Category: C.I.A. Confidential

“Remember 9/11!” is the rallying cry of the War Party; what we are remembering, however, is a half-truth.  It is time to draw the curtain on the largely ignored prehistory of September 11.  Although Bush-administration officials deny that they had even a hint of what was to come, government agencies were literally awash with warnings...

On August 9, 2001, during a speech from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush put an end to several months of debate surrounding government funding of research on stem cells derived from human embryos.  After discussing his administration’s research into the matter and declaring his own “deeply held beliefs” in science and...

Trent Lott—to the guillotine!  The cry has gone up, the mob is implacable, and the once-powerful and seemingly unassailable Senate majority leader has gotten the message loud and clear: Confess your sins, bare your neck, and prepare to lose your head!  And for what? What sin did this former muckamuck of the GOP commit that...

A search for the origin of the term “homeland security,” which has emerged almost from nowhere since last September, leads to the little-known Institute for Homeland Security, formed in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., in October 1999.   News reports have credited the term to Defense Panel member Richard L. Armitage, former CIA officer...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin called President Bush shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks to express his solidarity, pundits East and West took this as a sign of what one American columnist called the coming “earthquake” in U.S.-Russia relations.  Putin was aiming to shift his policy focus westward, away from his previous “Eurasianist” effort...

The U.S. and British embassies were shut down in Sarajevo on October 17 after receiving threats from Bosnian Muslims and their foreign co-religionists resident in Bosnia who profess outrage at the bombing of Afghanistan. “This step has been taken due to a credible security threat to the official U.S. presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina” a U.S. official...

The E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, approved in Nice on December 8, 2000, sets forth the principles upon which the future European constitution should be based. Drafted by a commission of experts from various countries, the document consists of a preamble and 54 articles. It was presented to the E.U. Council as “unamendable”: The charter...

A thousand editorialists have described Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslavia’s new president, as a “moderate nationalist.” In fact, Kostunica is no more “nationalistic” than Jacques Chirac or Vaclav Havel. He is a self-described Serbian patriot, who says he wants for his people no more—and certainly no less—than he is prepared to grant to others. That is enough...

The debate over immigration policy has been marked by inaccurate reporting in an astonishing number of instances. Errors and material omissions by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Census Bureau, and the Department of Education are only the beginning of misinformation about immigration. News releases and publications by experts, including some associated with...

On Wednesday, September 1, a homemade bomb exploded on the third level of the Manezh Square underground shopping mall—dubbed “Luzhkov’s pyramid” by critics of the Moscow mayor’s taste in architecture—in the heart of Russia’s ancient capital, only yards away from the red brick walls of the Kremlin. Forty-one people were injured, but none thus far...

For nearly half a century, hundreds of school districts across the nation have battled exorbitantly expensive social engineering schemes forced upon them by federal courts under the guise of “desegregation remedial orders.” These orders, which supersede local, state, and federal laws, are often devastating. Courts have stripped authority from local officials, told them how they...

As I write this at the end of April, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia is in its fourth week. Albania—predictably—has been turned into a NATO base, and the Kosovo Liberation Army is openly recruiting volunteers in NATO countries, including the United States, where both U.S.-born Albanians and Albanian resident aliens are allowed to join the...