Category: The Bush-43 Administration

A Dangerous CIA ‘Reform’

The CIA’s original purpose was to coordinate intelligence and provide unbiased analyses to U.S. presidents to avert another Pearl Harbor, but politicians and operatives have corrupted the process, a problem that CIA Director Brennan would make worse, writes ex-CIA analyst…

Squandering a Chance with Iran

Under pressure from hardliners in Congress and Israel, the Obama administration backed away from what could have been a historic agreement with Iran over limiting its nuclear program. Instead coercive diplomacy has become almost an end in itself, as Gareth…

Possible Motives for Ousting Hagel

Exclusive: At the start of Barack Obama’s second term, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was seen as the best hope for standing up to the neocons, inside and outside the administration. Though Hagel proved to be a weak champion, his sudden removal could…

Filling the Blanks in Snowden’s ‘Citizenfour’

Exclusive: To grasp the full story of Citizenfour, the documentary on Edward Snowden’s decision to expose NSA spying, you must go back four decades to see how the reality slowly dawned on Americans that their privacy and freedoms were at risk, writes…

CIA’s Torturous Maneuvers on Torture

Exclusive: The CIA is fighting congressional demands to release a report on its covert program for torturing “war on terror” suspects, even as the spy agency contemplates a reorganization that could give the covert-action side more ways to bend the truth,…

Ellsberg Discusses Decline of Democracy

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg discussed the threat of National Security Agency surveillance and the decline of American democracy in a late-night interview that he gave after a lecture at George State University in Atlanta.

Katharine Gun’s Risky Truth-telling

Truth-telling can be a dangerous undertaking, especially when done by government insiders trying to expose wrongdoing connected to war-making, as British intelligence official Katharine Gun discovered in blowing the whistle on a pre-Iraq War ploy, writes Sam Husseini.

The Double Standards on Bank Crimes

The U.S. government has levied some billion-dollar fines on banks for offenses tied to the financial crisis, but bank officers have avoided the shackled frog-walk and time behind bars, humiliations dealt out routinely to criminals who make off with much less money,…

Neocons’ Fateful Iraq ‘Surge’ Myth

After provoking the Iraq War debacle, America’s neocons found themselves on the defensive but soon came up with a “theme” to salvage their reputations the  myth of the “successful surge” what might be called the last lie of Iraq War…

Letting the Neocons Lead

Exclusive: At the G-20 meeting, Putin-bashing was all the rage, as President Obama and other Western leaders berated Russian President Putin for his supposed “aggression” in Ukraine. The mainstream media also piled on. But the reality is much more complex,…