Gareth Porter

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentation of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran’s “atomic archive” in Tehran would certainly have been the “great intelligence achievement” he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a … Continue reading “The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign”

The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just … Continue reading “Did John Bolton Leak Intelligence To Sabotage a Trump-Kim Deal?”

The British government shared what was supposedly a dossier containing sensitive intelligence to convince allies and EU member states to support its accusation of Russian culpability in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England on March 4. But like the infamous 2003 “dodgy dossier” prepared at the direction of Prime Minister Tony … Continue reading “Another Dodgy British Dossier: The Skripal Case”

For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have insisted that there is “no alternative explanation” to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month. But in fact the British government is well aware that such an alternative explanation … Continue reading “An Alternative Explanation to the Skripal Mystery”

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf, 2017; 640 pages) The companion coffee-table book to the 10-part PBS series by Ken Burns, The Vietnam War, is so closely tied to the series that it’s left ambiguous whether Ken Burns himself is the co-author or not. Burns is shown … Continue reading “What Ken Burns Left Out of the Vietnam Story”

Fifty years ago this month, on March 16, 1968, two companies of US Army troops belonging to the Americal Division entered the My Lai and My Khe hamlets of Son My village, in Quang Ngai province, and killed 504 Vietnamese civilians – overwhelmingly women, children, and old men – in cold blood. The national press … Continue reading “The Untold Story of My Lai: How and Why the Official Investigation Covered Up General Westmoreland’s Responsibility”

Media coverage of and political reactions to Donald Trump’s announcement of a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have been based on the assumption that it cannot succeed, because Kim will reject the idea of denuclearization. But the full report by South Korean president Moon Jae-in’s national security adviser on the meeting … Continue reading “South Korean Report on Summit Discredits US Elites’ Assumption”

Jeffrey Sterling, the case officer for the CIA’s covert “Operation Merlin,” who was convicted in May 2015 for allegedly revealing details of that operation to James Risen of the New York Times, was released from prison in January after serving more than two years of a 42-month sentence. He had been tried and convicted on … Continue reading “How ‘Operation Merlin’ Poisoned US Intelligence on Iran”

Israel is beating the drums of war again, this time over Syria. On February 10 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out the most aggressive Israeli use of force in Syria thus far. After having bombed a drone base in retaliation for an alleged incursion by an Iranian drone, Israel retaliated for the shooting down of … Continue reading “Israel Plans a New War in Syria – but Not for the Reasons It Claims”

The agreement for cooperation between North and South Korea on the Olympics provides a pause in the drumbeat of war threats by postponing joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises until after the Winter Games are finished. But the real payoff from the Olympics détente is the possibility that the governments of South Korean President Moon Jae-in … Continue reading “Can South Korea’s Leader End Trump’s North Korea Crisis?”