Apologists for Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice, are relying on two lines of argument: that Libby was the Bush administration’s “fall guy,” and that Libby’s problem was his faulty memory—the “busy-man defense.” It is true that...
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October 1, 2004June 21, 2022Vital Signs
No Political Pressure?
That the intelligence community (IC) misrepresented evidence suggesting that Iraq was harboring WMD’s cannot be denied. To what extent was this misrepresentation politically motivated? “The Committee found no evidence that the IC’s mischaracterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities was the result of political pressure.” In this statement,...
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June 1, 2004June 21, 2022Vital Signs
Who Was Watching the Watchers?
One cannot reasonably assume that the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a seamless conspiracy. Even a successful plot is not a well-oiled machine, and, whatever the plotting behind the scenes, as Shakespeareans say about Romeo and Juliet, the skyjackings of September 11 were, in some ways, tragedy snatched from the jaws of comedy. Take,...
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January 1, 2004June 22, 2022Vital Signs
Information Sharing
On February 13, 2001, George W. Bush, three weeks in the Oval Office, issued his first official White House document pertaining to national security. The document, called a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD), partly reorganized the National Security Council, which had been established by President Truman in 1947 and put into the Executive Branch in...
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October 1, 2002June 22, 2022C.I.A. Confidential
The Etymology of “Homeland Security”
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...
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April 1, 2002June 22, 2022Cultural Revolutions
Ignoring Important Stories
After September 11, several important stories continue to be ignored. Here, to a lay observer, is the shape of the past fall’s most overlooked developments. The two biggest sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The intelligence community has known this for years. The recent kidnapping and slaying of a...
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February 1, 2002June 22, 2022Cultural Revolutions
Consistent Sponsers
Terrorism, in our time, has found one of its most consistent sponsors in Pakistan. This fact is so simple it could be taught in fourth-grade geography; only the names are difficult. In December 1999, in Kashmir, India, an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked by several Pakistan-based groups—Harkat-ul-Mujahedin (HUM), Lashkar-e-Toib, and Hizbul Mujahideen—demanding the release of...
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April 1, 1999April 21, 2022Cultural Revolutions
Lying Under Oath
President Clinton lied under oath as well as on television: About that, few have disagreed. So why wasn’t lying under oath simply regarded as perjury? Because weighty conservatives, famous feminists, and legal scholars, among others, have tended to excuse the President, claiming that he was just lying to conceal an affair. Said Arthur M. Schlesinger,...
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January 1, 1997April 21, 2022Vital Signs
Southern White Trash
Surely anyone looking at film with an eye to understanding American pop culture or, for that matter, American serious culture, lately, would have to be intrigued by the recent spate of “whitetrash flicks.” Every season over the past three years seems to have produced its brace of movies set in either the South or a...