Melvin Goodman, former senior Soviet analyst at the CIA, discusses why WikiLeaks' Cablegate is a big data-dump and not the work of foreign intelligence services; documents that show inaccurate information flowing from the US embassy in Georgia back to Washington during the S. Ossetia conflict; disagreements about the quality and honesty of journalism in the NYT and Washington Post; and the question why — if these cables are so ordinary and unremarkable — are so many of them...

Melvin Goodman, former senior Soviet analyst at the CIA, discusses the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) response to torture investigation naysayers, early indications that the investigation will focus on low-level operatives instead of policy makers, the Washington Post’s role as CIA apologist and how the U.S. occupation of Iraq is shaping up to be this generation’s 'Forgotten War.'

Melvin Goodman, author of Failure of Intelligence: The Rise and Fall of the CIA, discusses problems with the CIA, how the serial intelligence manipulator Robert Gates was brought in to replace Rumsfeld only after Rumsfeld started talking about withdrawal, the history of distorting intelligence to fit the policy, how the military runs the intelligence apparatus, Congress's indifference to the Constitutional crisis and our inevitable failures in Iraq and the militarily-led war on terror.