Very little sympathy is felt for Air Force personnel assigned to fire nuclear missiles that could end all life on the planet. But their grim, boring and existentially absurd job has eroded staff morale so much that their collapsing competence…
Category: Obama Administration
What a Real Cover-up Looks Like
Exclusive: Republicans won’t let go of their conspiracy theory about some nefarious “cover-up” in “talking points” for Ambassador Susan Rice’s TV interviews on the Benghazi attack. But they should at least have better skills for detecting a real cover-up, since…
The Delicate Balance of Leaking
Without doubt, the U.S. government over-classifies national security information, hiding not just genuine secrets but policy debates and mistakes. This creates tensions for whistleblowers and journalists over what should be public. But there are legitimate concerns about leaking, says ex-CIA…
The Scandal of Lax Government
For decades now, it’s been fashionable to demonize government. After all, that’s what billions of dollars invested in right-wing think tanks and media outlets will buy you. There also are genuine abuses by bureaucrats. But lax government oversight can be a…
Does Woodward Know Watergate?
Exclusive: Republicans are hyping the flap over Benghazi talking points by calling it “worse than Watergate,” a false narrative that Bob Woodward has helped along by ignoring new evidence connecting Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to…
Justice at a Guatemalan Crossroads
The genocide conviction of Guatemala’s ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt has put respect for human rights at a crossroads, with one option to reverse the judgment and another to expand the investigation to Rios Montt’s accomplices in Guatemala and the U.S., journalist Allan…
Racism and the American Right
Exclusive: From the start of the Republic to today’s Republican ranting against Barack Obama, racism has been a central element of the American Right. But this ugly feature of U.S. history has often come concealed behind words praising traditions, liberty…
Failing Fitzgerald’s Masterpiece
Exclusive: As an author, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of subtlety in his characterizations and his style, not exactly the strengths of modern Hollywood, as is painfully apparent in the latest big-budget, 3-D adaptation of The Great Gatsby, as…
Reagan and Argentina’s Dirty War
Exclusive: The 87-year-old ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Videla died Friday in prison where he was serving sentences for grotesque human rights crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. But one of Videla’s key backers, the late President Ronald Reagan, continues to be…
Argentina’s Dapper State Terrorist
From the Archive: Ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, who died Friday in prison at 87, saw the Dirty War that killed some 30,000 people as an intellectual exercise in exterminating subversive thought even across generations by transferring babies of the…