Does Google thinks it’s too good–too smart–for democracy? When the top three Internet companies were invited to Capitol Hill last month to explain the political impact of their operations, Twitter and Facebook sent their CEOs. Google sent a lawyer. Rather than hear the minion of Mountain View, the Congress chose to leave Google’s chair empty. ...
Category: Congress
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After Turkish Spy Chief’s ‘Very Unusual’ Visit, Two Flynn Associates Are Indicted
When Turkey’s intelligence chief Hakan Fidan visited Washington earlier this month, reportedly to brief Congress on the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he came with another agenda: pressing the Trump administration to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish national whom Turkey accuses of masterminding an attempted coup in July 2016. Today, Istanbul got Washington’s answer. The Justice...
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What Do Democrats Do With the CIA?
It was a get-together only a Washington policy addict could love. On a cold winter night, I took a Metrobus to a weekday evening presentation at the National Press Club, two blocks from the White House. The event was organized by a former CIA director. It featured four former government officials and a national security...
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The Legacy of Bush’s CIA Pardons
When I first came to Washington in the 1980s, one of the first stories I reported on regularly was the Iran-contra scandal. As vice president, the late George Bush was in the thick of it. In the fall of 1986, while working as an editor at The New Republic magazine, I commissioned a story by...
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Elissa Slotkin for the Democratic Defense
If Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has a certain New York panache that drives conservatives batty, Rep. Elissa Slotkin does Midwestern Nice in a way that will irritate no one. And I mean that as a compliment. Slotkin, a former CIA officer and Pentagon policymaker, was just elected from Michigan’s 8th District, a diverse swath of central...