Category: Secrecy

The New Industry of High-Tech Spying

The post 9/11 spending splurge by the U.S. national security state has given rise to a new industry devoted to developing technology for spying on almost everyone. These gizmos now represent a threat to what’s left of personal privacy, writes…

Slanting the Case on Iran’s Nukes

Special Report: The U.S. news media shows no skepticism as it accepts the toughly worded report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Ignored is the fact that the IAEA’s new chief appears to have…

How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents

From the Archive: At the G20 summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy commiserated with President Barack Obama about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Sarkozy called a “liar,” prompting Obama to say: “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him…

No Room for Smugness on Iran

There’s a “Lucy-yanks-the-football-away-from-Charlie-Brown” quality to how Americans are handled each time a new war with a foreign “enemy” is being sold. There’s a slightly varied pitch and the public belatedly learns it’s been conned, as is now happening with Iran, notes ex-U.S. intelligence analyst Elizabeth…

Whistleblowers Honored on Nov. 21

In recent decades, information — the lifeblood of democracy — has often been cut off from the American body politic on “national security” grounds or because insiders feel it wouldn’t be “good for the country.” To counter that benighted view, a group of ex-U.S. intelligence…

J. Edgar Hoover’s Long Shadow

A new movie about the life and times of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reminds America how the Republic veered so far off course in the last century, as claims of “national security” enabled a corrupt political establishment to take…

Big Media’s Double Standards on Iran

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. press corps is again pounding the propaganda war drums, this time over dubious accusations of Iran’s secret work on a nuclear bomb. It is a pattern of bias that Robert Parry calls the U.S. media’s worst…

The Lost History of ‘J. Edgar’

A film about someone as controversial and mysterious as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover forces the filmmakers to make judgments about key historical events, including some still cloaked in secrecy. But the movie J. Edgar ducks those tough choices in…

Richard Nixon’s Darkest Secret

Exclusive: In just-released Watergate grand jury testimony from 1975, ex-President Richard Nixon complained that his 1968 campaign was bugged by the Johnson administration. But there was little curiosity then or now as to why that surveillance was justified, reports Robert Parry.

Déjà Vu Over Iran A-Bomb Charges

Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. news media is again ratcheting up tensions with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program by hailing a new report on the topic. But the press is once more falling down on its duty to examine the…