John Brennan in Grad School: Destroying Democracy Helps Save It

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Tuesday March 19, 2013 · 9:26 AM PDT

2013/03/19 · 09:26

In 1980, a 25-year old graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin wrote a master’s thesis called “Human rights, a case study of Egypt.” In it, he argued that the aim of achieving and maintaining political stability justifies human rights violations by apprehensive governments— including crackdowns on unbridled journalists:

Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship. Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence.

Why should we care what a 25-year old grad student wrote over 30 years ago? Because that student grew up to be John Brennan—recently appointed director of the CIA. And because the theory he outlined in his master’s thesis seems to have shaped his attitude toward the exercise of power since then. Read More

Talk About Politicizing Intelligence! Meet John Brennan, CIA Chief Designee

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Thursday January 10, 2013 · 9:17 AM PST

2013/01/10 · 09:17

John O. Brennan, nominated by President Obama to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a crafty character. Not surprising for a spy.

The Washington Post says that his nomination may generate a debate about the policy of using drones to kill terror suspects, and that there’s some dispute about what Brennan’s position was on the use of torture during his lengthy career in the spook business. But the fact that his own role in the torture debate is even subject to disagreement is just the beginning of this gentleman’s craftiness.

It actually gets much, much more interesting. Brennan’s nomination is a great time for the public—and its elected representatives—to demand answers to a host of questions, not just about Brennan’s values and activities, but about whether the resources of the presidency are routinely used for nakedly political purposes.

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Monday January 07, 2013 · 10:39 AM PST

2013/01/07 · 10:39

Ever since Susan Rice’s botched nomination, it seems to be open season on President Obama’s top cabinet picks for a second term. As Russ Baker explained here, the substance-free fight over Ms. Rice revealed much more about her accusers and Washington than it did about her. Similarly, the recent kerfuffle over Chuck Hagel as a pick for Secretary of Defense does much to outline the contours of prevailing “wisdom” among the intellectual classes of DC and New York, and the clashing currents within post-Cold War foreign policy doctrine.

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Wednesday December 19, 2012 · 11:18 AM PST

2012/12/19 · 11:18

You’ve heard the business angle on America’s sad, sad day in Newtown, Connecticut? In the wake of the slaughter of 20 children and 8 adults, merchants who have been profiting from the insane explosion of guns in America have been trying to stay out of the spotlight until outrage at this tragedy subsides, as it has after all the previous massacres of innocents in schools, malls and workplaces in recent decades.

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Tuesday December 04, 2012 · 6:24 AM PST

2012/12/04 · 06:24

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the impartial international body in charge of enforcing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and supposedly trustworthy source on Iran’s nuclear program, may have been badly compromised through planted intelligence in an effort to bolster unfounded arguments that Iran is doing work towards a nuclear weapon. The latest evidence to that effect came on November 27, when the Associated Press (AP) published an “exclusive” titled, “Graph Suggests Iran Working On Bomb,” by George Jahn. The article was the latest in a series of highly misleading stories from the Vienna-based reporter concerning Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and the suspicious information published within is indicative of much of the flimsy intelligence mustered against Iran at the IAEA.

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Monday November 26, 2012 · 5:24 PM PST

2012/11/26 · 17:24

Welcome to the JFK Assassination Cover-up, Chapter 20.

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Saturday November 17, 2012 · 11:19 AM PST

2012/11/17 · 11:19

One thing you didn’t hear during the presidential debates was any questions about why the United States and its allies are involved in an undeclared war against the government of Syria. That’s right: not efforts to “end the violence there,” as the public is told, but rather stoking the violence, as a means of ejecting the long-running Assad regime.

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Thursday November 15, 2012 · 7:53 AM PST

2012/11/15 · 07:53

Barack Obama's reelection ensures 16 full years of George Bush's radically imperial policies and their resultant civil liberties abridgments at home.

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