Blackwater Founder and West Michigan Native Funds Right-wing through Foundation

Medi­a­Mouse
Black­wa­ter USA founder and West Michi­gan native Erik Prince funds a vari­ety of rightwing and reli­gious causes accord­ing to a review of grants awarded by Prince’s Frei­heit Foun­da­tion. Prince, who’s Black­wa­ter has drawn con­sid­er­able atten­tion for its work in Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans, and Colom­bia, also has strong ties to the eco­nomic and reli­gious right [...]

Roads To Riches

by Emily Thorn­tonBUSINESS WEEK
Why investors are clam­or­ing to take over America’s high­ways, bridges, and airports—and why the pub­lic should be ner­vous
Steve Hogan was in a bind. The exec­u­tive direc­tor of Colorado’s North­west Park­way Pub­lic High­way Author­ity had run up $416 mil­lion in debt to build the 10-mile toll road between north Den­ver and the Boulder [...]

FTR #579 Gimme a Break! — Reflections on the Death of Gerald Ford

REALAUDIO
The recently deceased Ger­ald Ford is remem­bered for his role in the Water­gate Scan­dal. Hav­ing been appointed by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew as Vice-President, Ford announced, “Our long national night­mare is over.” He then par­doned Nixon of all crimes that he had com­mit­ted. Nixon’s polit­i­cal down­fall turned on his unwill­ing­ness to release the Watergate [...]

How Ford stood by ‘real friend’ Nixon

Unpub­lished tapes, doc­u­ments shed light on the deep rela­tion­ship between them
Bob Wood­wardWASHINGTON POST
Wash­ing­ton — Months before Richard Nixon set Michi­gan con­gress­man Ger­ald Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called him­self the embat­tled president’s “only real friend,” to get him out of trou­ble.
Dur­ing one of the dark­est days of [...]

FTR #575 Interview with Robert Parry

Recorded Novem­ber 5, 2006
REALAUDIO

Once again, Mr. Emory inter­viewed Robert Parry, who runs the “Con­sor­tium News” web site. The last pro­gram recorded before the 2006 elec­tion, this broad­cast exam­ines how George W. Bush has actu­ally worked with, not against, Osama bin Laden. Begin­ning with analy­sis of a 2004 video­tape released just before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the [...]

FTR #563 A Tale of Two Heroes

Recorded August 13, 2006
REALAUDIO
Revis­it­ing the tragic story of FBI Agent John O’Neill, the pro­gram high­lights his unsuc­cess­ful efforts at inter­dict­ing Al Qaeda oper­a­tions and details the mag­nif­i­cent work of his Lebanese-American col­league Ali Soufan. These are the “Two Heroes” in the title of the broad­cast. In charge of the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Al Qaeda, O’Neill [...]

FTR #560 Economics 9/11

Recorded July 9, 2006
REALAUDIO

Ana­lyz­ing the eco­nomic impli­ca­tions of the events of 9/11, this pro­gram exam­ines sig­nif­i­cant areas of com­mon­al­ity between the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic forces con­trol­ling the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, as well as al-Qaeda and its par­ent orga­ni­za­tion the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the free-market eco­nomic phi­los­o­phy of the Mus­lim Brotherhood—a philosophy [...]

The Agent

Did the C.I.A. stop an F.B.I. detec­tive from pre­vent­ing 9/11?
by Lawrence Wright
On Octo­ber 12, 2000, in the deep-water port of Aden, Yemen, the U.S.S. Cole, a guided-missile destroyer weigh­ing eighty-three hun­dred tons, was docked at a fuelling buoy. The Cole, which cost a bil­lion dol­lars to build, was one of the most “sur­viv­able” ships in the [...]

FTR #554 Conversation with Daniel Hopsicker

The Won­der­ful World of Makram Chams
Recorded May 21, 2006
REALAUDIO

Doc­u­ment­ing the career of Makram Chams, this pro­gram sets forth some facets of a man who must be the most remark­able con­ve­nience store owner of all time. In addi­tion to being an inti­mate asso­ciate of, and appar­ent col­lab­o­ra­tor of, 9/11 hijack­ers Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan Al-Shehhi, Chams [...]

FTR #541 Leaks

Recorded Febrary 12, 2006
REALAUDIO
A major rea­son for George W. Bush’s decline in pub­lic opin­ion polls is the dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion done by dam­ag­ing dis­clo­sures about his con­duct of the war in Iraq and his pur­suit of Al Qaeda. In this broad­cast, we exam­ine indi­ca­tions that many of these dis­clo­sures have been delib­er­ately leaked in [...]