In a ward of Gohardasht Prison, a sprawling detention facility in a western suburb of Tehran, a few inmates gathered one night in late 2014 to remember a fallen comrade. Ali Saremi, a supporter of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK,… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘National Security’
Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult
On a blisteringly hot summer afternoon in 2006, Reza Sadeghi ran into an old friend at the Iraqi headquarters of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an exiled Iranian militant group better known as the MEK. The two men had not seen each… Read More ›
Pandemic Planning Should Ensure All Votes Can Be Cast by Mail in November, Experts Say
As Ohio’s governor defied a court ruling and ordered that his state’s primary be delayed until June, citing the need for social distancing in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Senate Democrats and election experts pressed Congress to act immediately on… Read More ›
New Bill Would Protect Journalists From Being Prosecuted for Publishing Classified Information
Almost a year after the Trump administration unsealed an indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, two progressive members of Congress are trying to prevent a World War I-era secrecy law from being used to investigate and prosecute journalists for publishing… Read More ›
New Data Shows the U.S. Military Is Severely Undercounting Civilian Casualties in Somalia
During the first six months of 2019 alone, U.S. Africa Command tracked seven reports of American and allied attacks in Somalia that allegedly killed or wounded at least 18 civilians, according to internal AFRICOM documents obtained by The Intercept. But the… Read More ›
Homeland Security Algorithm Revokes U.S. Visa of War Crimes Investigator Eyal Weizman
Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-born British architect who uses visual analysis to investigate war crimes and other forms of state violence, was barred from traveling to the United States this week for an exhibition of his work after being identified as… Read More ›
NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Submits Clemency Petition Alongside More Than 4,000 Letters of Support
On Monday, a Texas civil rights attorney launched a clemency petition for National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner in Dallas. The attorney, Alison Grinter, encountered Winner through Crystal Mason, a Texas mother who served time alongside Winner in a Fort… Read More ›
Mike Bloomberg in 2014: “We Should Hope” the NSA Is “Reading Every Email”
In October 2014, on a stage in San Francisco in front of a live audience, Katie Couric asked Mike Bloomberg whether he had ever “sexted on Snapchat.” The former New York City mayor, speaking alongside Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at… Read More ›
Report: U.S. Military Rarely Visits Bomb Sites or Talks to Survivors When Investigating Civilian Deaths
It was the midpoint of a 10-month battle to dislodge the Islamic State from the Iraqi city of Mosul. Two ISIS snipers were holed up in a “defensive fighting position built into the second story of the structure” in the… Read More ›
The U.S. Government Secretly Spied on Chinese-American Scientists, Upending Lives and Paving the Way for Decades of Discrimination
In 1973, Harry Sheng was working as a mechanical engineer for Sparton Corporation, a defense contractor in Jackson, Michigan, when his mother got sick back in China. Sheng was among thousands of ethnic Chinese scientists then living in the United… Read More ›