September 25 - Sounding the Alarm on Russian Intelligence's Interference in the US Election; Is Trump the Manchurian Candidate? The Filmmaker of the Searing Documentary "4.1 Miles"

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the question of whether Donald Trump is the so-called "Manchurian Candidate”, a fictional Cold War book and twice a movie of an American patriot who becomes President of the United States all the while under the control of America’s Communist enemies. With growing concerns expressed by the ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Senator Feinstein and Congressman Adam Schiff, warning “Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian Intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election”, we speak with Karen Dawisha, a Professor of Political Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and author of "Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Own Russia?”  We look into questions that are beginning to surface about the extent to which Putin is not just orchestrating the SVR and GRU’s efforts to manipulate the outcome of the election, but also has ties to Trump that go beyond alleged covert financing of Trump’s enterprises and seem to indicate Trump is owned by Putin, who is rumored to have compromising video of Trump with very young women ensnared in a so-called “honey trap” by the FSB when Trump was in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.  

Part 2

Then we examine further the Trump-as-the- “Manchurian Candidate” scenario with Roger Morris who served on the National Security Council under both presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and is the author of the forthcoming comparative history of the inner politics of the U.S. and the USSR, “Kindred Rivals: America, Russia and their Failed Ideals”. We look into research he has uncovered from former KGB Generals and other Kremlin insiders that the Trump operation has been underway for years and that within the ranks of Russian Intelligence, there is some dissent about Putin’s increasingly brazen efforts to undermine the U.S. election by in effect, declaring war on American democracy.

Part 3

Then finally, Daphne Matziaraki joins us in the studio. She just graduated from U.C. Berkeley’s Documentary Program at the Graduate School of Journalism and her latest film is “4.1 Miles”, a searing documentary filmed in the 4.1 miles of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos that shows the trauma the already traumatized Syrian and Afghan refugees endure as they make the harrowing journey, packed into unseaworthy boats that often capsize. The film is in the running for an Academy Award and any sentient person who sees it, can no longer be indifferent to the humanitarian catastrophes underway in the Middle East and the human suffering caused by the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.