Jeremy Scahill, contributor and writer to The Nation and correspondent for the national radio and TV program, Democracy Now!, discusses his bestselling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, the history of Blackwater, its impact on the war in Iraq, Eric Prince, the president of Blackwater, the political impact of having private contractors serve in Iraq, the death count of private contractors in Iraq, the lawless nature of Blackwater and other private contractors, the deaths of the four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, Iraq in February 2004, the Iraqis complaining about private contractors’ behavior and tactics, the U.S. military’s outrage at Blackwater, how the U.S. military is compensated compared to private contractors serving in Iraq, their presence in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater’s tactics in New Orleans, global reach, possible future operations in Latin America and competition with other private contracting companies.

MP3 here. (20:50)

YouTube here.

Jeremy Scahill is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Traveling around the hurricane zone in the wake of Katrina, Scahill exposed the presence of Blackwater forces in New Orleans and his reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. He has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS’s The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal and is a frequent guest on other radio and TV programs nationwide. Scahill also serves as an election correspondent for HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Christopher Coyne, author of After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy, discusses the economics of American empire, the true motivations behind the slogan of “spreading democracy,” the domestic problems of intervention including bloated budgets, bureaucracies and lost liberty, how politicians, bureaucrats, and government contractors’ incentives are the opposite of private business – success is punished and failure is rewarded, leading to increased budgets, more employees and more power, the thoroughly bipartisan crony capitalism in Washington DC, the reasons why Germany and Japan were “successful” interventions and the urgent need for renewed skepticism towards the government among the American population.

MP3 here. (32:30)

Christopher Coyne is an assistant professor of economics at West Virginia University. He is also the North American Editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. He contributes to the blog, The Austrian Economists. His book, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy, published by Stanford University Press, is now available.

Actor, writer and producer John Cusack discusses his new satire War Inc., which opens Friday, May 23rd, in New York and Los Angeles, his outrage at the criminality of modern American war profiteers, the need for a grassroots bumrush of the first showings to guarantee national distribution, some critics’ complaints that the movie “hits too close to home,” the great journalists whose work has inspired him, the socialization of the costs of all these private armies onto the American tax payer, the outsourcing of interrogation, the betrayals of the Democrats, the banality of evil, the short-changing of the troops while private mercenaries cash in and militarism in the movies. (Watch out! A few bad words.)

MP3 here. (25:11)

YouTube here.

Transcript.

John Cusack is an actor, writer and producer.

Paul Verkuil, professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of Outsourcing Sovereignty: Why Privatization of Government Functions Threatens Democracy and What We Can Do About It, discusses the increasing privatization of government, the new phenomenon of the hiring out of the actual enforcement functions of the state, the lack of adequate oversight and criminal accountability and how the many domestic functions of government being privatized are making it even worse and the beginnings of Congressional interest in curtailing the worst excesses.

MP3 here. (22:13)

Paul Verkuil is a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His research emphasis is in administrative law, and government regulation. Professor Verkuil was dean of the Cardozo Law School from 1997 to 2001. He has served on the law faculty of the University of North Carolina, as dean of Tulane Law School, and as president of the College of William and Mary. Professor Verkuil is co-author of Administrative Law and Process (4th ed. 2004) and Regulation and Deregulation (2nd ed. 2004).