Ex-Capitol Hill Reporter Whose Eyes Have Been Opened

As a former Washington, DC-based journalist who covered the immediate pre-9/11 and post-9/11 political environment, I've gained a level of insight and skepticism that I hope will enable me to contribute greatly to this forum and website. In the meantime, I continue to help expose some of the ways the U.S. federal government spends our hard-earned tax dollars overseas by launching an original-news blog called U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor.

This is relevant to my introduction because it offers credible evidence of my commitment to revealing events and programs that typically do not make it to the mainstream media, for whatever reasons that may be the case.

My latest post - U.S. to Assess Education Program Progress -- in USAID-backed Filipino Muslim Schools - is only one such original news report in my continued efforts to shed light on unknown and little-known federal programs. More often than not, I find such initiatives simply by looking in the right places and searching appropriate databases. My reports are frequently linked to by other popular sites such as Cryptome, which has linked to numerous U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor articles such as Next Phase of Advanced Global Data-Mining & Intelligence System Unfolds and Pakistani Intelligence, Military to be Trained on U.S. Soil?

Welcome to ATS. I did go to your links. If indeed you are the person I read on as the owner of the site....You will be an invaluable asset to the forums here. I wonder of the Site Owner here, would consider allowing you to post threads without the mandatory 20 post prerequisite. I look forward to your participation here, at ATS.

Small snippet from your link:

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
New Jersey
An independent investigative writer with over a decade of reporting experience.
Interests: xxxxxxxxxxx is a freelance writer who has sold work to publications including The Tampa Tribune, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journals, Broadband Business Week, and WorldNetDaily. He formerly was a Capitol Hill reporter for the Washington, DC-based Warren Communications News.

Welcome, bitsoys. I've only read the articles you highlighted so far, but I intend to go back to your site later for more. I can only say thanks for not going to the Dark Side; you would have been useful there....

Originally posted by Destinyone
Welcome to ATS. I did go to your links. If indeed you are the person I read on as the owner of the site....You will be an invaluable asset to the forums here. I wonder of the Site Owner here, would consider allowing you to post threads without the mandatory 20 post prerequisite. I look forward to your participation here, at ATS.

I once wrote to one of the site owners (I do not recall whom I contacted) about that requirement, as I had a hot story I wanted to share. No response, though. That''s not a complaint, however, as I respect the need to filter out those writers who simply want to "use" other sites to push their own sites (in fact, if that's why I got flagged twice for this post, I am sympathetic, as I understand it was risky to post links to my own site; on the other hand, as I explained, it seemed wholly relevant to my introduction.) Again, no complaints; I know it's easy to say, but my intentions were pure and not entirely self-serving.

Thanks again for the welcome.

Originally posted by Ex_CT2
Welcome, bitsoys. I've only read the articles you highlighted so far, but I intend to go back to your site later for more. I can only say thanks for not going to the Dark Side; you would have been useful there....

I literally walked out of a House Judiciary Committee around 2002 screaming into my hand, as I had heard -- for the millionth time in a year - -some politician say, "Things have changed since September 11th." Rather than continuing as a business journalist or instead becoming a corporate PR flack, I moved my family to rural Pennsylvania to escape that insanity. I needed quiet for a a few years, and indeed escaped from the Dark Side (well, sort of, as I then became a public school teacher. Go figure. In my defense, though, I attempt to get my students to think critically and to question me as well as the government and industry!)

Having your thread flagged means they LIKE it!

I'm glad you decided to land here at ATS.

welcome, you seem like an interesting person, i'm going to check your site out