When I first started reporting on the CIA in the 1980s, I learned early on Bill Blum was a good source for stories. He wrote for Covert Action Information Bulletin (later Covert Action), a notorious publication in Reagan’s Washington. The CAIB that had the feel of samizdat, the underground publications of dissidents in the Soviet Union....
Category: United States
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The Legacy of Bush’s CIA Pardons
When I first came to Washington in the 1980s, one of the first stories I reported on regularly was the Iran-contra scandal. As vice president, the late George Bush was in the thick of it. In the fall of 1986, while working as an editor at The New Republic magazine, I commissioned a story by...
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Flynn Cooperation Memo Hints at Trump’s Russia Deal
Thanks to disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller now has material evidence of a secret deal between President-elect Trump and the Russian government about U.S. sanctions. At least that’s what a seven page memo filed in federal court earlier this week, strongly suggests. Flynn, a former general served as Trump’s national...
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Remembering Bush: The Lies That Led to the Invasion of Panama
Newsweek’s Peter Eisner wrote this account of the 1991 U.S. invasion of Panama after the death of Manuel Noriega last years. It is equally relevant after the passing of the late President Bush. Not only was the justification for the invasion was bogus, Eisner reported, Noriega was a long time asset of the CIA. The...
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Feds Target Butina’s GOP Boyfriend as Foreign Agent
Maria Butina is the accused Russian agent who infiltrated American conservative circles to ingratiate Russian president Vladmir Putin with the right-wing in Washington. Now her American boyfriend, Paul Erickson, has been warned he might be charged as a spy too, according to the Daily Beast. “Charging an American under 951 in the context of the...