To many, the BBC stands as the gold standard in journalism: It has lots of resources, bright correspondents, able producers and a great web site. There is just one problem. It is missing the one element—more important than money, expensive technology and all the rest—necessary to do great journalism. It lacks the intestinal fortitude to broadcast stories important to its country that might get its government, and in particular its national security apparatus, in trouble. That is the Beeb’s great weakness. It is funded by the British people through the government. So when a story, no matter how important, proves too embarrassing for its paymasters, BBC management takes notice.

In journalism school the mantra is “without fear or favor.” It’s not a slogan they adhere to at the BBC. A case in point is that of Atif Amin, a British Customs agent who, in doing his job, tried to shut down the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network only to be blocked by U.S. and British intelligence. When the story of Amin’s curtailed investigation got out recently, the British government lashed out and tried to discredit him. The BBC took a powder, refusing to touch the story. Its sister service, BBC America, has also studiously ignored the story.

Many of you may have seen Joby Warrick’s piece in the December 16^th Washington Post telling a small part of the story of how the British government has decided to come down on a man who should be a national hero. British Customs agent Atif Amin is being targeted in a criminal probe because the National Security News Service included the story of U.S. and British intelligence halting his investigation of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network in a book. Dave Armstrong and I recounted his story, as told to us by a variety of senior intelligence and law enforcement sources, in America and The Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. Now British authorities are conducting a witch hunt on the assumption Amin was not the subject of our book but our source. [The Guardian has also picked up the story which can be read by clicking here.]

For the last several years, my colleague Dave Armstrong and I have been immersed in unraveling the bi-partisan disaster that resulted in the unstable nation of Pakistan obtaining and then proliferating nuclear weapons.

We tell the story in America and The Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. The book is out from Steerforth Press this week and I urge you to read it. Income from the book goes back into the National Security News Service and will allow us to continue the work we have been doing here since 1989. Organizations that once funded such work with great relish have become far fewer in recent years. As a result, we need your help to continue the work we do. I suspect one reason we are getting less money is that this is a story without a happy ending. Telling the truth in the United States is complex these days. For example, 60 Minutes did our story on the “no-fly” list last year. This year, instead of doing a story we offered them on the Pakistani proliferation network’s operations in Dubai they did a disgraceful puff piece on the Emirate and its Emir.

Roger Boisjoly, whose prophetic warnings about the deadly defects of the Challenger space shuttle were ignored by NASA, shares his thoughts about the current state of NASA's management.

Hi Joe:

Well the idiots that continue their attempt to manage NASA by sticking their heads in the sand when it concerns Flight Safety have been caught once more by the infamous Mr. Murphy of the very well known "Murphy's Law" - simply stated as, what can go wrong will go wrong. There isn't an engineer worth his/her salt that doesn't know that to fool around and tempt Murphy's Law is a losing proposition and that Murphy will always eventually prevail and often with the least expected timing.

What managers continually fail to recognize and/or accept is the fact that there will be a product failure of any defectively designed/manufactured or tested item sometime during the lifetime of the products use. Also, highly recognized by engineers is the FACT that Murphy's Law can be anywhere along the spectrum path of useful life of a product from the very First Use up to the Last Use.

This has been seen over and over again in every field of engineering after known/suspected defects were allowed to be ignored by Blind Loyal Managers in favor of Massive Profits that definitely enhance the corporate bottom line. In a less known fashion, defects help fill the financial pockets of many managers who turn a blind eye to defective products to receive higher bonuses.

While most of us have been wondering what Bush and Cheney were going to break next – after Iraq and Afghanistan, we made the mistake of looking overseas when we should have been looking toward the heavens: We should have been covering NASA.

First, the Bush Administration attacked NASA’s climate scientists who had the temerity to point out the world was warming up. So political hacks at the top of NASA dissembled and clubbed the NASA scientists who spoke out like baby seals. The then NASA administrator did nothing to protect his scientists. The press reported it but did not dig. Just like before Challenger and then the Columbia tragedies we accepted the exciting pictures and astronaut interviews but not our own responsibilities as reporters.

For most Americans, June 6, 1944 is remembered as D-Day.

For me, it’s August 10, 1949.

Far more meaningful to me in terms of America’s long-term history – largely because the results of what happened that day continue to reverberate – it’s anniversary will, not at all surprisingly, once again pass virtually unnoticed.
On that day in 1949, a vitally important semantic change took place in Washington – the arguably brilliant substitution of a single word that would have awesome, far-reaching significance for our country, of how we citizens perceive ourselves and the conduct of United States of America.

Because on August 10, 1949, the Department of War, which had existed under that name since 1778, became the Department of Defense.

And in the President’s Cabinet, the Secretary of War became the Secretary of Defense.

Think about that.

Not War – with all those nasty, distasteful connotations and the grotesque images they summon.

Defense.

My colleague Burton Hersh has a new book out that is well worth reading to understand the context of contemporary history. I recommend Bobby and J. Edgar: The Bitter Face-Off Between The Kennedys and Hoover (Carrol & Graf, $27.95). Hersh understands the Kennedys better then any other living historian. He also has something rare for a historian – Hersh understands the intelligence community and how its leadership targets and manipulates Presidents through the men around them. The lessons in this book about the 1950s and 60s apply very well to how easy it is to manipulate the politically ambitious.

There is truly astonishing information in this book. You will learn that Hoover was frantic to bury the John Kennedy and Oswald cases because he was trying to cover up the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald has been a paid FBI informant. Hersh has no document to support the Oswald informant story, but he skillfully interviewed a top FBI counterintelligence official who read files confirming that Oswald was on the Bureau payroll when he was in New Orleans. This is a vital lead that reporters should follow-up.