October 5 - The Real Mike Pence; Another NSA Contractor Caught Leaking; After Behind the Scenes Machinations, A New UN Secretary General

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the punditry announcing Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence the winner of the Vice-Presidential debate and even touting him as the Republican presidential front-runner for 2020. An expert on Indiana politics, Gerald Wright, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University and author of “Keeping the Republic”, joins us to discuss how in many ways Pence is to the right of Trump, particularly on social issues where his pro-life, anti-gay, pro-gun positions are even more conservative than the conservative state of Indiana. We also examine how Pence’s political fortunes were all but extinguished in his home state before jumping aboard the Trump ticket which Pence vigorously defended when repeatedly confronted by Trump’s outrageous statements, most of which Pence denied were said by his running mate, even though they are on video and have been broadcast widely and often.  

Part 2

Then we speak with James Bamford, an investigative journalist who specializes in national security issues and has written the definitive books on the National Security Agency, “The Puzzle Palace” and “The Shadow Factory: Inside the Ultra-Secret NSA, From 9/11 to Spying on America”. He joins us to discuss the announcement today that an NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin 111 was arrested on the 27^th of August, three days after James Bamford wrote an article at Reuters “Evidence Points at Another Snowden at the NSA”, which investigated the posting online of a top secret catalog of NSA hacking tools known as the ANT (Advanced Network Technology) which are a toolkit and roadmap to hack into and in some cases control, Apple, Cisco, Dell and Samsung systems and devices.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the announcement today by the U.N. Security Council of the selection of a new head of the U.N. to replace Ban Ki-moon, a Portuguese diplomat and former Prime Minister of Portugal with extensive U.N. experience in refugee issues who was head of the UNHCR for 10 years, Antonio Guterres.  The former U.N. correspondent for The New York Times, Barbara Crossette, who now covers the U.N. for The Nation, joins us to discuss the selection process that is now much more transparent and the behind-the-scenes machinations to get a woman seated to head up the U.N., and how that was scuttled.