What makes Rick Perry run?

N.K.: So when you saw the photo of Neda Soltan, what did you think? M.A.: It was incredibly sad, due to many reasons. First we have proof that that scene was staged, and she was killed later, at a later point. This footage was shown for the first time by BBC. Our security officers and officials had no information of such a thing. but if BBC makes the complete footage from beginning to end available to us, we will analyze it, we will research it because we do search for those who are truly guilty of murdering this young lady. And also, a scene fairly close to this—almost a photocopy I would say—was repeated previously in a South American country—in a Latin American country. this is not a new scene. And they previously tell those who are due to participate, they tell them that “you will be participating in making a short footage, a short movie, a short clip.” After their participation is finished they take them to some place and they kill them. If BBC is willing to broadcast this film, this footage in its entirety, any viewer would be able to distinguish whether it is as we say or it is as they maintain.

In Tripoli, after Gaddafi.

On witnessing the transformation of George W. Bush over 25 years.

An ex-spook takes on the Warren Commission.

At a dinner party, the author meets one of Afghanistan’s last remaining maskhara — an entertainer, thief and murderer.

Traveling with President Clinton.

In 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and held the entire American diplomatic mission hostage for fifteen months. Twenty-five years later, the students reflected on their actions, many with regret.

Notes from the campaign trail in Nevada with Ron Paul.

Part of Longform.org’s guide to the 2012 GOP field at Slate.

On FIFA’s history of scandal.

How Michelle Bachmann became a GOP front-runner.

On a decade-long war:

Hackers from many countries have been exfiltrating—that is, stealing—intellectual property from American corporations and the U.S. government on a massive scale, and Chinese hackers are among the main culprits.

Around the world, governments and corporations are in a race for code that can protect, spy, and destroy—hacks some secretive startups are more than happy to sell.

In Afghanistan and other zones of international crisis with John Kerry:

Why, then, does Kerry bother? Why is he racing back and forth to put out the fires being set by a serial arsonist? I asked him about this on the short flight from Kabul to Islamabad. Kerry tried to put the best possible face on what he had learned. Despite the warlords in Kabul, he said, Karzai had appointed some talented officials at the provincial and district levels. “It’s a mixed bag,” he concluded gamely. Kerry knew Karzai’s failings as well as anyone, but he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan’s president, because he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan. But why not?

Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man tells the inside story of the 1991 coup that killed glasnost:

"That scum!" Boris Yeltsin fumed. "It's a coup. We can't let them get away with it."

The rise and dissolution of the magazine that nearly took down a president.

The first profile of Michele Bachmann.

A profile of GOP hopeful Jon Huntsman.

A profile of the up-and-coming New York politician, who at the time was toying with a run for mayor.

The anatomy of a scandal.

A profile of Arnold Schwarzenegger written during his first year in office as Governor of California:

"You know, the thing I love about Mexican women is how furry their pussies are."

During her brief tenure as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin was a genuinely effective, bipartisan legislator. What went wrong?

On the ground to witness Cuba’s last days:

“Either we rectify our course or the time for teetering along on the brink runs out and we go down. And we will go down…[with] the effort of entire generations.”—Raul Castro

On Hillary Clinton’s Arab Spring.