In 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 […]

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Thomas 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 […]

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Redefining Terrorism—Long before right-wing opportunists began using the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to inflame public passions, federal law-enforcement was focused on a less conspicuous address. The “prayer house” on 1257 Siskiyou Blvd. in Ashland, Oregon, was owned by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation of Oregon, a Muslim charity that in 2001 was […]

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Channeling Ike—Robert Gates’s May 8 address at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, got passing attention from the media when he delivered it. Two months later, the speech has taken on a life of its own, in particular at the Pentagon, where it is read as a warning about out-of-control budgets, a dysfunctional appropriations process, […]

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The Afghan Dilemma—House Armed Services Committee Chair Ike Skelton (D-MO) describes President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan strategy as “not new” but the “first strategy” in a war that has been under-resourced and “forgotten” since the Bush administration initiated it in 2001. The Afghanistan assessment that General Stanley McChrystal presented to the president reportedly calls for an […]

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