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...
On May 26, The New York Times Magazine ran a feature story by Matthieu Aikins entitled “America’s Monster: Uncovering the Brutal Career of Abdul Raziq—And the Hidden Truths of the War in Afghanistan.”
The story detailed the U.S. military and CIA’s support for Abdul Raziq, a police commander in Spin...
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...
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...
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),...
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...
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...
In this extraordinary fifth installment of "Live on the Fly - Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom," Randy Credico speaks with Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and professor at Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights; Lauri Love, who successfully avoided extradition to the U.S.; and...
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...
New disclosures add weight to theory that Burisma was part of CIA operation
On February 21, 2019, a confidential source told the FBI that two CIA officers went with Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that appointed Hunter Biden to its board, to the office of...
