Unauthorized Disclosure

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola are joined this week by educator and journalist Roberto Lovato. In 2015, he wrote the article, "," for Foreign Policy. Recently, he a piece to Latino Rebels on the appointment of Elliott Abrams to represent the Trump administration as special envoy to Venezuela (particularly, the opposition). Lovato, who is of Salvadoran descent, describes the dread he experienced when the former State Department official implicated in massacres in El Salvador in the 1980s was given a job by President Donald Trump's administration to help advance their agenda in Venezuela. He recalls bearing witness to a mass grave. Later in the show, Lovato recalls what happened to him when he went to Venezuela to report on Lopez, the opposition leader who is a folk hero to many international human rights groups and Western media outlets. He highlights when he was threatened by a member of the opposition. When he returned home, a State Department employee gave him a creepy phone call. Lovato also highlights some of the individuals in the opposition, who have ties to neo-fascists. *Thank you to our patrons for supporting our show, and thanks for listening to the interview. If you like what you hear, .

In a special episode, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola stand up to a slew of smear attacks against Rania for speaking out on the attempted coup in Venezuela. Particularly, journalists like Michael Weiss of The Daily Beast, Yashar Ali of Huffington Post, and Casey Michel of Think Progress attacked members of Congress who interacted with her tweets on Venezuela. They labeled her a "Russian propagandist" to further isolate and make them denounce her. Rania's Wikipedia page was defaced around January 28. It was brought to editors' attention. A slanderous sentence was removed from the top of her page and then re-inserted further down. It was then locked making it difficult for anyone to remove what was added. She had to wait for nearly a half of a day before it was deleted altogether, and her page still going through maintenance so it conforms with Wikipedia's standards and does not attack her reputation. This has lasted for about a week. In the words of Kevin, this sustained campaign of attacks are an effort to silence a strong and effective woman journalist who is unapologetic in her anti-imperial views. She agitated for members of Congress to come out against President Donald Trump's support for a coup in Venezuela, and it worked because multiple representatives responded to her favorably. That deeply upset those in media who despise her. We spend nearly an hour going through several of the attacks. Most importantly, we give Rania space to deal with what she has endured. Nobody is going to shut Rania down on "Unauthorized Disclosure."

In this additional segment from Mike Prysner and Spenser Rapone, hosts of the "Eyes Left" podcast, we talk about the U.S. military's colonization of sports, particularly the NFL. Then we discuss the Veterans Affairs Department and why it is important to care about the dysfunction and systemic problems with the agency. Finally, Prysner updates listeners on the status of "Empire Files" with Abby Martin. He is a producer on the show, and the show recently lost all funding from Telesur in Venezuela as a result of sanctions from President Donald Trump's administration.

Hosts of the "Eyes Left" podcast join the show to talk about creating the conditions for more resistance within the United States military. Spenser Rapone, known as the "Commie Cadet," spoke out for NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and expressed his support for left-wing politics. He was issued an other-than-honorable discharge nearly one year ago. Michael Prysner is an antiwar activist, who enlisted in the military following the 9/11 attacks, and a producer of the "Empire Files." Together, they share their thoughts on antiwar organizing under President Donald Trump and whether the terrain has shifted considerably since President Barack Obama was in office. They share their back stories, address the never-ending war in Afghanistan, discuss U.S. support for a right-wing coup in Venezuela, and more.

In Part 2 of our interview with investigative journalist Yasha Levine, we discuss the power Silicon Valley corporations like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, are claiming to engage in censorship and how troubling it is to see liberals cheer corporations. Later in the show, Levine recalls attacks he experienced for investigating the Tor Project, a popular tool for protecting one's privacy on the internet. He addresses the issue of journalists and how they should respond to constant surveillance enabled by tech corporations. Levine argues there needs to be a political solution that shifts the culture around privacy, but that cannot and will not come from Silicon Valley.

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola are joined by Sarah Smith, a Democratic Party candidate running for Congress in Washington's 9th District. She recently beat the Republican to qualify for the general election against the incumbent, Democratic Representative Adam Smith. Sarah Smith is both a member of the local Democratic Party and Democratic Socialists of America. She's run that consists of all volunteers. She also has garnered a reputation as a rare antiwar candidate in the 2018 midterm elections because she views foreign policy as a top issue. In Part 1 of our interview with Sarah Smith, we talk about why she decided to run, why foreign policy is so important to her campaign, and what she thinks about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel for its occupation of Palestine. Later, the show's hosts get her thoughts about the war economy, Puerto Rico, and the head tax proposal in Seattle to raise funds for affordable housing, which Amazon defeated. *Part 2 will be posted on August 22.

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola welcome journalist Max Blumenthal, the editor of the Grayzone Project and co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. He recently returned from a reporting trip in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has experienced violence over the past months, as opponents of President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas launched an insurrection back in April. The U.S. government, as Blumenthal reported, laid the for . He also Ortega. Blumenthal describes how he was shocked by the "extent of sadistic violence that was meted out against average supporters of the Sandinistas during the period in which the national police were ordered to stay in their barracks." He recalls meeting one person after another who was tortured, beaten, or kidnapped and how their stories were overwhelming. Blumenthal also outlines what he found out about the students who Western media have treated as leaders of democratic uprising, when that is not really the case. Later in the interview, Blumenthal breaks down how opposition groups set up roadblocks to establish zones of control and strangle the country economically. Blumenthal goes on to discuss how right-wing Republicans, like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, have helped meddle in Nicaragua, and the impact that U.S. sanctions have had.

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola discuss how MSNBC gave Jonathan Chait a platform to promote a wild conspiracy theory about President Donald Trump being a Russian asset. They also get into how the network encourages attacks on journalists like Glenn Greenwald, who are skeptical of certain allegations about Russia and the Trump administration. Later in the show, they talk about media by highlighting the introduction to journalist Seymour Hersh's memoir, "Reporter." They also spend a bit of time talking about Boots Riley's "Sorry To Bother You."

Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and diplomat from the State Department who resigned in protest over the Afghanistan War, joins the show this week. During our interview, he talks about how the U.S. government is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes. He discusses the military industrial-complex under President Donald Trump, as well as under President Barack Obama. He addresses the ongoing war in Yemen. Later in the show, Hoh describes what it is like for someone to endure post traumatic stress disorder and outlines the scope of the issue for military veterans, especially those with moral injuries. He also comments on news that NSA whistleblower Reality Winner accepted a plea deal.

Our guest this week is Ryan Cooper, a national correspondent for . He's also the co-author of a policy paper for the People's Policy Project called "" We talk about the exuberance and reverence for former FBI director James Comey and his new book among The Resistance™ to Donald Trump. Then, Cooper addresses the ways in which neoliberal Democrats have contributed to GOP efforts to dismantle financial regulations and the impact this will have on poor and working class black Americans. Later in the show, Cooper highlights his policy paper, "Foreclosed," and what happened to black homeowners under President Barack Obama. The episode concludes with discussion about the Democrats' continued focus on Trump-Russia allegations and what this means for the midterm elections.