Ethics, Intelligence, and Security

Steven Miles is a professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His forthcoming book, which has the working title Oath Betrayed: Military Medicine and the War on Terror, stemmed from his attempt to learn why the U.S. medical staff in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay did not report or intervene to stop [...]

Torture is all the rage these days, getting plenty of ink in the liberal press, as if it’s something new. It’s not. We have been torturing one another for centuries. Our intelligence professionals have perfected the means and the methods and have created opportunities for learning how to do it right. Torture, from beating, lacerating, [...]

S. Eugene Poteat, President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) is no fool. A senior CIA official for thirty years, now retired, Poteat was a scientific intelligence officer and program manager for special reconnaissance systems for the U-2, SR-71, and other reconnaissance vehicles. He received the CIA’s Medal of Merit and the NRO’s [...]

The San Jose Mercury News reports that “Gary Webb, a former Mercury News investigative reporter, author and legislative staffer who ignited a firestorm with his controversial stories, died Friday in an apparent suicide in his suburban Sacramento home. He was 49.” I was heartsick. Just knowing that Webb was alive was enough to keep me [...]

One way a government mobilizes support for morally dubious actions is to make those actions sound like the right thing to do. Decisions made for other reasons entirely, for reasons of strategy, say, or economic advantage, are cloaked in religious rhetoric, and when our leaders claim the moral high ground, we the people want to [...]

The internet like a kaleidoscope unceasingly juxtaposes images in different patterns. Turning on the computer in the morning is almost like casting the I ching or throwing bones. Sometimes the images form a coherent picture of everyday reality, but sometimes …. sometimes they illuminate a crazy place. Three translucent images came to the desktop the [...]

“I am obsessed with the body,” Isabel Letelier said. “I turned from painting to sculpture because I needed to work with something I could feel. Bodies are so open, so vulnerable, so easy to abuse.” Isabel Letelier had just read my column (When Should You Tell the Kids?) about proposals to use torture to elicit [...]

Some things are so obvious they are invisible. Prophets see them, prophets like Marshall McLuhan who lived between two eras and had the courage to say what he saw. Hence he was ridiculed, caricatured, and for a generation, largely forgotten. It’s all there in his breakthrough works – The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media – [...]

In the world of computer security, it’s called the cycle of complacency. A critical incident – the NIMDA virus disrupts networks or a worm takes advantage of unpatched systems to install a trojan horse – raises the level of urgency. Everyone works overtime. A crisis mentality governs the workspace, and for once, everybody pays attention. [...]