CIA

According to a December 4, 2014 report in The Hill, a newspaper that covers the goings-on in the U.S. Congress (please, withhold your jokes about it being a one-page newsletter, or a bi-monthly, one-page pamphlet…)

I was pleasantly surprised, and yet simultaneously trepidatious, to read in the Washington Post on November 19th that CIA Director John Brennan was considering sweeping organizational changes to the agency he heads. Let me start by saying that I am not one of those who thinks that the CIA is broken, partisan, or incapable of […]

I am an unapologetic believer in our nation’s national security apparatus, and not just because I was a part of it as an officer in both the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency. I also witnessed, firsthand, the dedication of those in the intelligence- and security-agency trenches, and saw them put their considerable skills to […]

With dramatis personae that include the CIA, Delta Force, DEVGRU, the Intelligence Support Activity, Pakistani Commandos, the Taliban, and spies from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), this story has the makings of a future Brad Thor bestseller. The only difference is, this story happened over the course of an eight-month period for a very small […]

It’s Christmas morning, and I am wondering if it’s too early to break out the bourbon. We are at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan, about 12 kilometers from the border with Pakistan, in the heart of Pashtun country. It’s a quiet morning, no rockets have been fired at the base, and there are no reports […]

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi tells a story you have not heard, told by men you do not know, but they are not strangers. Any American who has been in combat has seen these men. In very good units, they are plentiful. This is a story about a few amazing […]

Phonies are everywhere these days and being a CIA fraud is the best of all because you can always claim that your background is Majestic-12 super-top-secret.  “You see, I was a NOC, so all my records are sealed.  That’s why I can’t provide a single shred of evidence to back up my claims.”  Being fake CIA […]

Before GROM were formed, Polish forces had to work hard to win over their new NATO and the Western allies. New, because until then they had been the arch enemy on the other side of the iron curtain. Here’s how the story began. In July 1990, half of the Iraqi army was deployed to the southern part […]

The CIA isn’t known for sharing its secrets with anyone, let alone the public.  As such, the contents of an old Office of Strategic Services field manual aren’t something to be missed. As SOFREP has covered previously, the days of the OSS were the glory days where espionage, sabotage, and war-fighting all converged under the […]

Your quick history on the Patriot Act -The “USA PATRIOT Act of 2001” is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The act, as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, significantly weakened restrictions on law enforcement agencies’ gathering of […]

Born in October of 1974, Darren LaBonte grew up in Southwest Connecticut, where he attended Brookfield High School and excelled in football and baseball. According to his father; Darren turned down a shot at professional baseball with the Cleveland Indians and instead opted for the Army after graduating from high school. He enlisted in 1992 […]

There’s a well-known expression that if you repeat a rumor often enough, it becomes a fact. Such is the case with the oft-repeated rumor that the CIA was responsible for the Trans-Siberian pipeline explosion in June, 1982 by sabotaging the SCADA system that ran the pipeline. The latest iteration of that rumor was in the […]