defense

One Writer's Crusade To Defend Woody Allen

Rich Juzwiak · 06/03/16 11:20AM

Screenwriter and director of the 2011 PBS film Woody Allen: A Documentary Robert B. Weide published a widely circulated Daily Beast piece “The Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast” in 2014. The piece was ostensibly interrogative though some interpreted it as dog whistling sympathy for Allen. In it, Weide responded to the outrage directed at Woody Allen’s lifetime achievement Golden Globe that year (including accusatory tweets by Allen’s ex Mia Farrow and son Ronan Farrow)—Weide had contributed to the honor by producing the clips reel of Allen’s work that preceded Diane Keaton’s acceptance speech. By mere days, the publishing of Weide’s piece preceded Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow’s account of her abuse at Allen’s hands when she was seven years old, which ran on Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times blog as “An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow.”

Is Israel Really as Good at Shooting Down Rockets as it Claims?

Adam Weinstein · 07/21/14 12:50PM

Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-rocket system is one of the most reliable defense tools on earth. It stops almost every deadly missile tossed its way. It is a miracle of modern civilization. These are claims repeated by reputable Western news sources. But what if they're bogus?

Adam Weinstein · 04/15/14 02:01PM

The top Marine who last week told Congress that pay cuts were good for discipline apologized to his troops in a letter for "a mistaken impression that I don't care about your quality of life and that I support lower pay for servicemembers." He then dropped them all and demanded 20 pushups.

John McCain Gives Away the Truth About the Supercommittee

Jim Newell · 10/14/11 11:40AM

The congressional supercommittee established in the debt ceiling deal has about a month left to come up with trillions in deficit reduction and then move its plan through Congress, lest the dreaded "trigger" go into effect that would viciously cut defense spending and more. So what if the supercommittee gets stuck on, say, tax increases that Republicans will never accept? Will they just give up and let the trigger go into effect? Nope! Old man John McCain let us onto the real Plan B yesterday.

Lockheed Martin Victim of Hack Attack

Max Read · 05/29/11 03:55PM

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin was the victim of a "significant and tenacious" attack on its network last week, but that the system was secure and the hackers warded off. The Pentagon — Lockheed's biggest customer — is helping the company investigate the attack, which Lockheed says is "part of a pattern of frequent attacks on it from around the world." Our guess? It's the same guy who uploaded the dick pic to Anthony Weiner's Twitter account. [Reuters]

Next Month, It Will Finally Be Legal to Read the Pentagon Papers

John Cook · 05/27/11 11:12AM

After 40 years of painstaking labor, Pentagon researchers have finally combed through the 7,000-page Top Secret Pentagon Papers to ensure that none of the information contained therein—almost all of which has been public for as long as Marco Rubio has been alive—will harm the national security if released. Guess what? It won't! Except for 11 words. If they get out, we could lose the Vietnam War.

5WPR Argues Its Case

Hamilton Nolan · 03/14/08 12:20PM

On Wednesday night, I had a meeting with Juda Engelmayer and Adam Handelsman, two top executives at Ronn Torossian's 5WPR, to hear them out. The meeting could accurately be described as "strained, but civil." I told Handelsman—who sold his own firm to 5W in 2004, and is now a partner in the agency—to send me a letter outlining his objections to our coverage of Ronn and 5W, and we would run it. His email came last night, and it is reproduced in its entirety below.