Government & Politics

Columnist Bob Sullivan covers Internet scams and consumer fraud for MSNBC.com, where he writes a column called The Red Tape Chronicles. His new book is about the hidden fees found in many phone, cable, credit card and other bills.

The fifth and final season of the acclaimed HBO drama The Wire has its season premiere Jan. 6. Fresh Air's TV critic has a preview.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, a regular guest on Fresh Air, returns to discuss developments in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died after an attack at a political rally that also killed at least 20 others. Bhutto recently had returned to Pakistan from an eight-year exile to challenge President Pervez Musharraf for the country's leadership. Ahmed Rashid covers Pakistani politics and culture for various Western publications; he has written extensively about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, a regular Fresh Air guest, joins us again to assess recent developments in his home country and to preview the upcoming election there. Born in Lahore and based in Pakistan, Rashid has written for The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, London's Daily Telegraph and other publications. He's also the author of several best-selling books.

After former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes reported on the fall of the Taliban in 2001, she decided to stay in Afghanistan as the country was being rebuilt. In 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a business that sells local products for use in perfumes, soaps and food. The author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, Chayes wrote about her experiences starting the cooperative and selling beauty products in December's Atlantic Monthly.

Joel Hafvenstein spent a year in Afghanistan trying to convince opium-poppy farmers to give up what he calls "the perfect crop." Working for a private company funded by the United States Agency for International Development, Hafvenstein helped provide Afghan farmers with alternative jobs — like building canals and roads — in hopes that they'd give up their alliance with the Taliban.

In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story, reporter Andrea Elliott explained how the small Moroccan neighborhood of Jamaa Mezuak has bred terrorists responsible for a number of recent high-profile attacks. Some were involved in the Madrid train bombings; some went to Iraq. Elliott won a Pulitzer Prize this year for her series An Imam in America.

A MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick runs one of the nation's leading water-conservation assessment centers.

The institute's biennial report, The World's Water, surveys global water trends and issues, including the links between water and terrorism and the growing risk of flood and drought.

Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks has recently returned from Iraq — where senior military commanders now say that the key threat facing the U.S.effort isn't terrorists, it's the intransigence of the Shia-dominated government.

Ricks, a regular Fresh Air guest, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the best-selling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Journalist Philip C. Winslow has worked for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, ABC radio and CBC radio.

But he hasn't always been a journalist: His new memoir, Victory for Us Is to See You Suffer, chronicles the time he spent working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank. It was during the second Palestinian intifada, during which Winslow transported aid across checkpoints to villages and refugee camps.

Our guest, Father John Barkemeyer, left a parish on Chicago's South Side to become an Army chaplain in 2003, the year U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq. There's a shortage of Catholic priests in the Army, and for much of his current tour in Iraq, Barkemeyer has been the service's only Catholic chaplain in the province of Anbar.

In a new book, two British investigative journalists dig into the story of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear network — and America's role not just in condoning its ally's nuclear ambitions, but aiding them.

Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are senior correspondents for the Guardian newspaper; both previously worked for the Sunday Times of London.

Their book is titled Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons.

Norman Mailer once wrote that before he was 17, he'd formed the desire to be a major writer. That wish certainly came true. One political campaign, two Pulitzer Prizes and an unprecedented level of controversy later, he became a literary grandee unlike any other. This interview originally aired on Oct. 8, 1991.

The rapper MF Grimm, whose real name is Percy Carey, has written a graphic memoir entitled Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm. He spoke to Terry Gross about his story.

Arrests and protests have followed last week's declaration of martial law in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf has ousted the chief justice and cracked down on dissent

Journalist Ahmed Rashid, a regular guest on Fresh Air, tells Terry Gross that Musharraf's latest gambit could encourage more civil strife — and greater territorial gains by the Taliban.

Rashid reports on Pakistan and Islamic fundamentalism for several Western newspapers. He's also the author of the best-selling book Taliban.

Clive Stafford Smith is one of just a few people who've had independent access to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He's a human rights lawyer representing dozens of the prisoners held there, and he says countless innocent men have been held at Gitmo for years with no meaningful review of the accusations against them. Many of them, he says, have suffered terrible abuse.

In Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay, Smith details the abuses and absurdities of life inside the legal black hole of the prison camp.

Earlier on today's Fresh Air, we heard from Clive Stafford Smith. He's a defense attorney who charges in a new book that numerous innocent men have been held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo for years with no meaningful review of the accusations against them.

For a different perspective, we're speaking with Capt. Pat McCarthy, the U.S. government's lead counsel in Guantanamo.

She works in a country where reporters have been harassed, deported, jailed, even tortured. She's subject to all these risks herself — but Peta Thornycroft surrendered her British citizenship and became a Zimbabwean so she could remain in the country and continue to report on the challenges it faces. She's one of the few independent journalists still working in Zimbabwe.

Journalist James Fallows, a 25-year veteran of The Atlantic Monthly, is living in China and writing about it. He joins Dave Davies to discuss his recent article "China Makes, The World Takes" — and the booming Chinese factories that are its subject.

Always politically minded, chess master Garry Kasparov is now running for president of Russia. He's the leader of an opposition coalition known as The Other Russia. He's also published a new book, called How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom.