Terry Gross

The final report on Iran contra by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh has just been released. Terry talks with Peter Kornbluh about the reports findings. Kornbluh is senior analyst on U.S.-Latin America policy at the National Security Archive and editor of "The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History," (published in 1993 by the The New Press).

War correspondent and CNN's international correspondent Peter Arnett. He's best known for his reporting from Baghdad during the allied bombing raid which heralded the start of the Gulf War. Arnett has over 30 years of experience reporting, mostly for the Associated Press. He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Vietnam war . Later he covered wars in Cyprus and Lebanon. In 1981 he made the switch to television, when he joined CNN. After learning the ropes, he was sent to El Salvador, Moscow, and then Iraq.

Musical theater historian Robert Kimball. Kimball compiled and edited The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin (Knopf) and is artistic advisor to the estate of Ira Gershwin. Kimball knew Ira Gershwin and his wife Leonore. He also edited The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter.

Documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus. Their film, The War Room, is a behind the scenes look at the Clinton presidential campaign from the New Hampshire primary to the election. Pennebaker and Hegedus chronicled the campaign through the eyes of its two main strategists, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.

We speak with John Barth, senior producer of Marketplace and former colleague from WHYY, about life in L.A. following this morning's earthquake.

James Farmer, co-founder of CORE, the Congress On Racial Equality and its National Director from 1961-1966. CORE was one of the Civil Rights groups of the 1960's which followed Gandhi's principles of non-violent resistance. CORE also helped organize the Freedom Rides -- multi-racial busloads of people traveling through the southern states making sure the Supreme Court's decisions on desegregation were being enforced. Farmer's long life as an advocate of civil rights was detailed in in his autobiography, "Lay Bare the Heart" (Dutton).

J. L. Chestnut, who in 1958 became Selma, Alabama's first and only black lawyer. Working with the NAACP, he defended activists during the civil rights movement. Since then he's been involved in what he describes as the longer march...turning the victories of the civil rights movement into grass roots change. The law firm Chestnut founded in Selma is now the largest black law firm in Alabama. Chestnut's autobiography is "Black in Selma" (Anchor), co-authored with Julia Cass, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Writer Taylor Branch. The first volume of his exhaustive history of the Civil Rights movement - "Parting the Waters, America in the King Years"(SS) - was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1989. In it, Branch covered the period from 1954 to 1963. Branch is a former staff member of Harper's, and Esquire. This interview was originally broadcast on 12/05/1988.

Richard Prelinger is a archivist of films you probably thought were not worth saving: educational, industrial, and public-service films made from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The former head of NBC's television programming Pat Weaver (Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver, Jr.). He began that job in the early days of the medium - in 1949 - and was the creator of two of television's longest running shows, the "Today" show and the "Tonight" show. Weaver started his career in radio, where he worked with comic Fred Allen. And he was advertising manager for the American Tobacco Company, under the eccentric tobacco magnate George Washington Hill. Weaver has a new memoir of his career, "The Best Seat in the House," (Knopf).