Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses his trip to Russia to present NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence.

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses the popular opposition to US intervention in Syria; the difficult job of destroying all of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile; the lessons Obama should have learned from Libyan regime change; and the prospects for a non-interventionist US foreign policy.

David Vine, author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, discusses how Italy became the Pentagon's launching pad for future wars in Africa and the Middle East; the bloody results of the military's effort to keep busy; and the ebb and flow of the US's empire of bases.

Patrick Cockburn, a journalist with The Independent, discusses why the media doesn't cover the chaos and violence in post-Gaddafi Libya; how Libyan sovereignty has been degraded by the abduction of terrorist suspect Anas al-Liby in a US commando raid; and the cascading failures of US foreign policy in the Middle East since the Iraq War.

Mark Thornton, Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, discusses Ron Paul's plan for an instant $1.6 trillion reduction in the national debt; why we need to lower, not raise, the debt ceiling; the dangers of a depreciating dollar; why the NSA's spy data is more useful for blackmail than fighting terrorism; the Fed's money creation shell game; and why empire is a money-losing proposition.

Jim Lobe, chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service, discusses the neoconservative ideology and its prominent practitioners; the opposition to US-Iran detente; and Obama's weak-kneed consensus-building approach to bitter policy disputes.

Jason Leopold, a writer for Al Jazeera, discusses the human rights groups criticizing Obama's failure to close Guantanamo prison; the just-released documents on prisoner genital searches that the DOJ claimed could help Al Qaeda attack Guantanamo; and the media's failure to cover the still-ongoing hunger strike.

Jeffrey Phillips, director for ADAM VS THE MAN, discusses why libertarian activist Adam Kokesh is still in jail and how you can help support his legal defense.  

Michael Swanson is the author of The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963. This is the first interview in a series of in-depth discussions about the book.