COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The images are so gruesome I won’t post them. But they’ve been flooding my inbox, as if I didn’t already know that men are getting chewed up on the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia. These particular images come from a social media account that claims to …
Read More »Inside ‘The Warning’: Bombs, Money, and the Boston Connection
by Susan Katz Keating What began as questions about activity in Boston evolved into a wider Soldier of Fortune investigation involving operational warnings, networks, and patterns hiding in plain sight. Some stories don’t arrive fully formed. They come in pieces: a source leaning forward across a table, a sealed envelope …
Read More »Counterfeit Courage: The Deadly Trade in Fake Press Credentials
by Susan Katz Keating For decades, war correspondents earned the right to carry a PRESS credential into dangerous places. Now outsiders, operatives, and opportunists are seeking the same protection without earning it, because in conflict zones a press card can open doors, lower rifles, and get you out of a …
Read More »The Warning, Part 3: The Money and the Map
by Susan Katz Keating Graphic combat imagery circulating through exile networks raised a darker possibility. The money may have mattered less than identifying who would give it – and who would not. “What do you make of these, Jocko?” I slid the packet across the table as he set down …
Read More »War Predators in Ukraine: They Come to Study the Killing Fields
by Susan Katz Keating China and other foreign actors are using Ukraine as a testbed, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets to gather real-time data on drones, intelligence sources told Soldier of Fortune. The grainy figures moved across the screen, creeping through murky terrain like shadows come to life. A blip …
Read More »The Warning, Part 2: Bombs in the Hedgerows
by Susan Katz Keating The investigation into Fancy Bear and Boston’s hidden seams continued with a meeting, a sealed envelope, and an old warning from Northern Ireland. It’s not a bomb. It can’t be a bomb. I stood by the window, watching the envelope from across the room. It lay …
Read More »The Warning, Part 1: Fancy Bear and the Boston Pattern
by Susan Katz Keating It wasn’t the bombs that kept bringing me back. It was the warnings. “It’s an old story,” I said. “It’s not.” He wasn’t arguing. He was correcting. “The Boston office is working it,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m telling you.” We had been talking for 20 …
Read More »The War After the War: Vietnam Veterans Won the Fight at Home
by Susan Katz Keating The war did not end when Saigon fell. It moved home, where those who fought in the jungles, skies, and waters of Southeast Asia reshaped American law, medicine, and culture. Fifty-one years ago today, the last American helicopters lifted off a rooftop in Saigon. The war …
Read More »Massacre at Bien Hoa: These Americans Were the First to Die at War in Vietnam
by Susan Katz Keating America’s fight in Southeast Asia began before our country knew that a war was unfolding, on a single night when two men were the first to die by enemy fire in Vietnam. It happened on July 8, 1959, in Bien Hoa, some 20 miles outside Saigon. …
Read More »So You Want to Be a War Correspondent
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The work has been called the most dangerous form of journalism. Amid my daily influx of emails, text messages, and phone calls, I frequently am hit up by people who want to go downrange under my name. They approach me with variants on the following requests. …
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