The divide between the generals and the spies was codified in 1994, ensuring the Pentagon ran its counterterrorism fight in a vacuum while the intelligence community stayed on the sidelines.
By Harlan Pryce ·
A weekly briefing to President Clinton tracked a public clash between DOD officials over the Kyoto Protocol while the administration's policy hit a wall in Congress
By Marcus Boone ·
Taxpayers foot the bill for a financial system shifted between agencies for four decades to ensure the movement of funds to private contractors stays out of sight.
By Desmond Okafor ·
A formal statement to Congress in March 2000 codified the shift toward preemptive strikes and the use of rapid response teams, while masking the kinetic operations they supported.
By Desmond Okafor ·
While the FBI warned that conventional weapons remained the primary terrorist threat, the Pentagon spent millions building a response machine for a chemical apocalypse that intelligence said wasn't coming.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Following the 1998 embassy bombings, the Pentagon spent months drafting a manual on who was responsible for protection, a blueprint that prioritized paper trails over the lives of personnel on the ground.
By Desmond Okafor ·
Environmental groups pushed for transparency in 1999, but the Pentagon's carbon footprint stayed hidden behind national security exemptions kept secret for decades.
By Roy Castellano ·
A 1997 report kept the military's status as the government's largest energy consumer tucked into the pages of a diplomatic summary, masking a deeper strategic shift.
By Constance Bell ·
Handcrafted cards and toxic-zone gear were bundled together in a federal archive, scrubbing the operational failure of the response into a collection of memories.
By Constance Bell ·
An Italian businessman and his companion were held at gunpoint because of a vision in Washington, part of a psychic search for a kidnapped general kept secret for nearly two decades.
By June Hargrove ·
The vulnerability of the nation's power and communication grids was laid bare by a series of intrusions that the military's highest leaders were told they could neither detect nor attribute.
By Marcus Boone ·
Military officials embedded themselves in the Clinton administration's climate research to map strategic vulnerabilities while the public was fed sanitized talking points.
By June Hargrove ·
The logs of the Pentagon's top civilian staff were shunted through a comptroller's office for five years, burying political motives beneath a mountain of procurement data.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Invisible incursions into private and state systems defined the new battlefield in a 2000 briefing that remained unclassified as the Global Information Grid expanded.
By Miriam Adler ·
Two-astronaut crews depended on color-coded manuals and weather bureau plans that stayed tucked in archives to avoid support failures before the lunar landings.
By Vera Kessler ·
Iraqi defenders were forced into surrender by the obnoxious sound of a 'vulture' drone, despite the Navy bypassing safety protocols for a system that suffered frequent crashes.
By Miriam Adler ·