Spencer Ackerman

Author of REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA & PRODUCED TRUMP. Pulitzer/National Magazine Award/etc winning journalist. WALLER VS WILDSTORM for DC Comics, IRON MAN for Marvel.

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The Nation

This Is How Trump Becomes a Dictator

The former president doesn’t want to destroy the security state. He wants to bend it to his will.

The War at Home

Biden Goes All In On FBI/NSA Mass Surveillance

The White House's final offer on surveillance reform: nothing. At least they stripped away the pretense that there's any way to fix Section 702. PLUS: Pee-Wee's last adventure

The War at Home

Gillibrand And Biden Protect Troops The Military Simply Left To Be Sexually Assaulted

The chain of command was never more important than the right of servicemembers not to be sexually abused. I can still hear the Pentagon saying they should never break the chain

The War at Home

Mark Milley's Last Mistake

This guy simply should not have been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His final attempt to build the U.S. military of the future is gibberish.

The War Abroad

CIA Story Time: From Patrice Lumumba's Assassination To Post-9/11 Torture

Before his death in 2008, CIA operator Larry Devlin lamented the persecution of agency interrogators. A forthcoming book sheds light on his role overthrowing Congo's first post-colonial government.

The War Abroad

The Bipartisan Parts of the Defense Bill Suck, Too

House Republicans used $886 billion (!) NDAA as a pitchfork for a culture-war witchhunt. That just scratches the surface of what's wrong with this thing.

The War Abroad

Babylon Makes The Rules-Based International Order

You know what clarifies the difference between the U.S.' order and international law? Syria. Guidance…

The War Abroad

The Foreign Policy Elite Can't Understand How They Got Us Here

Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations thinks the biggest danger to the world is the United States. But he doesn't mean it in the way that's, y'know, true.

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The Nation

Affirmative Action—But Only For The Military Academies

In a footnote, the Supreme Court directs Black and brown advancement into a uniform.

The War Abroad

U.N.: U.S. Must 'Make Full Reparation For The Injuries Caused' by Gitmo

"Without accountability, there is no moving forward on Guantánamo," said a U.N. special rapporteur, shouting a truth into the void of U.S. foreign policy.

The War Abroad

From Dan Ellsberg and Vietnam to Bob Gates and NATO Expansion

The ex-defense secretary wrote in his 2014 memoir that expanding NATO inevitably provoked Russia—and kept silent to George W. Bush instead of doing something about it.

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The Nation

Daniel Ellsberg’s Heroism Began with Listening to the Antiwar Left

The whistleblower confronted his complicity in the Vietnam-era war machine. His successors within it prefer to show up at Henry Kissinger's gala.

Chromium Cover

"This Is About The Way The WORLD Is About To BE…"

Issue 2 of the critically-acclaimed WALLER VS. WILDSTORM is on sale at comic stores everywhere. It's time to build that Wall. PLUS: U.S. intelligence's latest end run around the Constitution: buying your data!

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The Nation

Abolish Section 702

There should be no future for Section 702, an enduring vestige of the post-9/11 security state. To kill it, all Congress has to do is do nothing.

The War at Home

If 9/11 Was God's Vengeance for Homosexuality, What's Pat Robertson's Death During Pride Month?

God was very, very far from the War on Terror. Those who wanted to make it an explicit religious war were not.

The War at Home

When Protest Is 'Terrorism,' Material-Support Charges Are Next

Wednesday's arrests of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund over Cop City could be a strike against protest infrastructure nationwide, warns Cat Brooks of the Anti-Police Terror Project.

The War Abroad

The Three Laws of Robotics Will Be Violated Like All Other Laws

The Air Force might not have run an AI test that prompted a machine to kill its overseer with a drone. The Air Force colonel who brought it up did so as a warning.

The War at Home

How To Deter FBI Surveillance Crime: Make Them Write It Down

A recent spy-court document suggests that fear of getting caught stops the FBI from a lot of its "backdoor searches." How might a criminologist view this phenomenon?!

The War at Home

Based Fiona Hill

Here's a rare example of an eminence willing to take clear-eyed stock of most of the world's rejection of coalescing Cold Wars. PLUS: Elon Musk, antisemitism, capitalism and Magneto! AND: Get used to being a needle in U.S. intelligence's HAYSTAC!

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The Nation

Why the Right Embraces Military-Veteran Vigilantes

The extreme right is often misconstrued as anti-war. In reality, it wants to wage its war on American soil—against people whose Americanness it won’t recognize.

The War at Home

The Killing of Jordan Neely In The Shadow of The Rent Guidelines Board

Homelessness can happen to anyone in this economy, and anyone means you and me. Don't live in New York if you're afraid of New Yorkers.

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The Nation

Emptying Guantanamo Is Not The Same As Closing Guantanamo

New column for The Nation – and you, the FOREVER WARS subscriber – just dropped. Unless the post-9/11 forever prison is permanently shuttered, it’s only a matter of time before one of Biden’s successors takes up Trump’s unrealized call to fill it back up with “some bad dudes.”

The War Abroad

U.N.: Free Abu Zubaydah—and Pay Him

An extraordinary report from the United Nations says the detention of the first forever-prisoner the U.S. tortured after 9/11 and then threw into Gitmo amounts to an "enforced disappearance."

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The War Abroad

How To Read an Intelligence Leak

One of the recent ChudLeaks claims Afghanistan is fertile soil for the so-called Islamic State. Let's step back for some perspective. PLUS: The Pegasus cyberweapon is back.

The War Abroad

'This Was Nineveh, After All…'

Have you read Salar Abdoh's Out Of Mesopotamia? Because I can't stop thinking about it. PLUS: Tortuguita's autopsy; Guantanamo and the Yemen war; and are we sure we're not incentivizing China to invade Taiwan?