Afghan intelligence operators capture the leader of ISIS in Afghanistan

The Afghan government announced that its security forces arrested the leader of the Islamic State in Afghanistan in an operation. Abdullah Orakzai, also known as Aslam Farooqi, was captured by operators from Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghani intelligence service and a rough equivalent of the CIA but with greater emphasis on domestic duties. […]

Operation Just Cause: A feast of Special Operations

In the early hours of December 20, 1989, 28 years ago, the United States began operations against Manuel Noriega and the Panamanian Defense Forces in Operation Just Cause. During the opening hours of the US operation, several US Special Operations units conducted operations to rescue American Kurt Muse from the notorious Modelo Prison, stop Noriega […]

Robert Levinson: Former FBI agent and CIA asset dies in captivity in Iran

Robert Levinson, a former FBI special agent and undercover CIA asset, has died while in captivity in Iran, according to a statement by his family. Levinson’s story is complicated, to say the least. The former FBI special agent retired from the Bureau in 1998. He then proceeded to work as a private investigator. In 2007, […]

US labels Venezuela’s Maduro a Narcoterrorist, offers $15 million reward

The U.S. Justice Department may have just breathed some life into the near-dead opposition movement in Venezuela. On Thursday, Justice leveled narco-terrorism and other criminal charges against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and senior leaders of his government.  Relations between the U.S. and Venezuela have been poor since Hugo Chavez, a self-described Marxist, became president in […]

A letter from the Editor-in-Chief

SOFREP Community, It has been a while since I’ve written a letter to the community-at-large, but with the world around us being so highly impacted socially, economically, and physically, I wanted to share some updates about what we’re doing to support in the small ways we can at SOFREP. Our company is distributed around the […]

Bulletproof Motivation: Tips from a Navy SEAL, CIA Officer, and Firefighter

Editor’s note. This article was written by our dear friend Alex Hollings for and published at Sandboxx. SOFREP old-timers will find another familiar face in the piece. When it comes to motivation, Navy SEALs have plenty to spare, but we know one guy that could even make some SEALs look lazy. Earning your place among […]

UK honors World War II Special Operations operative

During World War II, many of the best operatives of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), were women. They worked undercover, putting their lives at risk in occupied France, and running agent networks, conducting sabotage, and training the French Maquis.  Many lost their lives or went sent […]

Two Americans, one British soldier killed in Iraq by rocket attack

The American military has confirmed, in a released statement, that a rocket attack on an Iraqi base, where U.S. and coalition troops are based, has killed an American and a British soldier and an American contractor. The three men were killed on Camp Taji base as 18 Katyusha rockets slammed into the base on Wednesday […]

American airstrikes on al-Shabaab in Somalia kill 4 terrorists

American drones hit al-Shabab members for the fourth time in just over a week as the latest airstrike took out four suspected terrorists in the Somali town of  Gandarshe, on Saturday. And on Monday an airstrike in the Somali town of Qunyo Barrow killed an al-Shabab member on Thursday and another terrorist and wounded two […]

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 […]