The John Batchelor Show

Friday 31 July Friday

Air Date: 
July 31, 2015

Photo, left:  Ethel Rosenberg, cast to the electric chair under false testimony by her brother, David Greenglass, who later said that he'd lied in order to save his wife. "My wife is more important than my sister."  See Hour 4, Blocks A & B, Sam Roberts, NYT, anent: Secret Testimony on Ethel Rosenberg Is Released
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Sarah Westwood, Washington Examiner, in re: Latest round of Clinton emails heavily scrubbed  State Department officials released a heavily-redacted batch of Hillary Clinton's private emails Friday, including 37 documents that were classified, amid allegations that the former secretary broke the law by transmitting classified material on her personal server. The 6,148 pages of emails fell short of the 8 percent of records the State Department had been required to produce by the end of July under a court order.
"We fell short this month," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a briefing Friday. Toner stated the agency would make up for the gap and noted officials "still intend to fulfill the goal." The emails published Friday were heavily redacted and, in some cases, indicated Clinton indeed handled sensitive material on her private server. Although the newspaper attempted to walk the story back in the face of pressure from the Clinton campaign, the news fueled scrutiny over Clinton's conduct as secretary of state.
Another report Thursday indicated the classified information on her server belonged to at least five different intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the CIA. One email that contained classified information was improperly published May 22 in a batch of 296 emails that were related to Benghazi. The inspector general for the intelligence community said earlier this month that five of the 40 emails he sampled contained classified information, raising concerns that . . .  [more]
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block B:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: Joe Biden: The Looming Threat to a Republican Presidency 
Joe Biden has dreamt of this moment. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in free-fall and Republicans are busily re-enacting Lord of the Flies. After a lifetime of striving and six years as Loyal Number. . .  [more]
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Jim Gilmore, Republican presidential candidate, in re: Jim Gilmore formally joins GOP presidential race Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore became the 17th Republican presidential candidate Thursday, making the announcement in a Web video.
"Some may ask, 'Why am I running?' " Gilmore says in the video, noting the large GOP field.
"I'm a candidate for president because our current Washington leadership is guiding America on a path to decline, and I can reverse that decline," he says.  . . . [more]
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Lanhee Chen, Hoover, in re: GOP Candidates Must Offer Obamacare Alternative Despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision in King v. Burwell and President Obama’s pronouncement that the debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is over, health care reform will be a major topic of discussion in the 2016 presidential campaign. What the 2016 Republican presidential candidates must realize, however, is that since 2012, the politics of health care reform have changed. And these changes have amplified the need for the candidates to propose policies that they would want to replace President Obama’s signature health care law, if elected. Three key changes are noteworthy. First, core provisions of Obamacare—including the individual mandate, subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans to afford coverage, and its health insurance exchanges—went into effect in 2014, turning the abstraction of the ACA into a reality for many Americans. These provisions mark significant changes to the health care system that become more entrenched with each passing day.  
Second, and relatedly, the fact that the law now has millions of beneficiaries makes it more challenging to repeal in its entirety. A significant number of Americans have benefited either from the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid or through tax credits for the purchase of health insurance on exchanges created by the law. Any change that seeks to take away these benefits without a replacement will meet significant political resistance.   Finally, . . .  [more]
Hour Two
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re:  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/31/migrants-calais-resettlement-europe  But such short-termism ignores a vital fact: the migrants at Calais are merely the crest of  the biggest global wave of mass migration since the second world war . Others will keep coming in their wake, whether we like it or not. Previous camp clearances over the past decade have ultimately not stopped the flow at Calais. Why would they work now?
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: http://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/jan/03/arab-spring-migrant-wave-instability-war   A further 33.3 million people are “internally displaced” within their own war-torn countries, forcing many of those originally from the Middle East to cross the lesser evil of the Mediterranean in increasingly dangerous ways, all in the distant hope of a better life in Europe.
“These numbers are unprecedented,” said Leonard Doyle, spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration. “In terms of refugees and migrants, nothing has been seen like this since world war two, and even then [the flow of migration] was in the opposite direction.”
European politicians believe they can discourage migrants from crossing the Mediterranean  simply by reducing rescue operations. But refugees say that the scale of unrest in the Middle East, including in the countries in which they initially sought sanctuary, leaves them with no option but to take their chances at sea.
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Eli Lake, Bloomberg Politics, in re: DECLASSIFIED  Intel Assesses Iran Deal, Without Really Assessing Iran The intelligence assessment provided to Congress to support the Iran nuclear deal has a hole: It fails to examine the intentions of Iran's regime to actually comply with the agreement over time.
U.S. intelligence officials and members of Congress who have reviewed the document  -- known as a classified annex -- tell me it says that compliance can be verified and that U.S. intelligence can reasonably detect a secret attempt to build a bomb.
But according to the officials and lawmakers, its judgments are based on the assumption that Iran adheres to strict monitoring and transparency measures over the life of the agreement, in some cases up to 20 years. The annex does not examine how Iran's leadership will change over the course of the agreement and the chances that Iran's leaders will allow the same strict monitoring of its declared nuclear program in 10 or 15 years. This could be a problem considering Iran's history with arms control agreements. Tehran never adhered to the terms of . . .  [more]
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block D:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: https://twitter.com/FRoseDC/status/627113231304290304  (also:  Francis Rose ‏‪@FRoseDC‬ Jul 30   ‪@CatFoodBreath‪ that look Max gave me when I told him Tour De Couch was over #Tour2015 ‬)
Hour Three
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Ethan Hauser, NYT, in re:  Puppies Go to Prison to Become Dogs that Save Lives (1 of 2)
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Ethan Hauser, NYT, Puppies Go to Prison to Become Dogs that Save Lives (2 of 2)
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block C: Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, in re: Here's a feature, where actually I flew a B-2:  / Everything You Need to Know About the Air Force's New Bomber  Defense contractors are now bidding on the right to build the Long Range Strike Bomber. This is what you need to know about the Air Force's next big machine of death. [more]
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, in re: B-2 bomber flight demonstrates rapid systems integrationNorthrop Grumman is the latest company to demonstrate compliance with the US Air Force’s new open mission system (OMS) standards, with recent flight tests involving a B-2 Spirit bomber and a NASA Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle.
Northrop says that a series of test flights in June demonstrated how quickly OMS-compliant subsystems and payloads could be integrated with the B-2, as well as aircraft that conform to the new air force standards for software and hardware. In the most recent test at Edwards AFB in California, a company-owned Gulfstream G550 testbed aircraft acted as a surveillance asset, broadcasting an enemy location to a battle management unit on the ground. The unit then tasked a nearby B-2 to destroy the target.
The attack was simulated, and the information was exchanged via an OMS-compliant, line-of-sight Link 16 data link. The B-2 was diverted from its flight path and guided to the target using a specialised OMS-compliant auto-routing function, Northrop said in a statement this week.  [more]
Hour Four
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Sam Roberts, NYT, in re: Secret Testimony on Ethel Rosenberg Is Released A transcript from Mrs. Rosenberg’s brother provides some evidence to her defenders, who say that she was unfairly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
More than six decades later, the prosecution of Ethel Rosenberg remains one of America’s most controversial criminal cases: Her conviction — and eventual execution — for joining in her husband Julius’s espionage conspiracy rested largely on trial testimony from her younger brother.
But in private testimony to a grand jury seven months before the 1951 trial, Mrs. Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass, never mentioned involvement by his sister in Mr. Rosenberg’s delivery of atomic secrets to Soviet operatives, according to a grand jury transcript released Wednesday.
While not definitive proof that he lied at trial, Mr. Greenglass’s omission — and his assertion before the grand jury that he had never even discussed espionage with his sister — provides further evidence to Mrs. Rosenberg’s defenders who believe that she was unfairly convicted, and that her brother, under pressure from prosecutors, had doomed her with concocted testimony to spare his own wife from prosecution.  (1 of 2)
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Sam Roberts, NYT, in re: Secret Testimony on Ethel Rosenberg Is Released A transcript from Mrs. Rosenberg’s brother provides some evidence to her defenders, who say that she was unfairly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. (2 of 2)  At the trial, Mr. Greenglass, who had been an Army machinist assigned to Los Alamos, N.M., where the atomic bomb was developed, testified that in September 1945 he had delivered bomb secrets to his brother-in-law in the Rosenbergs’ Lower East Side apartment. There, he said, his sister typed his handwritten notes for delivery to the Russians.
Summing up his case at the end of the trial, the prosecutor said Mrs. Rosenberg had “struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets.”
Years later, Mr. Greenglass, who served almost a decade in prison for his role as a spy, acknowledged that in 1951 he could not recall who had typed the notes, and that he actually thought his wife had, but when she remembered shortly before the trial that it was Mrs. Rosenberg, he was not going to disagree.
The 46-page transcript of Mr. Greenglass’s Aug. 7, 1950, grand jury testimony did not include any mention of the typing, nor even of the September 1945 meeting in the Rosenbergs’ apartment.
That his grand jury answers would not jibe with his riveting trial testimony was not unexpected. But in light of what he testified to at the trial, the extent to which he shielded his sister before the grand jury was surprising.
Referring to a silver Omega watch and commendation that Mr. Rosenberg was given by the Soviets, an assistant United States attorney, Myles Lane, asked whether Mrs. Rosenberg ever received any similar gratuity.
“My sister has never spoken to me about this subject,” Mr. Greenglass replied.
Asked whether Mrs. Rosenberg, like her husband, had urged him to remain in the Army after World War II so he could continue spying for the Soviets, Mr. Greenglass answered broadly: “I said before, and say it again, honestly, this is a fact: I never spoke to my sister about this at all.”
The Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage — the government claimed they had stolen the secret to the atomic bomb and all but set off the Korean War — and were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. Mr. Greenglass’s wife, Ruth, an admitted courier and go-between, was not charged.
Mr. Greenglass’s grand jury testimony about his sister does not necessarily contradict his trial testimony, as it has no mention of typing, but it might have undermined his credibility had it been available to defense lawyers at the time.
In response to a suit by the National Security Archive, historians and journalists, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan released the testimony of most of the Rosenberg grand jury witnesses in 2008, except for those who were still living.
Mr. Greenglass, who was released from prison in 1960, died last year. Over the objections of his family and the government, the judge ordered in May that his testimony be made public.
“This revelation points to perjury on the stand by David Greenglass,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, an independent group that focuses on transparency.
David C. Vladeck, the lawyer who argued for the release of the transcripts, said the Greenglass testimony “underscores the likelihood that the testimony used to convict Ethel Rosenberg was, as David Greenglass later admitted, cooked up right before trial.
“If that’s so, and it appears to be, that is a tragic commentary on the 1950s-era Justice Department.”
Michael and Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs’ sons, acknowledge that their father was legally guilty of the actual charge lodged against him, which was conspiracy, not overt espionage. But they maintain that he, much less their mother, did not deserve to be executed and that the government charged her largely as leverage to persuade their father to confess.
“It’s not 100 percent proof that the September espionage meeting never took place, but it’s a strong indication that it didn’t,” Robert Meeropol said Wednesday.
While the Rosenbergs were charged with conspiracy — not overt spying — an aggressive defense lawyer might have wielded Mr. Greenglass’s grand jury testimony to poke holes in the prosecutor’s case.
The grand jury testimony suggested that Julius Rosenberg had been thoroughly briefed about the bomb by the Soviets so that he would know what information to find, and that Mr. Greenglass later filled in some gaps.
Asked to recall his conversation with Harry Gold, the Soviet courier who met him in Albuquerque in June 1945, Mr. Greenglass neglected to mention the incriminating quote from Mr. Gold he testified to at the trial: “I come from Julius.”
His testimony also suggests obliviousness to the consequences of stealing atomic secrets. Asked whether Mr. Rosenberg was worried about being arrested, Mr. Greenglass replied: “Well, he wasn’t worried about that, because this atomic information I gave to him was small compared to the information he was getting from other sources.”
And, he recalled, when Mr. Rosenberg advised him to hire a lawyer, “My wife and I said, ‘Why should we?’” Instead of fleeing the country, as Mr. Rosenberg suggested, Mr. Greenglass said they intended to escape to the Catskills for the summer.
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Christine Sneed, Longreads.com, in re: Literary Fiction’s Open Secret  With the publication of my second book, Little Known Facts, lightning seemed to strike. This novel was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and went on to receive other good reviews. Not long after Little Known Facts's publication date, Bloomsbury acquired a second novel and a story collection. The advance for these two manuscripts was $10,000 more than what they paid for Little Known Facts.
The open secret is that literary fiction does not pay big dividends. At least not to most of its writers and publishers. Even with excellent reviews, there’s no guarantee that your book will sell. Little Known Facts had a mid-five-figure advance and it has earned about three-fifths of it back so far. It was reviewed in several major-market newspapers and won a couple of awards. I did readings in cities all over the country to promote it, wrote many guest blog posts, and all told, it has probably sold about 23,000 copies. That figure includes paperback, hardcover, and e-books. Not bad but, by the publishing world’s yardstick, not a standout; not at all. (1 of 2)
Friday  31 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Christine Sneed, Longreads.com, in re: Literary Fiction’s Open Secret  With the publication of my second book, Little Known Facts, lightning seemed to strike. This novel was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and went on to receive other good reviews. Not long after Little Known Facts's publication date, Bloomsbury acquired a second novel and a story collection. The advance for these two manuscripts was $10,000 more than what they paid for Little Known Facts.
The open secret is that literary fiction does not pay big dividends. At least not to most of its writers and publishers. Even with excellent reviews, there’s no guarantee that your book will sell. Little Known Facts had a mid-five-figure advance and it has earned about three-fifths of it back so far. It was reviewed in several major-market newspapers and won a couple of awards. I did readings in cities all over the country to promote it, wrote many guest blog posts, and all told, it has probably sold about 23,000 copies. That figure includes paperback, hardcover, and e-books. Not bad but, by the publishing world’s yardstick, not a standout; not at all. (2 of 2)