Power Wonk Wednesday

It’s great to have you with us, David.

DAVID TALBOT: Great to be here, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: What an astounding book. Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden – how do they relate to Allen Dulles, the longest-reigning CIA director?

DAVID TALBOT: Well, as I write in the book and as you just pointed out, all the practices that we are wrestling with as a country now, the intelligence and security measures – including, I might add, the legacy of the killing fields in Central America that your guest was just discussing, in Guatemala and so on – that all had its roots, not after 9/11, but during the Dulles era and the Cold War. He was a man who felt he was above the law. He felt that democracy was something that should not be left in the hands of the American people or its representatives. He was part of what the famous sociologist from the 1950s, C. Wright Mills, called the power elite. And he felt that he and his brother and those types of people should be running the country.

@ TRUTHOUT this time