Day: October 18, 2022

The FBI’s Failure to Act on Warnings Before Jan. 6 and Sympathy For the Insurgents Within the FBI’s Ranks

We begin with revelations from the recent House January 6 Committee that there was plenty of intelligence warning of an insurrection prior to January 6 that was available to the Secret Service and the FBI but was not acted on. Joining us is Mike German, a fellow with the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Previously he served as the policy counsel for national security and privacy for the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office and, a sixteen-year veteran of federal law enforcement, he served as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. His books include Thinking Like a Terrorist and Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy, and he had a report at the Brennan Center for Justice, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement” and he recently submitted written testimony to the House Select Committee investigating January 6th. We discuss a memo to a top FBI official warning of sympathy withIn the bureau for the insurrectionists stating that “a sizable percentage of the employee population felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol.”

Why Did American Experts on Russia Get the Ukraine War So Wrong?

Then we look into why a majority of American experts on Russia in a 2015 survey by Foreign Affairs were against arming Ukraine and later agreed with the Kremlin that Russia’s army would overwhelm and defeat Ukraine in a few days. Joining us is Taras Kuzio, a Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute at School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He is the author and editor of 21 books, including Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime and, most recently, Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War. and we discuss his article at Geopolitical Monitor “How Western Experts Got the Ukraine War So Wrong.”

AIPAC is Backing Trumpist White Nationalist Candidates As Trump Spouts Antisemitism

 Then finally we investigate why AIPAC, the Israel lobby, is backing Trumpist candidates who support election deniers and white supremacists at a time when Trump is making antisemitic statements and speak with Mitchell Plitnick, the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy and former vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. A political analyst and frequent writer on the Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, he served as director of the U.S. Office of B’Tselem and co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace and he is the co-author with Marc Lamont Hill of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics and he has a recent article at 972 Magazine, “AIPAC’s insurrectionists for Israel.”