The Progressive Commentary Hour 9.23.25

Charlotte Dennett is an attorney, best-selling author, a former reporter in the Middle East, and investigative journalist who has been described by Time Magazine as “an expert in resource-based politics.” As the daughter of Daniel Dennett -- America’s first master spy in the Middle East -- Charlotte has been offering a different perspective on the wars raging in Israel and Gaza based on decades of research into the mysterious death of her father after his top secret mission to Saudi Arabia. Daniel Dennett was the head of counter-intelligence for the Central Intelligence group (immediate forerunner of the CIA) when he traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1947 to determine the route of the Trans-Arabian pipeline and whether it would terminate in Lebanon or Haifa, Palestine. His plane crashed two weeks after he filed his last report. Charlotte has published several books dealing with a campaign to prosecute George W Bush, and Nelson Rockefeller and the Age of Oil. Her most recent  book is Follow the Pipelines: Uncovering the Mystery of a Lost Spy and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil . Relying on declassified documents at the National Archives – and after suing the CIA for additional information about her father (who now has a wing of the CIA named after him) -- she reveals that today’s wars in Gaza and Ukraine have been triggered by great power competition to control oil and natural gas.