Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the end of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's 14-year legal saga,

as he is due to appear on Wednesday in a US court in the Northern Marianas to be charged with one count under the Espionage Act in a plea deal that has the 1,901 days he spent in a British prison credit

for time he would serve under the US sentence, meaning he will soon join his family in Australia,

where the government there played a large part in getting him freed.

We'll discuss the irony that Assange is being charged with publishing

the 2010 leaks from Chelsea Manning's massive hall of stolen military and diplomatic cables

on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not for working with the Russians to help elect Trump

by publishing emails stolen by the Russians to take the damaging access Hollywood

tape off the headlines just before the 2016 election.

Joining us is James Reison, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author

whose investigative reporting has triggered a series of political firestorms and attempts

to jail him under the Espionage Act.

Among his best-selling books are State of War, the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush

administration, and pay any price, greed, power, and endless war.

The senior national security correspondent at The Intercept and a former investor journalist

with the New York Times, his new book

is The Last Honest Man, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia and the Kennedys and one senator's

fight to save democracy. Then we'll look into the debate prep underway with Joe Biden,

hold up in Camp David, as Trump engages in pre-spin accusing Biden of being on drugs

and the CNN moderators of liberal bias calling Jake Tapper, fake Tapper.

...