Government & Politics

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews Luis Mandoki's latest movie, starring John Goodman, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.

Boris Yeltsin may be forced out of office tomorrow when the Congress of People's Deputies meets in a special session. William Taubman, a political science professor at Amherst College, was in Russia this January, and has visited the beleaguered country five times in the last 18 months. He talks about the current chaotic state of Russian politics.

Carlisle is the granddaughter of renowned Russian writer Leonid Andreyev. She grew up in Paris, but travelled to Russia in the 1960s, where she befriended that country's most prominent writers. For 20 years she was exiled from Russia because of her friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose work she published in the west. She returned to her native country in 1989 to find it vastly changed. Her new memoir is "Under A New Sky: A Reunion with Russia."

Thomas Blanton, of the National Security Archive, a group that declassifies government documents, using the Freedom of Information Act. Recently, they accessed documents indicating that the Reagan administration was aware of human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1980s. During that time, the administration was required to report to Congress about conditions in El Salvador, with the understanding that if the Salvadorian military did not improve it's human rights record, the U.S. would no longer send aid.

The former New York Times reporter was based in Poland from 1979-1982 during the rise of the Solidarity movement and martial law. Darnton just returned to Poland and wrote about it for the New York Times. He'll talk with Terry about his observations.

Peter Schweizer, author of "Friendly Spies: How America's Allies are Using Economic Espionage to Steal our Secrets." He is a consultant for "NBC News," and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new crime show on Fox, produced by Robert De Niro.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "Point of No Return," directed by John Badham. Schiff says, despite the movie's sleaze, it may be good for Bridget Fonda's career.

Economics correspondent for CBS This Morning Robert Krulwich discusses President Clinton's economic plan. A former NPR correspondent, he's best known for making money matters interesting and accessible.

Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia Abdulaziz A. Sachedina joins Fresh Air to discuss the recent worldwide rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Journalist Robert Cullen was Newsweek's Moscow bureau chief in the Soviet Union. He has a new book The Killer Department." It's about one detective's eight year hunt for the man known as "the most savage serial killer in Russian history." Cullen is also the author of, "Twilight of Empire: Inside the Crumbling Soviet Bloc," about the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Officer Jim Galipeau works with gangs in Los Angeles, and is currently trying to raise money for a program for older gang members. He'll talk with Terry about the truce between gangs that began last spring, just before the riots; the differences between Hispanic and Black gangs, and inner city and suburban gangs; the impact of the riots, and the possibility of riots in the future. Galipeau has been a probation officer for 27 years. He's a Vietnam vet, and when he was a teenager, he was a street fighter and drug addict.

Professor Marc Roberts is a professor of Political Economy and Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government. He'll discuss the economics of health care and health care reform in America.

Journalist Ray Bonner lived in Africa from 1988 until January of this year. He has a new article in "Mother Jones" about why the U.S. sent Marines into Somalia. He questions our role as the world's "missionary." Bonner also reported from Central America. Just recently he was exonerated for reporting on a massacre in El Salvador. Officials denied the event, but archeologists have since uncovered a mass grave.

New York Times journalist Jane Perlez has been covering Africa since 1988 and has been credited with recognizing stories before the rest of the media. She was reporting on the trouble in Somalia, and the threat of famine a year ago, long before it became the focus of world attention.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "Mad Dog & Glory," starring Robert De Niro and Bill Murray.

Investigative journalist Tom Powers has written a new book about the German attempt to get an atomic bomb, the threat that terrified American scientists and military during World War II. The book is "Heisenberg's War." At the center of the story is German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg. While other preeminent scientists left Germany with the rise of the Reich, Heinsenberg chose to stay to defend what was left of "good science." The program weapons program failed.

Journalist, professor, and historian Christopher Simpson teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. Last month the U.N. Security Council voted to create a new international tribunal to try those accused of war crimes in the Balkan conflict. Simpson has written a new book about the use of mass murder as an instrument of state power, beginning with World War I, called "The Splendid Blond Beast." Simpson shows how those who commit such crimes are rarely punished, like high-ranking SS killers from World War II.

Journalist Robert Kaplan has been a foreign correspondent for "The Atlantic," and "The New Republic." In the 1980s and early 1990s, he was the first American writer to warn of the coming crisis in the Balkans. His latest book, "Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History," is a political travel book about his journeys through southern Austria and Croatia, Old Serbia and Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece.

Writer and filmmaker Stephen Trombley's latest project is a book and documentary, "The Execution Protocol: Inside America's Capital Punishment Industry." The book has little to do with the morality of taking a life; rather, It's about the practical considerations involved with performing executions.