You're in Providence? I wish I'd known. I'm right next door in New London,CT. Will you be there more than a day?

Oh goodie, A Washington Poster. Gee, thats gonna be "enlightening". Is he bringing a script, or is he gonna wing it?

Steve, if you get a chance, seeing as how he is an expert on Pakistan and Afghanistan, ask him what he thinks about Mahmud Ahmed's meetings with Goss and Graham, and why he thinks it is that we never pursued him for his role in financing Atta.

I am also curious what he thinks about the Pakistani airlifts we allowed, where Pakistani aircraft were allowed to enter Afghanistan and remove Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives while we were supposedly engaging them militarily.

I guarantee the answers to these questions will not be on his WP list of talking points. Unfortunately, he will have to wing it on this one.

No rush, Steve. Trust me, I'm not holding my breath.

I'm glad to see via your link that he will still be writing for the New Yorker. In addition to his regional expertise, Steve Coll is a really good writer - pleasurable to read as well as thought provoking.

Best to you all

The Washington Post, along with most of our media mainstream, failed this country miserably in the build up to the Iraq war, and continue to do so in regards to advancing the exagerations and propaganda that is being waged against Iran.

They have also failed to thoroughly investigate and report on voting "irregularities", John Conyers' attempt to expose those "irregularities", 9/11, and a myriad of other issues.

ANYONE that has been complicit in the complete failure of the Fourth Estate to exercise their responsiblities as a protector and purveyor of the truth has no business expecting respect or credibility.

Coll is one of the world's leading experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan and can get into the weeds with anyone on those issues -- and gets the big picture need to tilt foreign policy and national security work towards the empirical and pragmatic rather than positions fashioned mostly by ideology or inertia.

Empirical/pragmatic mechanisms are ideological. Denying this is a cheap and dishonest way of masking the bloodless technocratic elitism that enabled this country into war. But you know this, Steve, don't you?

poa- i agree. not to mention how talking opening about their thoughts on impeachment never happens.. their is a clear pattern and it stinks.

Considering that he understands the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan very thoroughly, it would be great to see him offer ideas on the issue of poverty. 78% of Americans believe that solving the issue of poverty would be a way to combat terrorism [Borgen Project] and very little is necessary to end such widespread problems like malnutrition and starvation.

To take Mr. Coll to task for the alleged failures of the WaPo to report on a variety of issues -- particularly those after he left -- is as absurd as giving him credit for editorial positions taken by his current employer, The New Yorker. For those who have not, I strongly urge you to look instead at what he has written, particularly Ghost Wars and more recently the pieces that have appeared in the New Yorker. You may find such information more valuable than knee-jerk reactions to his past employer.

For crissakes, the guy was the managing editor. Are you trying to tell us he had no role in content?

But hey, yeah, I'm a cynic. So I'll take your advice, and read up.

Steve, your boss's own published finding flies in the face of your present published report of progress for Saudi-Israeli talks about the two state solution:

"I find no evidence that the CIA had direct contact with bin Laden, but they were allies with Saudi intelligence during the 1980s. The formal alliance with Saudi intelligence was a check-writing operation in which the Congress would appropriate covert funds each year and then somebody would fly to Riyadh where Prince Turki al-Faisal would write matching-funds checks, which would go into the formal accounts of the CIA administered out of Washington, Switzerland, and elsewhere."