Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst turned political activist, discusses why the US media thinks a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent; and Victoria Nuland's successful regime change operation as her guy "Yats" becomes interim prime minister and paves the way for IMF austerity.

Adam Morrow, an IPS News journalist based in Cairo, discusses Field Marshall al-Sisi's announced candidacy for president and his main competition; the Egyptian government's bad reputation on the world stage for its mass death sentences; and the how Egypt's turmoil is causing rifts between Gulf monarchies.

Nathanael Ferguson, executive director of Texas Public Policy Action, discusses the criminal justice reforms coming from the political right; the detrimental and cascading effects of too many laws and the war on drugs; and former NYPD boss Bernie Kerik's change of heart after his stint in federal prison.

Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, discusses the fake reforms in Congress' NSA bills; the millions of innocent people caught in the NSA's practice of collecting phone records two or three "hops" away from the suspect; and why Rep James Sensenbrenner's NSA reform bill is the best of the lot.

Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the ACLU, discusses her Tomdispatch article "Big Data and the Internet of Things Means the Surveillance of Everything."

Syndicated columnist Eric Margolis discusses the 528 Muslim Brotherhood supporters sentenced to death by an Egyptian judge; continuing US financial support for Egypt despite army chief al-Sisi's purge of political dissidents; the possibility of an armed uprising by Egyptian army defectors; and whether or not Israel will join the war in Syria.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the belligerent Americans itching for conflict with Russia and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's increasingly desperate behavior ahead of elections.

Gareth Porter is an award-winning independent journalist and historian. This is the eighth part in a series of interviews on Porter's new book Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Porter discusses the CIA's flawed assessment of Iran's nuclear program; re-using the "fix the facts around the policy" strategy from the Iraq war; the good guys in the CIA like Paul Pillar; why wrongheaded National Intelligence Estimates go unchallenged; and the high-level coverup of a...