In 1968, 31-year-old hypersonic flight specialist Thornton "T.D." Barnes reported to Groom Lake, the remote Southern Nevada military base also known as Area 51.

He began work on the CIA's top-secret Project OXCART. Over the next seven years, he and many of his colleagues knew one another only by...

People have questioned the existence of ghosts since the beginning of civilization, or at least since civilization's second generation. Today, journalists, individuals and organizations who investigate the paranormal are found almost everywhere there are -- or were -- people.

Recently, members of the Alabama Paranormal Society reported hearing...

Say things had gone a bit differently during the Taliban's attack on Pakistan's Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on Sunday. Say the Taliban had prevailed, then entered to find a nuclear weapon--far from implausible since Pakistan is believed to have 70 to 90 nuclear missiles secreted within its borders....

If you have a computer, you probably have noticed the torrent of FWDed emails with titles like "Bring Home Our Troops: Send the Democrats" and "See Obama's Kenyan Birth Cert." Curious about the origins of these FWD:FWD:FWDs, I enlisted a systems analyst and followed the digital trails backward.

The Kenyan birth certificate pictured below comes from an admitted forger, and there is strong evidence that it is a forgery. But August has been a slow month for the media. So this still rates a story.

Moreover, there are three reasons to believe the document is real, or,...

The recent torrent of Kenyan Barack Obama birth certificates calls attention to the relative ease with which one can acquire forged identity documents nowadays. Say, for whatever reason, you want your own Kenyan Barack Obama birth certificate. All you will need is: (1) about $200; (2) the ability to use...

Sarah Palin may be as significant to internet political wagering as anyone since Konrad Zuse, inventor of the modern computer.

"We have never had as many market requests relating to a single politician as we have had related to Sarah Palin," says John Delaney, CEO of Intrade.

Intrade's...

The news of Sarah Palin's resignation reached gamblers while they were mired in holiday traffic, vacationing in cabins without internet access, or at the shore with children in need of supervision. Still, somehow, they found time to handicap and place a flurry of online bets regarding Palin's future.
...

I would guess that in the past year, there were more regime-change-in-Iran plots floated by members of the intelligence community than there are Iranians.

During that time, research for my novel Once A Spy (Doubleday, 2010) brought me into contact with an array of intelligence community personnel ranging from analysts...

A North Korean Taepodong-2 missile is about the size of six U-Haul vans sitting bumper to bumper. North Korea is smaller than Mississippi. So how is it -- given a skyful of satellites, every other manner of electronic surveillance and legions of human spies -- that we...

Forty-nine percent of Americans oppose the use of torture no matter the circumstance, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll (48 percent believe the United States should consider torture on a case basis). The country also is split on whether President Obama should investigate the treatment of terrorism suspects...

The betting odds that Timothy Geithner will remain Treasury Secretary until Dec. 31 are currently about 3 to 7. For every $7 you wager, if he stays, you come away with $10. Alternately, if you bet correctly that he'll depart, your $3 bet more than triples.

So how do you...

The issue: Censorship of the song "Life In The Fast Lane" from the Eagles' 1976 album Hotel California. The line in question:

We've been up and down this highway/
haven't seen a goddamn thing.

At radio station WBPT 106.9 FM in Birmingham, Alabama, program manager Mike Schoenherr...

If you're one of the 16 million people who bought the Eagles' album "Hotel California," or if you've spent any portion of your life somewhere other than the underside of a rock, you've heard the song, "Life In the Fast Lane." For 33 years it's been a staple on classic...

Sometimes the Mossad seems like the intelligence community's answer to Hogwarts. The agency's tactics detailed herein are not secret, certainly not to the Iranians -- Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security plays the same game the world over, including in the United States. The Mossad simply plays better. Almost...

On a sunny morning last February, Joe Murphy, the Greater Birmingham Humane Society's animal cruelty investigator, was called to Winfield, Alabama, a town 80 miles northwest of Birmingham whose 4,700 residents live in relatively close proximity. In the back yard of a two-acre property, he found a 500-pound tiger and...

Recent events had me wondering about the accuracy of the old axiom that you're more likely to be killed on the drive to the airport than on the flight.

According to the meretrix.com, which parsed extensive National Transportation Safety Board accident data with Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association...

Packaged goods giant Kellogg announced today that it would not renew its sponsorship contract with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps as consequence of his being photographed smoking marijuana. It's a strong statement by the company, particularly in historical context: According to an October 2002 Time/CNN poll, 47% of Americans...

Perhaps the most frequently-asked question about Watergate is: "How could the conspirators have been so foolish, gabbing away even though they knew the tape recorder was on?" The answer: They were human, and, as such, erred.

Anne Weisman, chief counsel for the non-profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in...

At the moment it's even-money that George Bush will pardon Scooter Libby--or about 6 to 5, to be precise (a bettor wins $6 for every $5 bet that Bush will pardon Libby), based on wagers placed on internet bookmaking sites like Intrade. Such betting markets have proven to...