Spy agencies from ‘Five eyes’ gather in New Zealand: PM, sources

New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English was flying to the mountainous resort city of Queenstown on Tuesday to meet intelligence officials from the “Five Eyes” network, which includes the U.S. FBI, CIA and National Security Agency. The meetings, designed to facilitate intelligence sharing between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are […]

US will seek the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

The United States government, through the Department of Justice, is seeking the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to a report from CNN. U.S. officials familiar with the matter say that Assange can no longer claim First Amendment protections. Prosecuting Assange has been a priority for the Department of Justice for many years, but under […]

CIA chief calls WikiLeaks a ‘hostile intelligence service’

In July, Pompeo, than a Republican member of the House of Representatives, mentioned it in a Twitter post referring to claims that the DNC had slanted the candidate-selection process to favor Clinton. “Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by Wikileaks.” WikiLeaks has […]

Ideology can kill a country’s intelligence apparatus

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”—Friedrich Nietzsche My entry into the world of intelligence-gathering began in 1996 when I joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  Before my retirement in 2014, most of my career was spent overseas as an operations officer in countries comprising the former Soviet Union. Serving abroad in the CIA […]

CIA Ground Branch Loadout

I recently came across the above picture which is reputed to be a CIA Ground Branch contractor’s kit that he takes out on operations.  On first glance, the picture is probably a few years old considering some of the kit, but it looks pretty legit. The desert tiger stripe uniform is one of the first giveaways […]

Werner Stiller, East German spy and defector, dies at 69

On a snowy night in January 1979, Werner Stiller stepped into his office in Berlin, pried open a safe and grabbed the transit papers that would allow him to travel safely from the city’s communist eastern half to freedom in the west. He had already sent his wife a goodbye letter stuffed with 10,000 German […]

CIA and Pentagon given expanded power in counter terrorism fight

Lost in the pandemonium of the last few weeks’ focus on the possible repeal of Obamacare, passage (or not) of a new health care bill, possible Trump campaign ties to the Russian government, and all the other shenanigans swirling about Washington, D.C. these days, was pretty clear evidence that the Trump administration has delegated quite […]

Did Kurdistan’s Counter-Terrorist Group assault the Tabqa Dam in Syria?

In 2015, SOFREP interviewed Polad Talabani, the commander of Kurdistan’s elite Counter-Terrorism Group or CTG.  At the time, he spoke about how he wanted his men to get back to conducting real Special Operations missions behind enemy lines, rather than engaging in conventional infantry operations alongside the Peshmerga as they had been in places like […]