Fortune’s TechMate segment about Apple’s upcoming tablet (referred to as the next Newton) proves to me that Michael Copeland has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
The TechMate video automatically starts when the page loads — and their embed tag does not permit a video to begin when triggered by the user…..so here is the link
Tags: Michael Copeland, Fortune, Tablet, Apple, TechMate, Newton, trends
What can you learn from a Nixon staff lawyer who pleaded guilty to approving the break-in of Dr. Lewis Fielding’s office in 1971? Plenty to my surprise. Egil Krogh‘s Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House is a story of how ‘national security’ and political zeal triggered Watergate. Krogh even closes the book with an open letter to W. Bush’s illegal wiretapping to demonstrate that our nation’s politicians and their staff have forgotten Watergate‘s 40th anniversary is just a couple years away….clearly the lesson has been forgotten as well.
Krogh joined Nixon’s White House team after working in a Seattle law firm with John Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman served Nixon as a senior consultant in the 1968 Presidential campaign and was rewarded with the role as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs. Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman dominated the Nixon White House like no other executive staff.
Krogh was responsible for approving the break-in at Fielding’s office in order to dig up damaging evidence against Daniel Ellsberg who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Ellsberg served on Kissinger’s staff. This event was the first of many illegal break-ins designed by G. Gordon Liddy‘s Operation Gemstone.
Ellsberg wrote the introduction to Integrity.
Shortly thereafter Nixon’s men would invent a Special Investigative Unit, a Nixon/GOP “police force” known as “The Plumbers” to fix the leaking of government documents to the media.
It was not a total surprise to learn Liddy was willing to kill during the Fielding break-in. Thankfully that did not happen but proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the zealots who were working for Nixon. Even Howard Hunt‘s team from Miami did not ask to be paid to break into Fielding’s office — they saw it as a patriotic act.
My understanding of the events leading up to 9/11 have been shaped by great authors and believe Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI–and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him by Peter Lance makes significant contributions to understanding the full breakdown of the US intelligence community. Many elements of his research and interviews will should shock Americans.
Lance reveals Al Qaeda had a mole in the NYFD who was able to steal blue prints of the World Trade Center before the 1993 bombing and that US authorities had been tracking Al Qaeda for more than 10 years.
The book’s primary focus is the role of Al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed and his work as a mole within US Army intelligence, the CIA and the FBI. Lance brings a number of key points that were overlooked or more appropriately ignored by the 9/11 Commission.
Patrick Fitzgerald, National Security Coordinator for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York met multiple times with Ali Mohamed years before 9/11. During this timeframe Ali Mohamed declared his loyalty to Osama bin Ladin and told Fitzgerald that he did not need a fatwà to attack America. And yet Fitzgerald did nothing.
Ali Mohamed was identified by the US State Department as Osama bin Ladin‘s first security trainer and helped smuggle Al Qaeda’s co-leader Ayman al-Sawahiri into mosques located in California and North Carolina for recruiting and fund raising. Lance reveals that even Bin Ladin recruited at mosques in Chicago in the late 1980s.
Holiday reading arrived today via mail. Many selections have been referred in previous books so I started tagging them after realizing more than one book pointed to the following:
Cell, The: Inside The 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It,
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy,
Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House,
Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School,
The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business,
American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond
and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
The holiday should be very interesting…I’m looking forward to every book.
University of Chicago Economics Professor Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner about Geoengineering Global Warming Fixes. Their data about innovation planning shows how important creative thinking can be in addressing global problems. From their followup best seller Freakonomics called SuperFreakonomics:
I really enjoyed what Levitt and Dubner’s research revealed in both books, it was very enjoyable reading. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (my review) and their recent followup SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (my review) are two can’t miss books!
Tags: SUPERFreakonomics, Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt, Economics, datasets, innovation, energy, population, poverty, technology, Sudir Venkatesh, terrorist, trends