(updated below w/ transcript)

Two interviews are featured today on Salon Radio:

(1) NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten, who covers intelligence and national security matters, wrote an article on Wednesday reporting that John Brennan, who purported last week to withdraw his name from consideration for a top intelligence post, was, in fact, "pressured by the Obama transition team to pull his name from consideration."  I discuss that episode with Gjelten, but the majority of my interview focused on this paragraph Gjelten wrote:

Brennan's withdrawal, offered in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama, came after liberal bloggers mounted an opposition campaign against his possible appointment. They said he was tainted by his service in the CIA at a time when the agency was employing coercive interrogation methods, including "waterboarding," on detainees.

As I wrote previously -- and as this excellent post from NPR Check detailed -- this claim is false.  The objection to Brennan was not that he just so happened to be at the CIA when these policies were implemented.  The objection was much more substantive than that; it was that Brennan has a history of explicitly supporting and defending policies such as "rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Last week, Gjelten appeared on NPR in a radio segment with NPR host Steve Inskeep to discuss the Brenann controversy, and both he and Inskeep repeatedly made the same false claim:  that objections to Brennan were oh-so-unfairly grounded in the happenstance that he was at the CIA during the time these programs were instituted.  That claim -- used to depict objections to Brennan as irrational and based on unfair guilt-by-association hysteria -- has also been repeated by The New York Times.

I had a very "spirited" discussion with Gjelten over how he could possibly have mischaracterized so patently the case made against Brennan, and specifically how he could have done so in his piece this week even after multiple complaints were made to NPR last week in the wake of his radio report.  The discussion was roughly 25 minutes long, and finally -- after 20 minutes -- Gjelten acknowledged that he should have reported this differently. 

Unfortunately, due to technical problems, the sound quality of the recorded podcast is poor (though still intelligible).  But a full and accurate transcript is here.  Given the sound problems, I'd recommend the transcript, but because the "lively" tone of the discussion adds to the flavor, we've posted the podcast so that those who want to do so can listen to it -- by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.

(2) As Wired's David Kravets reported, a contentious hearing was held this week in Judge Vaughn Walker's federal district court in San Francisco, to hear arguments on the Government's motion to dismiss the lawsuits brought against telecoms, which accuse the telecoms of violating the statutory and constitutional rights of their customers by participating in the Bush administration's illegal surveillance programs.  The Bush administration is seeking dismissal of those suits based on the retroactive amnesty provisions Congress granted last August. 

The plaintiffs in the case have argued that telecom immunity is, for several reasons, unconstitutional and should therefore be invalidated and disregarded by the court (I previously summarized those constitutional arguments for the ACLU's site, here).  Judge Walker has previously issued several rulings that have been rather adverse to the telecoms (which is why the Bush administration and the telecoms were so desperate to obtain amnesty from Congress), and as Marcy Wheeler notes, prior to this week's hearing, he submitted numerous questions to the parties  (.pdf) suggesting that he takes quite seriously the constitutional challenges to telecom immunity that have been raised.

I spoke today to Harvey Grossman, Director of the ACLU of Illinois and one of the co-lead counsels in the telecom lawsuits.  We discussed the hearing held this week in front of Judge Walker, the reasons why telecom amnesty is unconstitutional, and most interestingly, what the incoming Obama administration can and should do to ensure that these suits can continue (Obama has always maintained that he's opposed to telecom amnesty and said he voted for the FISA law in August despite, not because of, those provisions).

The discussion is roughly 25 minutes and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below (the sound quality is normal and quite good).  A transcript will be posted shortly.

UPDATE:  The transcript of the Grossman interview is here.