Dispatches

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The press community has weighed in on the Seth Harp affair. What they’ve offered is a reflexive defense and a missed opportunity to address journalistic ethics. The weigh-in comes in the form of a Jan. 13 open letter asking Congress to drop a subpoena issued to …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating For two weeks, the Marinera ran. Formerly known as Bella 1, the sanctioned tanker fled the U.S. Coast Guard on the high seas, employing methods that read like a sanctions-evasion playbook. It flew a false flag. It switched off transponders at sea. It attempted to reflag …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Messages from colleagues and operators have flooded my inbox over the past day. The question underlying all of them is the same: Did Seth Harp cross a line that, in national security history, has carried life-and-death consequences for Americans? Some asked it more bluntly. Others asked …

ANALYSIS by Susan Katz Keating Long before the U.S. military strike that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Venezuela was not simply an authoritarian regime awaiting a reckoning. It was a hijacked democracy; a country that began with elections but saw its institutions hollowed out and repurposed by leaders who …

ANALYSIS by Susan Katz Keating Originally published on December 10. “Rumors spread so fast over the weekend that people rearranged their lives just to be on “Venezuela Watch.” Over the past few days, speculation has gone wild that the U.S. is about to flex military muscle in Venezuela. Rumors spread …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating I recently did my annual demographic survey on the Soldier of Fortune audience – and the results prompted me to send a message to certain readers. Old hands, listen up. This is for you. Bear with me for a little context. In the survey, the big …

by Susan Katz Keating Did a Russian assassination team inflict the mysterious Havana Syndrome on American targets, or has an innocent unit been framed, as Moscow would have us believe? Here is one Red flag to consider. It comes in the form of a decades-long Soviet offensive that the Kremlin …

ANALYSIS by Susan Katz Keating A Virginia man was arrested in connection with pipe bombs planted in Washington, D.C., the FBI confirmed. The devices – set outside the Republican and Democratic national party headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021 – have haunted investigators for nearly five years. Even with Brian Cole …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Something strange crackled through the shortwave radio bands coming out of Russia this summer. The long-dormant station UVB-76  –  known to old intelligence hands as the “Doomsday Radio” – buzzed to life on June 4, and began broadcasting again. The transmission was cryptic. The voice …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Russian soldiers have been working their quads – the drone version. We snagged this vid from their Ministry of Defence, showing a quadcopter threading its way through a makeshift obstacle course in the woods. The setup looks crude, almost laughably so, with planks nailed into frames, …