Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

’13 Hours’ Splashes Blood Across the Screen and Misses the Real Story of Benghazi

The Intercept
January 14, 2016

Would you give the story of Benghazi to the producer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Someone did. The result is the new film directed by Michael Bay, 13 Hours, which makes Rambo look like War and Peace.

In 13 Hours, Bay displays a fetish for fake blood and heads ...  (Read more)

Firing Blind: Flawed Intelligence and the Limits of Drone Technology

The Intercept
Oct. 15, 2015

(This article was co-authored with Cora Currier and is part of a series of stories, The Drone Papers, that The Intercept published based on secret military documents. For a version of this story with links to the source documents, please click here.)

The Obama administration ...  (Read more)

How the Makers of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Seduced the CIA with Fake Earrings

The Intercept
September 9, 2015

The plot behind the plot of Zero Dark Thirty just gets better and better.

From the moment it premiered in 2012, the film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been criticized as pro-torture propaganda. According to its many detractors, ...  (Read more)

Benghazi Film by Michael Bay Could Be Next ‘American Sniper’ but Let’s Hope Not

The Intercept
July 30, 2015

Hollywood surprised itself earlier this year by producing an Iraq war movie that was a blockbuster—American Sniper has earned more than half a billion dollars so far, starring Bradley Cooper in the role of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The film also produced intense cultural criticism ...  (Read more)

Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize ‘Collect It All’ Surveillance

The Intercept
May 28, 2015

AS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS struggle to agree on which surveillance programs to re-authorize before the Patriot Act expires, they might consider the unusual advice of an intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency who warned about the danger of collecting too much data. ...  (Read more)