Kwangju Declassified: Holbrooke’s Legacy
One of the most important documents I obtained in my 15-year quest to unearth the US role in South Korea in 1979 and 1980 were the minutes to a White House meeting that took place on May 22, 1980. At…
The Shorrock Files
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
The Shorrock Files
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
Tim Shorrock
Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based investigative journalist who grew up in Japan and South Korea. He is the author of SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence, published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster (see him talking about his book here). Over the past 35 years, his work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including The Nation, Salon, Daily Beast, Mother Jones, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus and Asia Times. He also appears frequently on the radio as a commentator on intelligence, contracting, foreign policy, East Asia and North and South Korea. He has been interviewed on Democracy Now, NPR’s Fresh Air, HuffPostLive and many other outlets.
The latest release of the Cherokee Files
The Korean Peninsula is tense this week over the recent sinking of a South Korean naval ship, allegedly by North Korea. Once again, the United States is strengthening its already mighty military presence in the region as a warning to…
Kim Dae Jung speaks (1985)
In a long-lost interview, the former dissident and president of South Korea speaks about Kwangju and the U.S. role in his country The Kwangju people kept order; paratroopers broke order…You should have criticized the paratroopers’ side, not the Kwangju people’s…
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…
Echoes of Cold War past in torture report
My latest published piece, from the London Guardian (go there for all the links). Hidden deep in the CIA Inspector General report on the Bush/Cheney torture regime are references to interrogations and torture in Vietnam and Central America. Plus: How…
An American in Hiroshima
Steve Leeper is an American in an usual position: he is the first foreigner to run the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, the organization that operates the museums and memorials in the first city attacked by nuclear weapons. Steve’s been getting a lot…
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…
Twittering away
Yeah, I’m on Twitter. These days I find it one of the best ways to express myself and be in touch with fellow journalists, intelligence experts and activists. So I’m going to start posting some of my comments, with additional…
KOREAN CRISIS REVISITED: 1979-2009
THE CHEROKEE FILES, 30 YEARS LATER This posting marks the creation of on-line guide to a seminal event in the Cold War in Asia: the South Korean democratic upsurge of 1979 to 1980, its suppression by a US-supported military dictatorship,…
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…
McCarthyites, Nader, and Me
How Ralph Nader Sold Me Out to the Reagan McCarthyites: A Lesson in Cold War Cowardice In 1983, only a few months after I arrived in DC from San Francisco, I came under attack from a silly right-winger named Cliff …
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…
Pictures at an Inauguration (2009)
ETAN to Obama: No to Blair as DNI
The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) has long been at the forefront of the international movement to support democratic and indigenous struggles in Indonesia against the repressive military forces in that country. Those forces are closely aligned with…
Katrina story drives traffic up 400%
My posting last night about the FBI infiltration of Common Ground, the New Orleans-based humanitarian/solidarity organization, drove traffic up on my website from about 60 hits a day on January 6 to more than 550 on the 7th. Most of…
FBI spied on Katrina activists
In 2005 I spent nearly six weeks in New Orleans writing about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Common Ground collective, an amazing group of street and health-care activists who came together to provide solidarity and humanitarian support to…
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…
Intel a No-Win for Obama
My latest, co-authored with Frank Naif, in today’s Huffington Post: Any senior intelligence pick who has served in any capacity in government or as a private intelligence contractor during the past seven years is likely to evoke the kind of…
“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…