Mr. Ed Malloy is the mayor of Fairfield, Iowa, the home of KRUU 100.1 FM.
Ed recently spear headed a campaign, which got Fairfield designated, as
one of Iowa’s great places. The town will receive a five hundred
thousand dollar grant as a result. Mr. Malloy is also a successful
businessman who is currently President of Danaher Oil.

U.S. Congressman Jim Leach

Richard DeAngelis

U.S. Congressman Dave Loebsack

Buddy Biancalana

Buddy Biancalana is the former first round draft pick and shortstop for the Kansas City Royals. He was the star of the 1985 World Series and received the highest number of MVP votes for any position player. Mr. Biancalana is currently coaching professionally as well as working to develop peak performance in athletes. Buddy has appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and the Today Show.

Jonathan Freeman

Jonathan Freeman is a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army having recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. He has his BA from the University of Michigan and has an MA from Harvard University.

Steve Posner

Steve Posner is a Lecturer at the University of Southern California. He is also an expert on the Middle East and the author of Israel Undercover, Secret Warfare and Hidden Diplomacy in the Middle East. Mr. Posner’s newspaper commentaries have appeared in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the International Herald Tribune. Steve holds Masters degrees from the University of Southern California and Harvard University.

Tim and Laya Hawthorne

Tim and Laya Hawthorne. Tim is the president and founder of Hawthorne Direct, America’s leading long form advertising agency. Tim has also worked for CBS and ABC Television. Laya is the producer, director, and writer of a documentary that was done for the non-profit organization, World Teach.

Ari Berman

Mr. Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation Magazine and a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation writing fellow. Ari is a graduate of the Northwestern University. Ari has appeared on MSNBC and the Fox News network as a political analyst.

Ed Petersen

Mr. Ed Petersen is a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He retired from the FBI in 1987 after twenty-seven years of service. During that time Mr. Petersen investigated a wide range of federal violations including general criminal matters, international and domestic terrorism, and foreign counter intelligence.  He has also served as the director of security for major league baseball.  Mr. Petersen is currently one of the directors of Buckley Petersen Global, a private investigative and consulting company.

Dr. Stanley Cheren

Dr. Stanley Cheren is a medical doctor who is a former faculty member of Boston University Medical School. Dr. Cheren has published numerous articles including a series on violence in sports, which appeared in the New York Times. He recently returned from Guatemala where he has been working with a Maya village to improve the community’s quality of health care. Dr. Cheren is a graduate of Harvard University and Tufts University Medical School.

Pedro Noguera

Dr. Pedro Noguera is a professor of education at New York University. He has also been a professor at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard University. Dr. Noguera is the author of several books and over one hundred and fifty articles. He is considered one of America’s leading authorities on urban education. Dr. Noguera has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including the O’Reilly Factor.

Kevin Clawson

Mr. Kevin Clawson is the president of the non-profit, Reach the Children. Reach the Children provides underprivileged children opportunities for self-reliance by strengthening families and communities.

They operate in fourteen countries throughout Africa.

Mary Lou Johnson Pizzaro

Ms. Mary Lou Johnson Pizzaro works for the U.S. State Department and is currently stationed in the U.S. Consulate’s Office in Lagos, Nigeria. She works closely with the local community there and has also done State Department work in South Africa. Ms. Pizzaro has degrees from the University of Nebraska and Harvard University.

Gil Alba

Gil Alba. Former New York City Police Department Dectective, Mr. Alba now heads up Alba Investigations, www.gilalba.com. Gil has appeared on numerous radio and television shows including MSNBC, CBS News, ABC News, and the O'Reilly Factor.

Noel Boxer

Mr. Boxer worked in the Clinton White House and is now the country coordinator in the Republic of the Congo for the non-profit, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs,
www.ndi.org/.

Dennis Raimondi interviews presidential candidate Barack Obama

"Hannah Riley Bowles" is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School and on the staff of the Center for Public Leadership. She is engaged in research on negotiation and leadership. She is interested in how people negotiate for resources and opportunities to advance into leadership positions and when gender differences tend to arise in negotiation expectations and performance. She teaches and has conducted case research on leadership in crisis and complex multi-party conflict. Earlier in her career, she was a research associate at Harvard Business School, Strategic Environmental Associates, and Conflict Management Group.

She was a technical advisor to the Minister of Natural Resources, Energy & Mines of Costa Rica and served in 1995 on the Costa Rican delegation to the UN Climate Change negotiations. She was fellow at the Argentinean National Institute of Public Administration, the West German Parliament, and Oxford University's Forestry Institute. Bowles is the faculty director of Women & Power, the Kennedy School's executive program for women leaders from the public, private and non-profit sectors. She won the Kennedy School's 2003 Manuel Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has a DBA from the Harvard Business School, an MPP from the Kennedy School, and an AB from Smith College.  read more »

Former Iowa Congressman Jim Leach has recently been named the new director of Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

Mr. Leach has agreed to take a leave from Princeton University, where he is the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

Prior to his arrival at Princeton, Leach served 15 terms in Congress as a Republican representative from eastern Iowa. During his congressional career he served as chairman of the House Banking and Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and was author or co-author of several significant pieces of legislation, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, reforming the financial services industry. He was educated at Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, and the London School of Economics.

This will be the former Congressman's second appearance on Speaking Freely.

Craig Jessop,
Music Director, Mormon Tabernacle Choir

When Jessop became music director of the Choir in October 1999, he stepped into a position tailor-made for him. Not only had he served as the Choir's associate director from 1995 to 1999, he had also been a member of the Choir for four years during college. Growing up, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was his musical inspiration.

Under his leadership, the Choir has continued to live up to its tradition of excellence and has explored new territory in the musical and performance realms. As the music director of not only the Choir, but also the Orchestra at Temple Square and the Temple Square Chorale,

Jessop draws on the strengths of these three entities and combines them as appropriate to enhance the level of musical excellence in performance.
 read more »

Mr. Steven White is a producer, director, and actor. Steven’s grew up in the film industry. His father was a cinematographer for Cecil B. DeMille. Steven is currently the founder and president of the Shakespeare Ensemble Company based in Fairfield, Iowa.

Walter Frederick ("Fritz") Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota on Jan. 5, 1928, the son of Theodore Sigvaard Mondale and Claribel Cowan Mondale. He spent his boyhood in the small towns of southern Minnesota, where he attended public schools. After he helped manage Hubert H. Humphrey's first successful U.S. Senate campaign in 1948, he earned his B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1951. After completing service as a corporal in the U.S. Army, Mondale received his LL.B (cum laude) from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1956, having served on the law review and as a law clerk in the Minnesota Supreme Court.  read more »

This week on Speaking Freely, host Dennis Raimondi has a short interview with Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giulliani. Giulliani, the former mayor of New York City, who was traveling through Iowa, is the Republican national frontrunner, though he is presently fourth in the polls in Iowa.

A lawyer, businessman, and politican from the state of New York, Giuliani served in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, eventually becoming U.S. Attorney.

Giuliani later served two terms as as Mayor of New York (1994–2001). Giuliani gained international attention during and after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2001, Time magazine named him "Person of the Year" and he was knighted by Quenn Elizabeth II.  read more »

This week on Speaking Freely, host Dennis Raimondi has an interview with former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who came into KRUU-FM studios.

Wilson was in town stumping for Hillary Clinton. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is the CIA covert operative allegedly outed by administration officials in retaliation for Wilson's Op-ed piece in the NY Times. Wilson's personal and direct challenge caused the President to withdraw claims Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium for nuclear weapons, the White House's central justification for invading Iraq.

Plame has just released a book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," about her experiences which led to Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby being convicted of perjury. Libby's sentence was commuted by President Bush this past July. 'Fair
Game' was the term the president's then-chief strategist, Karl Rove, used regarding the vicious smear campaign unleashed against Plame and Wilson, in hopes of softening the serious blow to White House credibility.  read more »

Michelle Obama, wife of United States Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Ms. Obama received her BA with honors from Princeton University and her Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama

Ari Berman

Mr. Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation Magazine and a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation writing fellow. Ari is a graduate of the Northwestern University. Mr. Berman has appeared on MSNBC and the Fox News network as a political analyst.

Mitt Romney
(born March 12, 1947) was the 70th Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Elected in 2002, Romney served one term and did not seek re-election in 2006; his term expired January 4, 2007. Romney is a Republican candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election.

He is a former CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and the co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. He also served as president and CEO of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games held in Salt Lake City.

Dal LaMagna

JACQUELINE MUREKATETE
Internationally recognized for her work as a humanitarian, speaking out for victims and survivors of genocide. Jacqueline was not yet ten when she lost her immediate and extended family in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Her story has been featured in the NY Times, the Washington Times, NPR, CNN, PBS, NBC, ABC, and other leading media outlets worlwide.

Josh Romney, the thirty-three-year-old son of presidential hopeful, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Josh is on the campaign trail for his Dad. Josh recently visited all ninety-nine Iowa counties.