397 posts tagged with cia.
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"A Covert Arrangement: The CIA and Time Inc."
Simon Willmetts (Diplomatic History, 08/19/2024), "The CIA and Time Magazine: Journalistic Ethics and Newsroom Dissent": "This article provides evidence for the first time of a systematic policy of direct collusion between the Time Inc. media empire and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency" ca. 1945-1965, adding much to stories like Carl Bernstein's "The CIA and the Media," published in Rolling Stone in 1977. Related: Matthew Jones (History, 2015), "Journalism, intelligence and The New York Times: Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Harrison E. Salisbury and the CIA" [PDF].
Wheels within wheels
Like the Enigma, the HX-63 was an electromechanical cipher system known as a rotor machine. It was the only electromechanical rotor machine ever built by CAG, and it was much more advanced and secure than even the famous Enigmas. In fact, it was arguably the most secure rotor machine ever built. I longed to get my hands on one, but I doubted I ever would. from The Scandalous History of the Last Rotor Cipher Machine [IEEE]
James C. Scott (1936-2024)
James C. Scott, noted anthropologist and author dies after "having suffered from heart and kidney failures, Maung Hmek had decided to pull the plug on himself, declining dialysis and other medical interventions, but he was still following Myanmar affairs" (Remembering Maung Hmek aka Shwe Yoe aka James C. Scott) [more inside]
Spy Time
The recruitment cycle is slow and methodical, and the core step is the development of a Subject, which can last months or years. There are specific milestones a “developmental” must meet before moving to the next stage. At first, the acceptance of an expensive meal may be an indicator but over time, these financial benefits increase. A timepiece, whether luxury or affordable, is an ideal gift. It’s immediately recognizable, and it’s something that the agent can wear as a constant reminder of the friendship with the Case Officer and thus the greater relationship with the US Government. Further, the soon-to-be agent’s acceptance of an expensive gift from an American official is a strong indication that the individual is willing to move in the direction of a clandestine relationship. from Bribes & Operational Gifts - The Role Of Timepieces In Clandestine Operations [Watches of Espionage via The Morning News] [more inside]
The Cassandra of American intelligence
Intelligence analysis is a notoriously difficult craft. Practitioners have to make predictions and assessments with limited information, under huge time pressure, on issues where the stakes involve millions of lives and the fates of nations. If this small bureau tucked in the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters has figured out some tricks for doing it better, those insights may not just matter for intelligence, but for any job that requires making hard decisions under uncertainty. from The obscure federal intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right [Vox]
“All art is propaganda … on the other hand, not all propaganda is art”
Not All Propaganda Is Art is a nine episode series of the podcast Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. In it, Walker tells the story of the CIA’s cultural Cold War propaganda operations in the 1950s as reflected in the lives of three men, cultural theorist Dwight Macdonald, theater critic Kenneth Tynan, and novelist Richard Wright. The show notes are also full of interesting links and images. If you’re not sure you want spend nine hours in the paranoid fifties, Sarah Larson gives a very good overview in the New Yorker [archive].
Got WiFi? Will Spy
“anyone from a landlord to a laundromat – could be required to help the government spy.” (Guardian) The Guardian covers the Houses expansion of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Although presented as a re-authorization, “The Turner-Himes amendment – so named for its champions Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes – would permit federal law enforcement to also force “any other service provider” with access to communications equipment to hand over data.” [disclaimer: I am related to the author of this article.] [more inside]
Their Men in Havana
A yearlong investigation by The Insider, in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana Syndrome, may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by members of Russian GRU Unit 29155. Members of the Kremlin’s infamous military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on overseas U.S. government personnel and their family members, leading victims to question what Washington knows about the origins of Havana Syndrome, and what an appropriate Western response might entail.Unraveling Havana Syndrome: New evidence links the GRU's assassination Unit 29155 to mysterious attacks on Americans, at home and abroad [more inside]
It was the least remarkable Q&A I’ve ever been a part of.
Invisible Ink: At the CIA’s Creative Writing Group A mildly-interesting piece by Johannes Lichtman in the well-known CIA cutout, The Paris Review.
Because JFK's head didn't just do that
The Secrets of the JFK Assassination (single link New York Magazine's Intelligencer). A dogged journalist finds evidence relating to Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement with intelligence agencies has been hidden, and public disclosure purposefully stymied. But some question if he goes too far theorizing beyond the new facts.
"Be Aware of Your "Giveaways"
Trick-Or-Treat The CIA Way: Tips For A Halloween Spent Undercover. Come explore 'Spooky Stories for Halloween.' Or, or, 'Explore the aftermath of the CIA’s infamous “Halloween Massacre”. In recent news, 'CIA publicly acknowledges 1953 coup it backed in Iran was undemocratic as it revisits ‘Argo' rescue'
CW: links to CIA site.
Her career was being monitored, prodded and shaped by a group of spies
The worst literary agent? Bryan Denson begins the story by describing how journalist/literary agent Robert Eringer helped Earth Liberation Front spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh develop a book. Then things take a turn. (SLNYT) [more inside]
"No ideas but in things" is an idea not a thing
No the CIA Didn't Invent "Show Don't Tell". Or maybe they did? Perhaps the effects of CIA money on the Iowa Writer's Workshop are overblown, but this piece in Current Affairs makes a strong case how the CIA has influenced "literature" in America. (previously)
"I have been wanting to make this video for 4 years."
F.D Signifier [previously 1, 2] is back with another Black Media Breakdown video essay: You're Wrong About Black Panther (2018) [1:20:57 YouTube video, auto-transcript only] [more inside]
And yet... bots
Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies.
Many former FBI officials hold influential roles within Twitter. For instance, in 2020, Matthew W. left a 15-year career as an intelligence program manager at the FBI to take up the post of senior director of product trust at Twitter. [more inside]
The Surreal Case of a C.I.A. Hacker’s Revenge
A hot-headed coder is accused of exposing the agency’s hacking arsenal. Did he betray his country because he was pissed off at his colleagues? by Patrick Radden Keefe
Nestled west of Washington, D.C., amid the bland northern Virginia suburbs, are generic-looking office parks that hide secret government installations in plain sight. Employees in civilian dress get out of their cars, clutching their Starbucks, and disappear into the buildings. To the casual observer, they resemble anonymous corporate drones. In fact, they hold Top Secret clearances and work in defense and intelligence. One of these buildings, at an address that is itself a secret, houses the cyberintelligence division of the Central Intelligence Agency. The facility is surrounded by a high fence and monitored by guards armed with military-grade weapons. When employees enter the building, they must badge in and pass through a full-body turnstile. Inside, on the ninth floor, through another door that requires badge access, is a C.I.A. office with an ostentatiously bland name: the Operations Support Branch. It is the agency’s secret hacker unit, in which a cadre of élite engineers create cyberweapons. [more inside]
“Reports are sketchy at this point”
“The plan was to simulate a nuclear terrorist incident and explore how every agency would react and whether they would cooperate. To enhance the verisimilitude of the war games, the U.S. government went so far as to record a fake news broadcast about a nuclear bomb exploding in Indianapolis.“
USA vs USSR moon probe intrigue
Previously: how the USSR repurposed high resolution film salvaged from American spy balloons to use on their Lunik 3 moon probe. But then: One day in late 1959 or 1960 ... a crack team of four CIA agents worked through the night in stocking feet taking apart a kidnapped Soviet Lunik spacecraft without removing it from its crate. They photographed every part and documented every construction element, then perfectly reassembled the whole thing without leaving a trace. [more inside]
“Formally, this is it. The case is closed.”
It wasn't a yeti attack. A Yekaterinburg prosecutor held a press conference to announce his solution (previously) to the Dyatlov Pass mystery. It was not well received.(SLNewYorker) [more inside]
Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion
"He was a senior CIA official tasked with getting tough on Russia. Then, one night in Moscow, Marc Polymeropoulos's life changed forever. He says he was hit with a mysterious weapon, joining dozens of American diplomats and spies who believe they’ve been targeted with this secret device all over the world—and even at home, on U.S. soil. (GQ) Now, as a CIA investigation points the blame at Russia, the victims are left wondering why so little is being done by the Trump administration. (NYT)" [more inside]
Rooms Full of People
Is Palantir's Crystal Ball Just Smoke and Mirrors? Peter Thiel-backed surveillance giant Palantir Technologies (previously) is set to go public September 30. Long controversial for its secrecy and involvement with the more unsavory parts of the national security state (e.g., ICE, CIA, NSA), Palantir is under scrutiny for its financial woes -- it posted a $600 million loss in 2018 and in 2019 -- and for whether its product even works as advertised. Palantir portrays its software as like its namesake — a crystal ball you gaze into for answers... But the truth is that it still appears to take a lot of manual labor to make it work, and there’s nothing magical about that.
How to Subvert a Democracy in Six Steps
In 1954 in Guatemala, the CIA hired a cocky American actor and two radio DJs to launch a revolution and oust a president. Their playbook is being used against the U.S. right now. Intro: The Original Fake News Network (Narratively Deep Dive) [more inside]
Patrice Lumumba: May Africa breathe the air of freedom
‘We have long suffered and today we want to breathe the air of freedom. The Creator has given us this share of the earth that goes by the name of the African continent; it belongs to us and we are its only masters. It is our right to make this continent a continent of justice, law, and peace. All of Africa is irrevocably engaged in a merciless struggle against colonialism and imperialism. We wish to bid farewell to the rule of slavery and bastardization that has so severely wronged us. Any people that oppresses another people is neither civilized nor Christian. The West must free Africa as soon as possible.’‘Westerners must understand that friendship is not possible when the relationship between us is one of subjugation and subordination.’ [more inside]
Saudi Connection. A discussion of the 9/11 investigations
A NYTimes long read uncovering information about the terrorists that we never knew What did US intelligence know, and when did they know it? This article explores FBI discoveries and why we never got to hear about them. [more inside]
Q & A with Angelo Codevilla
The Codevilla Tapes: The historian of American statecraft and spycraft and conservative political philosopher Angelo Codevilla talks about the ruling elite, Jonathan Pollard, and the rise of the techno-surveillance state—and the consequent demise of the American EmpireAngelo Codevilla is interviewed by David Samuels for Tablet Magazine. Sections include: The Ruling Elite, The Rise of the Surveillance State, Are Assange and Snowden heroes or villains?, When Jeff Bezos Has Dinner With the CIA, Henry Kissinger Meets the Demon Emperor, The Progressive High Church Mass, The Cruxification of Jonathan Pollard, and Secrecy and the Rule of Law.
All this information used to be ephemeral
"So if it’s hidden, and it could be hidden, it’s hidden really damn well, even from people who are on the inside." Whistleblower and patriot Edward Snowden digitally stopped by Joe Rogan's podcast on October 23. The interview is over three hours long and Rogan almost entirely hands over the microphone to Snowden, who offers a very detailed account of events both prior to and after his 2013 disclosure of the wide-reaching global surveillance programs. [more inside]
Those Sorts Of People
“When the rude masses began arriving from Eastern Europe, the WASPs got paranoid that they were, to use the phrase chanted by the rioting Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, about to be “replaced.” They turned on their former class siblings, the German Jews, with whom they’d once shared the upper rungs of American society. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, many old-line WASPs embraced a toxic mix of social Darwinism and eugenics.” To Serve Is To Rule: On WASPs and the longing for a more polite ruling class. (Harper’s)
Brett Kavanaugh, in Florida, with the Hand Recount
“Post 9/11 thread for people to post the wildest shit they remember from 01 to 06 I'll start:
People thought Osama had an entire mountain hollowed out that he was using as his base and that's why AQ was hard to find and that somehow a group of like 30 dudes arranged this.” (Twitter) Thread of reminders of the various scandals, current connections, and WTFery of the first G. W. Bush administration.
Once CIA-backed Chinese rebels, now you’re invited to their hideaway
Former CIA-backed guerrillas — rivals of Chairman Mao Zedong — are now embracing the tourism industry, years after setting up the arteries and networks that sustain the Golden Triangle drug trade to this day.
spi vs spi
Like any true polar adventurer, Bruno saw penguins as a kind of leitmotif
"Zehnder has been walking across the hard-packed snow for about 40 minutes, each step a small negotiation requiring delicacy, concentration, and luck—one can never tell when a hidden crevasse will snap your ankle or swallow you altogether....Forty-two hours later, when the Russians found him frozen to death nowhere near the penguins, the legend of Bruno was born. Never famous while he was alive, in death he became the latest in a long line of outsize polar adventurers whose obsession with the ends of the earth cost them their lives." The author investigates Zehnder’s secretive, playboy life in New York City; rumors of C.I.A. or K.G.B. ties; and the questions surrounding his icy grave.
The Drug Trafficker Resocialization Program
“It became such a mess that the government as a whole just said f---ing bury this,” says Paul Craine, who was a DEA agent in Bogotá in the late ’90s. “If we try to unravel this, we’re going to have to prosecute FBI agents, DEA agents, prosecutors. It was so crazy, where do you even start?” ... “Without being presumptuous, I think I am one of the top money launderers who ever worked for the government,” Vega says. “But I have something that is called integrity.”
I never went to grad school
I could share that recipe with you..but then I would have to kill you.
Sure everyone has heard of or has a "secret family recipe" or two but how about one so secret it was classified by the CIA for over 50 years? Presenting: The Soviet Army’s 1948 borscht recipe with tips for service and presentation.
Likely still up to their old tricks
Among the fireworks this week were continuing revelations in the the ongoing trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka “El Chapo.” What has been left unsaid indeed. Friday, the NYT reported:
While American authorities have acknowledged that Mr. Zambada met with federal agents, they have long denied there was any quid pro quo agreement. In a recent ruling, Judge Brian M. Cogan, who is hearing Mr. Guzmán’s case, said that Mr. Zambada’s claims regarding his cooperation with the Americans cannot be mentioned at the trial.[more inside]
The Thing
high tech, low practice
The CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran. How did Iran find CIA spies? They Googled it:
According to one former official, the Iranian double agent showed Iranian intelligence the website that the CIA was using for their communications. By using Boolean search operators like “AND” and “OR”, stringing together characteristics of the communications and websites, Iranian intelligence was reportedly able to locate multiple other websites that the CIA was using for its communications. From there, Iran could track who was visiting the sites and from where — eventually exposing a large swath of the CIA’s network in Iran.[more inside]
Making Spies Disappear
For years, Jonna Mendez was undercover as a part of the CIA's Office of Technical Service. She later became the Chief of Disguise for the CIA. Here's a YouTube video of her talking about how spies use disguise. [more inside]
An Ex CIA Analyst: How to process current modern life
Otis is a Former CIA military analyst and wrote a short twitter thread on how to process current modern life when you find it overwhelming. As well as being a former CIA Analyst, Otis has also worked as a White House Intelligence briefer and is currently a Travel and YA Writer. [more inside]
The Black Knight Rises
From the streets of Fallujah to Savannah
We have to stop treating people like we’re in Fallujah. In time, he came to believe that the most meaningful application of his training and expertise—the only way to exemplify his beliefs about American security, at home and abroad—was to become a community police officer in Savannah, where he grew up.
The Not Quite Secret History
“I don’t think Americans have trouble simultaneously believing that stories of the CIA assassinating people are mostly “crazy,” and that they absolutely happened. What emerges from the contradiction is naïveté coated in a candy shell of cynicism, in the form of a trivia game called “Did you know the CIA _____?” Did you know the CIA killed Mossadegh? Did you know they killed Lumumba? Did you know the CIA killed Marilyn Monroe and Salvador Allende? Did you know they made a fake porn movie with a Sukarno lookalike, and they had to take out Noriega because he still had his CIA paystubs in a box in his closet? There’s a whole variant just about Fidel Castro. Some of these stories are urban legends, most are fundamentally true, and yet as individual tidbits they lack a total context. If cold war is the name for the third world war that didn’t happen, what’s the name for what did?” Did you know the CIA _____? (N+1)
The women who lived with the CIA
Margaret Scattergood and Florence Thorne were living in Langley, Virginia when the CIA moved in. The women reached an agreement with the federal government, wherein they sold their house to the Agency to be part of its compound, but could live in it for the rest of their lives. However, Margaret was a Quaker and "considered the organization’s mission to be in violation of her pacifist beliefs. She used her trust fund to financially contribute to antiwar causes. She lobbied Congress to cut the US Intelligence and military budgets. In the 1980s Margaret opened her home to Sandinistas from Nicaragua, while CIA supported the opposition.... More than once, Sandinistas arrived at the CIA’s main entrance in search of the Calvert Estate." [more inside]
He's either as smart as the devil himself or the luckiest bastard alive.
In 1985, KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko defected to America. He told agents he had terminal stomach cancer and had decided to make the world right in the time he had left. Yurchenko told KGB secrets to the CIA and NSA, including important details about 55 to 60 KGB assets in America and two Soviet moles (Edward Lee Howard and Ronald Pelton) inside US intelligence. But three months in, he learned he didn't have terminal stomach cancer -- just a minor bowel disorder. So Vitaly Yurchenko changed his mind and escaped back to the Soviet Embassy. He told the media that the CIA had drugged and kidnapped him. “The agency had either been completely taken in by a brilliant Soviet intelligence officer, or allowed one of its top Soviet defectors to slip out of its hands.” (Via) [more inside]
Buckley, Kerouac, Sanders and Yablonsky discuss Hippies
“...that Marvel appears to be determined to drag its heels...”
New Trailer Proves Red Sparrow Is the Best Black Widow Movie We're Probably Ever Going to Get [YouTube] “It isn’t exactly fair to hold up every single movie about a female assassin to Marvel Studios and ask when the hell we’re finally going to see a Black Widow solo movie, but the similarities between Natasha Romanov and Red Sparrow’s titular ballerina-turned-super-spy are too striking to ignore. [...] On its face, Red Sparrow seems like a rather straightforward kind of spy film, but the Black Widow comparisons really do come to mind when you realize that much of the movie follows Dominika’s earliest days during her Sparrow training that takes place in a Red Room-like facility.” [via: io9]
Victorio Peak: New Mexico's El Dorado, C.I.A. cover up, or fatal scam?
Lost treasure stories are a dime a dozen in the Southwest. But when the Army; Air Force; the White House; Congressmen; New Mexico's Governor and F. Lee Bailey and dozens of other lawyers get into a single treasure saga, only confusion and rumors remain cheap (New York Times, 1973). It is one of the most celebrated legends of buried treasure in the history of the American West, a thriller that includes a gunfight, nuclear weapons and the Watergate hearings (N.Y. Times, 1992) These are two period-specific introductions to the ongoing saga of the treasure of the hollow mountain (Atlantis Rising Magazine, 2009), a cache of gold and loot that was re-discovered in 1937 by "Doc" Noss, in what is now part of the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. [more inside]
Good Reader, Bad Reader
Why do bad readers matter? It is because they lead us to the kinds of citizens—the internationalized subjects—that practices of bad reading aspired to produce; and show how these literate subjects used reading to navigate a political climate that championed liberal individualism, on the one hand, while establishing unprecedented forms of institutional oversight, on the other. These subjects’ diverse and often overlapping genres of reading— properly “literary” novels but also “how to” manuals, advertisements, magazines, newspapers, simple novels, and bureaucratic documents—formed a rich textual ecology whose national and geographic limits literary scholars and cultural historians are only just beginning to map. Good Reader, Bad Reader, an essay by Merve Emre in Boston Review [Via Literary Hub]
His villagers must be wondering where he is
As the CIA releases (link news) more of the content of the hard drives in Osama Bin Laden's compound, the Internet wades through the movies (Antz, Cars, Chicken Little, and Resident Evil), propaganda, anime, and games including not surprisingly Counter-Strike, but perhaps more surprisingly ... Animal Crossing: Wild World. We can sadly only speculate on life in his town as Mayor, and his encounters with Tom Nook.
(Post title)
Jan 5, 1967 was not a good day for things flying in the skies of Nevada
Tom Mahood - known for his investigation into what happened to the Death Valley Germans - searches for a lost spy plane.