United States Archive

On Feb. 5, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, removed the entire high command of the country’s armed forces. The move followed a public dispute about the amount paid by the Ministry of the Environment in 2010 to acquire a military-owned plot of land in the city of Guayaquil, which was incorporated into a natural reserve. After an investigation, the government claimed that it had overpaid by $41 million and would therefore reduce its obligations to the Social Security Institute of the Armed Forces (ISSFA), the original owner of the land. The military publicly rejected the accusations and resisted the reimbursement of […]

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran two major articles looking at Hillary Clinton’s role in the Obama administration’s deliberations over whether or not to intervene in the Libyan civil war in 2011. They offer what is, at times, a damning critique that portrays Clinton, then the U.S. secretary of state, as eager to get involved in Libya, but less interested in what might come after the U.S. intervention. A deeper look at the articles, however, suggests a greater indictment of President Barack Obama for his willingness to get involved in Libya but not to see the mission through. […]

Every year in February, the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies present Congress with an unclassified threat assessment. The quality of the document this year is uneven, and it’s clear that intelligence leaders remain conflicted about how much of their knowledge belongs in the public domain. But the annual ritual has some value in pushing the intelligence bureaucracy to clarify its thinking on key issues, and can set a framework for a productive partnership with policymakers. Last week, WPR columnist Michael Cohen argued that the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, as the report and accompanying congressional testimony is known, amounts to fear-mongering […]