Salon.com > Spencer Ackerman

Perfect pitch

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:25:00 +0000

You can smell it in the foul air blowing from Boston to New York. Today begins a new chapter in the greatest sports rivalry of all time. Not since 1978 have the Red Sox and the Yankees been locked in a down-to-the-wire race for the postseason. (Hey, Red Sox Nation: Remind me again how that one ended?) But not since 1919 have the Yankees faced defending World Series champions that call Fenway Park their home. (Red Sox Nation retorts: Remind us again how the 2004 American League Championship Series ended?) And since it wasn't until shortly after the 1919 season ended that New York bought Babe Ruth's contract for $100,000 -- thus beginning the Curse that Boston reversed last year, and hence the modern Yanks-Sox feud -- the rivalry is in uncharted territory. Whatever happens after Sunday, the end of the regular season, the real World Series will have been decided over these next three days. As a result, statisticians, analysts, beat writers, bookies and barflies are furiously picking at the tea leaves for clues as to how it'll go.

How real is “24″?

Mon, 16 May 2005 20:00:00 +0000

This season of "24" was inevitable. Along with his colleagues at the fictional Counterterrorist Unit (CTU), Jack Bauer, the unrelenting terrorism fighter played to crusading perfection by Kiefer Sutherland, has already faced plots to assassinate politicians, explode suitcase nukes, and launch massive bio-attacks. The CTU has taken out vengeful Serbs, ruthless drug lords and powerful oil interests seeking to manipulate the United States into launching a war in the Middle East. For your freedom, Jack Bauer even got himself addicted to heroin. But that was all foreplay. This year, for the first time, Bauer went up against the real deal: a vast and dedicated network of Islamic terrorists, including domestic sleeper cells, dead set on launching a multi-wave nuclear assault against the U.S. homeland.

Pitting Jack against the jihadists -- for real this time, not like the tease of Season 2 -- gives "24" the story arc it's been crying out for since its November 2001 debut. The secretary of defense is kidnapped, outfitted in a Guantánamo-style orange jumpsuit, and marched into a terrorist show trial broadcast live over the Internet. Defense contractors who have sold weapons to enemies of the United States deploy a team of mercenaries to kill government agents. Nuclear reactors remotely controlled by the terrorists melt down in the midst of densely populated areas. The only force able to protect America from total destruction, naturally, is CTU.

Killing the messenger

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 18:23:00 +0000

The current war inside the CIA began with a stolen package of bacon. During a 1981 grocery run in Langley, Va., Michael Kostiw decided against paying $2.13 for a few strips of salted, fatty pork. Unfortunately for him, his 10 years of experience as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency was poor training for petty thievery, and after he was caught by supermarket employees the CIA placed him on administrative leave. He opted for a quiet retirement from Langley.

But not long ago he was back -- briefly. When Porter Goss, a Republican representative from Florida and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, became director of central intelligence on Sept. 24, he named Kostiw, his chief staffer on terrorism, as his executive director, Langley's third in command. The prospect of Kostiw, a partisan GOP Hill staffer, effectively running day-to-day affairs at the CIA was too much for some of his prospective employees to take, however. Although the agency had prevailed on the local authorities over 20 years ago to wipe Kostiw's police record clean, Walter Pincus, the veteran intelligence reporter for the Washington Post, related the long-forgotten bacon heist on Oct. 3, citing "four sources." As one former intelligence official observes -- not without a hint of admiration -- "that was a vicious leak." And it worked. Within days, a humiliated Kostiw withdrew his name from consideration for the position. Chalk up a scalp for the CIA.