Masters of War – Japanese Version
The late, great Pete Seeger performs Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War with simultaneous translation into Japanese. Eerie yet very moving.
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.
PSYCHO-CAPITALISM: A $180 million torture-for-profit industry
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…
Blackwater: The problem is the outsourcing of war
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…
The U.S. media will believe anything on North Korea — some perspective from a long-time Asia hand
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…
No boots on the ground, but plenty of contractors
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,…
Stunning report from South Korea: “A worker’s body is stolen.”
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…
Leaked document reveals extent of contracting in Afghanistan
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:
Just as I thought: U.S. prevented ROK retaliation in 2010
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…
Stay tuned
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…
November 22, 1963 – The View from Tokyo
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…
Bill Binney on the WSJ’s NSA-telecom revelations
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…
“CACI and Its Friends,” Revisited
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,…
Obama’s Militaristic Tilt in Korea
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…
Time to End the Cold War in Korea
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…
Marking the Armistice: Dispatch from South Korea
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…
Time to Nationalize the Intelligence Industry
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.…
SPIES FOR HIRE: The 70 Percent Solution
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…
Digital Blackwater
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…
INSA – How Money and Power Corrupts National Security
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…
Who’s helping the NSA? A Look at Palantir
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…
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