It all began so promisingly. Inspired by the idealism of President John F. Kennedy, young Richard Holbrooke, a gangly 21-year-old graduate of Brown, joined the Foreign Service in 1962. The State Department assigned him to the rural southern tip of Vietnam. In a region where the South Vietnamese army and its American advisers claimed to...
Category: Diary
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Venezuela’s Descent: From Shopping Mall to Torture Prison
El Helicoide, The Helix, is part of the DNA of Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela. Dreamed up by three architects in the 1950s, El Helicoide was supposed to be a drive-through shopping mall for the country’s aspiring petro-oligarchy. Built on a hill in the heart of Caracas, the dramatic ocean liner-like edifice “embodied Venezuela’s...
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Watergate Burglar Sought Information on a Left Wing Mole Who Didn’t Exist
James McCord, the Watergate burglar who died two years ago, told his family he had a political motive for participating in the botched break-in that lead to the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. McCord claimed he sought to gather intelligence on an alleged antiwar militant working in the headquarters of the Democratic National...
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Elliot Abrams vs. Code Pink: Showdown at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington
In response to a round-the-clock sit-in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, President Trump’s special envoy Elliot Abrams said on Thursday the activists are “clearly breaking the law.” The protesters say they were invited to stay by the government of President Nicholas Maduro, which the Trump administration is seeking to oust. The U.S. and about 50...
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A Night of Angst from Spies and Journalists
Some of the folks whom President Trump has smeared as “enemies of the people” took to the speaker’s platform at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Tuesday night. Attended by senior journalists and intelligence professionals, the event, “Breaking News: U.S. Intelligence and The Press,” was affably insiderish in the Washington way. Former acting CIA...