Central Intelligence Agency

Op-Ed: Why I don’t support Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe

Here’s the bottom line: I staunchly oppose the appointment and confirmation of Mr. John Ratcliffe — a man with insufficient national security experience — as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the leader responsible for coordinating the efforts of the intelligence community and personally shaping the President’s understanding and consumption of intelligence information. As you […]

The plot thickens as two ex-Special Forces operators are caught in Venezuela coup

“They were playing Rambo,” Maduro said. “They were playing hero.” Venezuelan security forces arrested at least eight people, including two Americans, after a failed coup aimed at capturing socialist President Nicolas Maduro. This failed coup was allegedly approved by the U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, an allegation that he has denied. Jordan Goudreau, an ex-Green […]

The Coup of the Century: How the CIA eavesdropped on the world for decades

For decades, the Central Intelligence Agency, along with its West German counterpart the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), secretly controlled the Swiss-based company Crypto AG, which enabled them to engage in decades of communication interception. Crypto AG, which went defunct in 2018, sold encryption devices to governments across the world. However, this CIA-owned company managed to […]

Cold War comedy: Read the CIA’s classified list of official jokes about the Soviet Union

The CIA webpage is an oft under-appreciated gem in the U.S. government’s suite of dry, formal websites.  There’s no formal decree that mandates government sites have to be boring, but something about the need to exude inoffensive professionalism throughout every corner of these sprawling domains has sanitized everything .GOV into the digital version of the […]

Senate Confirms Haspel as CIA’s First Woman Director

In the end, the vote to confirm Gina Haspel as the next Director of CIA stayed pretty much divided along party lines with Republicans favoring her nomination and Democrats voting against it. It times it seemed that her nomination was going to fail due to numerous questions over her running an “enhanced interrogation” site in […]

Suspect for CIA Hacking Tools Dump in Jail on Child Pornography

The suspect in the CIA’s hacking tools release onto WikiLeaks is a former agency computer programmer, a black eye for the organization as it details all of the cyber weapons arsenals according to court documents that have been released. Joshua Adam Schulte, the former agency programmer has not been charged with stealing or passing along […]

JP’s Adventures in Spyland: First dates and spilled drinks

It was cold. What is it that they say? “Bone chilling?” Yeah, that was about right. And it was windy as all hell, too. It was as if God had looked down and said “Ya know what, Gabriel? (one of his main angels) I haven’t messed with J for a minute…watch this…” I mean, I […]

OSS weapons ingenuity: The secret gear of America’s WWII spies

General Donovan motivated the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) research and development branch to fabricate weapons in-house for officers in the field. These weapons ranged from the amazingly complex to the remarkably fundamental. OSS guns and blades were intended for simple but effective use. American servicemen going into harm’s way had a variety of ingenious places to hide small, even miniature, compasses for […]

Tracing ISIS’ supply chain— back to the US

“Habibi! Aluminium!” The call echoes through the courtyard of a trash-strewn home in Tal Afar, a remote outpost in northern Iraq. It is late September and still hot, the kind of heat that seems to come from all sides, even radiate up from the ground, and the city is empty except for feral dogs and […]

JP’s Adventures in Spyland: Sightseeing and a bit of shopping

Check out Part 1, “Room Service” here. Once I had “paper walked” — mapped — my tentative routes and filled my belly, I figured that it was time to hit the streets and do some spy sh-. OK full disclosure – “spy sh-” meant, at that point, nothing more than looking like the bumbling, lost […]