Film Exposes the Seduction of Secrecy

“Secrecy is something like forbidden fruit,” former NSA official Mike Levin says in a startling new documentary, aptly named Secrecy. “You can’t have it. It’s classified. That makes you want it more.” But who should determine what a real secret is -- bureaucrats or the press?

CQ Politics (05/09/2008)

Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs designed to weaken the resistance of terrorist suspects to interrogation. Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques. But hard evidence that U.S. interrogators are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface.

CQ Politics (04/04/2008)

Mike McConnell’s Temporary Spokesman Has a Full-Time Job

Ross Feinstein ought to get a Purple Heart for all the hits he’s taken as press agent for Mike McConnell, the serial mis-stater who runs American intelligence. It’s all the more astounding that only a few years ago, the 25-year-old was vice president of the Union College student union.

CQ Homeland Security (02/29/2008)

Who Can You Believe in the Torture Wars?

Was it just a coincidence that CIA officer John Kiriakou popped up to soft-sell the efficiency of water-boarding just as news broke that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation?
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CQ Homeland Security (12/14/2007)