Episode 117, with guests Sam Katz and Doug Mills

Samuel M. Katz and Doug Mills are our guests this week.
Show produced by Katherine Caperton.
Original Air Date: September 7, 2013 on SiriusXM “POTUS” Channel 124.
PoliOptics airs regularly on POTUS on Saturdays at 6 am, 12 noon and 6 pm.
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Vanity Fair magazine consistently delivers great excerpts from forthcoming books, and they picked another whopper with Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi by Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz. While the story is a narrative non-fiction thriller that recalls Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down (Bowden was a guest on our show last year), Under Fire is also a fascinating history of the Diplomatic Security Service.

When I worked at the White House, the DS Agents protecting Secretary of State Warren Christopher and, later, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, were always poised, calm and deferential to the hierarchy that put the U.S. Secret Service in the lead when the President was present. In Burton and Katz’s book, we understand in far greater detail the complexity of the DS mission, how it’s often misunderstood and the extraordinary sacrifice the service makes ever day to protect our diplomats and installations abroad.

After President Obama outlined his plan to seek Congressional approval for use of force against Syria earlier this week, he took off for Sweden and Russia and left behind Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel to start selling the the proposal on Capitol Hill. He also left behind the New York Times‘ great photographer, Doug Mills, to document the action.

Doug returned to the show to talk about how me gets his shots and what he’ll be covering in the months ahead. To see more of Doug’s work over the past few months and to keep up with what he’s seeing though the lens, follow him on Twitter @DougMillsNYT.

 

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