Category: National Security
Learning to Love Torture
by Bonny Tamres-Moore | Feb 1, 2013 | Foreign Policy, National Security“There can be no doubt that torture is illegal. There are no wartime exceptions for torture, nor is there an exception for prisoners or ‘enemy combatants,’ nor is there an exception for ‘enhanced methods,’” lawyer/journalist Scott Horton wrote in Harper’s in 2008. Prohibition of torture is jus cogens (compelling law), a principle of international law […]
American Torturers on Trial, But Not in the United States
by James A. Goldston | Feb 1, 2013 | Foreign Policy, National SecurityAlmost a decade after he was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared by Macedonian officials acting at the behest of the CIA, Khaled El-Masri has finally secured a measure of redress. After years of denial in Skopje (capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), stonewalling in Berlin and silence in Washington, the European Court of Human […]
How Rove Became Rove
by WS Editors | Dec 1, 2012 | National Security, Politics1970 Poses as a volunteer for a Democratic Senate candidate in Illinois and circulates a letter to homeless people, advertising “free food, beer, girls and a good time for all” at the candidate’s campaign event. 1974–77 The Washington Post reports Rove taught Nixon- style “dirty tricks” to College Republicans. Rove is investigated and cleared by the […]
Intelligence Contractors’ Complex
by Barbara Koeppel | Jun 15, 2012 | National SecurityIn our May 15, 2012 issue, National Security Agency executive turned whistleblower Thomas Drake described the agency failures that led to 9/11. In part two of Barbara Koeppel’s interview with Drake, the ex-spy reveals the agency’s corrupt practices. Let’s talk about the corruption. What kinds of numbers were involved? Billions. I have prima facie knowledge […]
SAIC Scandals
by WS Editors | Jun 15, 2012 | Foreign Policy, National SecurityThomas Drake’s revelations about National Security Agency’s contracts with SAIC — the (mostly) defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation — read like a how-to on purging the public purse. But there is more in SAIC’s four-decade history. This past March, New York City fined SAIC half a billion dollars for what a prosecutor described as […]