Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » Terrorism

Reza Marashi

Scott Horton — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:55:33 +0000

Reza Marashi, Research Director for the National Iranian American Council, discusses the Wall Street Journal’s announcement that the MEK will soon shed its “terrorist group” status in the US; the State Department’s de-listing evaluation process, which requires that the MEK publicly renounce violence and disarm; how the Bush Administration used Saddam Hussein’s hosting of terrorist groups, especially the MEK, to justify the Iraq War in 2003; the foreign and domestic opponents to friendly US-Iran relations; and how business interests can open borders even when political forces conspire to close them.

MP3 here. (23:16)

Reza Marashi joined NIAC in 2010 as the organization’s first Research Director. He came to NIAC after four years in the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to his tenure at the State Department, he was an analyst at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) covering China-Middle East issues, and a Tehran-based private strategic consultant on Iranian political and economic risk. Marashi is frequently consulted by Western governments on Iran-related matters. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Tehran Bureau, the Huffington Post, Salon, Asharq Alawsat, the Daily Caller, and the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He has been a guest contributor to the BBC, NPR, Financial Times, Reuters, Al Jazeera, ABC News, CBC News, Macleans, Fox News, The Daily Star and The National.

Naureen Shah

Scott Horton — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:13:32 +0000

Naureen Shah, Associate Director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at Columbia Law School, discusses her article “Drone attacks and the Brennan doctrine;” US counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan’s admission that civilians are killed in drone strikes (after previously asserting “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop”); the rhetorical means of avoiding civilian casualties (simply call them terrorists); remotely killing people halfway around the world, based on information from paid informants or culturally ignorant inferences; the legality of drone warfare, and whether it even matters; and rumors of a “rendition 2.0″ torture outsourcing program under Obama.

MP3 here. (24:12)

Naureen Shah is Associate Director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project and Lecturer-in-Law of the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

Naureen develops research and advocacy on human rights and counterterrorism policy, including transfer of detainees, safeguards against torture, and lethal targeting with drone technology. Since joining the Human Rights Institute in 2009, she has researched and written on emergent transnational counterterrorism practices, including diplomatic assurances, Afghan detention practices, repatriations from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, deportation of terrorism suspects, and targeted killings.

Naureen also conducts network building work among leading litigators, advocates, activists and scholars in the counterterrorism and human rights field, to promote collaborations and generating of innovative advocacy and research.Prior to joining Columbia, Naureen was a Leonard H. Sandler Fellow at Human Rights Watch, based in London. She is the author of the August 2009 report “Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse, and Impunity in the Indian Police.” Prior to Human Rights Watch, Naureen worked at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on refugee appeals cases.

Naureen holds a B.S. from Northwestern University in Journalism and Gender Studies, cum laude. She holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a James Kent Scholar and Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and received the Lowenstein Fellowship awarded to outstanding graduates pursuing public interest law. She served as Articles Editor on the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

John Mueller

Scott Horton — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:08:39 +0000

John Mueller, author of Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, discusses his article “Why Al-Qaeda May Never Die;” how “al-Qaeda” is used as a catchall name for terrorist groups, even those tangentially related to the original; why a large percentage of Americans fear terrorism even though dying in an attack is about as likely as being struck by lightning; US alliances with radical Islamic insurgents in Libya and Syria; and how imperial overreach hastened the Soviet Union’s collapse.

MP3 here. (20:23)

John Mueller is the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. He is the author of Overblown and The Remnants of War, winner of the Joseph P. Lepgold Prize for the best book on international relations in 2004, awarded by Georgetown University.

David K. Shipler

Scott Horton — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:07:25 +0000

David K. Shipler, former NY Times reporter and author of Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America, discusses his article “Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.;” the convicted felons used as FBI informants to ensnare the lowest-hanging fruit among potential terrorists; why an “entrapment” legal defense hardly ever works; the media’s failure to attribute domestic terrorism arrests to government sting operations; how the FBI could “entrap” terrorism suspects into working in an Islamic soup kitchen instead of pretending to blow up a bridge; the massive imbalance between surveillance data and the human analysts and investigators tasked with reading it all; and the strange story of “underbomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Update: Your host was wrong. The Detroit News took Kennedy out of context. The video makes it clear he was speaking generally, not specifically about the Underbomber.

MP3 here. (30:06)

David K. Shipler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former foreign correspondent of The New York Times. He is the author of The Working Poor: Invisible in America and Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America.

John Hutson

Scott Horton — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:58:54 +0000

Rear Admiral John D. Hutson (Ret. USN) discusses his article “Military Commissions Are a Failed Experiment, Try Terror Suspects in Civilian Courts;” how commissions are traditionally and properly used to quickly determine the status of captured enemy soldiers on a battlefield; why the greatest US export is (was) justice and equal protection under the law, not democracy; how Guantanamo trials are set up to guarantee conviction – even more so than the near-certainty in federal courts; relying on the goodwill of the President and Attorney General to uphold and enforce laws against torture; and how al-Qaeda, by all accounts a decimated terrorist organization, has frightened Americans into giving up their Bill of Rights.

MP3 here. (23:35)

Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, JAGC, USN (Ret.) served in the U. S. Navy from 1973 to 2000. He was the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000. He is Dean Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire School of Law in Concord, New Hampshire, where he served as Dean & President from July 2000 through January 2011.

Peter Certo

Scott Horton — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:09:11 +0000

Peter Certo, editorial assistant at Right Web and the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses his article “U.S. Government Finally Catching up With MEK Boosters Like Ed Rendell;” the shocking development that the rule of law might actually apply to former high-level US government officials; the usual suspects – humanitarian activists and Muslims who upload videos on YouTube – who face “material support” of terrorism charges under the PATRIOT Act; and the connection between the MEK’s terrorist-group designation, Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and Iran-war fever.

MP3 here. (19:12)

Peter Certo oversees Foreign Policy in Focus Special Project Right Web‘s social media projects and is an editorial assistant at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Reza Marashi

Scott Horton — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:05:15 +0000

Reza Marashi, Research Director for the National Iranian American Council, discusses his article “Money vs. Facts: The Mujahedin-e Khalq Is a Terrorist Organization;” the chorus of voices turning the tables on the MEK’s latest PR campaign; the Treasury Department investigation of Ed Rendell (and other prominent ex-politicians who are paid to speak on MEK’s behalf – a.k.a. providing “material support” to terrorists); and why Israel is the most likely source of MEK funding – meaning the “only democracy in the Middle East” is really a state sponsor of terrorism.

MP3 here. (27:22)

John Cook

Scott Horton — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:04:03 +0000

John Cook, editor at Gawker.com, discusses his article “How the FBI Monitored Crusty Punks, ‘Anarchist Hangouts,’ and an Organic Farmers’ Market Under the Guise of Combating Terrorism;” the Bush administration’s obsession with animal-rights and environmental activists, who were the primary focus of post-9/11 domestic terrorism policy; how the FBI quickly expanded their “Seizing Thunder” operation beyond federal criminal investigations, devoting resources to staking out farmers’ markets and following Subarus; and the Occupy Wall Street FOIA requests that will soon come to light.

MP3 here. (13:55)

John Cook is an editor at Gawker.com

Marcy Wheeler

Scott Horton — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 05:31:17 +0000

Blogger Marcy Wheeler discusses the conviction of US citizen Tarek Mehanna on material support of terrorism charges, in part for posting “jihadist” videos online; the SCOTUS ruling (Holder v. HLP) that defines “material support” so broadly a lawyer could be arrested for representing alleged terrorist organizations (except those favored by the government, like MEK); whether provisions in the NDAA authorize the indefinite detention of Americans or not; the legal precedents set by the Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Anwar Al-Awlaki cases; and the ways presidents can avoid judicial review altogether – should a court ever get reacquainted with the Constitution and stop deferring to Executive power.

MP3 here. (19:17)

Blogger Marcy Wheeler, a.k.a. emptywheel, grew up bi-coastally, starting with every town in New York with an IBM. Then she moved to Poway, California, home of several participants in the Duke Cunningham scandal. Since then, she has lived in Western Massachusetts, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Ann Arbor, and — just recently — Western Michigan.

She got a BA from Amherst College, where she spent much of her time on the rugby pitch. A PhD program in Comparative Literature brought her to Michigan; she got the PhD but decided academics was not her thing. Her research, though, was on a cool journalistic form called the “feuilleton” — a kind of conversational essay that was important to the expansion of modern newspapers in much of the rest of the world. It was pretty good preparation to become a blogger, if a PhD can ever be considered training for blogging.

After leaving academics, Marcy consulted for the auto industry, much of it in Asia. But her contract moved to Asia, along with most of Michigan’s jobs, so she did what anyone else would do. Write a book, and keep blogging. (Oh, and I hear Amazon still has the book for sale.)

Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She’s known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and generally for her weedy analysis of document dumps.

Marcy met her husband Mr. emptywheel playing Ultimate Frisbee, though she retired from the sport several years ago. Marcy, Mr. EW and their dog — McCaffrey the MilleniaLab — live in a loft in a lovely urban hellhole.

Karen Greenberg

Scott Horton — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:37:45 +0000

Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University, discusses her article “How terrorist ‘entrapment’ ensnares us all;” setting a dangerous precedent by allowing law enforcement and paid informants to manufacture terrorist plots, ideology and materials; making the already-difficult entrapment legal defense even less likely to succeed; why terrorism suspects can’t expect to get fair trials; why preventive law enforcement is needed to some degree after 9/11; and how inter-agency rivalries (FBI-CIA) hinder open communication and may have allowed 9/11 to happen, but also prevent a unified police state from taking hold.

MP3 here. (30:04)

Karen J. Greenberg, a noted expert on national security, terrorism, and civil liberties, is Director of the Center on National Security. She is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days (Oxford University Press, 2009), which was selected as one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post and Slate.com. She is co-editor with Joshua L. Dratel of The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge University Press, 2005); editor of the books The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Al Qaeda Now (Cambridge University Press, 2005); and editor of the Terrorist Trial Report Card, 2001–2011. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, TomDispatch.com, and on major news channels. She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations.