The New Yorker

Last week, the Bush Administration released declassified extracts from a new National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear program. The passages landed in Washington like a religious scroll; they radiated revelation. The N.I.E. drew upon new intelligence, collected last summer, to report with “high confidence” two facts that were previously unknown, or at least heavily disputed: that Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government had commissioned a secret, military-run atomic-weapons program, in addition to its open nuclear-power program, and that, in 2003, Iran halted… more

In his autobiography, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, the Pakistani military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, describes himself as a once talented college athlete. His achievements attracted a particular compliment that lingered long in his mind:

I was fourth in cross-country, was the top gymnast, and was third in the “Mr. FC College” bodybuilding competition. . . . Muhammad Iqbal Butt, who had competed creditably in the Mr. Universe competition, told me at the time that I had a… more

On a muggy August afternoon in Baltimore, trash scuttled down Guilford Avenue, the breeze smelling like rain and asphalt. It was the last week of shooting for the fifth and final season of the HBO drama The Wire, and the crew was filming a scene in front of a boarded-up elementary school. Cast members had been joined by forty or so day players -- mostly kids from the neighborhood. Earlier, the episode’s director, Clark Johnson, had been giving some… more

Just over a year ago, during a high-school assembly in Jena, Louisiana, a black student asked the school’s white principal if it would be all right to sit under an oak tree outside, an oasis of shade known as the “white tree,” because only Caucasian students congregated there. The principal said that the young man could sit where he liked. Later, the student and some African-American friends walked over to the oak and chatted with some white schoolmates. The next… more

Last December, the Army released a document entitled “Counterinsurgency,” an updated field manual designed to guide United States forces to victory in guerrilla wars. “Legitimacy Is the Main Objective” is one heading above its thematic advice. To defeat a resistance force in irregular war, the manual observes, it is essential to recognize “that political factors have primacy” and may account for as much as four-fifths of the struggle -- an insight ascribed, a little showily, to a strategist on Mao… more

The most egregious liar I ever knew was someone I never suspected until the day that, suddenly and irrevocably, I did. Twelve years ago, a young man named Stephen Glass began writing for The New Republic, where I was an editor. He quickly established himself as someone who was always onto an amusingly outlandish story -- like the time he met some Young Republican types at a convention, gathered them around a hotel-room minibar, then, with guileless ferocity, captured their… more

In October, 2005, a radiation sensor at the Port of Colombo, in Sri Lanka, signalled that the contents of an outbound shipping container included radioactive material. The port's surveillance system, installed with funds from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the Department of Energy, wasn't yet in place, so the container was loaded and sent to sea before it could be identified. After American and Sri Lankan inspectors hurriedly checked camera images at the port, they concluded that… more

Barbie is forty-seven years old, and forty-seven years is a long time to have been the alpha doll. Over the decades, many competitors have been sent out into the world to get what Mattel’s doll had: hugely profitable sovereignty over the imaginations of little girls. Some of these rivals briefly grabbed a small share of the fashion-doll market. The Tammy doll, which had a wholesome teen-aged look and came encumbered with parents, stuck around from 1962 to 1966, before Barbie… more

On weekday mornings at nine o’clock, at Harvard University’s Laboratory for Developmental Studies, the babies start arriving in a long procession, looking like young pashas in their luxurious, oversized strollers. Researchers rush out to greet them, brandishing toys and consent forms. One day this summer, eight-month-old William was carried into a small, darkened room, where he sat on his father’s lap and viewed, on a screen in front of him, rectangles and dots shrinking in size or number. He was… more

On May 31st, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced what appeared to be a major change in U.S. foreign policy. The Bush Administration, she said, would be willing to join Russia, China, and its European allies in direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program.

There was a condition, however: the negotiations would not begin until, as the President put it in a June 19th speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, “the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its… more