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Happy New Year!

The “Christmas Surprise” that wasn’t It’s 2020, and after a long hiatus (caused in part by physical ailments, sigh!) I’m starting to post here again. I started the year off with a bang by posting a story on January 1…

Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Covering Hurricane Katrina was one of the hardest assignments in my 30 years in journalism. I wrote this story after spending two grueling days walking through the Lower Ninth Ward, accompanying families who were coming back there for the first…

SPIES FOR HIRE reviewed in New Zealand

My book, SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, was just reviewed in Converge, the publication of the Anti-Bases Campaign, the largest peace group in New Zealand. That country is home to several important U.S. intelligence installations that…

Coming soon to this space…

To my readers: the hiatus is winding down. Postings will come shortly in sudden bursts. Many stories to tell and follow, starting with articles on the U.S. involvement in the suppression of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising – widely known in…

Easter Sunrise Service, Occupied Tokyo

This picture was taken in 1948 by my father, Rev. Hallam C. Shorrock, Jr., during an Easter sunrise service in Tokyo sponsored by the U.S. occupation army of Japan. General Douglas MacArthur, who ran the occupation for the Truman administration,…

Only the shadow knows

  Since coming to office, the Obama administration has launched an aggressive campaign to change the basic tenets of government contracting. In February, for example, Obama introduced a set of “reforms” designed to reduce state spending on private sector providers…

Happy Holidays!

To all my readers, whether you’re a friend, colleague, comrade, fan of my book, intelligence officer, contractor or “government employee,” I hope you have a wonderful holiday and that 2009 brings you (and the rest of the world) some peace…

“The Whore Factor”

Your’s truly is quoted in Rolling Stone, by the magazine’s political reporter Matt Tabibi. Even stranger, however, is the fact that [John] Brennan used to head the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, or INSA, in independent nonprofit “research center” which…

On vacation…back in a few

Meanwhile, take a listen to the great Hawaiian slack key guitarist Ledward Kaapana. Heard him play with 12-string master Mike Kaawa in San Francisco the other night and was blown away by their artistry and sense of humor. Catch them…

USA! USA!

“The beauty of this country is that someone who makes a statement and disrupts a public meeting won’t be taken out and shot.” — Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, after an antiwar protestor from Code Pink was removed from a…

Repression, from Birmingham to Gaza

Birmingham 1963 Gaza 2008 AP: Egyptian security personnel use a water cannon to disperse Palestinian women, supporters of Hamas, during a demonstration at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008. Hundreds of Palestinian…

Christian diplomacy in North Korea

From Hankyoreh, via H.K. Suh in DC: “Imagine an American Christian rock band going to North Korea, a country accused of being one of the most oppressed in terms of religious freedom, and not only performing a Christian hymn but…

Bush and Kim, Peacemakers

Bruce Cumings, the nation’s foremost historian of US-Korean relations, analyzes the Bush administration’s recent deal with Kim Jong Il: “Bizarre events may well place Bush and ‘evildoer’ Kim Jong Il side by side as peacemakers. If so, all well and…