SPOOKY FAMILY SECRETS

Russ Baker is a celebrated investigative journalist who in 2004 became interested in how someone like George W Bush could become president of the USA. He eventually researched the topic for 5 years, unearthing a shocking backstory which went into his 2009 book "Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years." We hear how he got started on this book, and some of its highlights in our second interview.

Our first piece this week is a half hour interview of Baker by Mike McCormick of Talkingstick TV in May 2014. Baker explains how the investigative website he started, WhoWhatWhy.com provides a platform for a deeper analysis of world events than is offered by commercially-controlled media - similar to Wikispooks, but a conventional news site rather than a wiki. Focusing on the Boston Marathon bombing, he points out a series of highly suspicious details which surround the government's claim that the bombing was committed by the Tsarnaev brothers. Deaths of key witnesses, factual contradictions in the official narrative and unexplained deviations from standard operating procedure indicate that the official narrative is suspicious at best.

Our second piece was broadcast 5 years earlier, in May 2009 by Bonnie Faulkner for Guns and Butter. At that time, Russ Baker had got "Family of Secrets" published, and he summarises some of its highlights. He presents a highly compelling narrative (which Mark Gorton cites as a major influence on his Fifty Years of The Deep State) of a secret life of the George Bushes (junior and senior) as deep state operatives. ...  Several short musical breaks by Capitol Steps and the Compassionate Conservatives offer a less serious, if similarly unflattering, angle on George W Bush.