For decades, liberals have been shilling for the US war-state and collaborated with the worst neocons in the name of a self-righteous value discourse. In this tragedy, the media-industrial-think-tank-complex has been playing a crucial role. This is the first part of a discussion with Katrina vanden Heuvel, an icon of US journalism and publishing. She was for decades the editor in chief and a pillar of the progressive magazine “The Nation”. As such, she was pivotal in giving alternative voices a place to speak, especially when it came to US involvements in wars. I consider her and her late husband Stephen F. Cohen as giants of US public peace work and realism in international relations. Katrina has been writing about US domestic and foreign policy for 40 years and she is also a member of the American Committee for US-Russia Accord, that has for many years been pushing for better relations between Washington and Moscow.