It was a banner year for bad spies. The ideal covert operation, a CIA man once said, remains secret “from conception to eternity.” So too with the ideal spy. The true artists of espionage are those who are never detected or are detected too late to be harmed, humiliated, prosecuted or persecuted. The most famous...
Category: Activities
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CIA Ran Two Different Torture Programs, Psychologist Says
A recently declassified CIA study reveals that the agency had two different programs for the brutal interrogation of suspected terrorists, according to a retired psychologist and author of a book about Guantanamo. Writing in Medium, Jeffrey Kaye says that the two programs were run by different components within the CIA that had different approaches to interrogation....
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RIP William Blum: CIA Critic and Independent Journalist
When I first started reporting on the CIA in the 1980s, I learned early on Bill Blum was a good source for stories. He wrote for Covert Action Information Bulletin (later Covert Action), a notorious publication in Reagan’s Washington. The CAIB that had the feel of samizdat, the underground publications of dissidents in the Soviet Union....
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Time to Lay to Rest Those JFK Conspiracy Theories About George Bush
As editor of the JFK Facts blog, I often heard the theory that the late President Bush was somehow complicit in JFK’s death. In the comments section of site, it was a hardy perennial. Exactly how Bush was involved was rarely explained. To me it seemed that JFK conspiracy theories about Bush persisted mainly as a way...
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Troubled Trump Threatens More FISA Disclosures
Amid damaging revelations from the guilty plea of his former personal lawyer, President Trump responded with a threat to reveal information about the special prosecutor’s investigation. Such bluster is a familiar Trump tactic. The right-wing The Daily Caller picked up on Trump’s intentions a couple of weeks ago. “Declassification, we’re looking at very seriously,” Trump told reporters...