From the Archive: The death of Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh on Wednesday at the age of 102 marked the passing of what is now rare in the American Establishment, a person who courageously fought for a truthful historical record,…
Special Report: Robert Strauss, who died Wednesday, was a Democratic powerbroker who thrived in the age of Nixon, Reagan and Bush-41. But an enduring Watergate mystery is whether Strauss earned his GOP spurs by secretly helping the Republicans in the spy scandal, reports Robert…
Exclusive: In a stunning display of “group think,” virtually the entire Washington Post editorial section was devoted to denunciations of Russian President Putin, especially his “crazy” belief that the U.S. government often ignores international law and applies “the rule of…
Official Washington thinks “American exceptionalism” means the U.S. government can ignore international law when intervening in other countries. But that hypocrisy is now coming back to bite the U.S. with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
Exclusive: The Ukraine crisis in part stirred up by U.S. neocons has damaged prospects for peace not only on Russia’s borders but in two Middle East hotspots, Syria and Iran, which may have been exactly the point, reports Robert Parry.
Since the Thatcher/Reagan era, “liberals” like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have scurried toward “safer” political terrain, whether that meant endorsing aggressive wars or embracing deregulation. But some progressives, like UK’s Tony Benn, refused to bend, as Michael Winship recalls.
Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. press explains the overwhelming Crimean vote to leave Ukraine as vote-rigging or coercion, but the reality is that “European aspirations” are not so attractive to people aware of the painful life for many in the EU’s “periphery,” from Spain to…
The one-sided uproar in Official Washington over the Ukraine crisis, a cartoonish depiction even including parallels to Hitler, ignores the many on-the-ground gray areas. It also threatens to recreate the Cold War’s dangerous “zero-sum” calculations, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
The U.S. State Department, which in just the past year has made excuses for violent coups toppling democratically elected leaders in Egypt and Ukraine, showed more disdain for democracy by tolerating Egypt’s mistreatment of U.S. peace activist Medea Benjamin, writes…
Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream news media is reaching a new professional low point as it covers the Ukraine crisis by brazenly touting Official Washington’s propaganda themes, blatantly ignoring contrary facts and leading the American public into another geopolitical blind alley, writes Robert…
Behind the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected president of Ukraine are the economic interests of giant corporations from Cargill to Chevron which see the country as a potential “gold mine” of profits from agricultural and energy exploitation, reports JP Sottile.
Exclusive: Sen. John McCain is baiting President Obama for making America “look weak” and is demanding more aggressive responses toward Syria, Iran and Russia. Thus, Obama faces a turning-point moment when he must confront neocon warmongering or surrender to it, reports Robert…
Wall Street banks made a bundle on securitized subprime mortgages until the bubble began to burst in 2007 inflicting devastating harm on average people around the world. Yet, despite government rhetoric to the contrary, the key culprits have escaped punishment,…
Exclusive: Official Washington’s bipartisan hysteria over Ukraine and Crimea is evidence that the neocons not only weathered the public fury over the Iraq War but are now back shaping U.S. geopolitical strategies, reports Robert Parry.
More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has yet to undertake a major reform of U.S. intelligence, even letting CIA Director John Brennan, who was implicated in Bush-Cheney abuses, block reports on those offenses. That must change, says ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.
Exclusive: President Obama has stumbled into a constitutional firefight between the CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee over the spy agency’s attempted cover-up of its Bush-era torture practices, a clash he could have averted by wielding a declassification stamp, reports Robert Parry.
President Obama has stumbled into a scandal created by his determination to protect dirty secrets on torture and other CIA crimes committed by the Bush-43 administration. The unlikely “whistleblower” is another Democratic defender of CIA abuses, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, notes Norman…
Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. news media has so fully bought into the U.S. government’s narrative on Ukraine that almost no one sees the layers of hypocrisy, an achievement in “group think” that dates back to Ronald Reagan’s war against “moral equivalence,” writes Robert…
Across the Western world, there has been a clamping down on meaningful dissent, including secret information that is withheld from the public in the name of national security. And there has been a failure to contest this assault on democracy,…
Official Washington, including its compliant mainstream media, paints Moscow as the “black hat” in the Ukraine crisis but the fuller picture would show that the supposed U.S. “white hats” are the ones who have violated the deal that ended the Cold War, writes ex-CIA…