History

Witte is Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, and director of the law and religion program at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

Cole is an authority on modern Islamic movements. He is professor of modern Middle East and South Asia history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam. The book collects some of his work on the history of the Shiite branch of Islam in modern Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf region.

The New York Times' James Bennet discusses the situation in the Middle East following the Israeli military's assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of the militant Palestinian group Ham

McGeary's article "Inside Hamas," in which she interviews several leaders of the Palestinian militant group, appears in the current issue of Time magazine. On March 22, the Israeli military assassinated the group's spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Clarke is the former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. He held the position in President Clinton's administration and continued for President Bush. He resigned in March 2003. His new book is Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. In the book he criticizes the Bush administration for failing to heed warnings about al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and for invading Iraq without evidence of a connection to al Qaeda. Clarke also worked for the Reagan Administration and the first Bush administration.

In his new book, Disarming Iraq, Blix writes about what happened in the months leading up to the war in Iraq last year. Blix, formerly the head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, has been named chairman of the newly formed International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which began its work in January 2004.

He's now the area security manager for KBR, a division of Halliburton, a private military firm. Vargas has been stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, for the past year. He talks about the capture of Saddam Hussein, which took place in Tikrit. Vargas is a retired Command Sergeant Major of the U.S. Special Forces. He's written the foreword to the new book Hunting Down Saddam: the Inside Story of the Search and Capture, by Robin Moore.

His new book is At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. Reed recounts America's fight against communism at the height of the cold war. Reed was director of national reconnaissance, a special assistant to President Reagan for national security policy, and a consultant to the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a well-known center for nuclear weapons research.

The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet traces the relationships between Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice. The group calls itself "The Vulcans." Some of its members have known each other 30 years. Mann is a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times.

She has reported on Haiti for a number of years and is the author of the book The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. She also edited and translated the book In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti by deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Wilentz is a contributing editor for The Nation, and a former associate professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Engel was the only American television correspondent who was in Baghdad before, during and after the war. On the next Fresh Air, Engel talks about how he bribed officials, woke to gunfire and witnessed atrocities of battle. His new book is A Fist in the Hornet's Nest.

Coll is managing editor of The Washington Post. His new book is Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Coll previously covered Afghanistan for the Post and was the paper's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992. He won the Pulitzer in 1990 for explanatory journalism.

Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She talks about Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, the company where Cheney served as chief executive for five years. Halliburton is the world's largest oil-and-gas-services company, and is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq. Mayer's article "Contract Sport: What Did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?" is in the current issue of the magazine (Feb. 16 and Feb. 23 issues).

A new book investigates Operation Condor, the secret alliance between six Latin American military dictatorships in the 1970s. It was formed to track down the regimes’ enemies and assassinate them. Author John Dinges is a former managing editor of NPR News, and has written for The Washington Post and Time. He teaches journalism at Columbia University. His book is The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton.

He wrote the introduction and commentary for the new book The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of The Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times. McPherson is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of many books on the Civil War era including Battle Cry of Freedom.

The group was founded by Boyd and Joan Blades, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, in the late '90s as a liberal political force. MoveOn.org recently sponsored the "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest. Some 1,500 contestants submitted ads and more than 100,000 people voted for them online. Moveon.org is now raising money to air the winning ad on TV this week and is even trying to get the ad aired during the Super Bowl.

Clayborne Carson of the Founding Director of the King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As a child, she had a crush on the 19-year-old preacher in her church. He was known as M-L, but later he became Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kani, a South African, is best known for his apartheid-era, politically charged collaborations with playwright Athol Fugard. His new play — and his first as a solo playwright is Nothing But the Truth. It's a post-apartheid family drama inspired by the death of his brother, a poet who was killed by the South African police in 1985. Nothing But the Truth is currently playing at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).