No one who closely watches the Interior Department foresees any dramatic shifts in policy once Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne replaces Gale Norton as secretary later this spring. As a former senator, Kempthorne is expected to breeze through the confirmation process, scheduled to begin in early May. But now is a good time to take stock […]

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Abandoning Bush—To Bush or not to Bush? That is the question conservative Arizona Congressman J.D. Heyworth pondered when asked by radio host Don Imus last November if he wanted the president to campaign with him. “In a word, no,” Heyworth answered. “Not at this time.” Turns out, Heyworth was relating a common sentiment. These days, […]

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Post-DeLay Disarray—Tom DeLay is out, but the race in Texas to replace him has only just begun. There are more possible successors than there are indicted DeLay aides. The list of candidates includes a local county judge; the mayor of Sugar Land, Texas; a state representative and a state senator; a tax assessor; and a […]

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In the short space of five years, Americans have witnessed two major intelligence debacles: first, a sin of omission in 2001 (failure to detect and prevent the 9/11 attacks), followed by a sin of commission in 2002–03 (the estimate that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction). These failures produced four major investigations, two […]

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On December 20, 1960, representatives from U.S. corporations with business interests in Cuba—including Exxon, ITT and Domino Sugar—met with then-CIA director Allen Dulles. The meeting was called, according to an agency history written in the late 1970s, so that Dulles could hear the executives’ grievances about Fidel Castro’s regime. Without hinting that the CIA was […]

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