With his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner, Frank McCulloch was one of the great journalists of the past 50 years. Unfortunately, far too few people know that. Over the past year, as the conflict in Iraq slid from […]
Accountability
Posted inNational Security
Anti-Terror Database Got Show at White House
Note: This story is based in part on reporting by O?Harrow for his forthcoming book, to be published in January by Free Press and supported by the Center for Investigative Reporting. One day in January 2003, an entrepreneur from Florida named Hank Asher walked into the Roosevelt Room of the White House to demonstrate a […]
Posted inNational Security
U.S. Backs Florida’s New Counterterrorism Database: ‘Matrix’ Offers Law Agencies Faster Access to Americans’ Personal Records
Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism database designed to give law enforcement agencies around the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of records about both criminals and ordinary Americans. Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police […]
Posted inNational Security
Surveillance Proposal Expanded
A passenger-screening system designed to help capture terrorists could also be used to target people suspected of violent crimes, under a proposal approved by Department of Homeland Security officials. Previously, government officials said the surveillance system known as CAPPS II would be used only to target potential terrorists and their allies — limits intended to […]
Posted inAccountability
Six Weeks in Autumn
Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh took his seat in La Colline restaurant on Capitol Hill and signaled for a cup of coffee. It was one of those standard Washington breakfasts, where politicos mix schmoozing and big ideas to start their days. An intense foot soldier for Attorney General John Ashcroft, Dinh had been in his […]