In July 2012, one year after the Arab Spring shook Arab regimes around the world, an email appeared in the inbox of Mamfakinch, a Moroccan online publication critical of the government. Under the subject line “dénonciation” — French for “denunciation” — was a single sentence. “Please don’t use my name or anything else, I don’t want any trouble.” And…
Category: Military Intelligence History
Modern War: Drone Choppers Help Hunt Top-Tier Terrorist in Africa
On Jan. 14, 2014, USS Elrod left her home port in Norfolk, Virginia for what, to outsiders, might have seemed like a routine six-month trip to the Mediterranean. Carrying a detachment of four MQ-8B Fire Scout drone helicopters, the nearly 30-year-old frigate would visit various ports and train with America’s allies, according to an official…
Surveillance State: The U.S. Governments New Spy Sattelite
The second week of June 2016, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched NROL-37, carrying its latest spy satellite into geosynchronous orbit via a Delta IV-Heavy rocket. But it only took amateur space enthusiasts a few days to locate the mysterious new craft in the skies near Malaysia, over the Strait of Malacca. While the contents and…
Espionage Files: Why Tradecraft Will Not Save Intelligence Analysis
The other day I watched a 2 hours special that 48 Hours did back in May titled “The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs” combined with another HBO documentary from 2013 about the CIA and Terrorism called “Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden“. These two documentaries show the in-depth process of how raw intelligence from the field…
Cold War Files: 10 Sinister Groups Behind the Cold War’s Craziest Conspiracy
In 1972, a fascist named Vincenzo Vinciguerra detonated a car bomb in the Italian town of Peteano. As Vinciguerra had planned, the attack was initially blamed on left-wing extremists. Years later, Vinciguerra explained his motives: “Our movement is pledged to target . . . ordinary people, to create conditions of anarchy. The resulting state of fear will mobilize public…
Military History: Six of the Most “Super Secret Ninja” Units in Military History
Secrecy is one of the best currencies in war, so it’s sometimes best for commanders to keep their best assets hidden from the enemy and the public. While the military has admitted that most of the units on this list existed at some point, a lot of their missions were classified for decades before being…
History of Terrorism: How British Intelligence Infiltrated the IRA
This is an article from The Atlantic in 2006 but I thought it a great read on the History of the IRA from the British perspective.-SF I first met the man now called Kevin Fulton in London, on Platform 13 at Victoria Station. We almost missed each other in the crowd; he didn’t look at…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Soviet 6P9 (PB) Pistol
Developed for Spetsnaz and the KGB Wet Teams, the PB was a Suppressed Pistol with some Serious Design Compromises Developed for Spetsnaz units and the KGB in the mid-1960s, the Soviet PB — also known as the 6P9 — took the proven Makarov PM design and incorporated a two-stage, integral suppressor. During World War II, the Soviet NKVD had…
Military Intelligence History: The Battle of Midway, The Complete Intelligence Story
The Battle of Midway in June of 1942 was one of the most important naval battles in world history and a turning point in the Second World War. Between June 4 and 7, aircraft from aircraft carriers Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet of the U.S. Navy’s Task Forces 16 and 17 ambushed and sank the Imperial…
Know Your Weapons: The CIA Probably Still Uses Some of the High Standard Spy Pistols It Bought During World War II
A suppressed .22-caliber “Wetwork” weapon that never needed replacing When the United States entered World War II, the Pentagon quickly bought up all the stocks it could find of .22LR target pistols — a .22-caliber handgun that fires a rifle-style cartridge—for training purposes. But the British Special Operations Executive was already using suppressed versions of similar weapons in combat….