While I was in New York, running around promoting the book and doing things I thought were all terribly important, something else happened. Jetlagged and excited, I sat on a step outside a Starbucks close to 5th Avenue to check my emails. There was a cheery, round-robin, letting-you-know email from a good friend…
Comment: The best writer I know
While I was in New York, running around promoting the book and doing things I thought were all terribly important, something else happened. Jetlagged and excited, I sat on a step outside a Starbucks close to 5th Avenue to check my emails. There was a cheery, round-robin, letting-you-know email from a good friend…
Video: Matt on Fox News Live
During last week’s promotional visit to the USA, I appeared as a guest on Fox News Live. On arriving, you tend to think Fox News studios at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan is an imposing piece of work… but then you meet the presenters. I’ll be posting it as an iPod-friendly MP4 for…
Report: Smuggling, security & the power of cheap – speaking at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs
On 22nd September, I was honoured to be invited to discuss the links between big business, mercenary airmen and terrorist groups at a special event presented by the Transnational Security Committee of NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. The conversation that followed, moderated by CGA Academic Chair Dr Mark Galeotti, took in the disintegrating Soviet Union,…
Extract: Colombia, cocaine and the coastal paradise on a US blacklist
Today, the US finally blacklisted Belize and El Salvador for being major narcotics transhipment hubs – mainly for Colombian cocaine. Anyone who’s been to the former British Honduras, a tiny little country on the Central American coastline, will already know very well how much of it goes down there. Indeed, most are probably wondering, like…
Analysis: Chewbacca, Kurt Cobain & cheap thrills, or life in a post-Soviet West
What if…? is a popular parlour game among historians. How would the world look had World War Two ended differently? What would a Confederate-won Civil War have meant in a parallel 21st-century USA? What if the DDR’s army hadn’t wavered, and the Berlin Wall had never fallen? This week brought a chance to play…
Free audio download: Matt talks 9/11’s unreported aftermath on the Rick & Donna Martinez Show
Listen to Matt on WPTF with Rick and Donna Martinez: Matt’s guest appearance on WPTF’s Rick and Donna Martinez show yesterday kicked off the show’s coverage of some of the more unheralded players in 9/11 and its global aftermath. Matt and Donna discussed the dirty deals our governments make with phantom carriers – in Iraq,…
Comment: “A chilling indictment of worldwide regulatory failure” – or, the book beneath the book
Five newspapers in the UK have given a unanimous four-star thumbs-up to Outlaws Inc. – and with some hearteningly perceptive reviews that took me a little by surprise. The Liverpool Echo, Edinburgh Evening News and Yorkshire Post among others, and especially this review (below), from the Manchester Evening News, hit the nail on the head…
News: Outlaws Inc is out in the USA, & the first (great) reviews are coming in…
Good morning America! Just a quick update on the eve of my US publication date to thank the American media for the great response so far, and especially the quality papers for reviews like this one from the Baltimore Sun calling Outlaws Inc. “a nonfiction tale more suspenseful and compelling than any espionage novel” and…
Article download: Esquire takes up the story
This month, Esquire magazine took up the story of Outlaws Inc., publishing a three-page expose of the phantom cargo trade in the Middle East. You can read the feature for free here by clicking on the layout image below and opening it on your desktop.
Outlaws Inc is Maxim magazine’s big adventure
Maxim magazine has made Outlaws Inc. its adventure of the month for August, with a three-page feature interview on some of the key locations featured in the book. From mafia-run Belgrade to the bootleggers’ paradise of Kabul and war-torn Africa, the feature takes a long, hard look at just how the guns, drugs and gold…