NPR Podcast alert

Hi folks, just wanted to let everyone know that Stu and I will be on the Leonard Lopate show tomorrow, Monday May 5.  Stu will be in the New York City studio while I participate via call in.  The show’s is streamed and podcast as well as archived for later listening.  You can find the links to listen in at:

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=123970455

It should be interesting, the Lopate show is more of a general interest program and among others he interviews writers and authors. I suspect the conversation will be broader than many of my more recent interviews, which have been primarily on smaller radio/internet streaming shows with hosts focused on covert operations.

I’ve been a bit disappointed not to hear much from readers yet, but it is early and the book is 600 pages long so I suppose patience is indicated…grin.  Shadow Warfare has done well in the library market and at retail but has sold less copies online than we might have expected.  That puzzles me a bit.  I recall when I first got into studying the JFK case that I had no idea of how agencies such as the CIA and FBI operated. One of the few books that really provided any detail was one based on a series of interviews with Fletcher Prouty and while that was very educational, his focus on the financial and administrative practices for providing military support to the CIA was really a small part of the picture. Obviously “deniable” operations with surrogates were not going to be using U.S. weaponry and deniable operations are the backbone of the Plans and Operations Directorate. It took me a great many years to dig up a fairly detailed picture of how those sorts of operations worked and its all in Shadow Warfare.  It may be that with so much general information on the internet these days, that folks are satisfied with what they find there – but I can assure you that unless you are going to real research sources, a good deal of what  you find there is either lacking or in a number of instances just flat misinformed.

I’ve also been surprised that a great many folks don’t seem to want the deep background on contemporary events such as war on terror operations – more recently known as overseas contingency operations and now transitioning to a verity of ops using the generic name “shield” as part of their description. I suppose we shouldn’t be too frustrated though, we put forth a covert operation scenario for Benghazi, linking the activities there to Syria.  Seymour Hersh came out with something similar several months later and even with his reputation and recognition, he got no traction – it appears that everybody is too busy pursuing political agendas with that story to stop and listen.

Enough author whining, I do urge anyone reading the book to drop me an email or throw some questions into this blog.  And if you need a spot of diversion on Monday, we’ll be on the air…well sort of of….   Larry

 

 

 

 

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