A stinging tweet from President Trump about the intelligence community’s Capitol Hill public briefing on Iran a year ago has the intel chiefs ducking. According to Politico, U.S. officials have suggested to the House and Senate they testify only behind closed doors. The editors of the Washington Post object. The change would undermine the public...
Category: CIA
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How Late DCI William Colby Saved the CIA, and What That Can Teach Us Today
The back story to President Trump’s feud with the CIA dates back to the 1970s when CIA director William Colby navigated the aftermath of Watergate. That’s when the House and Senate Intelligence Committee’s were created, as well as the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Colby’s efforts to rehabilitate the CIA were not popular in the...
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The ‘Deep State’ Isn’t a Conspiracy. It’s a Political Faction
[This story was first published in The New Republic as “‘The Deep State’ Is a Political Party,” November 8, 2019)] It was, in the eyes of Trump World, the very clubhouse of the Deep State: the plush, blue-carpeted, wood-paneled 13th floor auditorium of the National Press Club, located in the heart of the Washington swamp,...
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About Time: Spy Museum to Overhaul Its Controversial Torture Exhibit
I wrote about the undercover mission of the International Spy Museum in Washington last year, especially its not-so-subtle message that torture was a policy option, not a war crime. Now the Spy Museum is recalibrating the exhibit to get on the right side of the law. From Buzzfeed News The new exhibit will focus more...
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CIA Officer Warned Against the Meeting that Killed Him
Ten years ago, the CIA suffered its worst attacks ever when a Jordanian doctor, posing as an informant, detonated an explosive vest at the agency’s outpost in Afghanistan. The CIA base chief and six other people were killed, including officer Darren LaBonte. From NBC’s Ken Dilanian. The LaBonte family doesn’t dwell on the errors or...