It started innocuously enough. The prime minister-for-life never missed the annual “Liberation Day” parade. With the drums and platoons thundering, nobody noticed as the quadcopter, barely larger than a sparrow, floated down toward the dais, its faint whirr drowned out by the industrial machinery rolling by in formation. It was at once a child’s birthday…
Category: Intelligence Tradecraft
Espionage Files: Operation CONDOR and Chile’s Bloody Past
If you have never read about the bloody past of Chile in the 70’s and the bloody reigns of Allende and Pinochet (whom the CIA helped install in a coup), you should definitely do some reading, if your google-fu is strong, you should have no trouble finding quality reading; You can start with this 2013…
Espionage Files: Documentary on CIA to Air on CBS Tommorrow at 8pm CST
“THE SPYMASTERS” REMASTERED: If you missed Showtime’s “The Spymasters: The CIA in the Crosshairs” when it aired last fall – you get another shot on Saturday May 21nd at 8PM CST. on CBS. The original documentary included interviews with every living CIA Director. It is unclear if they all will be in this version – since…
Surveillance State: Inside The NSA’s Real-Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG)
It is a very common trend to see “Counter-Terrorism” programs and technology that were once used to save American Military and Civilian lives in war get re-directed to spy on American citizens in Peace time. This is something to keep in mind with this program. -SF Relentless attacks on American military personnel at the height…
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
Spy Books Worth A Damn: “Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran”
MISSING MAN: THE AMERICAN SPY WHO VANISHED IN IRAN By Barry Meier Farrar Straus Giroux, $27.00, 273 pp. The American public — especially the media — tends to demand, “Who’s to blame?” when a person vanishes in a foreign land with no explanation as to why, or whether, he is being held. Such is the…
Espionage Files: Did The Pakistani ISI Poison the CIA Station Chief in 2011?
A leading article in The Washington Post suggests that the United States Central Intelligence Agency suspected that its most senior officer in Pakistan was poisoned by the host country’s intelligence services, in an attempt to kill him. The CIA pulled its station chief from Islamabad in the summer of 2011, two months after Operation…
Espionage Files: Russian Spies Put Full-Court Press on Sweden
The Swedish state security police, or SAPO, is getting pretty worried about a dramatic uptick in Russian espionage activity in Sweden, according to leaks in the Swedish press. And SAPO is hinting that it’s related to the fact that Sweden is gearing up for a May 25 parliamentary debate about ratifying a “Host Nation Support…
Espionage Files: The Long, Strange Trip of MK-ULTRA
The story below offers a rare close-up view of a man who is so creepy it’s fascinating. He actually performed some of the dirty, unthinkable deeds you read about in the various exposés on the CIA. According to the author, the man “looks like Danny DeVito playing the Penguin, and talks like Edward G….
Military Defense News: Another Naval Traitor Crawls Out of the Woodwork
First it was Lt. Commander Edward Lin now this guy…it appears the US Navy has too many leaky ships. I have found traitors are just like drug smugglers, for every one you catch there are most likely five or more still operating. -SF U.S. Navy Captain Select Sentenced to Over Six Years in Prison for…