Background Briefing: March 22, 2022

On By gram

 

Republican Attack Dogs Try to Portray Judge Jackson as Soft on Pedophiles

We begin with today’s hearing on the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson before the Senate Judiciary Committee at which Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, both of whom supported the insurrection against the United States in the January 6th storming of the Capitol where lawmakers lives were threatened, relentlessly tried to make the case that Judge Jackson is soft on pedophiles.  Joining us to discuss how the extreme partisan Republican attack dogs with the loudest barks dominated today’s Judiciary Committee hearing is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government–as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a Deputy Chief of the article 3 judges division for the U.S. Courts.

 

Is Putin’s Purge an Attempt to Preempt a Coup Against Him?

Then we look into the purge underway by Putin as he places senior FSB intelligence officers under arrest and sacks Russian generals while stifling dissent and labelling his own citizens who disagree with his war as “scum and traitors.” Now, with Putin’s military offensive in Ukraine stalled, he is doubling down with Russian guns and missiles trained on the civilian population as the desperate dictator tries to murder and terrorize Ukraine’s population into submission. Joining us to investigate the possibility Putin is trying to preempt an insider coup against him is Douglas London, a retired Senior CIA Operations Officer and a Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. Over the course of his 34 years in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, almost 17 of which were in the foreign field as a recruiter and agent handler, he served in the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and Africa, including three assignments as a Chief of Station and Chief of Base in a South Asia conflict zone. He is the author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence and we discuss his article at The Hill, “The heads begin to roll in Russia.”

 

Will Freezing Russian Reserves Cause Blowback Against the Dollar as the Reserve Currency?

Then finally, we assess whether there will be blowback against the dollar as the reserve currency following the freezing of Russia’s $630 billion in foreign currency reserves and speak with Benn Steil, director of international economics and the historian in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the author, most recently, of The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War. And we discuss his article at Foreign Affairs, “Is China Helping Russia Hide Money?”