Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has just issued his quarterly report investigating waste, fraud and security problems in the reconstruction efforts. Next week Bowen will appear before a House Committee beginning hearings into waste and fraud in reconstruction. Formerly, Bowen served in the White House under George W. Bush, and was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Patton Boggs LLP. Bowen's ties to Bush go back to the early 1990s, when he worked in the Texas Governor's office. Bowen was also an intelligence officer in the U.S.
Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski died on January 23, 2007, at the age of 74. As a foreign correspondent, Kapuscinski covered coups and revolutions in the developing world for forty years. Many of his articles appeared in a series of books that made him famous: The Soccer War, Another Day of Life, and Shah of Shahs. This interview originally aired in 1/21/1988.
Attorney Eugene Fidell is the president of the National Institute of Military Justice. He is also a partner and head of the Military Practice Group at the Washington, D.C., firm of Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell, LLP.
Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada is the first American officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that he thinks the war is illegal. He is joined by one of his lawyers, Eric Seitz, a civilian. Watada is now being court-martialed for his refusal, and for statements he made opposing the war and the Bush administration's leadership.
Director Guillermo del Toro's film, Pan's Labyrinth, is up for six Academy Awards this year, in categories including original screenplay and foreign language film. Del Toro, who grew up in Mexico, wrote and directed the film.
Country singer Bradley Walker is making his recording debut with Highway of Dreams. Walker's vocal style "harkens back to an earlier generation of vocalists, such as George Jones and bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe." The record's producer is Carl Jackson who worked with Emmylou Harris and Glen Campbell. Walker has performed at the Grand Ole Opry, and sung at leading bluegrass festivals. Born with Muscular Dystrophy, he has been in a wheelchair all his life.
Legal correspondent for ABC News, Jan Crawford Greenberg writes about the Rehnquist Court in her new book Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court.
A review of Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man, the new biography of the 19th century poet and novelist by Claire Tomalin. Tomalin has distinguished herself in the field of literary biography by her celebrated biographies of such figures as Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Pepys.
Journalist Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His new book is Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial.
Gyllenhaal plays a drug-addicted ex-convict in Sherrybaby, which will be released on DVD this month. Her other films include Secretary, World Trade Center, and Stranger than Fiction.
A review of the movie Venus, starring Peter O'Toole and Vanessa Redgrave. It was written by Hanif Kureishi, the writer of the films My Beautiful Laundrette and London Kills Me.
Producer Zarqa Nawaz is the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a new Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sitcom about a group of Muslims living in a prairie town in Saskatchewan. She is head of the production company FUNdamentalist Films, which produced her 2005 documentary Me and the Mosque, about the relationship of women to Islam.
Dr. Mark Kline is president of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital. Kline discusses his efforts and the advances that have been made in treating HIV-infected children.
Last summer, Kline launched the Pediatric AIDS Corps, which sends doctors to six African countries to treat HIV-infected children and train medical professionals. Recently, BIPAI signed an agreement with UNICEF to get first-rate drugs to infected children throughout the world.
Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the founders of rock 'n' roll. He has kept a low profile since his last album was released in 1996. His new studio album, Last Man Standing, was recorded over the last five years with an impressive cast. Collaborators included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, B.B. King, Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
Writer Emily Rapp's left foot was amputated when she was four years old, and she has worn a prosthetic device ever since. Her book is Poster Child: A Memoir.
Historian Thant Myint-U is a former U.N. official and a native of Burma. His new book, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma — part memoir, part history — explores the problems plaguing the country.
In his new book, Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey chronicles the campaign which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was working on at the time of his death. Honey is a former civil liberties organizer and a professor of ethics, gender and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
