Articles

As retold in this latest video documentary from Retro Report, part of a series exploring past news stories and their consequences, the phenomenon burned most intensely for roughly a decade, from the mid-1980s to the mid-’90s. Then it faded from public view, partly the result of lawsuits brought successfully against some psychiatrists, who were found […]

For many Americans, the killings that hit home hardest took place on Dec. 2, 1980, a little over eight months after the archbishop’s assassination. They are the focus of the Retro Report video. Salvadoran national guardsmen — five were eventually found guilty — murdered four American churchwomen who worked in that country with the poor. […]

Six months ago, the Supreme Court took its Citizens United decision further by opening the gates to yet more campaign cash. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, it struck down longstanding caps on what an individual may contribute to all federal candidates, collectively, in any two-year election cycle. Under the guidance of Chief Justice John […]

Los Angeles’s SWAT team tested its mettle in 1969 against a local Black Panther militia and again in 1974 during a fierce firefight with the Symbionese Liberation Army, a bizarre but dangerous band of radicals best known for having kidnapped the media heiress Patricia Hearst. Its bona fides thus established, SWAT units spread across the […]

The two disasters led to investigations, to the removal of senior officials, to promises of institutional change, to undying expressions of sorrow. Among the remorseful were engineers who had warned that headaches like eroded O rings and missing foam created risks, but who could not persuade their immediate superiors to act. One former NASA engineer, […]

That said, the American government’s resistance to connecting the dots in any manner has melted away over the years. The Agent Orange Act of 1991 accepted a presumed link to illnesses like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft-tissue sarcoma and chloracne. Veterans with those ailments were declared eligible for medical treatment and financial compensation without having to prove […]

The psychological toll, however, was immense. Even before the accident, America’s romance with nuclear power had begun to chill. Three Mile Island sent it into the deep freeze. Many years passed before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission got a chance to review an application to build a new power plant. The devastating 1986 Chernobyl nightmare in […]