War in Context

The Al Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 25, 2008
As someone who voiced great skepticism about the initial claims that Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in the Syrian desert on September 6, 2007, I’ll be the first to admit that the evidence provided in the DNI background briefing presents proof […]

Justice official defends rough CIA interrogations
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, February 17, 2008
The Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were “quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening,” as long as they did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to constitute illegal torture, a senior Justice Department official said last week.
In testimony before a […]

CIA’s ambitious post-9/11 spy plan crumbles
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2008
The CIA set up a network of front companies in Europe and elsewhere after the Sept. 11 attacks as part of a constellation of “black stations” for a new generation of spies, according to current and former agency officials.
But after spending hundreds […]

Anybody’s guess
By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, February 8, 2008
It’s been a banner week for water-boarding. This centuries-old practice of simulated drowning to extract false confessions and false testimony has really benefited of late from a good old legal reassessment and a smoking-hot PR campaign. In the course of a few short years, water-boarding has morphed from […]

Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe
By Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria, The Sunday Times, January 27, 2008
Ainvestigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed.
The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus […]

Pakistan shuns CIA buildup sought by U.S.
By Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, New York Times, January 27, 2008
The top two American intelligence officials traveled secretly to Pakistan early this month to press President Pervez Musharraf to allow the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories where Al Qaeda, the Taliban […]

Having reason to doubt the CIA
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 19, 2008
On the basis of an interview with CIA director Michael V. Hayden, the Washington Post reports that “The CIA has concluded that members of al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were responsible for last month’s assassination of former Pakistani […]

Lawyers for detainee refer in filing to more CIA tapes
By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post, January 19, 2008
Attorneys for a former detainee at a secret CIA prison said in a court filing this week that intelligence officials had falsely claimed in public statements that his interrogations were not videotaped, that all videotaped interrogations stopped in […]

Station chief made appeal to destroy CIA tapes
By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, January 16, 2008
Those known to have counseled against the tapes’ destruction include John B. Bellinger III, while serving as the National Security Council’s top legal adviser; Harriet E. Miers, while serving as the top White House counsel; George J. Tenet, […]

Bagram: The other Gitmo
By William Fisher, Asia Times, January 16, 2008
As last week marked the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first orange-jumpsuit-clad prisoners at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human-rights organizations are attempting to focus public and congressional scrutiny on what some are calling “the other Gitmo”.
This is a prison […]

Artificial intelligence
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, January 14, 2008
President George W. Bush hasn’t accomplished much on his voyage to the Middle East, but he did take the time to inflict another wound on the entire U.S. intelligence community—and on the credibility of anything he might ever again say about the world.
In the latest Newsweek, Michael Hirsh […]

The spymaster [PDF]
By Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, January 21, 2008
I asked how he [Mike McConnell, the US Director of National Intelligence,] defined torture.
“There’s a history of people making claims that it’s not torture if you don’t force the failure of a major organ,” McConnell said, referring to the infamous 2002 memo by John Yoo, […]

Ex-CIA aide won’t testify on tapes without immunity
By Scott Shane, New York Times, January 10, 2008
A lawyer for Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who in 2005 ordered the destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations of prisoners at a secret site overseas, has told Congress that Mr. Rodriguez will not testify […]

Second thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War
By Chalmers Johnston, TomDispatch, January 6, 2008
I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and […]

The power of authority: a dark tale
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 1, 2008
Frank Gibney was old and sick and a little more than a month away from dying. But he was filled with righteous anger, and he had some things to say. He told his son, the documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, to unplug […]