When I learned that President Obama had decided to visit Hiroshima while in Japan for the Group-7 meeting next week, the first person I contacted was David Krieger. As founder and president of The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Krieger has worked tirelessly for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. (And I thought ethics was a tough sell!) Obama’s visit gives...

In April, I wrote a commentary encouraging President Obama to visit Hiroshima. As reported in The New York Times three days ago (May 10), “President Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, Japan…” since the United States dropped an atomic bomb, ending World War II. In a blog post, White House Deputy National Security Advisor for...

Good news about Dennis Haines… finally! Last week, I wrote about Vietnam Vet. Dennis Haines’s difficulty in getting a medication approved by the V.A. for treatment for Hepatitis C – an infectious disease that he contracted after he had unintentionally received tainted blood while being treated by the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh. One week ago, I had contacted...

George Clooney’s compelling 2003 film, Good Night, and Good Luck, is about character assassination and the two men taking a principled stand against such tactics: CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, and producing partner, Fred Friendly. After publicaly exposing U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for destroying careers and lives through rumor and innuendo – usually claiming guilt by association – the...

We’ll get to the “Shocking Details” in our “bombshell” in a moment, but first, a little housekeeping. Deflated Brady – First, football’s “greatest quarterback of all time,” Tom Brady is suspended for four games for being “generally aware” of a scheme to deflate – and thus make the ball easier to control – footballs in the 2015 A.F.C. championship game....

Last week’s story about former Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti’s 1998 battle with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr is far from a complete account. I’ve been developing a more comprehensive narrative that includes what was going on inside the Office of Independent Counsel at the time. In preparing the story I studied “The Referral by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr”; “The Report...

In the 1998 battle between Independent Counsel Ken Starr and the Secret Service, Director Merletti receives help from the Department of Justice in fighting a motion to compel agents on the President’s Protective Detail to testify about what they may have seen or heard concerning President Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. After losing their case in U.S. District Court as...

In 1998, at the height of Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into President Clinton, Starr wanted to compel Secret Service agents on the President’s Protective Detail to testify about what they may have seen or heard regarding the president’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti argued that having agents talk about anything other than criminal acts would...

In the twenty-one years I have been writing and speaking on ethics, I have not encountered a more compelling story of integrity than that of former Director of the United States Secret Service Lewis Merletti – a story largely unknown to most Americans. In John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” U.S. Representative George Norris fittingly points out: “History asks, ‘Did...

Paul Ryan missed his moment, a seminal moment, a “come-to-Jesus” moment. It could’ve been a Reagan moment: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” As the leader of the House and his party, Ryan should’ve called Trump out, by name, as a misogynist, bully, bigot, demagogue, inciter of violence. Instead, the man whose name was raised as a possible presidential candidate...