”Apres moi, le deluge!” – After me, the deluge. So said French king Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French Revolution and lost his head. Much the same can be said of France’s outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The victory of his Socialist rival Francois Holland […]

Why was I named in alleged al-Qaida letters last week as a recipient for documents about 9/11? Al-Qaida was not founded by Osama bin Laden, as many wrongly believe, but in the mid-1980’s in Peshawar, Pakistan, by a revolutionary scholar, Sheik Abdullah Azzam. I know this because I interviewed Azzam […]

Writing about films is not something I often do, but as an old Cold Warrior who has covered intelligence matters for decades, the subject matter of the thrilling book “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is right up my dark alley. John Le Carré’s Cold War espionage trilogy, which also includes, “The […]