New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
The Senate Committee’s Report on the C.I.A.’s Use of Torture concludes that torture programs were “overwhelmingly outsourced operations.” Here’s the section on these Psycho-Contractors, as summarized by the Washington Post: The CIA contracted with two psychologists to develop, operate, and…
My latest, just posted in The New York Times. The Blackwater convictions this week brought me back to a fierce debate I witnessed in January 2005 between a Marine colonel and one of Blackwater’s top executives. The colonel, who had…
Over the last week, the U.S. media have been filled with lurid accounts of a “coup” in North Korea and predictions of either a revolution from within or a coming collapse of the country. In this piece, I look first…
The US just launched a new air war against ISIS. This week, Bill O’Reilly proposed that Blackwater send its private sector mercenaries to fight. I don’t know why; mercs are already there in force. My latest, from Salon: A massive,…
Read how Samsung treats its workers, even dead ones, and you might reconsider the giant company for your next phone. From Hankyoreh, one of South Korea’s only independent newspapers. Members of the Samsung service workers chapter of the Korean Metal…
So you think this is what only the government and the military can do? Think again – my latest, in Salon: And here’s the contractors leading the way on this $400 million contract:
Robert Gates’ new book on his time as Secretary of Defense makes an amazing claim that shows how close we were to war in Korea in 2010. It also describes how the United States stopped the South from launching an…
To my readers: Apologies for the skimpy posting this year. I’m working on a major piece about an intelligence contractor nobody’s ever heard of and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Keep checking back, or follow…
I was 12 when JFK was shot. At the time, I was living in Tokyo, where I’d arrived as a kid during the U.S. Occupation. Early on the morning of November 23, 1963, my father woke me and my siblings…
There was only one person I wanted to contact when I read the Wall Street Journal’s astonishing report that the NSA has built a surveillance system capable of spying on 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic: Bill Binney. Binney…
Read this unbelievable story from today’s Washington Post: There’s not much lower you can go as a company, or a contractor, or a country. Weeks after winning dismissal of a case alleging that CACI International employees directed mistreatment of Abu Ghraib detainees,…
My latest, in The Nation: [On July 27], President Obama became the first US president to attend the official armistice commemorations at the Korean War Memorial. Addressing a phalanx of US and South Korean generals and hundreds of veterans, he…
On July 26, I spoke in Seoul at the “International Peace Symposium to Establish a Peace Treaty on the Korean Peninsula.” It was organized by the Progressive Policy Institute of the Unified Progressive Party, a coalition of peace, labor and…
I was in Seoul during the July 27 commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the armistice agreement that brought an end to the fighting in the Korean War, one of the most brutal conflicts of the 20th century. My visit…
That’s basically what I argue in this op-ed I just posted at the New York Times – my first byline ever in the Gray Lady. We’ve allowed contractors to conduct our most secret and sensitive operations with virtually no oversight.…
Here it is, the 2007 ODNI slide that says , in bright color, exactly how much of the U.S. intelligence budget goes to contractors. I first reported this amazing figure in Salon on June 1, 2007, and I’ve been citing it…
My latest, in Salon. I was interviewed about this article today on Democracy Now! “The largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” says Michael V. Hayden, who oversaw…
The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA): A Field Guide By Tim Shorrock INSA was originally founded in 1979 as a forum for informal discussions between the NSA and its many contractors, and had its headquarters in the National…
In the wake of the amazing stories from The Guardian and the Washington Post on the expansion of NSA surveillance, I’ve been tweeting links to stories and websites on the contractors who help the world’s largest spying agency analyze all…
Palantir Technologies and Booz Allen Hamilton, for starters. My latest in Salon on what NBC’s isn’t telling you about their oh-so-objective national security analysts. Compared to the near-hysterical reporting on Fox and the mistake-prone efforts at CNN, the handling of…