Frumentarius

Overseas travel is one of life’s great pleasures, and like everything else in life, there are smart ways to go about it, and not-so-smart ways.

What cannot be accepted, though, is when a trainee is clearly struggling, being dunked under water by instructors, and then that struggling trainee begins to turn cyanotic — purple and blue — due to lack of oxygen caused by drowning.

Intelligence officers should always assume that what they put in an intelligence report might see the light of day — no matter what classification handling procedures are applied.

Are we now, then, witnessing your teenage years, America? Is that why we find ourselves in this state of national angst? Is this your adolescent period, during which you “find yourself?”

The crews “did not brief or even plan their route from Kuwait to Bahrain,” and decided to take a shortcut en route — one that took them directly through Iranian waters, and near an IRGC base.

The operational tempo of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), like that of U.S. special operations forces (SOF), has been intense over the past fifteen years, and significant turnover of leaders and mid-level officers has probably contributed to a feeling of inadequate leadership at times.

It is one thing to delight in upsetting the international order. It is quite another to deal with the aftermath.

A bill making its way through the U.S. Congress is seeking to bestow Congressional Gold Medal status on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).  On June 13, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 69 creating […]

Telling this story gives me pause, because Jim Janos is now known as “Jesse Ventura,” former professional wrestler and former governor of Minnesota.

Nothing ruins your “benevolent leader” vibe like a free press hounding you constantly about freedom, human rights, abuses, corruption, and all the other issues you will need to suppress in order to show your people that you are good for them.

Norris refused to abandon the downed pilots, even after initial failure, and went behind enemy lines over and over again, using daring, subterfuge, and ingenuity to execute his mission.

That is where I think the Intercept article is flawed. While the article did address the discrepancy between Kyle’s DD214 and his personnel record, they did so in a cursory, shallow way.