Anybody who has done any amount of serious reading about 9/11 knows that Pakistan is an ally of the U.S. in name only; they have been supplying the Taliban with intel and arms for decades and indeed did support Bin Laden and his ilk during the early parts of the War in Afghanistan in 2003…
Category: Espionage Files
Espionage Files: South Korea Announces Defection of North Korean Intelligence Official
A North Korean intelligence official who sought refuge in South Korea last year is the most high profile defector to the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953, according to authorities in Seoul. An announcement issued by the South Korean government last week said the defector is a colonel in the Korean…
Espionage Files: Why Computers May Never Replace Human Spies
If legendary British spy-turned-KGB mole Kim Philby was alive to offer arrested U.S. Navy officer Edward Lin advice — regardless of his guilt or innocence — we know what it would be. Despite repeatedly coming under suspicion, Philby fed British and American secrets to Moscow for three decades before ultimately defecting in 1963. His…
Espionage Files: Ex-Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and The Limits of Power
On March 17, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan passed away at the age of 71. An examination of Dagan’s career illuminates how creative thinking and bold approaches can enable intelligence organizations to adjust to changing environments, while at the same time demonstrating that the use of power has its own limitations. It also sheds light…
Espionage Files: Pakistani Intelligence Possibly Financed 2009 CIA Outpost Bombing
Pakistan’s powerful spy agency may have provided the funding for a deadly 2009 suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan that ranks as one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, according to a newly declassified State Department cable. The heavily redacted cable, sent about two weeks after the attack on Dec. 30,…
Espionage Files: Suspect Arrested for Attempted Assassination of Chief Forensic Expert in Malaysia Airlines MH17 Probe
For those of you that have been keeping up with story since it first happened in 2014, if you are like me, you might have to start taking notes or making a timeline chart…it just keeps getting stranger and sounding more and more like the plot out of a Robert Ludlum novel rather than an…
Espionage Files: Naval Espionage in an A2AD Age
U.S. Navy Lt. Edward Lin, a native of Taiwan, speaks about his path to US citizenship at a naturalization ceremony in Honolulu, Hawaii, in this US Navy handout photo taken December 3, 2008. Lin, a US Navy officer with access to sensitive US intelligence, faces espionage charges over accusations he passed state secrets, possibly…
Espionage Files: CIA Agent to Be Extradited to Italy to Face Charges of Kidnapping
First rule of being a Spy: Don’t Get Caught. If you are interested in reading more about this case, and the CIA Practice of Rendition that occurred Post 9/11, check out A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. -SF The Portuguese Supreme Court has upheld a decision to extradite to Italy a former C.I.A….
Espionage Files: CIA Funds Cosmetics That Can Collect DNA
SKINCENTIAL SCIENCES, a company with an innovative line of cosmetic products marketed as a way to erase blemishes and soften skin, has caught the attention of beauty bloggers on YouTube, Oprah’s lifestyle magazine, and celebrity skin care professionals. Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the firm has also attracted interest and funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of…
In Memoriam: A Spy For All Seasons, Duane Clarridge, Dies at 83
Duane R. Clarridge, a pugnacious American spy who helped found the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, was indicted and later pardoned for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, and resumed his intelligence career in his late 70s as the head of a private espionage operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Saturday in Leesburg, Va. He was 83….