He is credited with the coining of the phrase "secret war". He rescued massacre victims in Cambodia, which led to his work being banned from "The Washington Post". Later, as a contributing editor of "Harper's", he aroused further controversy when he predicted that the U.S. defeat in Indochina had opened the door to a new epoch of Pacific Rim success for American values and economic systems. He also rebutted claims that the Earth was running out of oil and predicted that U.S. cities, far from being doomed, were on the verge of a "Yuppie renaissance". His reports from Iraq and on the Colombian drug wars received wide attention, as have his profiles of figures such as Dick Cheney.