Democracy Now! - Notable Guests, Interviews, and On-air Debates

Notable Guests, Interviews, and On-air Debates

• Alan Dershowitz and Norman G. Finkelstein – Finkelstein is a frequent guest. This was a much publicized debate about whether the Dershowitz book, The Case for Israel was plagiarized and inaccurate. Dershowitz has written that he agreed to appear on the show after being told he would debate Noam Chomsky, not Finkelstein.
• Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve – by Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein, journalist and author of The Shock Doctrine, September 24, 2007. In a follow-up interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele, based on their October 2007 article in Vanity Fair, call Greenspan "flat wrong" regarding claims by Greenspan in that interview denying Federal Reserve responsibility in the transfer of billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve to Iraq, $9 billion of which the reporters claim has yet to be accounted.
• Arundhati Roy – Recurring guest; Indian writer, anti-war activist, and leading figure in the alter-globalization movement
• Bill Clinton – Interviewed after hours on election day of the US presidential election, 2000. The heated interview on the Clinton Administration's neoliberal policies, bombing of Vieques, Iraq sanctions, Leonard Peltier, the death penalty, the Cuban embargo, racial profiling, Ralph Nader, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict resulted in the outgoing President calling Amy Goodman "hostile and combative." A staffer at the White House press office later criticized Goodman for straying from the topic of getting out the vote and for keeping Clinton on much longer than the two to three minutes agreed. Goodman replied "President Clinton is the most powerful person in the world. He can hang up when he wants to."
• Bill Moyers – Interviewed; former Johnson Administration press secretary and former host of the PBS show NOW with Bill Moyers and former host of the PBS show Bill Moyers' Journal.
• Cornel West – Scholar, currently a professor at Union Theological Seminary, formerly at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; activist; author.
• Danny Glover – Regular guest; American actor, film director, and political activist.
• Dennis Kucinich, Democratic presidential candidate – Interviewed by Goodman and Gonzalez on November 9, 2007.
• Edward Said – was a regular guest; Columbia University professor, literary critic and Palestinian activist and intellectual
• Evo Morales, President of Bolivia – Interviewed on September 22, 2006; talked about his recent speech at the United Nations in New York where he held up a coca leaf and argued for international drug law reform as well as talked about the nationalization of Bolivia's energy reserves among other topics. Morales was again interviewed on April 23, 2010 after the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
• George McGovern, 1972 Democratic presidential nominee – Interviewed on March 11, 2008 about that year's presidential race and how McGovern's chairmanship of the Democratic Party Reform Commission (1969–70) transformed the nominating process.
• George Papandreou, Greek Prime Minister – Interviewed on December 8, 2011 at U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa shortly after resigning due to pressure from European Union and financial institutions.
• Gore Vidal – US-author, essayist, and political activist; interviewed sparsely on a few occasions.
• Greg Palast – Frequent guest; US-born writer and investigative journalist for the BBC and The Observer.
• Howard Zinn – Interviewed by Amy Goodman; late historian and activist; author of several books, including A People's History of the United States.
• Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela – Interviewed in September 2005.
• Jean-Bertrand Aristide – on March 16, 2004, the recently ousted Haitian President accused the United States of kidnapping him and overthrowing the government of Haiti.
• Jimmy Carter – Interviewed by on 10 September 2007; former US President: author of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.
• Joseph Stiglitz – Recurring guest; Columbia University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2001), and author
• Paul Krugman – Recurring guest; Princeton University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2008), and author
• Lori Berenson – Interviewed in 1999 in Peru by Amy Goodman; political activist arrested in 1995 and convicted for collaborating with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a Peruvian leftist guerrilla organization. It was the first time a journalist was able to interview Berenson inside the prison where she was incarcerated.
• Manuel Zelaya – multiple interviews with the ousted president of Honduras
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Michael Eric Dyson – Regular guest; Georgetown professor, writer & radio host.
• Michael Moore – Filmmaker, author, political commentator; interviewed on March 10, 2011 & on September 28, 2011
• Mumia Abu-Jamal – In its first year, Democracy Now! was one of the first national programs to air radio commentaries from the controversial journalist and former Black Panther Party member, on death row in Pennsylvania for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. The 1997 decision to air Abu-Jamal's commentaries caused Democracy Now! to lose twelve of its then 36 affiliates.
• Naomi Klein – Author, public intellectual, and critic of globalization and corporate capitalism. Interviewed on March 9, 2011.
• Noam Chomsky – A regularly interviewed guest; MIT linguistics professor, political analyst, and author.
• Norman Finkelstein – Author, activist and scholar.
• Ralph Nader – A regularly interviewed guest; consumer activist, corporate critic, author, and former presidential candidate.
• Ricardo Alarcón – President of the Cuban National Assembly interviewed by Amy Goodman.
• Robert Fisk – Frequent guest; British journalist who is Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
• John Pilger – Frequent guest; Australian journalist and film-maker.
• Scott Ritter – Interviewed; former UN weapons inspector who disputed the Bush administration's claims about weapons programs in Iraq.
• Tariq Ali and Christopher Hitchens – took opposing sides in two debates over the Iraq War, on December 4, 2003 and October 12, 2004.
• Tawakel Karman – The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient appeared 21 October 2011, while she was in New York for a UN Security Council resolution that would create a path for Yemen President Saleh to resign.
• Yoko Ono – Musician, peace activist and widow of John Lennon. Interviewed on October 16, 2007.