Col. Lawrence Wilkerson assesses President-elect Joe Biden’s “national security” picks, including Gen. Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense and Anthony Blinken for Secretary of State. “I don’t see a different kind of administration being formed,” Wilkerson says. “And it disturbs me because it just means more of the same — a little more calmness, a little more serenity, which lulls everyone into thinking that things are better, when in fact they’re not.”
Guest: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. Currently a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary.
After Israel’s assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter debunks the myths about Iran’s nuclear program and discusses the next phase of the US and Israeli campaign against Iran under Biden.
Israel’s assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist is the latest act of aggression in the Trump-Netanyahu campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. Although President-elect Joe Biden has voiced support for returning to the JCPOA, longstanding US-Israel hostility to Iranian sovereignty will continue under his watch.
Guest: Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector, former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, and author of Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal.
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden pledged to end US support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which the Obama-Biden administration authorized in 2015. Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, discusses Biden’s responsibility to end the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Guest: Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor of education at Michigan State University.
Key Mueller witness Rick Gates debunks key Russiagate conspiracy theories: Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian spy; Paul Manafort served Russian interests; and Roger Stone gave Trump campaign advance notice on WikiLeaks’ email releases.
Former Trump 2016 campaign deputy chair Rick Gates was once widely portrayed as the key Mueller witness who would expose Trump-Russia collusion. Gates’ testimony ended up seriously undermining the collusion conspiracy theory, but that has done little to undo the media narrative. Gates joins Pushback to debunk several key Russiagate conspiracy theories: that Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian spy; that Paul Manafort served Russian interests in Ukraine; and that Roger Stone gave the Trump campaign advance notice on Wikileaks’ release of stolen Democratic Party emails.
Guest: Rick Gates. Former Trump 2016 deputy campaign chairman, cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation, and author of Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost.
Former intelligence officials, Democratic leaders, and media outlets dismissing the Hunter Biden story as “Russian disinformation” are spreading more Russiagate disinformation, ex-CIA officer Ray McGovern says.
Media outlets are amplifying the claims of former intelligence officials, including John Brennan and James Clapper, as well as of top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Adam Schiff, that the Hunter Biden laptop revelations are “Russian disinformation.”
They have done so even though no one from the Biden camp has disputed the authenticity of a single leaked email or document, or denied that the laptop belongs to Hunter Biden. Ray McGovern, a former career CIA officer who served as chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division and chaired National Intelligence Estimates, discusses the widespread disinformation about “Russian disinformation,” and why it raises new questions about the conduct and claims of the intelligence officials behind Russiagate.
Guest: Ray McGovern. Former longtime CIA officer, who served as chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division, chaired National Intelligence Estimates, and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. He is also the co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
In a Grayzone exclusive, José Bustani, the former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, speaks out in support of two veteran OPCW inspectors who challenged a US-backed cover-up of their investigation in Syria.
Bustani also reacts to the recent US-UK-France-led effort to prevent his testimony at the UN Security Council about the OPCW’s Syria cover-up scandal. And Bustani reveals new details of how he was targeted in the lead-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush administration engineered his ouster for impeding its plans to invade.
Bustani discloses for the first time that his office was bugged – and that the OPCW’s then-head of security, a U.S. citizen, vanished right after this was discovered. It’s a case of history repeating itself, with the world’s top superpower once again trying to silence a veteran diplomat from the Global South, whose courage and principle challenges a pro-war deception.
Guest: José Bustani, veteran Brazilian diplomat and the first Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
