Marc Ambinder
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Articles by Marc Ambinder
Super Bowl Security Plan Far Exceeds Jan 6, 2021 Preparations
FROM WILLIAM ARKIN AND MARC AMBINDER Now comes the cold hard truth: Security for The Big Game is more comprehensive and taken more seriously than it was for January 6. The intensely watchful intelligence apparatus says there is no known threat – it says that every year – and yet that doesn’t stop intense preparations, the very kind of preparations that weren’t taken for the Congressional electoral certification in January 2021.
10 FBI Units You've Probably Never Heard Of
The FBI’s explosive post 9/11 growth – expanding by thousands of agents and technical personnel – has coincided with a flourishing of below-the-radar FBI units that effectively form the country’s “break glass” national emergency response team.
Nuclear Weapons and the Ukraine Crisis
FROM WILLIAM ARKIN AND MARC AMBINDER As Russian threats to Ukraine continue and persist, and as the Biden administration contemplates American responses, nuclear weapons lurk in the background. The nuclear option is postured to deter aggression, even in Europe, a fact made clear by a large-scale “Global Lightning” military exercise last year, which was based upon a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic states, a scenario that ultimately escalated to the use of nuclear weapons.
Why We Reveal Secrets
BY WILLIAM ARKIN AND MARC AMBINDER What’s the point of revealing secrets? What’s the benefit to society? Does it enhance national security? We’ve struggled with these questions for our whole careers and written book-length explanations. And yet in the last two weeks, we’ve been bombarded with the same old questions, from parents and friends, from colleagues and readers.
100 Essential Military Buzzwords for 2022
BY WILLIAM ARKIN and MARC AMBINDER This post is not for the faint of heart. The national security community produces an avalanche of buzzwords, code names, jargon, and acronyms that explains increasingly fine-grained explanations of basic concepts, policy, and doctrine. It is a constantly changing and evolving terminology, most of it introduced in documents that are a formal part of the overall military planning process.
The Special Missions Of The Electron Recon Team
By WILLIAM ARKIN AND MARC AMBINDER As we continue our expedition into the murky swamp of government secrets, we’ve noticed that many units seem to be duplicating the functions of others; the more anodyne-sounding the names are, the more secret those operations tend to be. This now includes a mysterious unit, never before written about, called the U.S. Army Technical Support Squadron, or the USATSS.
The Secret Powers Of WHMO and The "Continuity Of The Presidency" Programs
By WILLIAM ARKIN and MARC AMBINDER In a major calamity, when all hell breaks loose, where the question of presidential succession is paramount, the most powerful person in the country could be an unassuming retired U.S. Navy captain named Paul J. Jackson. Jackson has worked for the White House Military Office (WHMO), on and off, for over 25 years.
The Secrets Machine from William Arkin and Marc Ambinder
Because you want to know, sure. But because you need to know. We’re going to tell you. Secrecy has vitiated our sense that the American national security state functions as it should. There are now more than 600 clandestine government organizations, offices and groups that you can’t Google because they’re so secret. The reason you can’t Google them is because no one, anywhere, has ever written about them before.
What The New JFK Assassination Documents Reveal About The National Security State Today
This week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released a tranche of several thousand formerly redacted secrets about the Kennedy Assassination. Reading through hundreds of them, which is how I spent my Omicron worry week, I learned little about 1963 I didn’t already know. But I found a lot that points to the architecture of the modern national security state.
Headphone critique is the silliest attack on Kamala Harris yet
When the FBI tells politicians, lawmakers and national security executives how to protect themselves from spies, trolls and adversaries, one of its most common pieces of advice is also the most annoying: Whenever possible, even when you're at home, don't use Bluetooth wireless devices to connect to your phone, tablet or computer. Use headsets with a cord instead. Vice President Kamala Harris, to her credit, is the rare political figure who took her security briefings seriously.
Democrats Can't Fight Republican Fear With Facts
Democrats Can't Fight Republican Fear With Facts Republicans have mastered the art of hypercharging and polarizing cultural debates to win votes. Read Full Article »
Why AT&T went all in on Fox News on steroids
The headline from Reuters - "How AT&T helped build far-right One America News" - is alarming enough. A major corporation, the biggest communications company in the world, has subsidized and is continuing to subsidize propagandists who amplified harmful false facts about Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election. The why is a little hard to understand, unless you think like a cable news executive who ultimately wants to maximize profits.
A new book shows how broken our nuclear command system really is.
During the turbulent final months of President Donald Trump's administration, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took it upon himself to serve in loco parentis for a country that was descending into chaos, according to a preview of a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa. Milley reportedly told senior military officers to make sure they had his assent before executing nuclear launch orders. Gen. Mark A.
Twitter keeps riding the line between moderation and censorship
A recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center about the proliferation of far-right figures on Twitter notes that a number of popular right-wing personalities with histories of repellent racial views, and some who have embraced and spread fake and harmful conspiracy theories (like One America News Network anchor Jack Posobiec), have been treated with kid gloves. I don’t want the SPLC determining who I can and cannot hate-read.
Opinion | Who has the power to determine what should be government secret?
Congressional Democrats are demanding answers after recent reports that the Department of Justice under then-President Donald Trump subpoenaed communications and metadata from them and reporters in a leak probe. Meanwhile, Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor who was convicted in 2018 of leaking documents to The Intercept, was released from prison early on Monday. In the United States, who has the power to determine what should be secret?
Get Out the Vote: Defense Against Disinformation
Get Out the Vote: Defense Against Disinformation
Colonial Pipeline hack gas shortage warns of worse future cyberattacks
Last Friday, cyber extortionists penetrated the networks of the company that controls the fuel pipeline serving half of the United States. The company shut down its industrial systems as a precaution, only starting the process of turning them back on late Wednesday. That’s scary, as the lines of people on the east coast waiting to fill their tanks can attest.
Facebook keeps banning Qanon and hate speech. It won't ever work.
When the big internet platforms like YouTube and Facebook began to kick hate speech and harmful misinformation off their sites last year, a process that sped up as the pandemic flared and protests against police violence roiled the country, something comedian Sarah Silverman would often say about audiences came to mind: “People go towards love.” If you begin to push people away from a community for believing bad things, those people, being human, will look for people who accept them.
Fed Ex mass shooting reinforces an ugly truth: Biden can't end gun violence alone
Shortly after 11 p.m. on Thursday, a gunman reportedly opened fire at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, killing at least eight FedEx employees and causing others to be hospitalized before also killing himself. The gun violence epidemic in this country puts a remarkable strain on the notion of American exceptionalism.
Trump's lie about Chinese election interference is debunked. Its effects still linger.
China didn't work to get Joe Biden elected, no matter what Trump said during the 2020 campaign. That's yet another Trump lie about the election fully debunked.Anjali Nair / MSNBC; Getty Images March 17, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC By Marc Ambinder, MSNBC Opinion Columnist The intelligence community this week dispatched with one of the most damnable lies of the late Trump regime: that China was engaged in a concerted effort to manipulate the 2020 election on behalf of Joe Biden.
The only way to win the war on Tucker Carlson is not to play
Fox News host Tucker Carlson's latest round of outrage began with his chastising the U.S. military for being too feminine. I was asked to write this column to weigh in on the feud and inform you, the reader, of the many ways that Carlson is wrong in his analysis. But that's not what I'm going to do.
CPAC could stop the ‘big lie.’ Attracting Trump was more important.
The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, named its keynote dinner after the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, whose appearance at the first CPAC in 1974 marked the beginning of a yearslong political love affair. CPAC was a showcase, and a safe space, for the boisterous Republican base that powered the Reagan revolution.
The Atlantic And Salon Dinners: Thoughts From The Boss
The first reaction of every journalist to the story of the Washington Post's advertiser-cum-salon dinner proposal was probably one of disgust and moral superiority. The second reaction: we've all kinda been involved in situations where that line between what we do and how we are compensated for it blurs a bit -- or is at least visible. We bring attention to our brand by reporting and writing, but we do other things, occasionally, to further the interests of the commercial enterprises that pay us.
Trump's actions during the Capitol riot put Pence in danger - and national security at risk
One of the key questions asked in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is whether he knew that his vice president was in mortal peril on Jan. 6. There are only two possible answers: Either he knew and didn’t care or he was deliberately and cruelly incurious — knowing that he could have easily asked about former Vice President Mike Pence and did not — because Pence’s safety did not matter to him as much as the ambient excitement of the insurrection apparently did.
A national counter-disinformation strategy, revisited
Right, so it’s probably time to look at the prospects for a national counter-disinformation strategy. Six months ago, I took some chalk and outlined what such a plan might looks like and what it should encompass and what it should avoid. I’ll reproduce a few paragraphs here: First, here’s what it must avoid.
QAnon and other pro-Trump conspiracy theorists are Biden's problem now
The number of Americans in thrall to a sectarian cult is a heck of a lot less than the 74 million who voted for former President Donald Trump in November. Still, devotees of alt-right Trump supporters were organized and numerous enough to storm the U.S. Capitol. Although believers are drawn to conspiracies by the need to belong, they can break free — but timing is crucial. A Reddit support forum for families who have lost loved ones to QAnon had nearly 30,000 members in November.
The Capitol Rioters Are Giving Insurrection a Bad Name
Civil society cannot allow mistrust in institutions to become violent rebellion. Ethan Zuckerman 8:00 AM ET Getty / Katie Martin / The Atlantic In 1958 the American National Election Study began asking Americans whether they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time. By this measure, American trust in government peaked at 77 percent in 1964, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the election of Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Secret Service Is Bracing for Dangerous Times
© Mark Makela / Getty For the first time in modern American history, the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power is in doubt. Extremists swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and at least some of them intended to hunt down and kill elected officials. During their riot, they left bloodstains on the inauguration grandstands. Now, in the final hours of the Trump presidency, security forces have turned Washington, D.C., into a fortified encampment in an attempt to prevent further violence.
The pro-Trump attack on the Capitol proves Congress isn't safe
Republicans in Congress were given the choice between war and dishonor, to paraphrase Winston Churchill. Out of fear, they chose dishonor, as many capitulated to President Donald Trump’s demands that they dispute the Electoral College’s results. On Wednesday, as violent radicals stormed the U.S. Capitol to attempt a coup, the war came to them anyway. On Jan.
Why the Capitol Police Failed to Protect the Capitol From the Pro-Trump Mob
Argument An expert's point of view on a current event. Trump supporters confront police and security forces at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images The U.S. Capitol Police has 1,800 men and women dedicated to protecting the people’s citadel. Since September 11, their numbers have swelled, their procedures have changed, their perimeters have expanded, and their preparedness for a persistent threat has been plain. But they have been fighting an old battle.
Secret Service Has No Plan if Trump Refuses to Go, Sources Say Original
If there are any checklists or plans, procedures, or guidelines for the Secret Service to follow in the event of an autogolpe—a crisis in which a sitting president refuses to transfer power—a half-dozen former officials privy to the government’s most sensitive contingency plans aren’t aware of them.
Here's what the Trump administration failed to see in Russia's cyberattack strategy
Here's what we know: The Russian government is suspected of pulling off a major intelligence penetration of American networks. The U.S. government failed to prevent it or deter it. As of Friday morning, President Donald Trump has yet to condemn it. This sort of hack was almost guaranteed to happen. This is bad. But it's not, as Sen.
So Is it an Inspired Parody?
One of my correspondents, ActionFromTheBackSection, notes: Here's the original file as uploaded to archive.org (from where, I suspect, your sources got it): http://www.archive.org/details/Inspire_06 People who have Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) can download PDF (and no, it has no viruses), go to any page after 3 and open Document -> Crop pages menu. In the "Margin controls" replace 0.5 inches in the "Top" and "Bottom" sections with 0 inches.
Republicans are waging a war on democracy. But why are they allowed to get away with it?
In yet another sign of a party in crisis, in the House of Representatives, 126 Republicans, more than two thirds of the entire conference, signed an amicus brief supporting the Texas attorney general’s lawsuit to halt the seating of electors from four battleground states. That suit died as quickly as it was stitched together; at least seven members of the Supreme Court swatted it away like an annoying relative.
Oklahoma's Preemptive Strike Against Sharia Law
Will anti-Sharia law initiatives be in future election cycles what anti-gay marriage initiatives were before? That is, a cultural wedge issue the GOP uses to ensure that hard-core conservatives enthusiastically flock to the polls? If so, then Oklahoma is the proverbial canary in the coal mine for this type of initiative.
Scott Atlas' biggest mistake? Caring more about 'owning the libs' than protecting America.
As of Monday, radiologist Scott W. Atlas is no longer deranging the federal government’s pandemic response, and we will all be the better for it. President Donald Trump first saw Atlas, who is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution, on Fox News. Once ensconced in the White House as an official coronavirus adviser, Atlas was more than happy to gloss over Trump’s Covid-19 hunches with a goo of science-y language and “own the libs” dudgeon.
The Secret Pentagon Spy Ring
Michael Furlong, the long-time Defense Department official who set up and ran network of private intelligence collectors for the military, is being hung out to dry by the very forces that precipitated the network's formation in the first place. Here's the skinny: form follows function in the military, and the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, has been aggressively moving into territory traditionally occupied by other military elements and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Obama Unveils New Economic Team
Gene Sperling takes over as the president's top economic adviser Marc Ambinder January 7, 2011 Updated at 7:27 a.m. on January 7. President Obama will unveil a slate of new advisers to an audience at a green home improvement company in Landover, Md., later today, bracketing the release of what he hopes will be strong job numbers from December by showing off his retooled economic policy team. Most are veterans of the partisan economic fights of the 1990s.
Trump's GSA tells Biden the transition can begin. But let's not sugarcoat this failed coup.
Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence, former ambassador to Germany and current Trumpist agitator, offered some sage advice to reporters Thursday: "The journalism industry will improve when there is Truth in labeling its reporting." I think that's true. Which is why, Ric, I also think it's important for the media to call what President Donald Trump's campaign has tried to set in motion these past few weeks an attempted coup.
Why Parler's facing the same constraints conservatives fled on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
Even before President Donald Trump’s election loss, Trumpist conservatives made a show of joining Parler, an app often described as a type of conservative alternative to Twitter. This charge has been led by Dan Bongino, a Secret Service agent turned Fox News analyst turned mega podcast and social media star. The media is not set up to deal with an entire political machine that has no interest in agreeing to a basic set of rules.
The solution to Trump-Biden polarization may be easier (and cheaper) than we think
In this most discordant election, a lot has gone awry, but not necessarily in the ways for which we’ve braced ourselves: There was nothing close to the Election Day violence we had been warned to prepare for. There was one coordinated national telephonic misinformation campaign, but it was swiftly recognized and dealt with. For the most part, the social media platforms have handled false and misleading content with dispatch.
Voting has a violent history in the U.S. There's a reason we're talking about it so openly now
I grew up around the same area in central Florida, and I had no idea this had happened until I began researching state-sanctioned violence against Black people. It certainly wasn't taught in local schools. (Only as of this year was it included in the public school history curriculum.) There's a new conversation that's been sparked in 2020 about violence — racial violence, and also election violence. Reportedly 3 in 4 voters expect this Election Day to be violent.
How to Bear Witness To The Week Before The Election Without Going Absolutely Bonkers
How do we best bear witness to the coming week? I’ll keep these tips short. They represent the distillation of everything I’ve learned about information friction and mindful digital engagement. 1. Don’t miss the point. Twitter forces you to pause between seeing and sharing; use that second or two to ask whether the story you’re about to share could, if it’s false, harm someone else.
MoveOn Supporter Brutally Attacked by Rand Paul Supporter
Daniel AkstJournalist, novelist Andrew CohenLegal analyst Mickey EdwardsFormer congressman Garrett EppsLaw professor and journalist Richard FloridaCreativity expert Alex GibneyDocumentary filmmaker William HaseltineScientist, entrepreneur Ben W. Heineman Jr.Policy expert Philip K.
Trump's afraid of nuclear weapons. His new deal with Russia makes all of us scared, too.
President Donald Trump's rancorously chaotic foreign policy can be seen as successful in one crucial way: It has catalyzed the demolition of an artifice that Trump himself ran against, the idea that America was the indispensable country and that through relationship-building with other countries, it could advance the causes of democracy and freedom. Trump has never believed this: He has always seen America as a corporation involved in high-stakes zero-sum negotiations with cunning adversaries.
Biden would be a balm for Trump's high-drama presidency
Americans are flagging with election fatigue. We don’t want to fight anymore; President Donald Trump has exhausted us, Covid-19 is killing us, and the lockdowns are sapping our resolve and testing the limits of our compassion. We’re looking for leadership that will engage our vagus nerve, not produce endless pulses of cortisol. We’re looking for leadership that will engage our vagus nerve, not produce endless pulses of cortisol.
Saved By Accident - The American Scholar
A montage of the Trident I C-4 missile launch from the USS Francis Scott Key on October 2, 1981 (Wikimedia Commons) Gambling With Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette From Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis by Martin J.
A Hospitalized President, A Continuity Crisis?
Secretly, this summer the White House beefed up planning if Trump got COVID-19. That’s good. But despite the 25th Amendment the way we keep the presidency together in a crisis is still a mess October 4, 2020 | 9:38 PM Diego Cambiaso The White House At the beginning of the summer, the White House Military Office sent a memo to several dozen national security stakeholders with Top Secret clearances and a need-to-know designation.
A Hospitalized President, A Continuity Crisis?
Secretly, this summer the White House beefed up planning if Trump got COVID-19. That’s good. But despite the 25th Amendment the way we keep the presidency together in a crisis is still a mess October 3, 2020 | 12:05 AM Diego Cambiaso The White House At the beginning of the summer, the White House Military Office sent a memo to several dozen national security stakeholders with Top Secret clearances and a need-to-know designation.
Giuliani Remains Loyal To A Priest Accused Of Molesting Boys And A Cover-Up
Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, has for years employed a Catholic priest who was accused by a grand jury of orchestrating the over-up of nearly 60 separate molestations allegations -- a priest who allegedly partook of the activities himself. The priest, Alan Placa, is one of Giuliani's oldest friends; in turn, Giuliani has become Placa's highest-profile defender.
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