Exclusive: People often wonder what happened to the American press after it distinguished itself in the 1970s by exposing the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. How did the U.S. news media lose its way over the past four decades, a question…
Category: Intelligence
How US Hubris Baited Afghan Trap
Exclusive: Despite what Official Washington thinks it knows, the real error on Afghan policy after the Soviets left in 1989 was not the abrupt cutoff of U.S. aid but nearly the opposite, continued CIA support for the Islamist mujahedeen and…
The Secret in the US-Afghan Deal
The secret of President Obama’s strategic agreement with Afghan President Karzai is that U.S. Special Forces will continue raids to kill Taliban leaders who won’t make peace — even as the new accord is sold to the American public as…
Not Explaining the Why of Terrorism
Exclusive: President Obama signed a U.S.-Afghan strategic agreement on May 1, committing U.S. combat forces to withdraw by the end of 2014 while leaving behind U.S. counter-terrorism teams for another decade. But Obama and his aides still duck a full debate over the causes of terrorism, writes…
Finishing a Job: Obama Gets Osama
From the Archive: One year ago, President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden, ending a near-decade-long manhunt. Amid U.S. celebrations, it was largely forgotten that the delay in getting the terrorist leader resulted from blunders by George W. Bush and his neocon advisers,…
Some Israelis Resist Netanyahu
Exclusive: In the past week, several senior Israelis have criticized the extremism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward Iran and the Palestinians, but his American supporters continue to escalate their denunciations of anyone who won’t march in lockstep, as Robert…
About the bin Laden Anniversary
This week, there will be plenty of retrospectives on the U.S. Special Forces raid into Pakistan a year ago to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But the focus on that one attack and one man may obscure the larger threat from…
The ‘Drone War’ Expands
Military technology continues to spill over into domestic law enforcement as unmanned drones used to hunt down and kill suspected “militants” abroad are now touted as the latest tool for monitoring Americans, a development that has drawn scant attention, writes…
The US Press Sell-out on Iraq War
As President George W. Bush rushed the nation to war in early 2003, some Americans took personal risks to warn the country about the misleading evidence on Iraq, but most U.S. news outlets turned a deaf ear, sometimes leaving the…
Danger of Hyping Foreign Dangers
Propaganda often involves taking the words of an adversary out of context and making them seem far worse or more dangerous than they are. When the news media joins in the distortion, the public can easily be stampeded into confrontation…