For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump, Republican loyalists in Congress and media mouthpieces, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department...
Category: Articles
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The Problem With Jack Ryan’s ‘Regime Change’ Crusade in Venezuela
Season 2 of the adventures of Tom Clancy’s CIA man has arrived and the target is “Venezuela,” a mythical Latin American country where Americans like Elliot Abrams and Mike Pompeo like to project feelings of aggression and domination. The show intends to entertain and to inculcate Americas in the false narrative that Venezuela is some...
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The Last Assassination of the Cold War
[This review was first published in The Intercept, Nov. 17, 2019) Review of November, by Jorge Galán (London, Constable, 2019) The assassination of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador 30 years ago this month was the last great crime of the Cold War. It happened on November 16th, 1989, a week after German protesters began...
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The Trump Crack-Up: Federal Agencies Mobilize Against White House
As Congress embarks on impeachment proceedings, the leadership of federal agencies in Washington are growing increasingly outspoken. Without mentioning the president, they are warning that President Trump’s actions as a threat to democratic government. The American government is fracturing. Call it the Trump crack-up. A new inter-agency agency report illuminates the fissures between president and...
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Beyond Baghdadi: Turkey’s Discreet Relationship With ISIS
[This article first appeared in The New Republic, October 30, 2019] The elimination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi amid the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria is exposing an enduring and underappreciated reality of the Middle East: the Islamic State has always had a special relationship with Turkish National Intelligence Office, known by its...