Securing America with Frank Gaffney Podcast

John Bolton, Dan Bongino, Doug Lamborn, Jack Devine

JOHN BOLTON, former US Ambassador to the UN:

• Predicting the legacy of President Obama's foreign policy
• How the United States is viewed by its allies and adversaries
• Are there any actual moderates to arm and train in Syria?

DAN BONGINO, former Secret Service agent

• Dangers of putting politics above public safety
• The purge of data on people with ties to terrorism from a watch list used by ICE
• President Obama's documented location during the Benghazi attack, and what can be inferred about his behavior there

Congressman DOUG LAMBORN:

• Amendment in the NDAA that outlines three conditions for lifting sanctions on Iran
• The call from the Hill for the resignation of the VA's Erick Shinseki
• How Lamborn and his colleagues are working on keeping America armed
• Freedom of religion in the military

JACK DEVINE, author of "Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story":

• His personal experiences as a career CIA agent
• The decades old secret about American covert operations in Chile
• His personal outlook on Edward Snowden's motives and actions

Bill Roggio, Peter Pham, Jose Cardenas, Fred Fleitz

BILL ROGGIO, Managing Editor of the Long War Journal: 

• President Obama's speech at West Point
• Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan
• Thoughts on the planned arming and training of potential moderate groups in Syria

PETER PHAM, The Atlantic Council

• Grading Obama's foreign policy concerning U.S. strategic and economic goals in Africa
• Increasing Chinese military influence in Africa parallel to a shrinking U.S. Africa Command
• Did the failure to label Boko Haram as a designated terror group affect broader American goals in Africa?

JOSE CARDENAS, former USAID Acting Assistant for Latin America and the Caribbean: 

• President Obama's West Point speech outlining his administration's international goals and feelings towards American exceptionalism
• Anti-American sentiments in Venezuela
• The elections in Colombia and the possible role the narco-terror group FARC will play after the elections

FRED FLEITZ, Center for Security Policy

• President Obama's failure to emphasize terrorism as a threat in his recent foreign policy speech at West Point
• Past failures that may have motivated Edward Snowden to seek revenge against the United States

Pete Hoekstra, Diana West, Dr. Noha Bakr, and Bill Gertz

Congressman PETE HOEKSTRA, former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee:

• Wars of the 21st century: an update on the situation in Afghanistan. What outcome is the US seeking now?
• New “safe havens” for al Qaeda – its establishment around the world and shrinking dependence on Afghanistan as a home base
• White House's accidental exposure of the top CIA official in Afghanistan

DIANA WEST, author of "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character":

• Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers' attendance at an upcoming event honoring individuals who led the Ground Zero Mosque project
  
• President Obama's recent remarks about the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and the reactions of America's foes
• Increasing asylum/immigration into the U.S. of Islamic extremists with moderate terrorist ties

NOHA BAKR, Assistant to the Minister of Economic Cooperation with USA in Egypt:

• Strategic importance of Egypt for the United States
• The need for stability following the recent Egyptian presidential election, which was extended by a day due to low voter turnout
• Geopolitical threats facing Egypt

BILL GERTZ, of the Washington Free Beacon:

• President Obama's recent announcement on the timeline for the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan
• Promises made by the Obama administration to Russia in regards to the build-up of U.S. missile defenses
• Dangers of the Chinese development of hypersonic missiles

Stephen Hunter, Hal Brands, Andy McCarthy, Gordon Chang

STEPHEN HUNTER, author of "Sniper's Honor":

• Details about his new book, "Sniper's Honor," and the woman that inspired parts of it
• What a new super gun currently in development means for the sniper profession

HAL BRANDS, author of "What Good is Grand Strategy?":

• Role played by Reagan's grand strategy in toppling the Soviet Union
  
• Do China and Russia have grand strategies? If so, what are they?
  

ANDREW McCARTHY, former federal prosecutor:

• U.S. policy response to potential moderate Islamists
• Scheduled keynote address by Mike Rogers (MI-8), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, celebrating the architects and proponents of the Ground Zero Mosque

GORDON CHANG, author of "The Coming Collapse of China":

• Predictions for the rule of India's newly elected prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist known for promoting communal tensions in the country
  
• Another assault on a Vietnamese ship by Chinese vessel
  
• Chinese retaliation against the US charges against Chinese cyberhackers

Tom Marino, Ilan Berman, Dan Coats, Bill Gertz, Fred Fleitz

Congressman TOM MARINO (PA-10):

• Steps the US should have taken against Russia and Putin's tsarist ambitions
• Importance of protecting the US grid technology
• The internet's potential to be used as a weapon, and the national security implications of turning it over to the international community
• Arguments for why a strong NATO and an international military squad to defend US interests are needed

ILAN BERMAN, Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council:

• Russia's soft power
• Assessing the probability of a change in Russian strategy to gain back some of the post-Soviet satellites
• The truth behind Iranian President Rouhani's moderate background

Senator DAN COATS:

• US policy towards Russia
  
• American over-dependence on Russia for space travel, and what the consequences could be if Russia does restrict American access to the International Space Station
• NSA's failure to win the public debate over data collection because of misrepresentations about the program; difficulty in finding a balance between American privacy and intelligence needs
• Why surrendering the internet to the international community as planned would be a "terrible mistake"

BILL GERTZ, Washington Free Beacon: 

• New Russian hypersonic nuclear missile system
  
• Under estimating China's nuclear arsenal build up
  
• Chinese Russian Naval cooperation
  
• Chinese cyber warfare capability and U.S. response

FRED FLEITZ, senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy:

• Interpreting the newly passed USA Freedom Act in the House, which reigns in the NSA phone data collection program: how will phone companies be compelled to store the data and respond to NSA requests?
• Evolution of the USA Freedom Act, and how it is meant to be a compromise between the polarized views on data collection
• Update on the Iranian nuclear talks: the likelihood that Iran will be allowed to keep a heavy water reactor capable of producing plutonium
• Chinese cyber-espionage, and the US's treatment of such an act of war as a legal matter

Pete Hegseth, Elaine Donnelly, Zach Taylor, and Peter Huessy

PETE HEGSETH, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America:

• The secret wait list scandal at the VA

• Fixing the VA's internal problems with help from Congress

• The call for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign

ELAINE DONNELLY, Founder and President of The Center for Military Readiness:

• The political left's cultural assault on the military

• The current push by 'social engineers' for women to have direct combat roles

• Hollowing out of the U.S. military from a combat-ready force to a civil service organization

ZACK TAYLOR, President of the National Association of Former Border Patrol (NAFBPO):

• The release of 36,000 criminal illegal immigrants last year

• The continuing phenomenon of mothers coming to the US to give birth in order to gain American citizenship

• The failure of the drug war to address the infrastructure of the drug cartels

• Damaging interference into the daily duties of border patrol by the government

PETER HUESSY, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis, National Security Affairs Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council

• A shooting incident last year on a substation in San Jose, CA, that showed the vulnerability of the electric grid to physical attacks

• Threats posed by cyber attacks and EMPs to critical infrastructure in the U.S.

• Poor standards put in place by the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission to protect against solar events, such as the "Carrington Event" of the mid 19th century

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Jim Hanson, Michael S. Smith II, Diana West

Congressman ADAM KINZINGER (IL-16):

• Efforts to stop France from selling two ships to Russia, where Putin would use them to control the Black Sea
• Private sector interests driving the political decisions of Europe
• Firsthand account that the US's southern border is not secure, and the possible merits and pitfalls of the ENLIST Act

JIM HANSON, of Blackfive.net:

• Getting at the root of the VA's problems
• Ways to strengthen the VA system and provide veterans with better medical care—is privatization the solution?
  

MICHAEL S. SMITH II, of Kronos Advisory:

• Problems with the US's tunnel-vision focus on counter and de-radicalization efforts and attacking Al Qaeda's senior leadership
• Understanding that the global jihad movement is not limited to Al Qaeda, and the need to act accordingly
• Muslim Brotherhood apologists within the federal government

DIANA WEST, nationally syndicated columnist and author of "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character":

• A high school senior's thesis exposes the Muslim Brotherhood's subversion of American society that U.S. leaders have failed to recognize
• Recent medal of honor winner Kyle White and the failed counterinsurgency policy (COIN) in Afghanistan
• An argument for why Afghanistan is another entitlement program with wasted funding, ineffective nation-building, and little sustainability

William Graham, Charlotte Florance, Andy McCarthy, Clare Lopez

WILLIAM GRAHAM, Former Science Advisor to the Reagan Administration:

• Debating the administration's proposal to eliminate the last lab samples of small pox
• Potential for genetically modified viruses, including smallpox, to be used as biological weapons
• Russia's ban on American astronauts aboard the International Space Station

CHARLOTTE FLORANCE, Research Associate at The Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies:

• Northern Nigeria's deep mistrust of Goodluck Jonathan's government, the support that animosity lent to the rise of Boko Haram, and the missteps the government took after the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls
• The regional spread of shariah in Africa, and Boko Haram's international appeal to jihadists
• The case of Merriam Ibrahim and what it shows about the way Shariah adherents can manipulate religious law with no regard for the judicial process

ANDY MCCARTHY, former federal prosecutor:

• Attempts to limit free speech in the United States via international laws made by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
• New findings made by Judicial Watch on the IRS targeting controversy, and Senator Carl Levin's role in the scandal

CLARE LOPEZ, Vice President of Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy:

• Finding the common theme between events in Sudan, Nigeria, and elsewhere in the world with regards to women's rights
• The role the US's alliance with militias linked to Al Qaeda played in creating the current chaos in Libya
• Gaps between the international stance and Iran's position in the nuclear talks; what will happen if an agreement is not reached by July 20th?

Joseph Schmitz, Faith McDonnell, Chris Farrell, Gordon Chang

JOSEPH SCHMITZ, Former Inspector General of the Department of Defense:

• An aborted attempt to provide arms to the Free Syrian Army, and the problems with arming Syrian rebels with weapons through proxy private groups
• Trustworthiness of rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army, which reportedly has weapons for only one in three fighters.
• The transformation of an Inspector General's role under the Obama Administration

FAITH McDONNELL, of the Institute on Religion & Democracy:

• Meriam Ibrahim, sentenced to death in Sudan, and her refusal to answer to an Arabic name in court or agree to convert to Islam
• McDonnell's experiences with an Nigerian NGO task force that pushed for years to get Boko Haram designated a terrorist organization
• Refuting the Obama Administration's policy stance that the violence in Nigeria is caused by poverty, not religion
• Difficulty Christian victims of religious persecution have getting visas into the US

CHRIS FARRELL, Director of Research and Investigations at Judicial Watch

• Formation of the select committee on Benghazi and its chances for success
• Findings from a FOIA regarding Lois Lerner, the IRS, and the targeting of certain Tea Party groups
• Judicial Watch's lawsuit against National Intelligence Councilman Theodore Moran, for his dealings with a Chinese technology firm with close ties to Chinese government intelligence
• The security flaws associated with the U.S. personnel security investigative programs

GORDON CHANG, of Forbes.com:

• Chinese cyberwarfare against US industry
• Reasons behind America's reluctance to treat China as a potential enemy
• China's recent actions in Vietnam and the possibility of a Chinese-Vietnamese war

Rep. Lamar Smith, Joseph Humire, Christian Whiton, and Bill Roggio

Rep. LAMAR SMITH, Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee

• The Center for Immigration Studies publishes a report on 36,000 criminal aliens released from detention
• Obama's history of ignoring existing immigration laws and attempting to create his own via executive order
• Arguments against the ENLIST Act, which would legalize illegal immigrants who join the US military

JOSEPH HUMIRE, author of Iran's Strategic Penetration of Latin America

• "Dialogue of the deaf" between Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the Obama administration
• Is Maduro in danger of being overthrown by his own military?

CHRISTIAN WHITON, Principle at DC International Advisory:

• Harsh criticism being received by the Sultan of Brunei from the American political left for imposing shariah law in an attempt to appease political critics
• Problems that have come from Hillary Clinton not designating Boko Haram a terrorist group when Secretary of State
• The troubling lack of oversight in the dealings of the State Department—why was aide Huma Abedin allowed to talk with private clients about topics in her portfolio?
• The delicate combination of force and diplomacy to combat the issue of shariah in Sudan

BILL ROGGIO, Editor of the Long War Journal:

• Status of and problems with the US policy of training and arming "moderate" rebel groups in Syria
• Will those groups pass along US weapons to Al Qaeda?