During the Vietnam War era, peace activists compared American war planners like Robert S. McNamara and Henry Kissinger to Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of War Production and Armaments who stood out for his lack of ideological zeal in supporting the Nazi cause. What motivated Speer, rather, was a cold...
Part 2: “Assassination.” "On Company Business" is an in-depth look into the origins, history, and inner-workings of one of the world’s most powerful, but least understood, covert intelligence gathering organization: the Central Intelligence Agency.
Heidi Boghosian: In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which led to the formation of the National Security Council and, under its direction, the CIA. Its original mandate was to collect and analyze strategic information for use in war. Though shrouded in secrecy, many CIA activities such as...
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...
New Documentary Explores Life and Legacy of Fletcher Prouty, who wrote about CIA covert operations in his classic book The Secret Team In a famous scene in Oliver Stone’s epic 1992 film JFK, Kevin Costner’s character confers with a shadowy CIA operative played by Donald Sutherland known as Mr. X...
The CIA rivals the Vatican in covering up sex crimes against children and then protecting the members of its organization who commit them Buzzfeed reported early this month that, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the CIA revealed that 10 employees and a contractor had committed sex crimes against children—but only one was ever...
Ramparts magazine was a beacon of the 1960s social movements: an anti-establishment muckraking magazine that published important exposés of the CIA, including its involvement in the murder of Ché Guevara, its infiltration of the National Student Association (NSA), and its support for clandestine police training programs in South Vietnam...
In August 2022, Ukrainian security service (SBU) operatives hid explosives in a crate intended for a cat in a car driven by a woman and her twelve year old daughter. After the car passed through the Russian border, the SBU planted the bomb in the SUV of Russian journalist...
For over two years we have been told Putin’s Russia has interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We now find the U.S. government has decided it can unilaterally invalidate the actual presidential elections in Venezuela and recognize a person of its choosing as president. This is one more...
On April 6, The New York Times ran an article under the headline “CIA’s Deception Plan Helped Divert Iranians from Missing American” by Julian Barnes. The article noted that, when two American pilots ejected from their plane after it was shot down and took refuge in the mountains, the CIA...