Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

The Angolan Connection

A new book is revising the conventional wisdom about U.S. intervention in Angola during the Cold War. The book, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, quotes a former CIA station chief in Angola as saying the 1975 ... (Read more)

IWPR Extends The Brand

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is an obligatory stop for the Balkan news crowd; its reports are more detailed than anything else on the Web and written by journalists from the region. IWPR is the only place, online or offline, where ... (Read more)

Tobias Wolff on Andre Dubus

Tobias Wolff has written a book review that is crafted as thoughtfully as one of his short stories; it reaches for the soul. Not only does Wolff’s review make you want to read the new collection ... (Read more)

The Gay Pashtuns?

It’s not easy being female in Pashtun society but it’s not much easier being male. Men and women are strictly segregated–burqas predated the Taliban by centuries–which means the only females a male is supposed to see in his lifetime are his mother, sisters (if he has any) and ... (Read more)

Greetings From The CIA

The Washington Post has an excellent story about the secret war waged in Afghanistan by the CIA and the Special Forces. It began on October 19, when a dozen Special Forces soldiers, known as Team 555, choppered ... (Read more)

Coming Soon: Militainment

Should the Pentagon co-produce television shows? That’s the issue behind this New York Times story, which describes a wave of new programs as “militainment.” The Pentagon is offering detailed technical support to ... (Read more)

An Afghan “To Do” List

Richard Holbrooke states the obvious, but the easily-forgotten obvious–shoring up Afghanistan is as important as taking down the Taliban. Holbrooke is too optimistic about the prospects for nation-building; there’s ... (Read more)

Adam Shapiro, Call Your Mother

Strange things happen in strange places, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that a young American from Brooklyn has emerged from Yasser Arafat’s besieged compound in Ramallah. Adam Shapiro, who ... (Read more)

The Executioner’s Story

Monster’s Ball is a special film. Halle Berry won an Academy Award for her performance, which is why I decided, after the Oscars were handed out, to see it with a friend. Berry is great but Billy Bob Thornton is greater, and Monster’s Ball ... (Read more)

Times Of Honesty

The best feature in The New York Times, when the feature runs, is an Editors’ Note. The Times runs Corrections almost every day, but an Editors’ Note is different and less frequent, because it means the paper really messed up and has some explaining to do. The notes are wonderful ... (Read more)