Breaking News

Tag Archives: Featured

Badge and Betrayal: How Ex-DEA Official Paul Campo Tried to Run the System in Reverse

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 …

Read More »

Attack on Hill 950, Vietnam

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 …

Read More »

Missed by a Keystroke: A Typo Enabled the Boston Bomber to Slip Through Security Net

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 …

Read More »

Rhodesian Bush War: The Battle of Hill 31

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 …

Read More »

The Bomb That Couldn’t Be Disarmed: The Harvey’s Casino Extortion Plot

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 …

Read More »

Crossings in Wartime: The Shadow Pipeline Out of Ukraine

Smuggling networks led by fixers like Oleg move men through checkpoints, vehicles, and terrain, turning border enforcement into a market for escape. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – Oleg did not ask many questions when the calls came in. He listened, noted what mattered, and moved on to the next name …

Read More »

Alone in the Sahara, SAS Corporal Jack Sillito Survived the Impossible

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 …

Read More »

The Sands of Agadez: Where a Woman Knows More Than She Should About Gun Lords and Mercenaries

by Carl Hancocks For the past four years, the city of Agadez has been what could barely pass as home for a woman without a name. Nigerian, she fends for herself as a sex-worker, but that was not how she arrived in this place. Her story is that of a …

Read More »

A Nuclear Blast Would Bring Hell on Earth: Blinding Light, Searing Heat, and Intense Winds

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 …

Read More »