Of all the unanswered questions raised by the death of Osama bin Laden, one of the most salient for the U.S. national security community is how the world’s most wanted man could have lived for so long just miles from Islamabad and “more or less hiding in plain sight,” as one senior intelligence official...
Tim Hetherington, a veteran war photographer who was nominated for an Oscar for his work directing and producing the film Restrepo, was killed during an attack on the Libyan city of Misurata. Chris Hondros, a photographer who worked for Getty Images, was also killed in the attack. Two other journalists were injured. Misurata, the...
The U.S. intelligence community has long struggled with how to understand the world. In many instances, it comes down to budgeting: how to get the best results for the money—$80 billion last year—that the country allocates to the problem. University of Georgia political science professor Loch Johnson served on the staff of the 1995-96...
Michael Scheuer was the first chief of the CIA’s Alec Station, otherwise known as the bin Laden Unit, which was created in 1996 and specially tasked with hunting down the terrorist leader. Now an author, consultant, and commentator, Scheuer has written a biography of the al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. He recently spoke...
Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor, could never have guessed that when he doused himself in paint thinner and lit a match on December 17, he would throw the world’s most volatile region into chaos. His act of protest inspired riots that overthrew the government in Tunisia, and that inspired demonstrators in Egypt to...
The cast of the drama could have come from the keyboard of Swedish noir crime novelist Stieg Larsson: a group of rambunctious hackers, a secretive private security company, a powerful Washington law firm with notable clients, and the bête noire of bureaucrats, WikiLeaks.
The Internet is playing a major role in matching up potential volunteers with the organizations that most need help.
When her bosses at the state-run Nile News channel told Soha al-Naqqash to report that the chaotic streets of the country’s largest cities were calm, she resigned rather than lie on the air. Last week, Shahira Amin, deputy head of the network, quit for similar reasons. Those resignations were illustrative of the antigovernment protest...