Follow us on social

Shutterstock_681779896-scaled

WaPo quietly acknowledges op-ed author's defense industry ties

The piece opposed Biden's Afghanistan troop withdrawal and originally didn't disclose the author's financial stake in that view.

Reporting | Media

Last week, the Washington Post ran an op-ed opposing President Joe Biden’s commitment to withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, by Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, “professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission,” according to the Post. That bio, as originally published on Friday, omitted a crucial, and highly lucrative, position held by O’Sullivan: board member at Raytheon Corp, one of the top five arms makers in the world.

Raytheon, which has a $145 million contract to train Afghan Air Force pilots, is a major supplier of weapons to the U.S. military. In other words, weapons of war is Raytheon’s business and the end of America’s longest war almost certainly poses a threat to the company’s bottom-line.

O’Sullivan and the Post failed to note her role in the weapons business for which she was paid $940,000 in cash and stock between 2017 and 2019.

Indeed, the op-ed also failed to note that the Afghanistan Study Group report, which the authors cited and disclosed that O’Sullivan was a member of the group, was also largely composed of individuals with deep financial ties to the weapons industry.

The report, which Haass and O’Sullivan cited to push back on Biden’s assessment that al-Qaida no longer poses a significant risk and that a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan isn’t in the vital interest of U.S. national security, was authored by 15 former policymakers, retired military officers, and regional experts. An investigation by Responsible Statecraft and The Daily Beast found that 11 of the 15 members, including O’Sullivan, had current or recent financial ties to major weapons manufacturers.

The Post, for their part, quietly modified O’Sullivan’s biography on Tuesday morning following a tweet, and ensuing tweetstorm, I posted highlighting O’Sullivan’s undisclosed board membership at Raytheon. 

Screen-shot-2021-04-20-at-4.02.34-pm-1024x146

https://twitter.com/EliClifton/status/1384209117867175938

Her modified biography acknowledges she “is on the board of directors of Raytheon Technologies” but does not point to the potential conflict of interest between her opposition to U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and her well compensated role in the weapons industry.

Indeed, the Post’s clarification of her biography is helpful, but the paper’s failure to disclose the potential conflict of interest when allowing a weapons company board member to oppose the end of a nearly 20-year long war without so much as disclosing their board membership until four days after publication, points to the low bar for conflict of interest disclosure in the op-ed pages of a major newspaper and in the foreign policy debate.


Reporting | Media
Trump Netanyahu
Top image credit: White House April 7, 2025

Polls: Americans don't support Trump's war on Iran

Military Industrial Complex

While there are serious doubts about the accuracy of President Donald Trump’s claims about the effectiveness of his attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, the U.S./Israeli war on Iran has provided fresh and abundant evidence of widespread opposition to war in the United States.

With a tenuous ceasefire currently holding, several nationwide surveys suggest Trump’s attack, which plunged the country into yet another offensive war in the Middle East, has been broadly unpopular across the country.

keep readingShow less
Could Trump's Congo-Rwanda mineral deals actually save lives?
Top photo credit: Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, and Foreign Minister of Rwanda Olivier Nduhungirehe, right, during ceremony to sign a Declaration of Principles between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, at the State Department, in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 25, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA)

Could Trump's Congo-Rwanda mineral deals actually save lives?

Africa

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel as representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are hoping to end the violence between them by signing a peace deal in a joint signing ceremony in Washington today.

This comes after the United States and Qatar have been working for months to mediate an end to the conflict roiling the eastern DRC for years.

keep readingShow less
Trump steve Bannon
Top photo credit: President Donald Trump (White House/Flickr) and Steve Bannon (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Don't read the funeral rites for MAGA restraint yet

Washington Politics

On the same night President Donald Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes against Iran, POLITICO reported, “MAGA largely falls in line on Trump’s Iran strikes.”

The report cited “Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and critic of GOP war hawks,” who posted on X, “Iran gave President Trump no choice.” It noted that former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a longtime Trump supporter, “said on X that the president’s strike didn’t necessarily portend a larger conflict.” Gaetz said. “Trump the Peacemaker!”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.