History as usual provides a cautionary lesson
On August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned from the presidency in disgrace with impeachment proceedings underway against him for the Watergate affair in which five men from his presidential election reelection committee were caught trying to break into and undertake illegal wiretapping...
On January 29th, The Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale historian Timothy Snyder, titled “Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths.” In a key passage, the article reads:
Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity...
CIA detracts from national security by purporting to know what it doesn’t
In a recent feature article in The New Yorker magazine, writer Amy Davidson Sorkin recalls the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1995 bill, the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act.
One of the original neoconservatives, Moynihan had...
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 weekend of December 10-11, 2021, saw a reported 30 tornadoes hitting several states from Arkansas to Illinois; as of this writing, 74 people are confirmed dead and several buildings severely damaged or totally demolished.
All the cases of death and destruction are devastating; however, the most telling and unconscionable...
Yellow Journalism of the Hearst Era Is Alive and Well in the 21st Century
There is a wise old maxim that says, “The first step on the road to wisdom is to call things by their right names.” So, let’s do that.
"Fake News" has been around a long while: The...
The tale of a Vegas gambler, failed politician, and professional Nazi groupie
The war in Ukraine has been a bonanza for grifters. From mercenaries and gun runners to OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and journalists, a bottomless well of western financing combined with a firehose stream of information both true and...
In chaotic times like ours, it behooves us to practice proactive optimism, which is far more than infantile hope or pious faith.
Conscious, vigorous optimism is visionary and builds on our awareness of our human identity and dignity. It expresses our faith in humanity, our resolve to be morally and...
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for a new book I’m writing that has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence or the CIA, and I stumbled upon the biography of Frank Mankiewicz, the former Robert F. Kennedy speechwriter, who apparently had been a “secret backchannel” between President...
Less than a year after the United States and the U.S.-backed Organization of American States (OAS) supported a violent military coup to overthrow the government of Bolivia, the Bolivian people have reelected the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and restored it to power.
In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime changes”...
