No Wonder They Have Betrayed the Legacy of Frank Church
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) was established in 1977 as a consequence of post-Church Committee reforms intended to prevent the perpetuation of CIA abuses that were exposed in the 1975/76 Church Committee.
The first chairman of the HPSCI (1977-1985), Edward Boland (D-MA),...
The CIA likes to fashion itself as a heroic agency that helps to protect national security and uphold democracy around the world.
However, Hugh Wilford’s book, The CIA: An Imperial History (Basic Books, 2024), shows that the CIA draws directly from British and French colonial precedents, and adopts the same...
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...
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...
The name Allard Lowenstein (1929-1980) may not mean too much to political activists today, but in the 1960s and 1970s he was a well-known liberal figure associated with many of the progressive causes of the day.
For this reason, it would come as something of a shock to many of...
Current CIA director Gina Haspel described graphic acts of deliberate physical torture including the waterboarding of a suspected Al-Qa’ida terrorist under her supervision when she was chief of base at a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002, according to declassified CIA cables – most of which she wrote...
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...
Recently released documents as part of JFK dump show how CIA took charge of American embassies around the world operating under State Department cover
Revealed in the recent document dump from the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection as mandated by a presidential directive was just how extensively and...
William H. Blum
1933 - 2018
William Blum died in Virginia early this morning on December 9, 2018. He was surrounded by friends and family after falling in his Washtington D.C. apartment and sustaining serious wounds 65 days ago. He was 85 years old.
Bill was born March 6, 1933 at Beth Moses...
Part I in a two-part series
In December, the rapid fall of the Syrian government to Western-backed jihadists stunned the world and sparked a wide range of reactions amid the fallout. Unsurprisingly, the collective West was quick to celebrate the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, a long-time U.S. foreign policy objective...
