{"id":12102,"date":"2013-10-04T14:41:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T18:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/collideascape\/?p=12102"},"modified":"2013-10-04T14:41:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T18:41:11","slug":"the-amira-chronicles-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/?p=12102","title":{"rendered":"The Amira Chronicles (Introduction)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Purchase Valium Online A story that I have been working on for some time is being published this Sunday in the Washington Post<\/em> magazine. “The Princess of Somalia” is a long feature with a great photo spread. If you live in the Beltway area, be sure to have a look.<\/p>\n

The piece, which is unlike anything I have ever done, has been posted online<\/a> today. I’ve been following this story since 2009, which is when I first met Michele Ballarin, who presented herself as someone who could tame Somali pirates and warlords and rebuild a broken country. She seemed to have the ear of Somali politicians and clan leaders; she also had a dubious background that didn’t take long to uncover. But the revolving door of associates she had in the U.S. military and intelligence community proved fascinating, so I followed that trail for a while, until it led me into a hall of mirrors.<\/p>\n

Ballarin is such a colorful character that she was bound to pop up on the radar of other journalists. A reporter for Voice of America<\/em> sandbagged<\/a> her in 2010, and Mark Mazzetti, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the New York Times<\/em>, uncovered enough juicy tidbits for a chapter<\/a> on her in his recent book<\/a>: Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I knew I had the backstory (and much more) on Ballarin, so I gnashed my teeth when those pieces came out. But I kept digging. Every time I was ready to put the shovel down, something new would turn up that made me think there was more to be found. I still think that’s the case.<\/p>\n

Buy Prednisone Online Without Prescription You’ll certainly get a flavor of all this from my Washington Post<\/em> magazine story<\/a>. But there’s too much good stuff that didn’t make it in there that I can’t let fall by the wayside. The story has to be told in full. So for the next week, check back here twice a day (morning and evening). In this post, I’ve provided links to my story and others that should be enough to digest for now. What follows in the days ahead I think you’ll find equally interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A story that I have been working on for some time is being published this Sunday in the Washington Post magazine. “The Princess of Somalia” is a long feature with a great photo spread. If you live in the Beltway area, be sure to have a look. The piece, which is unlike anything I have… Clonazepam Purchase Online Continue Reading…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2990],"tags":[1325,1626],"class_list":["post-12102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-somalia","tag-michele-ballarin","tag-somalia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}