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.

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Sydney Schanberg discusses his article “John McCain and the POW Cover-Up,” the hundreds of U.S. POWs and MIAs knowingly left in Vietnam and Laos after U.S. withdrawal, Arizona Senator John McCain’s suppression of the truth surrounding the abandonment of missing soldiers, personal reasons McCain may have for wanting to keep the records secret, the complicity of the mainstream media and thousands within the government in refusing to address this issue, McCain’s history of not supporting the VA system, the 900 U.S. soldiers left behind in Korea and the constant lying to Americans by our government.

MP3 here. (32:03)

Sydney H. Schanberg, a journalist for nearly 50 years, has written extensively on foreign affairs–particularly Asia–and on domestic issues such as ethics, racial problems, government secrecy, corporate excesses and the weaknesses of the national media. Most of his journalism career has been spent on newspapers but his award-winning work has also appeared widely in other publications and media. The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields, which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book The Death and Life of Dith Pran - a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran. For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting “at great risk.”