The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.

Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger and Scott Shane, The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. The New York Times, 13 December 2016. “An examination by The Times of the Russian [cyberespionage and information-warfare] operation — based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.”

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Pentagon thwarts Obama’s effort to close Guantanamo

Charles Levinson and David Rohde, Special Report: Pentagon thwarts Obama’s effort to close Guantanamo. Reuters, 28 December 2015. “In September, U.S. State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realizing President Barack Obama’s goal of closing the prison before he leaves office.

The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah’s medical records, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 74 pounds from 148, and the foreign officials wanted to make sure they could care for him.

For the next six weeks, Pentagon officials declined to release the records, citing patient privacy concerns, according to the U.S. officials. The delegation, from a country administration officials declined to identify, canceled its visit. After the administration promised to deliver the records, the delegation traveled to Guantanamo and appeared set to take the prisoner off U.S. hands, the officials said. The Pentagon again withheld Ba Odah’s full medical file.”

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Trafficking in Terror: How closely entwined are the drug trade and global terrorism?

Ginger Thompson, Trafficking in Terror: How closely entwined are the drug trade and global terrorism? The New Yorker, 7 December 2015. This piece is a collaboration between The New Yorker and ProPublia. The DEA warns that drugs are funding terror. An examination of cases raises questions about whether the agency is stopping threats or staging them.”

Joe Posner, How the DEA invented “narco-terrorism.” Vox video, 7 December 2015.

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The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies

Matthew Cole, The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies. The Intercept, 26 October 2015. “U. S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage…. The revelation that the Pentagon used an NGO and unwitting humanitarian volunteers for intelligence gathering is the result of a months long investigation by The Intercept. In the course of the investigation, more than a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, U.S. officials, and former HISG [Humanitarian International Services Group] staffers were interviewed. The U.S. government officials who were familiar with the Pentagon operation and HISG’s role asked for anonymity because discussing classified military and intelligence matters would put them at risk of prosecution. The Pentagon had no comment on HISG or the espionage operations in North Korea.”

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The Drone Papers

Jeremy Scahill, Josh Begley, Cora Currier, Ryan Devereaux, Peter Maass, Ryan Gallagher, and Nick Turse, The Drone Papers. The Intercept, 15 October 2015. Eight-part series. “The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars…. The articles in The Drone Papers were produced by a team of reporters and researchers from The Intercept that has spent months analyzing the documents. The series is intended to serve as a long-overdue public examination of the methods and outcomes of America’s assassination program. This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. The public has a right to see these documents not only to engage in an informed debate about the future of U.S. wars, both overt and covert, but also to understand the circumstances under which the U.S. government arrogates to itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal.” Eight-part series. [Read more…]

Operation Auroragold: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide

Ryan Gallagher, Operation Auroragold: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide. The Intercept, 4 December 2014. “According to documents contained in the archive of material provided to The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on hundreds of companies and organizations internationally, including in countries closely allied to the United States, in an effort to find security weaknesses in cellphone technology that it can exploit for surveillance.”

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Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 3

Scot J. Paltrow, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 23 December 2013. “Part 3, Broken Fixes: Why the Pentagon’s many campaigns to clean up its accounts are failing…. Time and again, programs to modernize Defense Department record-keeping have fallen prey to bureaucratic rivalry, resistance to change and a lack of consequences for failure.”  (Part 1 of this three-part series was published on 2 July 2013, and Part 2 was published on 18 November 2013.)

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Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 2

Scot J. Paltrow, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 18 November 2013. “Part 2, Faking It: Behind the Pentagon’s doctored ledgers, a running tally of epic waste…. For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollars.”  (Part 1 in this three-part series was published on 2 July 2013, and Part 3 was published on 23 December 2013.)

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Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping, Part 1

Scot J. Paltrow and Kelly Carr, Unaccountable: The high cost of the Pentagon’s bad bookkeeping. Reuters, 2 July 2013. “Part 1, Number Crunch: How the Pentagon’s payroll quagmire traps America’s soldiers. Hobbled by old, incompatible computer systems, the Defense Department’s payroll bureaucracy inflicts punishing errors on America’s warriors.”  (Part 2 of this three-part series was published on 18 November 2013, and Part 3 was published on 23 December 2013.)

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