LISTEN online HERE  iTunes podcast HERE
How the CIA turned the National Student Association into a covert operational weapon in the Cold War—and how Ramparts magazine exposed the deception in 1967: KAREN PAGET tells that story. Her new book is Patriotic Betrayal.
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Plus: Bibi Netanyahu won the Israeli elections — after coming out against Palestinian statehood.  It’s hard to think of an uglier victory in recent history.  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment: he wrote about the election for the Washington Post: HERE.

Also: GEORGE PELECANOS worked as a line cook, bartender, and woman’s shoe salesman before publishing his first novel in 1992. He was also a producer and writer for The Wire on HBO, and a producer and writer for the HBO series Treme—two of the greatest things ever on TV. Now he’s published his first collection of short stories – it’s called The Martini Shot.

LISTEN online HERE  iTunes podcast HERE
Burglary at the FBI: Media, PA, 1971: we’ll speak with one of the burglars, Bonnie Raines, who stole documents that revealed massive FBI abuse of power, including COINTELPRO. The book is The Burglary—we’ll also be speaking with the author Betty Medsger. The film 1971 about the break-in opens Friday at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills. WATCH the trailer HERE.
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Also: 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese are still coping with unexploded bombs and Agent Orange. George Black will report—he has the cover story this week in The Nation.
SUPPORT Project Renew in Vietnam: HERE.
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Plus: a new kind of civil disobedience: a student debt strike. Students are refusing to make any more payments on their federal student loans. Astra Taylor will explain – she’s a filmmaker and activist, and she wrote about the debt strike for the New York Times op-ed page, HERE.

LISTEN online HERE  iTunes podcast HERE
The last year of Martin Luther King’s life was “hell” —that’s what TAVIS SMILEY says. We’ll speak with him about how King’s 1967 speech criticising the Vietnam war was denounced not only by the mainstream media—the NYTimes called it “disastrous and self-defeating”—but also by most of black America as well. Tavis of course hosts a show on PBS; his terrific new book is DEATH OF A KING:The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year.

Also: “Why I Won’t Serve in the Israeli Army”—Israeli refusenik Moriel Rothman explains why we went to jail rather than “be part of a system whose main task is the violent occupation of millions of people.”

Today is a fund drive day at KPFK—we’ll be featuring Tavis Smiley’s book Death of a King as our thank-you gift, along with rare Martin Luther King from the Pacifica Archives. Please call and pledge during the show: 818-985-5735

LISTEN online HERE  iTunes podcast HERE
Guantanamo Diary is an incredible document, the true first-person account of a “high-value detainee,” Mohamedou Ould Slahi—John Le Carre calls it “a vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka: perpetual torture prescribed by the mad doctors in Washington.” We’ll speak with Slahi’s editor LARRY SIEMS and his attorney NANCY HOLLANDER.
WATCH the video HERE.  READ the original manuscript HERE.
SIGN the ACLU petition HERE.

Also: Historian ERIC FONER on the hidden history of the underground railroad—his new book Gateway to Freedom shows how a small number of people can accomplish great things–and change history.
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Plus: KPFK Sports! Sunday is the Superbowl, a big day for brain damage. We’ll have comment from STEVE ALMOND—he wrote the book AGAINST FOOTBALL

LISTEN online HERE   iTunes podcast HERE
Richard Pryor revolutionized the world of comedy—he was a fearless performer and a truth-teller about race in America. Now there’s a terrific new biography out: Becoming Richard Pryor by SCOTT SAUL—he teaches English at Berkeley, he’s written for Harper’s, the New York Times, and The Nation. The Digital Companion HERE.  He’ll be  at Book Soup Sunday, Feb. 8 at 4 pm.

Plus: JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation magazine will comment on last night’s state of the union speech, where Obama proposed to address income inequality by redistributing some of the wealth that has been locked up by the billionaire class and their banks.

Also: “The brain’s job is to hide the truth of trauma from you” – that’s what DAVID J MORRIS says. His Humvee was blown up in the Iraq war; when he came home he suffered from post-traumatic stress, and now he’s written an amazing book about it, The Evil Hours: A Biography of PTSD. He’s published in the New Yorker, Slate, the New York Times last Sunday.  He’ll be speaking at Vroman’s in Pasadena Thurs, February 19 at 7pm.

LISTEN online HERE   iTunes podcast HERE
The film Selma and the fight for the right to vote – in 1965, and now: ARI BERMAN of The Nation comments. He’s an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute, is working on a book about voting rights since 1965.

Plus:  Much of the film Selma is based on the work of historian TAYLOR BRANCH.  We’ll speak with him about Selma in his book At Canaan’s Edge: Martin Luther King 1965-1968.

Also: Obama’s liberal apologists: TOM FRANK says they helped torpedo change and make the Democrats safe for Wall Street–and it didn’t have to be that way. Tom writes a column for Salon.com.

And we’ll also revisit a conversation with GARRISON KEILLOR—he says it’s time for all of us to become Republicans.