

Unauthorized Disclosure
Kevin Gosztola
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"Unauthorized Disclosure" is a weekly podcast hosted by Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola. It focuses on issues and topics that are overlooked or pushed aside by the more mainstream media.
The hosts champion adversarial journalism. Guests featured are often rarely heard or unheard voices. Or they are voices who we think can benefit from a space to have conversations, which allow for dissent and the unpacking of unpopular ideas.
SUBSCRIBE on Spotify for $4.99/month and gain access to full episodes instead of clips or highlights from each week's show.
"Unauthorized Disclosure" is a weekly podcast hosted by Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola. It focuses on issues and topics that are overlooked or pushed aside by the more mainstream media.
The hosts champion adversarial journalism. Guests featured are often rarely heard or unheard voices. Or they are voices who we think can benefit from a space to have conversations, which allow for dissent and the unpacking of unpopular ideas.
SUBSCRIBE on Spotify for $4.99/month and gain access to full episodes instead of clips or highlights from each week's show.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 15, 2015 • 1h 4min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Raven Rakia
Independent journalist Raven Rakia joins the show to share her reporting on Rikers Island prison in New York, where the city has reformed solitary confinement by establishing Enhanced Supervision Housing Units (ESHUs). They are essentially enhanced solitary confinement units, and Rakia highlights how this system may further entrench the abuses of solitary confinement into the system at Rikers. During the discussion, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola talk about the University of Missouri and how what happened there has inspired protests on campuses across the United States. Both talk about some of the tactics being used and whether these tactics will ultimately help students win power. Finally, Khalek comments on the Center for American Progress' event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Nov 8, 2015 • 54min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Aviva Stahl
Aviva Stahl, an independent journalist, talks about her story for the Gothamist on an NYPD undercover named "Mel," who infiltrated Brooklyn College. The undercover converted to Islam. She befriended students and even was in some of their bridal showers and wedding parties. Then, later, the students realized "Mel" was the undercover, who helped push two Queens women down the path to building a bomb so the FBI could arrest them. We talk about the operation and the NYPD's reaction to this story, which includes a ludicrous rejection of the idea that Muslims have ever before been subject to "blanket surveillance" by the city's police.
During the discussion portion, Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola highlight the problems with think pieces suggesting all critics of Hillary Clinton are "Bernie Bros." They also discuss Shaker Aamer's case and read from a prison letter from Chelsea Manning to Gosztola.

Oct 18, 2015 • 53min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Ryan Devereaux

Oct 11, 2015 • 1h 6min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Anand Gopal

Oct 4, 2015 • 1h 3min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Dima Khalidi
The director of Palestine Legal, Dima Khalidi, joins the show to discuss a reporting documenting hundreds of attacks against Palestinian human rights activists in the United States over the past two years. Khalidi addresses the escalation by Israeli advocacy groups against activists on college and university campuses. Khalidi highlights how Israeli consulate officials are spying on students, how students threatened are forced to pay for their own security or cancel events, and what organizations like Palestine Legal are doing to push back against states moving to pass legislation to discourage boycotts and divestment campaigns against Israeli apartheid.
During the discussion part of the show, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola talk about the US airstrike against a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netyanahu's speech at the UN General Assembly, right-wing human rights activist Thor Halvorssen's effort to have a story on him censored, and some of the Clinton emails mentioning WikiLeaks.

Sep 27, 2015 • 58min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Freddie deBoer
Writer Frederik deBoer, whose piece, "Why We Should Fear University, Inc," recently appeared in the New York Times, joins the show to discuss his argument about the corporatization of college campuses.

Sep 20, 2015 • 45min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Anna Jones
Anna Jones, a single mother and a leading organizer in the Fight for Dyett High School, joins the show to talk about the struggle to save a neighborhood school on the south side of Chicago. As a 34-day hunger strike comes to an end, Jones describes what this fight means to her, why people have fought to save the school, and how this is critical campaign against not only the privatization of public schools but also separate but equal schooling in the city. During the discussion, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola discuss the open expressions of fascism at the GOP debate, Ahmed Mohamed, and the latest development in Guantanamo Bay prisoner Tariq Ba Odah's case.

Sep 13, 2015 • 1h 5min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Jason Leopold
VICE reporter Jason Leopold joins the show to talk about documents he obtained containing new revelations about the collaboration that went on between "Zero Dark Thirty" filmmakers and the CIA. We talk about the significance of the documents, whether former CIA director Leon Panetta lied about interactions with screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow, and how the CIA was hoping to undermine a Senate intelligence committee investigation into torture with this mass-marketed Hollywood movie on the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.
During the discussion, the show's hosts talk about the refugee crisis in Europe, the British government's decision to kill two British nationals with drones, a court decision in a No Fly List retaliation case brought by American Muslims against FBI agents, U.S. rejecting human rights recommendations from countries, and James Clapper's speech about U.S. intelligence having a lot in common with Spider-Man.

Aug 30, 2015 • 1h
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Patrick Strickland
This week on “Unauthorized Disclosure,” Patrick Strickland, who is an independent journalist and contributor to The Electronic Intifada and Al Jazeera English, talks to us from Beirut, Lebanon. He discusses his reporting on the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, a Palestinian refugee camp which has been under siege. He talks to us about the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. Strickland also describes how ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra are taking over some of these camps with Palestinian refugees.
In the second half, during the discussion part of the show, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola highlight the refugee crisis in Europe and, separately, how President Barack Obama’s administration has fought to continue detaining refugee mothers and children from Central America. We also talk about North Dakota becoming the first state, where drones can be weaponized with tear gas or tasers, the FBI setting up a cell phone surveillance system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the latest appalling aspects of the Obama administration’s effort to keep a gravely ill Guantanamo prisoner detained indefinitely.

Aug 23, 2015 • 1h 4min
Unauthorized Disclosure - Guest: Imraan Siddiqi
Imraan Siddiqi, a blogger and the chairman of the Arizona chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), joins the show to talk about anti-Muslim hysteria and racism in the United States. We talk about the threat against American Muslims from right-wing groups, including calls from people like former Marine Jon Ritzheimer to hold armed protests outside a mosque in Phoenix (which is where Siddiqi is based). We discuss a released May bulletin from the FBI warning militia extremists are increasingly targeting Muslims. We highlight how rhetoric promoting fear against Muslims spreads in this country.
In the second half, we continue our interview with Siddiqi by talking about white men attempting to frame American Muslims for terrorist plots by faking the plots themselves. We highlight a case in New York involving a KKK man, who wanted to build a death-ray machine to kill Muslims and essentially was entrapped by the FBI. And then, we spend the rest of the episode talking about mosques in the United States and what it is like for American Muslims to have agents and informants working for the FBI infiltrating their communities.