The senator died Saturday night of an aortic dissection, at seventy-one, in the middle of a campaign for a fifth term. His communications director cited the medical examiner’s preliminary finding: a rupture in the body’s largest artery, the consequence of...
The Men Who Own the War Now Run It
There was a time when the arms dealer waited in the corridor. He financed the campaign, endowed the think tank, took the general to dinner, and hoped the man inside the office would remember him when the contract came up. The wall between the money and the decision...
The Salesman in the Oval Office
On June 24, in the Oval Office, the secretary general of NATO stood up from his chair, walked over to a pair of presentation boards, and began a sales pitch. Mark Rutte had brought charts. He pointed at the first one and gave it a brand name. He called it the “Trump...
The Chancellor, the Asset Manager, and the Missiles
There is a particular kind of arrangement that no law forbids and no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully,...


