Eartha Kitt was a magnetic singer, songwriter and actress who starred as Catwoman in the 1967 season of television’s Batman and was known for her 1953 Christmas song “Santa Baby.” In the early 1950s, Kitt recorded six top-30 songs. Orson Welles once called her “the most exciting woman in the...
I had the great fortune recently of addressing a gathering of Greek parliamentarians in Athens and with meeting members of the European Parliament to discuss national security whistleblowing. The European Union has drafted, and will soon release, a new whistleblower protection law that would be the finest and most comprehensive...
For over seven weeks, events in Nicaragua have devolved into an increasingly common scenario for leaders who find themselves at odds with Washington: the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, stands accused of “killing his own people” after authorities have used “lethal force” in quelling recent protests. The unrest, which has resulted in...
In early September, Dr. Thomas Alter II—author of the well-regarded book Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press, 2022)—was fired from his tenured position teaching history at Texas State University after he gave an online talk at a socialist conference. Alter’s...
In the 1990 movie, Air America, Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr., play two Air America pilots who smuggle heroin while supporting U.S. proxies in the Vietnam War. Air America was an airline run by the CIA previously called Civil Air Transport (CAT), which had been formed by General Claire...
David W. Conde set the groundwork for Philip Agee’s 1975 whistleblowing account, Inside the Company. In 1970, David W. Conde, an American journalist working in Japan, who had served with the U.S. Army Psychological Warfare Branch in World War II, published a now-forgotten book in New Delhi, CIA—Core of the...
"I don't think there's ever been a vice presi­dent... as much involved at the highest level in our policy-making and our decisions than George," said President Reagan in March 1985.1 At the 1988 Republican national convention, in response to the Demo­crats' taunt, "Where was George," during Iran-Contra, Reagan said,...
The New York Times and other obituaries predictably left this out Richard Armitage, the number two official at the State Department from 2001 to 2005, died on April 13. The New York Times and other obituaries emphasized that Armitage was a Naval Academy graduate and Bronze Star recipient...
Considered to be the Arab world’s “great white hope,” the CIA empowered Iraq’s Ba’ath Party through secret arms supplies, blacklists, psychological warfare and propaganda. On February 8, 1963, Iraq’s Ba’ath Party—which advocated for socialist and Pan-Arab ideals—carried out a successful coup resulting in the overthrow and execution of...
On February 2nd, eagle-eyed pro-China activist Arnaud Bertrand revealed that WEghur Stories, a podcast “working to create a conversation within and about the global Uyghur diaspora” that has been aggressively promoted on Facebook and Spotify, is funded by Washington’s French diplomatic mission—and that John Bair, its co-creator, co-host and...