Tag Archives: Featured

Prosecutors say a former DEA financial operations chief used his expertise in a rogue effort for personal gain, agreeing in a federal sting to assist what he believed was a cartel. This installment of Crossings in Wartime examines what happens when the people who know how the machine works decide to run …

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 …

by Susan Katz Keating “There’s a certain sound…” The song stuck with him for years afterwards. He was being marched to his execution in the jungles of Vietnam, and had been ordered to carry a radio to pick up “Radio Hanoi,” but he secretly dialed in to a station that …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is a grim lesson in what happens when the security safety net has holes. Long before the smoke cleared on Boylston Street in April 2013, long before the manhunt in Watertown gripped the nation, warnings had come in. They arrived not …

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 …

In 1942, Jack Sillito found himself alone in the Libyan desert, more than 100 miles from camp, with a flask of water that soon ran dry. What he did next became the standard every SAS soldier after him was measured against. by Gatimu Juma He raised the rock above his …

The degree of hazard depends on the type of weapon, height of the burst, distance from the detonation, hardness of the target, and explosive yield of the weapon.  by Susan Katz Keating Russian President Vladimir Putin again raised the specter of nuclear war when he announced that a conventional attack …

Investigators say false emergencies in the Himalayas had little to do with survival. by Gatimu Juma The radio call came in around noon from the approach to Everest Base Camp in Nepal. The tour guide spoke in urgent, desperate tones. A trekker was down. He was a British man in …

by Susan Katz Keating The Asgard came in low, riding heavier than it should have for a vessel of its size. Below deck, rifles were stacked four feet high. The ship sailed into Dublin Bay, through one of the most consequential gun-running lanes in modern military history.  THE ARMS SITUATION …