I think the interviews on this show need some powerful context to dispel some of the cloudy thinking embedded in the debate.

The author Rosenfeld's syntax & overly careful way of speaking reveals a tool or dupe of the police who he claims to have “compelled” to aid his research. A writer who is not deeply suspicious of an “ex”-agent who comes bearing gifts must be an idiot.

Let us do away with the silly notion that agents of secret police organizations (or journalists) in America are honorable truth-tellers or people with remarkable powers of observation and intellect. Nonsense.

The Freedom of Information Act is a joke. If you have ever looked at documents released from police organizations thanks to this act, you know they can be blacked out in their entirety, and when they're not blacked out, there are stunning instances of bad spelling, grammar, and logic in the “analyses” of these patriotic geniuses.

The use of informants in police work is second in stupidity only to the use of torture. Informants can be ignoramuses, simple liars, or enemies of their “handlers”. We all know that “informants” have been framing and fingering incredibly impressionable morons, only to earn their wage.

Last, the “Black Panthers” has become a buzzword or label that does little more than stoke fearful racism in old-school whites. The real history of the Panthers is more a case study of co-optation of a grassroots community movement by born self-promoters, and obvious carpetbaggers/infiltrators. In the end by the mid-70's, “Black Panther” was more of a media trope to smear black Americans than anything else.

I remember a great interview with an original Panther who laughed about carrying rifles and distributing cheap Red Books as a way to Freak Out the Establishment and get laid, whereas the late-emerging leaders of the “scary” Panthers speak like true Kool-Aid drinkers. Who you gonna believe?