Author
Search Results for: Dexter Filkins
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Posted by 
Longreads
Longreads 
Teju Cole (Photo by Ulf ANDERSEN/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
This week, we’re sharing stories from Teju Cole, Barton Gellman, Dexter Filkins, Rebecca May Johnson, and Navneet Alang.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
1. We Can’t Comprehend This Much Sorrow
Teju Cole | The New York Times Magazine | May 18, 2020 | 9 minutes (2,411 words)
“History’s first draft is almost always wrong — but we still have to try and write it.”
2. Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back
Barton Gellman | The Atlantic | May 18, 2020 | 25 minutes (6,472 words)
“After receiving a trove of documents from the whistleblower, I found myself under surveillance and investigation by the U.S. government.”
3. The Twilight of the Iranian Revolution
Dexter Filkins | The New Yorker | May 18, 2020 | 39 minutes (9,920 words)
“Even as Iranians speculate about who will succeed Khamenei, many believe that, whoever becomes Supreme Leader, the revolution is no longer salvageable.”
4. Qualities of Earth
Rebecca May Johnson | Granta | May 13, 2020 | 16 minutes (4,171 words)
“That violent heteronormative cultures of sex and reproduction among humans are attributed to ‘nature’ feels astonishing after spending time on the allotment. The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel that makes a mockery of conservative ideas of the natural.”
5. Stewed Awakening
Navneet Alang | Eater | May 20, 2020 | 16 minutes (4,041 words)
On Alison Roman, social media, and the conundrum of formerly “exotic” foods finding mainstream success.
→
Posted by Longreads
Longreads What does the future hold for Afghanistan after the Americans leave? Some fear that the country’s army won’t be able to stop another civil war from erupting:
Many Afghans fear that NATO has lost the will to control the militias, and that the warlords are reëmerging as formidable local forces. Nashir, the Khanabad governor, who is the scion of a prominent family, said that the rise of the warlords was just the latest in a series of ominous developments in a country where government officials exercise virtually no independent authority. ‘These people do not change, they are the same bandits,’ he said. ‘Everything here, when the Americans leave, will be looted.’
Nashir grew increasingly vehement. ‘Mark my words, the moment the Americans leave, the civil war will begin,’ he said. ‘This country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government.’ Nashir rattled off the names of some of the country’s best-known leaders—some of them warlords—and the areas they come from: ‘Mir Alam will take Kunduz. Atta will take Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum will take Sheberghan. The Karzais will take Kandahar. The Haqqanis will take Paktika. If these things don’t happen, you can burn my bones when I die.’
→
Posted by Longreads
Longreads The National Security Agency is building a “spy center” in Utah with the purpose of gaining intelligence by breaking codes. But the center will also collect massive amounts of private domestic data, including phone calls, emails and Google searches:
The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.
“The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say).” — James Bamford, Wired
See also: “The Journalist and the Spies.” — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, Sept. 19, 2011
→
Posted by Longreads
Longreads The evolution of how we recruit and train spies—starting with the OSS in the 1940s—and our changing expectations of what the job entails and what motivates those who sign up:
I remember him saying something like: “This is the only thing in the Army that you can volunteer for and then get out of if you change your mind.” That’s because we had signed up for something illegal, even immoral, according to some people, he said.
It was called espionage. We were not going to be turned into spies, he explained, but “case officers” — the people who recruit foreigners to be spies. Put another way, he went on, we were going to persuade foreigners to be traitors, to steal their countries’ secrets. We were going to learn how to lie, steal, cheat to accomplish our mission, he said — and betray people who trusted us, if need be. Anyone who objected, he concluded, could walk out right now.
He looked around. One man got up and left. The rest of us, a little anxious, stayed put.
“What Makes a Perfect Spy Tick?” — Jeff Stein, Washington Post
See also: “The Journalist and the Spies.” — Dexter Filkins, New Yorker, Sept. 19, 2011
The Great Afghan Bank Heist
Posted by Longreads
Longreads Poring over stacks of documents, investigators at the American Embassy in Kabul have pinpointed dozens of instances in which Kabul Bank executives may have bribed Afghan officials, including a successful bid to hold the contract to process the salaries that the government pays its employees each month—approximately seventy-five million dollars. Access to the salaries would give bank officials an opportunity to earn millions of dollars in interest in the course of a single year.
“The troubles at Kabul Bank stand as a parable for the sometimes malign effect that the influx of billions of foreign dollars has had on this impoverished country since 2001. While the Western money spent has done a great deal to create a modern economy, much of it has been captured by a tiny minority of well-connected Afghan businessmen and politicians, and much of it illegitimately. The loss of seven hundred million dollars or more at Kabul Bank represents a significant percentage of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, which stands at only about twelve billion dollars.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.