Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, discusses his new open letter to Colin Powell, he and Powell’s similar backgrounds growing up in the Bronx and time spent working together in the White House in the 1980s, the withholding of the Sabri and Habbush no-WMD intelligence before the Iraq war from Powell and other leading figures in the Bush cabinet, the necessity of a Congressional investigation and a Powell’s testimony about what really happened, Rep. John Conyers duty as chair of the judiciary committee, Bush’s trip to CIA headquarters on Thursday and the Bush family tradition of pardoning their loyal underlings for crimes committed at their direction.

MP3 here. (25:02)

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years – from the John F. Kennedy administration to that of George H. W. Bush and is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Gareth Porter, reporter for IPS News, discusses the fight between the “realists” and hawks in the Bush administration, the routine where Rice gets what she wants, but then Cheney makes her efforts meaningless – as in the case of William Burns’ trip to Geneva, George Bush Jr.’s complete inability to lead – thank goodness, crying wolf, the public’s distracted impotence to stop a war they oppose, the relative influence of the Israeli Lobby on Middle East policy in Congress and the White House, Ariel Sharon’s preference for the order of future regime changes, speculation that Cheney may have “learned” a bunch of nonsense about a necessary clash of civilizations from Prinston historian Bernard Lewis after 9/11, the War Party’s former(?) belief in regime change from the air.

MP3 here. (30:38)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.