Exclusive: Common citizens around the world may be alarmed at the NSA’s electronic dragnet prying into their personal lives, but reforms may focus mostly on the privacy of government leaders and corporate executives, writes Andrés Cala.
Category: Secrecy
The CIA’s Drone-Strike Revenge
Despite President Obama’s plan to curtail the use of lethal drones, he assented to a CIA strike this month against a Taliban leader as part of the CIA’s revenge for a 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven of its people,…
Clarifying Snowden’s ‘Freedom’
NYTimes Mentions Israeli Nukes
Exclusive: The U.S. press is very tolerant of Israeli cross-border attacks inside Syria, like the latest one against a military target in Latakia. Israel’s nuclear arsenal usually goes unmentioned, too. But the New York Times surprisingly deviated from that pattern, notes…
The Two Types of Spy ‘Scandals’
Geopolitics of the Drone
The U.S. drone program has decimated the leadership of al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups, but it also has alienated people and governments in countries on the front lines by killing civilians and disrupting political alliances, a complexity often missed…
Why Snowden’s Passport Matters
President Obama declares his love of “transparency,” but has an odd way of showing it, meting out harsh punishments to people who give the public a glimpse into the vast darkness of U.S. secrets, including revoking Edward Snowden’s passport to stop…
Dangerous History of Regime Change
Exclusive: Official Washington justifies military and political interventions in other countries under the theory of “U.S. exceptionalism.” But these “regime changes” often have unexpected results, as with the bloody coup d’etat that removed South Vietnamese President Diem a half-century ago, recalls…