Washington DeCoded

Washington Decoded, an online monthly, began featuring original articles and book reviews about recent American history in March 2007. Its editor is Max Holland, a journalist and author who arrived in Washington from Lincoln, Nebraska in 1976. The inspiration for the website comes from an essay penned by George Orwell in 1946, just after the end of... World War II. In Politics and the English Language, Orwell observed that "Political languageand with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchistsdesigned to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." That sensibility captures the intent of Washington Decoded. It will not toe a partisan, professional, or ideological line. Its only purpose is to try and explain issues of moment to its readers by tapping archival or other primary sources, with an emphasis on US government documents that have been recently declassified or works derived from such primary sources. More often than not, the the articles and book reviews featured on the website will be about old headlines. Max Holland got his start in journalism at the Lincoln Star, where he worked from 1975 to 1976 as a copy boy, obituary editor, music critic, and eventually, copy editor. Currently, he is a contributing editor at The Nation magazine and sits on the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. His articles have also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, American Heritage, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Studies in Intelligence, the Journal of Cold War Studies, Reviews in American History, and online at History News Network. In 2001, Holland won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, bestowed jointly by Harvard University's Nieman Center and the Columbia University School of Journalism, for a forthcoming narrative history about the John F. Kennedy assassination, to be published by Alfred A. ...Read More