June 6 - Blowback from Syria; A Marine Veteran of Afghanistan on the Shameful Attack on an American POW; Spies and Hackers in the World of Cyber-Espionage

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with a new study that finds there are more foreign fighters in Syria today than the total number of holy warriors who went to Afghanistan during the long war against Soviet occupation. A former senior British Intelligence official Richard Barrett, a director of the Soufan group, a New York-based security consultancy company, and author of the study, joins us to discuss the concerns of blowback in Europe and elsewhere from returning Jihadists back from the Syrian battlefield, as apparently was the recent case in Brussels where an attack on a Jewish museum carried out by a member of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, killed three people.

Part 2

Then we be joined by Matthew Hoh a former Marine Corps company commander who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the former Director of the Afghanistan Study Group at the State Department and the Pentagon. We discuss the upcoming ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 6, D Day, where Matthew Ho will be launching a billboard across from the State Department displaying a picture of Daniel Ellsberg with a quote from the Vietnam-era whistleblower urging today’s whistleblowers to come forward to “save a war’s worth of lives”. We also discuss the shameful Republican-orchestrated attacks on an American POW that the Press is dutifully parroting.  

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Washington Post columnist and best-selling author David Ignatius, who has covered the Middle East and the CIA for 25 years, about his new book “The Director”. We explore the world of cyber-espionage and the roles of key players like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange who are forcing the CIA to relearn the basics so that the CIA can operate in a new world where security is never guaranteed for long, as advancement in technology constantly levels the playing field.