

The Supreme Court’s Makeup Gift to the Religious Right

Then finally we look into the 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision to have state funds go to religious schools which Chief Justice Roberts says in his majority opinion “A state need not subsidize private education. But once a state decides to do it, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious”. Frederick Clarkson, a Senior Fellow at Political Research Associates and author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy joins us to discuss how Roberts taketh on the one hand with his abortion decision and giveth to the Religious Right on the other with today’s decision.