by Adam Goldman and Pamela Hess August 30, 2009 WASHINGTON – When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA. With Blackwater’s lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of [...]

Anti-Torture Advocates Worry Holder Won’t Go High Enough Up the Chain by Spencer Ackerman August 21, 2009 Like many in the intelligence community, Tyler Drumheller is waiting to see if his former colleagues will be left holding the bag for the Bush administration. As early as Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the appointment of a [...]

Four men with the U.S. firm once known as Blackwater are said to be under investigation in the deaths of two Afghans. A U.S. report found serious fault with private security firms in Afghanistan.

Facing the American World We Created by Tom Engelhardt July 23, 2009 We’ve just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here’s how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders, didn’t inform Congress that, to assassinate [...]

by Lisa Pease July 10, 2009 On TV this week, with a measure of disbelief in their voices, the pundits ask, did the CIA lie to or deliberately mislead Congress? How is that not a rhetorical question? The Agency has a long history of manipulating Congress and others to support its programs. That this was posed as an [...]

by Wade Goodwyn All Things Considered, June 9, 2009 · Jamie Leigh Jones was a 20-year-old Halliburton employee in 2005 when she was sent to work in Iraq. She’d been there just four days when she joined a small group of Halliburton firefighters outside her barracks at the end of the day. One of them gave [...]

by Ralph Nader May 28, 2009 Once upon a time early in the 19th century, corporations came into existence by state legislatures approving charters, which were granted for a limited period of time and for limited purposes. These corporations – producing textiles and other products in New England – raised capital in part because their investors had [...]