William J. Burns’ appointment offers little more than an image makeover for the agency. As a diplomat, Burns supported U.S. military interventions in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and is now stoking the coals against Russia and China.
William J. Burns was confirmed by a unanimous vote in the...
Three Powerful American Women—Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice—Pushed Obama into Destroying the Wealthiest, Healthiest and Happiest Nation in Africa
On this day ten years ago, the Obama administration launched air strikes over Libya under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which culminated in the killing...
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) began as an evolution of the ‘Holy Spirit Movement’—a rebellion against president Museveni’s oppression of northern Uganda, led by Alice Lakwena.
The Acholi people of the north had allied with Museveni’s rival in the Ugandan bush war, Milton Obote (Ugandan President 1961-1971, 1980-1985), and...
“United States foreign policy in Somalia has always sided with the wrong side.” That’s how Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, a young Somali historian studying for his doctorate at Oxford, summarized Washington’s legacy there in an interview with CovertAction Magazine.
Instead of promoting what it claims to—peace, stability, “nation-building”—the U.S. government, Ingiriis...
On March 2nd, the Biden administration imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia to punish it for what it described as Moscow’s attempt to poison opposition leader Alexey Navalny with nerve agent last year.
Navalny was arrested in January on his return from Germany following treatment for poisoning with...
Massive popular pressure—like that organized by the 1980s nuclear freeze movement—is needed to stop more waste, fraud and abuse.
One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake this year will be to review the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons budget and modernization strategy.
According to a 2019 Congressional Budget...
Ten U.S. presidents, 20 CIA directors, and 56 years of covert action screwed over Brazil’s poor and paved the way for the election of Jair Bolsonaro
Covid-19, murder, evangelical Christianity, crime, environmental destruction, drugs, shantytowns, inequality, corruption, doesn’t matter what you pick, Brazil is a world leader in them all—and...
Part 6 in our Biden Series: A Company Man?
On May 9, 1981, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism was debating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (S. 391). Their goal: criminalize the unauthorized identification of U.S. intelligence agents.
Then-Senator Joe Biden rose to his feet to denounce my...
As a warning to potential coup planners in other Latin American countries, the new government of President Luis Arce—elected in a landslide in October—will not adopt a “forgive and forget” attitude toward former dictator Jeanine Áñez and her key cabinet ministers.
On the contrary: Barely ten days after the election...
At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors.
It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah...
