Our Most Popular Stories Over Four Years

Happy Birthday to Us!

Where it all began: At North Road Farm, Fremont, NH, Aug. 31, 2000

Just for fun I’m going to call it  our Max Yasgur farm. In fact it was a friend’s New Hampshire farm where SpyTalk rocked into being four years ago this weekend.

It had started out as a vacation. In between visits to the cool waters of nearby Kittery, Maine and Hampton Beach, NH, I sat at the kitchen table of my longtime friends Rich Cooper and Jan Brubacher and stitched together the last edits of Inside Dupe, SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner’s terrific piece on Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who’d become a reliable purveyor of Russian disinformation.

With that, we were trumpting our upstart mission: “Intelligence for Thinking People,”  which is to say, independent reporting on the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy and military operations, produced by a team of veteran national security reporters who’d had decades of distinguished careers at the likes of The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, NPR, Reuters and The Associated Press, plus well regarded national security experts and CIA veterans like Frank Snepp and even the acclaimed espionage novelist James Grady.

Our audience was intended to be you, dear subscribers—people deeply interested in, and in many cases, deeply experienced in, the means and ways of overt and covert national security programs and politics. Our attitude: skeptical. We weren't going to be slaves to either knee jerk critics, adminstration sources or IC mouthpieces. As a result, you have rewarded us with year after year of steady growth and high renewal rates. We thank you from the bottom of our tin-man hearts.  

Now, I have to say, it’s paying subscribers who allow us to continue producing such high quality journalism. Our success keeps attracting more and more accomplished contributors, most recently, the distinguished investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, a veteran of Newsweek, The Washington Post, NBC News and Yahoo. Each such editorial addition, of course, raises the costs of producing the quality reporting and analysis you’ve come to expect. So do please keep those paying subs and re-ups coming. Please: We depend on them.

But now, without further ado, I thought you’d appreciate seeing the most popular stories we’ve produced since August 31, 2000. It’s quite a variety. [Drum roll…]

The Top Five

#1. Exclusive: FBI Agents Accuse CIA of 9/11 Coverup 

Previously unreported interviews filed in court claim CIA is hiding information relating to a failed 'recruitment' effort. By Seth Hettena. Mar 22, 2023

#2.  Putin Shooting to be Russia's Greatest Czar, Former Top Powell Aide Says

Former Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson also excoriates US arms makers for 'obscene profits' from Ukraine war.  March 18, 2022

#3. Kushner’s Deal with Pro-Russia Serbs Raises Hackles

The Belgrade development, joined by former Trump envoy Ric Grenell, includes a memorial to “victims of NATO aggression." By Michael Isikoff. June 4, 2024

#4. How the KGB Hooked Trump 

An excerpt from “American Kompromat,” by Craig Unger, on the longtime connections between Donald Trump and the Russians. Jan. 26, 2021

#5. Fire Kimberly Cheatle

President Biden should have quickly dumped the Secret Service chief, if only as a message to MAGA-world. By Jeff Stein. July 14, 2024.