Amid the deluge of radical Islamic literature, few works are as influential to would-be terrorists as a booklet called “Constants on the Path of Jihad.” Written in Arabic by a Saudi al Qaeda adherent, the booklet is the subject of a series of wildly popular video lectures in English by Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical...
In 1974, Ruben Flores-Villar was born to unmarried parents in Tijuana, Mexico. When he was 2 months old, his grandmother and 16-year-old American father brought him to San Diego, where he grew up. His mother, a Mexican citizen, took no part in his upbringing.
In 2003, CIA agents grabbed radical cleric Abu Omar off the streets of Milan and sent him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. The government called such abductions “extraordinary renditions.” In 2009, an Italian court convicted in absentia 21 CIA agents and a U.S. Air Force officer on kidnapping charges related to...
When he was the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus made co-option and integration of “reconcilable” enemies, particularly Sunni forces, a central component of his counterinsurgency strategy in 2007. Making peace with those willing to make peace was a hallmark of efforts at national reconciliation between the Baghdad government and the...
An internal review of the events leading up to the suicide attack against a CIA base in a remote part of Afghanistan last year has revealed a string of security and communications lapses in the weeks before the incident, which took the lives of seven agency employees. The bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was...
Military recruiting stations are often humble affairs. The modest-looking storefront Army recruiting station in Hagerstown, Md., is no exception: a few cubicles, some posters, an American flag, and the seven Army values listed on the wall. The simple fact is that the people who join up with Uncle Sam usually don’t need to be...
Before Charles Seife was a journalist, he studied mathematics. In Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, the New York University professor and science writer studies our faith in numbers and how it can be manipulated. He chatted recently with U.S. News about why numbers often lie. Excerpts:
The judiciary tossed the politically hot potato of gay rights in the military back to the executive branch after a federal judge in California last week issued an injunction stopping enforcement of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The prohibition on openly gay men and women serving in the military has been Pentagon policy...