Skullduggery

The third and final installment of the series recounts how senior U.S. officials became increasingly dubious about sensational claims about Havana Syndrome pointing to the lack of any hard evidence that a secret microwave weapon even exists. It features interviews with Fulton Armstrong, former CIA analyst, Jim McGovern, U.S. congressman, Mark Zaid, national security lawyer, and John Cohen, former Department of Homeland Security intelligence chief.

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The second installment of the series examines the Cold War mystery over suspected microwave attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and how Pentagon fears about such bombardments heavily influenced the initial response to Havana Syndrome. It features interviews with John Fitzsimmons, the former deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security, Sharon Weinberger, a Washington journalist who describes the Pentagon’s own secret research to develop a microwave weapon, and Mike Beck, former NSA counter-intel officer who was convinced he was whacked by a microwave attack during a trip to Russia in the 1990s.

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In the first installment of the series, Isikoff and his producer Mark Seman travel to Cuba where they interview Johana Ruth Tablada de la Torre, the deputy director for U.S. affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry about how the reports of Havana Syndrome were viewed by the country's leadership. The episode also features interviews with a leading Cuban human rights activist, Brian Nichols, the assistant U.S. secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs and Ben Rhodes, the ex-Obama aide who negotiated the reopening to Cuba in 2014 only to watch all his efforts undercut by the events that began with Havana Syndrome.

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In the fall of 1974, a young ambitious prosecutor was grilling a powerful US Congressman on trial for corruption. The prosecutor's cross examination was unforgiving. He had confronted the Congressman with checks from business interests that he had promoted and bombarded him relentlessly with tough questions. After a break, the Congressman threw in the towel and pled guilty. An amazing turn of the tables that handed the young prosecutor his first major triumph. The prosecutor's name, Rudy Giuliani. And it was the first of many headline making triumphs as he went on to serve as a top Justice Department Official, a mob-busting US Attorney, and of course as America's Mayor who guided NYC during its darkest hours and days in the aftermath of September 11th. What's endlessly fascinating about those early triumphs is that they were followed by one of the most spectacular falls from grace that any public figure has experienced in living memory. A man once widely revered, even Knighted by the Queen of England, has ended up as a nearly pathetic laughing stock with significant legal exposure thanks to a considerable degree to his role as consigliere to Donald Trump. It's a story masterfully told by veteran journalist Andrew Kirtzman in his new book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America's Mayor. We talk to Kirtzman about his new book and Giuliani's legacy.

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New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller addressed the Republican Convention of 1964, denouncing the extremists that appeared to be taking over his party. Only to be drowned out by boos and shouts by delegates backing that year's nominee Barry Goldwater. Rockefeller's all but forgotten speech is the opening scene in journalist David Corn's new book, American Psychosis: A historical investigation on how the Republican Party went crazy. Corn draws a somewhat straight line from that moment, when a Goldwater movement rife with followers of the John Birch Society and other extremist groups took over the GOP, to the rise of Donald Trump more than a half century later, culminating in the events of January 6th when MAGA extremists stormed the US Capitol and threatened the lives of lawmakers and the sitting Vice President. Corn's book raises the question that hung over the events of 1964, can the Republican Party be saved? And if it can't, can American Democracy be saved? We talk to Corn on this episode of Skullduggery

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It was 21 years ago this week that 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked commercial airplanes and crashed them in to the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon killing nearly three thousand Americans. That murderous act prompted the US Government to invade Afghanistan and where Taliban rulers were protecting Osama Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders. It was the start of the country's longest war stretching over two decades, only to end disastrously last August when President Biden pulled out all US troops and the Taliban re-took control of the country. For most Americans, Afghanistan is a country that evokes vague unpleasant memories that are fast being forgotten. 

But a new podcast, Kabul Falling, reminds us that for millions of Afghans, the US withdrawal was only the start of a horrific nightmare as Taliban fighters went house to house searching for American collaborators while Taliban leaders methodically stripped the country’s women of all their rights and barring them from attending school. We talk to the host of Kabul Falling Nelafur Heydayat, a refugee herself, as well as the podcast’s executive producer and former Wall Street Journal reporter Bradley Hope, to discuss what they discovered in the aftermath of the US withdrawal and what it pertains to the future.

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There's no President that Joe Biden and his aides like to compare themselves to more than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After all, FDR and his new deal transformed the American economy and helped rescue the country from The Great Depression, providing a model for the transformative policies that Biden embraced in his Build Back Better proposals. It was also Roosevelt who rallied the country to fight fascists abroad, even as Biden now seeks to mobilize voters to reject semi-fascists at home. In his new book, Becoming FDR, author Jonathan Darman recounts how the young Roosevelt, a gregarious likable politician, not especially deep or thoughtful, with a losing track record as a national candidate, was transformed by a personal crisis that shook him to his core. It's not unlike the personal tragedy that rocked Joe Biden's world after he was elected to the U.S. Senate. We discuss with Darman the FDR-Biden parallels, as far as they go, as well as the latest on Donald Trump's legal troubles.

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“I have finally seen enough. Donald Trump will be indicted by a federal grand jury.” So wrote national security lawyer Bradley Moss, our guest, in a column for the Daily Beast after release of a heavily redacted FBI affidavit detailing the justification for the extraordinary search of Donald Trump’s home in Mar A Largo to retrieve stacks of government documents that didn't belong to him. While many of the most pertinent portions were blacked out, the affidavit detailed how the FBI had retrieved 15 boxes from Mar A Largo earlier this year. What was in them—mixed in with newspaper clippings, personal correspondence and other items-- were “184 unique documents bearing classification markings,” including 67 marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” 92 marked “SECRET,” and 25 documents identified as “TOP SECRET”—where unauthorized disclosure could reasonably result in “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” Moss suggests these findings along could be the basis for charging Trump with multiple federal crimes, including obstruction and unlawful retention of classified documents as well as even possibly a section of the Espionage Act dealing with gross negligence in the handling of national defense information. But is the evidence that has been made public so far enough for Merrick Garland’s Justice Department to bring the first criminal charges in history against a former president. We'll discuss with Moss. 

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One year ago this week, the United States hastily pulled out of Afghanistan, an ignoble end to a twenty year experiment in nation building. As armed Taliban fighters swarmed into government buildings and took over the country, the world was privy to gut wrenching scenes as thousands of Afghans who served as translators, co-workers, and allies on the battlefield desperately tried, along with their families, to get on airplanes to leave the country and avoid the inevitable retribution. Few are more emotionally involved in the effort to save those Afghans than our guest Elliot Ackerman. A marine who served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning a Bronze Star for valor. In his new book, The Fifth Act: America's End In Afghanistan, he writes about his own frantic efforts along with others to line up charter flights to save his one-time Afghan colleagues. We discuss America's look back on its humiliating withdrawal and take stock of what Afghanistan has become under the harsh rule of our longtime enemies.

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On a Monday morning in August, the United States Justice Department as well as the FBI, may have crossed the proverbial rubicon. For the first time in American history, agents showed up unannounced at the home of a former President of the United States in a court authorized search for classified documents that were removed from the White House. It was an extraordinary move by any measure based on a still sealed affidavit that lays out probable cause for why the documents at Donald Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago contains evidence of a federal crime. What exactly are potential crimes at issue? And what to make of the furious reaction coming from leading Republicans in congress, vowing full-scale investigations of the Justice Department and the FBI if they, as many expect, take control of the House in Nov. Mary McCord, a career prosecutor and the former Chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division, as well as Dana Milbank, columnist for the Washington Post and author of new book The Destructionists: The 25-year crackup of the Republican Party, join to discuss.

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