James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets, A Pretext for War and now, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, discusses what the NSA knew about the 9/11 hijackers before the attack, the infighting between the CIA, NSA and FBI, the 9/11 hijackers proximity to NSA headquarters in Maryland prior to the attacks, the abandonment of law and limits on their domestic spying after 9/11, the complicity of major telecoms in helping the state tap the entire internet, the enormous new date storage and mining facility in San Antonio, Texas and the Israeli companies who make the software that runs the Big Brother database.

MP3 here. (49:51)

Update: The MP3 became broken somehow, but should now work fine.

James Bamford is the author of The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s Most Secret Agency. Published in 1982, it was the first book ever written about the National Security Agency and it became an immediate bestseller. He spent nearly a decade as the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings where he won a number of journalism awards for his coverage national security issues. In 1997, as the media profession began turning away from international news coverage and focusing almost exclusively on Monica Lewinsky and other domestic political scandals, Bamford left ABC to work on Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. Initially published in April 2001 to rave reviews, it also became a national bestseller. His book A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies remains one of the best resources on how the Cheney/Neocon cabal lied this country to war in Iraq. Bamford’s articles have appeared in dozens of publications, including cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. His newest book is The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and author of the blog TheWashingtonNote, discusses Joe Biden’s threat to remove Bush and Cheney from power if they bombed Iran in early 2007, the Annapolis peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, the challenges of a stable settlement, the influence of the evangelical Christian wing of the Israel lobby, the police state in Palestine and the fragile and dangerous situation in Pakistan.

MP3 here. (43:19)

Steven Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. He is also a Senior Fellow at New America, and previously served as Executive Vice President.

Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center.