Coups, assassinations, clandestine radio stations, economic warfare, insurgency, and counterinsurgency are all the stuff of covert action....

I normally try to avoid much of the political warfare going on in the US nowadays in this blog, but the recent FBI seizure of classified...

I was watching a portion of a podcast on TikTok, hence the watching rather than listening, where the concept of enhanced interrogation,...

I periodically get asked which is the best intelligence agency in the world. There are a number of articles that try to answer that...

Bridge of Spies Recently, I sat had dinner with an author specializing in intelligence matters. Over the course of the evening, we had...

Much has been written in the media about the CIA being risk-averse. Even some former CIA officers have commented on how the CIA avoids...

Stan Smith - Drawn Feet Wiki (miraheze.org) (This is a true story with the names changed to protect the guilty and locations obscured.)...

I get this question a lot, mostly from people interested in joining the CIA, or from people who were not selected and are wondering why....

Years ago when I worked at the CIA, I was part of a few panels and groups working to tackle a variety of personnel issues at the Agency....

The CIA does two principal things, collect and analyze intelligence. Within the CIA, the Directorate of Operations (DO) collects human...

Agent of Influence: An agent of some stature who uses his or her position to influence public opinion or decision-making to produce...

Julian Assange A recent Yahoo News article (http://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-pitched-trump-officials-plans-130727657.html) reported that the...

(Note: This one is near and dear to my heart. It is because of the Bay of Pigs covert action program that I am here in the U.S. and that...

(Note: This is not a detailed history of the 1954 Guatemala Coup. That would require too much space for a blog post. In addition, there...

It shall be the duty of the Agency to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as...

Liaison: communication or cooperation which facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations. Most intelligence...

Now that TRIGON had agreed to what the CIA calls "work inside," serious preparations had to be made before he departed for home, Moscow....

I have been wanting to write on this topic for a while and have had a few false starts. The problem is there really isn’t a typical day...

Several years ago I was sitting with a group of friends. We had all worked together at the Agency, I had even worked for some of them....

This seems like an obvious thing but most people without experience in the national security field, and even some with that experience,...