John Barry

The crucial insight I gleaned from Charlton Heston's pants.

Adm. Fallon's split with Bush on Iran sinks his own ship

An ex-bin Laden hunter on why the U.S. hasn't beaten Al Qaeda.

Pakistan's latest Army chief holds the key to next week's vote, and to the future of his unstable nation.

It wasn't long ago that Afghan president Hamid Karzai was seen as a dependable U.S. ally on par with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf. But as Afghanistan has fallen into violent chaos—along with Pakistan—tensions have erupted between Karzai and the United States and Britain.

Eager to avoid future confrontations between Iranian boats and U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. government has quietly sent word to Tehran asking for dialogue.

Rice's regional strategy may have died with Bhutto, endangering U.S. interests.

A reporter's reflections on 'the pornography of violence.'

Shortly after 9/11, the White House decided that the president needed a new helicopter. The current Marine One fleet was more than 30 years old and needed upgrades to its in-flight protection and communications gear.

What's going on at Los Alamos?  The nation's premier nuclear-weapons laboratory appears plagued with continuing security problems.  Barely 10 days after revelations of a leak of highly classified material over the Internet, NEWSWEEK has learned of two other security breaches.In late May, a Los Alamos staffer took his lab laptop with him on vacation to Ireland.  A senior nuclear official familiar with the inner workings of Los Alamos—who would not be named talking about internal...

Who will lead the Middle East out of its current crisis? Hard to imagine any of the parties now at the table have the strength, as they grapple with the consequences of what many Israelis are already calling "the second Six Day War," Hamas's coup seizing power in Gaza.

Gen. Peter Pace and Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, who climbed to the top rungs of the U.S. military in large part because of their proximity to Donald Rumsfeld, are now seeing their careers end for essentially the same reason.

There are the dead and wounded, then there are the damaged. The longer a soldier stays in Iraq, the more combat he or she sees, the greater the stress, the higher the psychological toll.

The old, macho Bush administration took a certain delight in telling its enemies, at home and abroad, to go to hell. The president seemed to enjoy watching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld swagger and put reporters down at press conferences in the post-9/11 buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (George W.

Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the National Guard and Reserve, warns Arnold Punaro, the chairman of a congressional commission.

The Iranian Special Operations unit called the Quds Force has for years been accused, with or without evidence, of assassinations and terrorist attacks as far away as Argentina.

China's been playing follow the leader in space for a long time. Back in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its first object into orbit, the late Great Helmsman Mao Zedong complained that Beijing "couldn't even put a potato into space." But Beijing's been scrambling to catch up ever since.

Room 325 of the Senate's Russell Office Building—the cavernous and overgilded Caucus Room—makes an unlikely theater of war. But Lt. Gen. David Petraeus underwent a baptism of fire there at his confirmation hearing to be the new commander in Iraq.

Given all the recriminations over the mess in Iraq, it is remarkable how little criticism has fallen on the U.S. military. Americans want to honor the sacrifice of the troops in the field and they may feel guilty about the cold reception given many veterans returning from the Vietnam War.

It's "the long goodbye"--Pentagon style. Donald Rumsfeld's successor as Defense secretary, Robert Gates, is due to have his confirmation hearing in early December--a process Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada predicted would be swift. "We want the change to take place very quickly," Reid said.Not so quickly, after all.

Over a dinner of savory kebab, they talked of the trips they've taken, and their favorite places. James Baker, the longtime confidant of the Bush family, spoke nostalgically of his visits to Iran before 1979, the year the Islamic revolution and hostage crisis put an end to diplomatic ties.

There weren't many people in the Pentagon brave enough to give bad news to Donald Rumsfeld. Jim Roche, though, was one. The Air Force secretary and his boss shared Chicago roots and Washington ties going back 30 years--and, like Rummy, the white-haired Roche had made a lot of money in business.

Beijing may have saved President Bush from a tough decision: whether to order a pre-emptive strike against North Korea's main missile-launch facility. In the wake of Kim Jong Il's nuclear test, the White House was alarmed at the prospect that Kim was planning to explode a second nuclear device while also firing off a second test flight of North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile.

Kim Jong Il doesn't need the bomb to defend his country. If military force were an acceptable option against Pyongyang, you probably would have forgotten the North Korean dictator's name long ago—if you ever knew it in the first place.The Pentagon has been bracing for trouble on the peninsula ever since the 1953 armistice.

The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war, but the contingency planning has already begun inside the White House and the Pentagon.

The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war, but the contingency planning has already begun inside the White House and the Pentagon.

The arrest of former U.S. Army Pfc. Steven D. Green--for the alleged rape of an Iraqi woman and the murder of her and three relatives near the town of Mahmudiyah--brought apologies from U.S. officials.

No one would have mentioned his name at all if President George W. Bush hadn't singled him out in public. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, West Point '76, is not someone the Army likes to talk about.

It's unclear if possible charges against Marines allegedly involved in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians last November will cause dismissals at the top of the corps.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, former chief of staff of the Army, says he is "at peace." But reached last week, he didn't sound all that peaceful. In the winter of 2003, alone among the top brass, Shinseki had warned Congress that occupying Iraq would require "several hundred thousand troops." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, had rewarded Shinseki for his honesty by publicly castigating and shunning him.Last fall, Shinseki went to the 40th reunion of the class of '65 at...