“War, War, War…” U.S. Intel Chiefs Brief Congress on Future

Loud & Clear

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, Ajit Singh, a writer and political analyst, and Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director who became a legendary national security whistleblower.
The Senate Intelligence Committee today will hear from the Director of National Intelligence and the Directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI and others on the global threats facing the United States. Those threats haven’t changed much since last year. They include cyberattacks, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Syria. But for the first time, terrorism wasn’t at or near the top of the list.
The hosts continue the weekly series looking at the economic issues of the day with financial policy analyst Daniel Sankey. The three also examine President Trump’s proposed infrastructure bill.
A judge in the UK today refused to cancel an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, ruling that he could still be arrested by UK police if he leaves the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Brian and John speak with Randy Credico, an activist, a comedian, and the former director of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice.
Three staff members of a jail formerly run by conservative activist sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee were arrested yesterday and charged with multiple felonies after a mentally ill prisoner, Terrill Thomas, died of thirst. The staff members had denied him water for a week to punish him for behavioral problems. Michelle Gross, the president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, and Peter Koneazny, the litigation director for the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, join the show.
The government of Kuwait yesterday opened a weeklong conference dedicated to raising money for the reconstruction of Iraq following the devastating war against ISIS. Experts estimate that Iraq needs more than $88 billion. Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov, a professor at the University of Tulsa and author of the book “Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century,” joins Brian and John.
Israeli police are expected to recommend today that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on charges of bribery and abuse of power, charges that he insists he will fight. Meanwhile, Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl, was put on trial yesterday in an Israeli military court on charges that she slapped an Israeli soldier after her cousin was shot with a rubber bullet. The case has attracted the attention of diplomats, human rights groups, Hollywood celebrities, and the media. Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, joins the show.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was released from a halfway house in St. Louis yesterday, arriving home in the late morning for the first time in more than two-and-a-half years. Sterling was prosecuted after alleging racial discrimination at the Agency and found guilty of a number of national security crimes, all of which he denied all the way through trial. The federal Bureau of Prisons did all it could to break Sterling even after he was released from prison.
tags: CIA, NSA, FBI, Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence, global threats, war, peace, cyberattacks, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, terrorism