The military buildup around Venezuela has prompted allies to stop sharing some intelligence with the U.S. Illustration by Noah Hickey/The Dispatch (Photos via Getty Images) “The Trump administration’s military buildup around Venezuela has drawn condemnation and concern from allies, and the U.K. and Canada are not just speaking out: Reports indicate that their intelligence and […]
(photo from The backstory of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier : NPR) Much has been written about Trump’s shoddy stewardship of American foreign policy. He is ignorant and contemptuous of the world’s complexity, he does not trouble to learn, and he does not seem to realize or care about how little he understands. […]
For decades, when Americans worried about government overreach, they argued about authorities—laws, regulations, and formal constraints that define what federal agencies are allowed to do. That focus made sense in an era when statutes were relatively stable, when guardrails were meaningful, and when administrations of both parties tended to treat legal constraints, even when frustrating, […]
[PDF AVAILABLE HERE] The Steady State—representing more than 360 former senior national-security, intelligence, diplomatic, military, law-enforcement, and homeland-security officials—strongly supports the six Members of Congress, all defense or intelligence veterans who this week released a video reminding U.S. military and intelligence personnel that they must not follow unlawful orders.[i] This principle is not controversial. It […]
By POMED – https://www.flickr.com/photos/154085524@N02/48826783596/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92884583 To mark the one-year anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder, POMED and 12 other human rights and press freedom organizations held a public event on Capitol Hill to commemorate Jamal’s life, to call for accountability, and to cast a light on the Saudi government’s repression of those […]
Judge Sol Wachtler, then Chief Judge of New York, famously quipped that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” For decades the line has been repeated as gospel truth by journalists, critics, defense lawyers, and even prosecutors themselves — a shorthand for the notion that grand juries are rubber stamps, […]
U.S. military actions in Venezuela could lead to wider regional conflict. (Photo by Angelito Catolos on Unsplash) Diverting Attention from Domestic Problems While autocrats seek dominion over their nations’ people, unlike bygone dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, direct military domination is not the strategic goal for today’s aspiring authoritarian rulers. To entrench their rule, […]
In a 28-year career culminating in service as Director of Counterintelligence (CI) programs at the National Security Council’s Intelligence Directorate, I participated in many debates about how to improve U.S. CI operations. Should we have our own internal service akin to the British MI5, a secret CI and counterterrorism agency without arrest or other law […]
When Donald Trump welcomed Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa to the Oval Office on Veterans Day, it wasn’t just an odd diplomatic gesture, it was a tone-deaf political spectacle with serious national-security implications. On the day America honors those who served and died in uniform, the optics of rolling out the red carpet for a man […]