In January 1943, Soviet infantry crossed the frozen Neva River under direct fire to reopen a land corridor into the starving city. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – The soldiers lay motionless in the snow at the edge of the ice, their weapons beside them. The men of the Soviet 136th …

by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – A massive wildfire inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is reviving scrutiny of the radioactive timber trade, wartime disruption, and the shadow economy investigators say has operated inside the contaminated forest for decades. Flames vaulted across the tree tops, carried by wind gusts that whipped through …

Six armed men on April 30, 1980 stormed the Iranian embassy in London. The men took hostages, and issued demands. After six days, the terrorists killed a hostage and threw his body outside. Enter the British Special Air Service (SAS) and Operation Nimrod. British crisis expert Robert McAlister analyzes what unfolded from there.  ANALYSIS …

Depressed over the April 30, 1975 fall of Saigon, this Army veteran went to see a new movie. by Jack Hawkins Released in Los Angeles in 1978, The Deer Hunter was already becoming a legendary film by the time it hit “flyover country” a few months later. I was between …

by Robert Ramsour The FP-45 was an unknown and surreptitious pistol developed in WWII to help our captured allies regain control of their country, or province. In order to conceal its real function as a firearm, our government represented this pistol as a flare projector. It was officially called the …

A fixer who says he connects buyers and sellers moving goods out of Chernobyl describes a trade that has slowed but grown more profitable, building on decades of documented smuggling from the contaminated Exclusion Zone. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – The truck rolled to a stop at the border, crossing …

When a B-24 went down in subzero weather, one airman was stranded alone. by Jose Campos Lieutenant Leon Crane stood hip-deep in snow on a frozen Alaskan mountainside, watching what remained of his B-24 Liberator burn itself out on the slope above him. He shouted for the other men. The …

A classified outpost near Khe Sanh was overrun in the fog. Special Forces Staff Sergeant Jon Cavaiani stayed behind to direct the evacuation and defend Hickory Hill. by Jose Campos He lay beneath a dead man, covered in blood.  Around him, enemy soldiers worked their way through the wreckage of …

What began as a routine track near the Mozambique border turned into a sustained engagement on broken ground where visibility collapsed and distance closed quickly. by Talor Sanders  Dawn broke over the Honde Valley under a gray sky, mist clinging to the ridges along the Mozambique border. For the Rhodesian …

by Jose Campos It started under cover of darkness. In the early hours of an August morning in 1980, three men in white jumpsuits rolled a steel box into Harvey’s Resort Hotel and Casino in Stateline, Nevada. They told casino staff it was an IBM copy machine. It wasn’t. Inside …