Podcast summary

One of America's most admired journalists offers a manifesto for enlightened reform of the nation's military-industrial complex.

Participant(s) Bio

Robert Scheer is the editor-in-chief of the political blog www.truthdig.com and the author of seven books, including Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power; With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals; with his son Christopher and Lakshmi Chaudhry, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq. Most recently, he wrote Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush. Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Scheer can be heard on the political radio program Left, Right and Center on KCRW 89.9 FM. Scheer is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow.

John Dean was legal counsel to U.S. president Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, and his testimony before Senate investigators convinced many Americans that Nixon was closely involved in the criminal activities that eventually led to his resignation from the presidency. Dean started his legal career in Washington in the late 1960s, as the chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. He then served as an associate deputy in the Attorney General's office before being appointed as White House counsel.

Dean went on to write books about his experiences in the Nixon White House, including Blind Ambition (1976), which became a made-for-TV movie. Since then he has worked as an investment banker in California and written columns, essays and books on subjects as varied as president William G. Harding and Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist. In 2004 he emerged as an outspoken critic of the administration of George W. Bush with his book Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.

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