by Susan Katz Keating In retrospect, it seems fitting that I met Viktor Belenko in Reno. He was a gambler hanging out in a gambling town, surrounded by pilots in their fast moving aircraft, barreling wildly around pylons. I went there many years back, looking for stories to be found …
Read More »Special Forces at War: A Deadly Firefight in Iraq
by Alex Quade Diyala Province, Iraq — Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (A-Team) 072 rolled into the village. It was dead quiet. Nothing moved. Suddenly, “squirters”—people running away from the village and cars leaving at a high rate of speed. Clearly, something of interest was in that village. A-Team Commander …
Read More »‘The Phantom’ Fouled the Latrine; We Had to Find Him Before Sarge Flushed Us All Down the Toilet
by Heath Hansen It was 0530 hours the morning our first sergeant kicked open the door to our tent, and told us to “get the fuck outside and form it up!” Late the previous night, we returned to base from a 10-day mission in Afghanistan. I could see through a …
Read More »Arizona Border Recon: We Watched From the Mountains While Cartel Gunbattle Erupted
By Heath Hansen Wedged between rocks, I scan with my binoculars and notice a bunker complex built into the top of theopposite hill. I keep observing and see three men, wearing green fatigues, walking between eachfighting position. All three are armed with AK-47’s. That isn’t Afghanistan. It’s Mexico. I had …
Read More »Alone Against the Taliban: Mad Dog Platoon and the Battle of OP Nevada
by Susan Katz Keating The Soviets called it Chernaya Gora: Black Mountain. That is where a unit of elite Spetsnaz forces met their deaths in Afghanistan, atop a remote observation post overlooking Kunar. I learned about the treacherous place in 2015, while researching an article for the Army National Guard. …
Read More »‘The Taliban Are at My Door’: The Whispered Message From a Friend in Afghanistan
by Susan Katz Keating “The Taliban are behind my door.” The whispered words came through the phone in the pitch of night, hours after Kabul fell on August 15, 2021. My friend “Hakim,” a man I had been trying from afar to help leave Afghanistan, called me from inside his …
Read More »Entebbe: The Story of Israel’s Daring Hostage Rescue Raid
by Elon Perry The Israeli commandos wrote their farewell letters to be delivered only in the event they were killed on the high-stakes operation. Then they boarded their flights to Uganda, for a rescue raid that stunned the world. Sunday morning, 27 June 1976. An Air France A300 airliner, Flight …
Read More »A Swedish Mercenary in Iraq: A Ghostwriter’s Ode to Axel Stal
by Jonas Vesterberg It was back in 2016. I was at home in Los Angeles when I got a call from my agent in Stockholm. “I have a project but nobody here in Sweden wants to touch it. Maybe you could take a look?” I suppose I was known as …
Read More »George Washington Bacon, the CIA’s Man in Laos Before He Became a Merc in Angola
Editor’s note: Longtime CIA covert operations officer James Parker Jr. often talked to me about his days in Southeast Asia, including the secret war in Laos. He told stories of another case officer and former Green Beret, George Washington Bacon III, who became a mercenary in Angola. Here is an …
Read More »Is Putin Dead? Moscow Says ‘Nyet’; But If Swan Lake is Broadcast on Russian TV, All Bets Are Off
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Is Vladimir Putin dead? Should we believe the “insider” who announced on Telegram that the Russian president died again, and that a fresh coup is underway in Moscow? Or should we trust the extraordinary denial from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that the report is an …
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