October 13 - Is the Whole Snowden Affair a Textbook Russian Intelligence Operation?; The High Water Mark for "White Protestant Nation"; The Real Agenda Behind Republican Efforts to Justify the Shutdown

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with information now emerging from Human Rights Watch about massacres in a number of Alawite villages in Syria. A veteran CIA operations officer Robert Baer, who remains in touch with Alawite officers and intelligence officials, joins us to discuss what may explain why the Syrian regime used Chemical weapons and also look into the Thursday New York Times story that the CIA had suspicions that Edward Snowden had tried to access classified computer files in 2009, a report that on Friday the CIA denied, but did not refute.  

Part 2

Then we speak with American University historian Allan Lichtman, the author of “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement” to assess whether the continuing shutdown of the government and the looming threat of default can be avoided by negotiations underway in the Senate that Congressman Paul Ryan is trying to scuttle by offering his plan to solve the two fiscal crises the House Republicans have created by removing family planning coverage under Obamacare, and delaying its defunding, while not giving up on killing it.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Thomas Ferguson, a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts and a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute about what he sees as the real agenda behind Republican efforts to justify their shutdown of the government and threats of default by citing the need to get the budget under control when, at the end of the day, reducing the deficit is just a smokescreen for cutting taxes on the wealthy.