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.

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.

MP3 here. (22:16)

The other Scott Horton is a Contributing Editor for Harper’s magazine where he writes the No Comment blog. A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union.

He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.

MP3 here. (23:50)

John Glaser is Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com. He is a former intern at The American Conservative magazine and CATO Institute.

MP3 here. (19:57)

The other Scott Horton is a Contributing Editor for Harper’s magazine where he writes the No Comment blog. A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union.

He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.

MP3 here. (29:41)

Kurt Haskell is an attorney in the Detroit suburb of Taylor. He was a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and has given numerous accounts of his experience to the media.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com blogger and author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, discusses his article “The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality;” how Anwar al-Awlaki was tried and convicted in the media through a government whisper campaign, rather than in a court of law; setting dangerous legal precedents that make the US more like a dictatorship than a republic; why the First Amendment protects the free speech of American citizens anywhere, even beyond the water’s edge; the unanimous SCOTUS decisions protecting unpopular speech, even when advocating violence; how “terrorism” has become a meaningless term, bending to the whims of government interpretation; and how severe societal pressures can break the bonds of American left-right tribalism to effect a political realignment that displaces Demopublican totalitarianism.

MP3 here. (29:49)

Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional lawyer in New York City, first at the Manhattan firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and then at the litigation firm he founded, Greenwald, Christoph. Greenwald litigated numerous high-profile and significant constitutional cases in federal and state courts around the country, including multiple First Amendment challenges. He has a J.D. from New York University School of Law (1994) and a B.A. from George Washington University (1990). In October of 2005, Greenwald started a political and legal blog, Unclaimed Territory, which quickly became one of the most popular and highest-trafficked in the blogosphere.

Upon disclosure by the New York Times in December 2005 of President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Greenwald became one of the leading and most cited experts on that controversy. In early 2006, he broke a story on his blog regarding the NSA scandal that served as the basis for front-page articles in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, all of which credited his blog for the story. Several months later, Sen. Russ Feingold read from one of Greenwald’s posts during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Feingold’s resolution to censure the president for violating FISA. In 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd read from Greenwald’s Salon blog during floor debate over FISA. Greenwald’s blog was also cited as one of the sources for the comprehensive report issued by Rep. John Conyers titled “The Constitution in Crisis.” In 2006, he won the Koufax Award for best new blog.

Greenwald is the author of A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok and Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

MP3 here. (28:36)

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. His publications include Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House 2005); Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell 1996), “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security (1997), “The Determinants of International Moral Action,” International Organization (1999); “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review (2003); and “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security (2005).

Adam Lankford is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama. He has also taught at Marymount University and The Corcoran College in Washington, D.C.

From 2003 to 2008, he helped coordinate Senior Executive Anti-Terrorism Forums for high-ranking foreign military and security personnel in conjunction with the U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. During this period, ATA hosted delegations from Armenia, Colombia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.

Dr. Lankford has published on a variety of subjects related to aggression, violence, counterterrorism, and international security. He is also the author of Human Killing Machines: Systematic Indoctrination in Iran, Nazi Germany, Al Qaeda, and Abu Ghraib. His research has been featured by media outlets in a number of countries, including Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dr. Lankford received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Justice, Law & Society from American University in Washington, DC and his B.A. in English from Haverford College outside Philadelphia, PA.

Michael Scheuer, 22-year veteran of the CIA and former head analyst at the CIA’s bin Laden unit, discusses why Ron Paul is right on foreign policy and Rick Santorum is a “gasbag;” how US military occupations and support for Israel and autocratic Arab governments radicalize Muslims in a way our “degenerate” culture fails to; why the 9/11 Commission report is a whitewash; how the Bush and Obama administrations fulfilled Osama bin Laden’s goals for him; why the war of civilizations (if it happens) should be labeled “made by the Ivy League;” why Arab Spring reformist governments need to worry if the US will let them remain in power or not; and why US government officials act like the heirs of the French Revolution when they travel the world, spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun.

MP3 here. (29:57)

Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and former head analyst at the CIA’s bin Laden unit. He is the author of Osama Bin Laden, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq and Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.

MP3 here. (20:37)

Trevor Aaronson is a 2010-11 Investigative Reporting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed a yearlong project about the FBI’s informants in U.S. Muslim communities. He is also associate director and co-founder of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit journalism organization that produces reporting about Florida and Latin America in English and Spanish.

Aaronson’s independent journalism has been funded by the Carnegie Legal Reporting Fellowship and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Previously, Aaronson was an investigative reporter and editor for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, where his stories ranged from local government investigations to reporting in Asia, Africa and South America. He was also formerly a staff writer for Village Voice Media’s newspapers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

His work has won more than two dozen national and regional awards, including from the Livingston Awards, Society of Professional Journalists and Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.