Section: The Atlantic (USA)
How a Guy With a Camera Outsmarted the United States
On the morning of December 26, Alan Meloy stood on the front porch of his home in northern England and noticed that “murky” early clouds were clearing into a crisp and sunny winter’s day.Meloy, a retired IT professional and a plane spotter of 45 years, decided to grab his best camera to see whether he could catch any interesting flyovers....
Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Remains a Mystery
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi is not a game of Clue, but it often resembles one. Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, in the annex, with a syringe. Or was it Salah al-Tubaigy, in the consul’s office, with a bone saw? About three months have passed since Khashoggi walked into the consulate in Istanbul, and nearly as much time has passed since Saudi...
A Surge In Foreign Influence Prosecutions
It began with a meeting in New York between the future national security adviser Michael Flynn and Turkish government officials in September 2016, where they discussed kidnapping an exiled cleric and turning him over to Ankara. A curious op-ed followed, in which Flynn alleged that the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, helmed a “dangerous sleeper terror...
Maria Butina’s Defiant Plea and Yet Another Russian Ploy
The first Russian to be convicted of trying to infiltrate and influence American policymakers in the run-up to the 2016 election walked into a courtroom on Friday with her head held high, gazing defiantly at the audience that had gathered to watch her plead guilty.Wearing a green prison uniform over a billowy long-sleeved shirt with two large...
Yes, America Can Still Lead the World
I. A Dangerous IdeaCan America still lead the world? Should it? If so, how? These fundamental questions have lurked in the background for years. Donald Trump brought them front and center.The knee-jerk response of national-security professionals to such questions is to offer a history lesson on the benefits of the “liberal international order”...
The Mysterious Return of Manafort’s ‘Russian Brain’
In the Collected Works of Robert Mueller, there are Russian names that come and go. But there’s only one of these figures who provides a recurring presence in this oeuvre. He is a diminutive man, whom Mueller has called an “asset” of Russian intelligence. His presence is either the sort of distracting irrelevance that Alfred Hitchcock...
Read Nikki Haley’s Full Interview With The Atlantic
During her recent trip to Washington, D.C., for President George H. W. Bush’s funeral, Nikki Haley, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sat down for an interview with The Atlantic.This interview has been edited for clarity. Uri Friedman: We’re meeting on a pretty solemn day. What’s been on your mind in recent...
Nikki Haley Is Emerging From the Trump Administration Unscathed
Who, exactly, is Nikki Haley? With just weeks left in her role as the ambassador to the United Nations, I wanted to ask her one of the big questions naturally prompted by her departure: Does she share Donald Trump’s iconoclastic, transactional, uber-nationalist vision of America’s role in the world?“I get where he wants to go, and I...
An Ancient Case of the Plague Could Rewrite History
The troublesome teeth belonged to a woman buried in Sweden. She lived 4,900 years ago, and she died young. Archaeologists found her at the turn of the last millennium, her bones jumbled up with dozens of others in a limestone tomb. Geneticists sequenced her DNA a few years ago, revealing her to be, unsurprisingly, one of the Neolithic farmers who...
Mueller’s Sentencing Memo for Flynn Doubles as a Warning to Manafort
President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that witnesses in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe should refuse to cooperate. But in a highly anticipated sentencing memo filed on Tuesday night, Mueller sent a clear message to the current and future witnesses in the Russia investigation: testify honestly and completely, and you...
