And independent journalist and author William Blum died Sunday at the age of 85 at a hospice in Virginia. Early in his career, Blum worked with computers at the U.S. State Department but left after becoming disillusioned with the American war on Vietnam. He co-founded the underground paper, the Washington Free Press. Blum’s books “Killing Hope” and “Rogue State” were widely praised for their detailed history of recent U.S. foreign policy. Blum said of his work, “The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behavior of U.S. foreign policy. It is what the U.S. government does which angers people all over the world.”