Aired 09/08/09 Daniel Ellsberg is an American hero. September 23rd is the 40th anniversary of the first night of copying the Pentagon Papers, which he took from his safe at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica. America was embroiled in a dirty war based on lies. A president was abusing the power of his office, ignoring the will of the people, Congress and the courts. He promised peace while planning war without end. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaded the truth about the Vietnam war to the New York Times. He risked life in prison to end a war he helped plan. Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America." He's still at it. This week Ellsberg begins the online publication of The American Doomsday Machine, his memoir of the nuclear era. INFO http://www.ellsberg.net/

May George McGovern rest –as he lived — in peace. We have lost a great and decent man.

At 24, I worked for McGovern’s 1972 Presidential effort, managing the campaign in what was then the 52nd Assembly District in Los Angeles County. This was the most conservative Democratic district in California and likely favored both Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace over the nominee. In 2005, I had the opportunity to interview him for an hour with the release of the documentary, One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern.

GEORGE McGOVERN was a decorated World War II bomber pilot (his wartime exploits were at the center of of Steven Ambrose’s The Wild Blue) and professor at Dakota Wesleyan Univeristy. After running the Food for Peace Program under John Kennedy, he represented South Dakota for two terms in the House and three terms in the Senate. His opposition to the Vietnam War fueled a grassroots campaign that won him the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, only to lose to incumbent Richard Nixon in one of the great landslides in US history. Many members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President later served jail time for Watergate-connected crimes.

In 1997, Bill Clinton named him the US Permanent Representative to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and in 2000 Clinton awarded him the nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Freedom. He has written nine books including Terry: My Daughter’s Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism (about his daughter — also named Terrence — who died in 1994), The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition, and Ending Hunger Now: A Challenge to Persons of Faith.

 

Aired 12/05/10

ROBERT SCHEER, editor-in-chief of Truthdig, was Vietnam correspondent and an editor of Ramparts magazine from 1964-69. He worked with the Los Angeles Times for nearly 30 years, as a national correspondent from 1976-1993 and as a weekly syndicated columnist until 2005. In 2005 he co-founded Truthdig. Scheer is heard weekly on Left, Right and Center on NPR's KCRW. A clinical professor of communications at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, he is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow. Scheer has written nine books, including With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War; The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq; The Pornography of Power and his newest, THE GREAT AMERICAN STICKUP.

http://www.truthdig.com/

 

Aired 08/25/09

Michael Lind is a Senior Research Fellow and Policy Director of New America's Economic Growth Program. Lind's first three books of political journalism and history, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution; Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America; and Vietnam: The Necessary War were all selected as New York Times Notable Books. Other books include Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American; What Lincoln Believed, and with Ted Halstead, of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics. Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New Republic, and writes frequently at Salon.com.

http://www.newamerica.net/people/michael_lind

At 24, I worked for George McGovern’s 1972 Presidential campaign. In 2005, I had the opportunity to interview him for an hour with the release of the documentary, One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern. Robert Kennedy described him as the most decent man he’d ever met in politics. I agree. This interview was originally published at Alternet November 21, 2005.