William Blum

, author of "Killing Hope," left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the U.S.was doing in Vietnam. He became a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various parts of the world. In the mid-1970's, he worked with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA misdeeds. He currently lives in Washington, DC, working on the staff of Covert Action Quarterly magazine and maintaining the U.S. Foreign Policy Watch page of Z magazine's website. His talks convey an understanding of US foreign policy -- it's hypocrisy, the great harm it inflicts upon the world, and its motivations.