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Tag: Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised
How to Smear a Patriot: A 1985 Case Study
In the 1980s, Andrew Eiva, a Republican and anti-Communist activist, led the successful grassroots campaign to force the CIA to arm the Afghan mujahedin with Stinger missiles. He exposed the CIA's disinformation and proved its policy was failing. He won the war of facts. So, the bureaucratic resistance started a…
How to Deconstruct a CIA Hoax
In 1983, mujahid leader Sibjhautullah Mojadedi visited Washington and confronted CIA Director William Casey with the lethal reality of his policy: "You are making us die too cheap." Casey's response was not to fix the supply line; it was to retaliate with arms reductions that led to hundreds of deaths.…
The Missile the CIA Fought—And Now Calls a ‘Game-Changer’
Today, the CIA's official museum features the Stinger missile as a game-changer that was one of the key factors in the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. But this official vindication hides the real story. For six years, the CIA's own Deputy Director, John J. McMahon, was the single most powerful obstacle…
A 16-Year-Old ‘Top Graduate’ in D.C.’s ‘Toughest School in Politics’
This letter, written when I was 16, calls me "one of our top graduates" from what was known as the "toughest school in politics." It notes that Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell personally graded my performance "A" with the words "Smart and articulate." This letter was more than a credential.…
How a 16-Year-Old Senate Staffer Met Ambassador Claire Boothe Luce
This is me with the legendary Ambassador, author, and stateswoman Claire Boothe Luce. How does a 16-year-old Senate staffer, not yet old enough to vote, get this kind of access? My real education did not happen in high school. It began in August 1985, at age 15, in the mailroom…
Lethal Consequences: The ‘Policy by Default’ That Defined Their War
In my research for Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised, I uncovered the full 1985 comments from Dr. Edward Luttwak that formed the basis of the "Don't Blame the CIA" debate. This document is a brilliant contemporary diagnosis of why U.S. policy was a "policy by default" and how it led…
‘Don’t Blame the CIA’: The Human Cost of U.S. Policy in Afghanistan
In 1975, U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black perfectly diagnosed the core of American foreign policy. The Soviets, she explained, play "chess," with long-range, coordinated moves. “By contrast,” Ambassador Black observed, “the United States is a poker player. It looks the world over, picks up whatever cards it is dealt, until…
Idealism vs. Pragmatism: A 14-Year-Old’s Political Education
My entry into the world of politics began not with an event, but with a question to my father at age 14: “What are Republicans and Democrats?” That conversation led me to my father’s bookshelf, where I found books that would form the two complementary pillars of my political education.…
Bureaucrat vs. Activist: The Subversion of U.S. Afghan Policy
What happens when the stated policy of the U.S. government—set by Congress and the President—is vetoed by a single, unelected bureaucrat? This is not a theoretical question. It is the documented history of the U.S. covert-aid program to the Afghan mujahedin in the 1980s, a subject I detail in Chapter…
‘It Sure Seems Contrived to Me’: The Bizarre Family Story That Forged a Book’s Theme
The central theme of my new book, Normal Channels: Blocked or Compromised, is not a theory I invented, but an analytical framework I inherited—a recurring pattern across generations. The book's second chapter, which I am releasing this week, details the origin of this framework. It begins with my father's story.…