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Harper’s Charles Glass on Mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan; Truthout’s Jason Leopold’s Exclusive on DHS Surveillance of Occupy

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Charles Glass, former ABC News Mideast correspondent, on his story in April Harper’s about armed military contractors;  Jason Leopold’s FOIA requests produce doc dump from Homeland Security. Glass, who was held as a hostage in Lebanon in the 1980’s, has an excellent story in April Harper’s about Aegis, the British mercenary company started by Tim Spicer.  He details Spicer’s failures as a soldier of fortune, and his good fortune in landing a contract in occupied Iraq to coordinate the actions of all the hired guns. Aegis is now in Afghanistan, where the March 20 deadline for armed contractors to leave has come and gone, with no change.  We talk about the Karzai government, and how its use of foreign goons for security did not play well domestically.  Glass is crisp and blunt, and opines that the US should have left Afghanistan well before now.

At 26:00, Leopold returns to talk about his scoop, based on documents released by Homeland Security due to multiple FOIA requests.  The focus is on the monitoring of the Occupy movement in New York and elsewhere, and how much First Amendment rights came up in emails.  Follow this link to the latest report based on the released documents, and look for Leopold’s new story about CIA and FOIA.