She’s retired from government, but not from national security

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. For long-serving federal executives, retirement from government is merely a gateway to a next phase. A case in point is Letitia Long, who retired back in 2014 as director of the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency. She sits on several corporate boards and chairs one of the big trade associations. For some insight into her post-government life and a few other matters, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Letitia Long. Interview…

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The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report

The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election. But the committee zoomed in so tightly on the culpability of Trump and his inner circle that it largely cropped out the dozens of other state and federal Republican officials who supported or enabled the president’s multifaceted, months-long plot. The committee downplayed the involvement of the legion of local Republican officials who enlisted as fake electors and…

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The GOP Can’t Hide From Extremism

The role of extremist white nationalists in the GOP may be approaching an inflection point. The backlash against former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist, anti-Semite, and Christian nationalist, has compelled more Republican officeholders than at any point since the Charlottesville riot in 2017 to publicly condemn those extremist views. Yet few GOP officials have criticized the former president personally—much less declared that Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper (formerly known as Kanye West) who has become a geyser of anti-Semitic bile, renders him…

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How J. Edgar Hoover Went From Hero to Villain

Five decades after his death, J. Edgar Hoover still haunts the FBI. His nearly 48-year reign as its director, from 1924 to 1972, has come to symbolize the dangers of a stealth domestic police-and-intelligence agency in an open society. Hoover is widely seen today as an autocrat who used secret surveillance and other illegal means to control politicians and infiltrate and disrupt domestic political groups in the service of his conservative worldview. No operation confirms this verdict more vividly than the FBI’s wide-ranging electronic surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.,…

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End the Exception: Senator Merkley Calls for Passage of the Abolition Amendment to End Legalized Slavery; Highlight Wide Support from Across the Country

WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley called on Congress to pass the Abolition Amendment. He was joined by Worth Rises and MoveOn, who presented a petition with over 200,000 signatures from across the country echoing the call. This event occurred just before Constitution Day (September 17) and 157 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery for most. The exception in the 13th Amendment makes slavery legal “as punishment for a crime,” forcing predominantly Black and brown people to work for little to no…

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