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.

Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program, discusses the CIA’s Phoenix program targeting civilians during the Vietnam war, the similarities between the Phoenix program, the Nazis in France in World War II and the “War on Terror,” the vast difference between policy and operational realities, the tragedy of our support for, and murder of Diem, CIA “black propaganda,” the lies that initiate all American wars, the CIA’s criminal involvement in the drug trade, the corruption of the U.S. Congress and pessimism about the ability of the American people to put government power in check.

MP3 here. (40:31)

Douglas Valentine is the author of several books including The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs and The Phoenix Program and a frequent contributor to the biweekly newsletter CounterPunch.