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Some of Our Favorite Things

SpyTalk stories we especially liked over the past year

Jeff Stein

Dec 29, 2021

Mossad’s New Boss is a Gadget-Loving Killing Machine

David Barnea is going to walk softly and carry a big stick—or so he’s been saying to Mossad’s workforce and alumni.

Jonathan Broder Oct. 20

SpyTalk

Mossad’s New Boss is a Gadget-Loving Killing Machine

David Barnea is going to walk softly and carry a big stick—or so he’s been saying to Mossad’s workforce and alumni. The new head of Israel’s storied foreign intelligence agency recently sent a stern directive to its former senior intelligence officials: Keep your mouths shut until I say you can open them…

2 years ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Jonathan Broder

China’s Top Spy is a Working Class Hero

Chen Wenqing has risen from street cop to boss of China's powerful Ministry of State Security. Loyalty paid off.

Matthew Brazil Jan. 4

SpyTalk

China’s Top Spy is a Working Class Hero

Chen, Wenqing Chen—never a 007, no martinis shaken or stirred, no tuxedo or Aston Martin. He’s just a working-class guy—and the star of China’s civilian spy apparatus, the MSS. Tall and athletic-looking—according to official photos that only show him from the waist up—with a square-jaw and the black dyed hair common among Chinese leaders, Chen has the looks of a hero in a Chinese spy flick. Instead, he’s risen from local cop through the counterintelligence ranks to the top of China’s feared Ministry of State Security…

3 years ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · Matthew Brazil

Frenemies: How the CIA and Polish Spies Went from Bitter Rivals to Post-Cold War Comrades

From Warsaw With Love is a basket of entertaining spy stories with hard lessons for wannabe US allies

Elaine Monaghan Oct. 25.

SpyTalk

Frenemies: How the CIA and Polish Spies Went from Bitter Rivals to Post-Cold War Comrades

Fans of fast-paced international spy stories will enjoy author and journalist John Pomfret’s well-crafted book, From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance, out this week from Henry Holt and Co. Conceived in the early 1990s, during Pomfret’s two decades at…

2 years ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Elaine Monaghan

Former CIA Director: We Were Surprised by Arab Spring

Leon Panetta says CIA was caught flat-footed and didn’t ‘really understand what was going on’

Jeff Stein May 20

SpyTalk

Former CIA Director: We Were Surprised by Arab Spring

Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the spy agency was caught flat-footed when the popular revolts and armed insurrections known as the Arab Spring swept across North Africa and the Middle East in the early 2010s. “Obviously, we made a couple of mistakes that I have always stuck in my mind,” Panetta said in a wide ranging interview on the…

2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Jeff Stein

Unintended Consequences: Inside Story of an Unsung Counterterrorism Strike

The U.S. hit on ISIS in Libya saved Tunisia but led to an odd standoff with Serbia.

John Dinges and Jonathan Broder Feb. 25

SpyTalk

Unintended Consequences: Inside Story of an Unsung Counterterrorism Strike

Just before dawn on Feb.19, 2016, U.S. Air Force F-15 Strike Eagle fighter jets dropped a payload of precision-guided bombs on a terrorist training camp in western Libya. The target: a senior Islamic State operative named Noureddine Chouchane. Some 1,300 miles away, Vice Admiral Michael T. Franken, deputy director of military operations at the U.S. Africa Command Headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, watched the airstrike unfold on several large closed-circuit TV screens that streamed live video of the targeted buildings from remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper drones circling overhead…

3 years ago · 7 likes · John Dinges and Jonathan Broder

Flynn Secretly Paid $200,000 in Middle East Nuclear Scheme—Report

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad dug up internal audit documents revealing more unreported payments in wild scheme for Arab power plants

Jeff Stein Oct. 3

SpyTalk

Flynn Secretly Paid $200,000 in Middle East Nuclear Scheme—Report

Disgraced former Donald Trump National Security Adviser and Army general Michael Flynn was paid a previously unreported $200,000 for work on a controversial plan to bring nuclear power to the Middle East involving Russian and other foreign business interests, according to a report this weekend by the respected Dutch newspaper…

2 years ago · 7 likes · Jeff Stein

New Spy Thriller Has a Novel Twist on Syria Ops

Damascus Station, by ex-CIA man David McCloskey, is an impressive debut

Peter Eisner, Oct. 1

SpyTalk

New Spy Thriller Has a Novel Twist on Syria Ops

Damascus Station, David McCloskey’s riveting debut spy thriller, is a swift dive into the lethal, nebulous world of CIA operations in the Middle East. And while its focus on sources and methods feels authentic and close to the moment, the story shines by delving into the inner workings and motivations of Syrian society…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Peter Eisner

The 'American Taliban' and Me

A former CIA analyst digests a new film on the saga of John Walker Lindh

Gail Helt Sept. 8

SpyTalk

The 'American Taliban' and Me

Detainee 001 is the latest in several toture-related films released in recent years, following 2021’s The Mauritanian and 2019’s The Report, both of which took a hard look at CIA interrogation and detention programs. This latest entry, skillfully directed by veteran documentarian…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Gail Helt

Taliban Include Heroin Kingpins in Leadership

Obama and Trump scuttled a DEA-DoJ prosecution plan to spur peace talks with Taliban. Will Biden resurrect it?

Gretchen Peters and John Seaman Sept 28

SpyTalk

Taliban Include Heroin Kingpins in Leadership

Nine years ago, a small team of Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Justice Department advisers formulated an ambitious strategy to use U.S. courts to prosecute 26 senior Taliban leaders and allied heroin traffickers under a criminal conspiracy. Multiple individuals identified as central to the conspiracy, including…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Gretchen Peters and John Seaman

Now, for the Accountability

The CIA and FBI also need a reckoning now that Kabul is gone. Two new startling insider accounts offer a roadmap.

Jeff Stein Sept. 2

SpyTalk

Now, for the Accountability

Hello darkness, my old friend. We’ve been here before, watching through our fingers as American troops flee from an ill-advised war or battles: Phnom Penh, Saigon, Mogadishu, Baghdad, Syria, now Kabul. We’ve run out of guerrilla wars—for the moment, and that’s a good thing…

2 years ago · 12 likes · 9 comments · Jeff Stein

Kabul Doomwatch: A Veteran TV Correspondent Recalls Escapes from Vietnam, Cambodia

Longtime ABC-TV international correspondent Jim Laurie also watched the Russians leave Afghanistan. It was more orderly than the US exit from Kabul.

Jim Laurie, Aug 15

SpyTalk

Kabul Doomwatch: A Veteran TV Correspondent Recalls Escapes from Vietnam, Cambodia

I am experiencing a bit of old reporter's déjà vu anxiety. What is happening in Kabul Afghanistan is heart-wrenching. On the morning of April 12, 1975, I flew out of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s besieged capital, on a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter, landing on the USS Okinawa as the American embassy staged its evacuation…

2 years ago · 6 likes · Jim Laurie

Israel’s Fingers in Sudan

Longtime Middle East hand Jonathan Broder picks through the history

Jonathan Broder Nov. 6

SpyTalk

Israel’s Fingers in Sudan

A report that Israel was “surprised” by the Oct. 25 military coup in Sudan doesn’t pass the smell test. Israeli intrigues in Sudan, and East Africa as a whole, go back decades. Not only was an Israeli delegation in Khartoum only days before the generals seized power, according to…

2 years ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Jonathan Broder

A Dazzling Debut Spy Thriller Carved in Poison

Sergei Lebedev’s 'Untraceable' explores evil through the minds of both the hunter and the hunted

Matthew Brazil July 18

SpyTalk

A Dazzling Debut Spy Thriller Carved in Poison

In Smiley’s People, the KGB assassinates a former Soviet general who spied for the British and is retired in London. John le Carré’s legendary spymaster George Smiley is brought back from retirement to assess the damage and sweep the mess under the proverbial carpet. But instead of a coverup, Smiley launches an operation that bags an enormous prize for British intelligence…

2 years ago · 4 likes · Matthew Brazil

Kabul Falls...to Multiple Metaphors

Members of Congress add Dunkirk to the Kabul-Saigon metaphor. Or is it Phnom Penh, as some fear? The mostly useless comparisons are adding up.

Jeff Stein Aug 13

SpyTalk

Kabul Falls...to Multiple Metaphors

UPDATED With thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban and the U.S. embassy under evacuation orders, ghosts of disasters past have reared their ugly heads. Is it Saigon all over again, with its iconic, desperate helicopter rescues as North Vietnamese troops overran the city? Or is it Cambodia, where the U.S. ambassador fled with some 200 other Americans just five days before Phnom Penh fell to the murderous Khmer Rouge? Further, will the Taliban turn out to be more like the Vietnamese communists, who settled scores with their enemy without mass executions, or the fanatical Khmer Rouge, who emptied Phnom Penh and embarked on a genocidal purge that murdered or starved to death somewhere between 1.3 and 3 million people…

2 years ago · 6 likes · Jeff Stein

Interrogations: How Did We Get to Brutal?

From brute force to mindful strategies, the evolution of interrogation science

Maria Hartwig, July 2

SpyTalk

Interrogations: How Did We Get to Brutal?

Interrogation is a loaded term. It can invoke images of relentless pressure, presumptions of guilt, and perhaps even a sense of vertigo: the experience of being overpowered by the state. No one articulated the terrifying notion of this form of power, being exercised in sickening clouds of secrecy and obfuscation—and, critically, without legitimate justification—more clearly than Franz Kafka…

2 years ago · 5 likes · Maria Hartwig

Ex-Trump Spy Chief Grenell Celebrates Pro-Moscow Serb Strongman

Are Trump acolytes cultivating European autocrats and extremists for a White House return as head of a transatlantic Axis of Evil?

Jeff Stein Aug 25

SpyTalk

Ex-Trump Spy Chief Grenell Celebrates Pro-Moscow Serb Strongman

While all eyes were on Tucker Carlson’s televised swoon for Hungary’s anti-democratic, pro-Russian strongman Viktor Orban earlier this month, another prominent Donald Trump acolyte was elsewhere in Eastern Europe celebrating yet another would-be dictator who’s fallen into Moscow’s orbit, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić…

2 years ago · 7 likes · Jeff Stein

New Russiagate Docs: Bombshell or Hoax?

The Guardian's scoop has many experts urging caution, questioning the "leak"

Craig Unger July 15

SpyTalk

New Russiagate Docs: Bombshell or Hoax?

Thursday’s bombshell in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, “Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House,” shook up the Internet and revived interest in Donald Trump’s role as a suspected Russian asset. But it also raised questions about how such documents could possibly have been leaked from a tight circle of Kremlin insiders and, therefore, whether or not they were real—or just another sleight of hand from Moscow…

2 years ago · 4 likes · 4 comments · Craig Unger

Chinese Defector Mystery Deepens

Beijing’s sketchy report of Dong Jingwei’s appearance at a spy-catcher seminar only adds suspicion that the top counterintelligence official fled to the U.S.

Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein June 21

SpyTalk

Chinese Defector Mystery Deepens

Where is Dong Jingwei? Widespread rumors that China's top counterintelligence official had defected to the United States last February reached a fever pitch over the weekend, propelled largely by unfounded reports in anticommunist and pro-Trump circles that Dong had brought with him evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic had originated in a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan, not from an animal source…

2 years ago · 6 likes · Matthew Brazil and Jeff Stein

CIA Officer Became ‘Formidable Foe’ of U.S. Government

Janine Brookner took on the KGB, sexist rivals and Justice Department lawyers alike during a pioneering career as a spy and lawyer

Jeff Stein May 13

SpyTalk

CIA Officer Became ‘Formidable Foe’ of U.S. Government

Janine Brookner, who battled communist spies and boorish male bureaucrats alike during a pioneering career as a CIA officer and later became a fierce advocate for women and whistleblowers in the intelligence community, died May 11 after a long struggle with kidney disease, “fueled at the end by a highly aggressive cancer,” according to her longtime companion Colin Thompson. She was 80…

2 years ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Jeff Stein

SpyTalk at the Movies: The Human Factor

An intense new documentary on the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is ‘a tortuous saga of good intentions and broken dreams,’ our reviewer in Jerusalem says

Stuart Schoffman May 6

SpyTalk

SpyTalk at the Movies: The Human Factor

The new documentary The Human Factor, a penetrating account of the rise and fall of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, arrives at an opportune moment. Human Rights Watch recently issued a 217-page document condemning Israeli apartheid, even as Jerusalem is paralyzed in political gridlock, with four elections in the past two years and a fifth on the horizon. Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, our eternal prime minister, faces multiple indictments for corruption. The Palestinians, for their part, finally scheduled an election to replace Yasir Arafat’s elderly, feckless successor Abu Mazen, who cancelled the ballot when it looked like Hamas, the militant rival of the reigning PLO, would win…

2 years ago · 2 likes · Stuart Schoffman

My Jason Matthews

Praise keeps rolling in for the fallen former CIA master spy and novelist

Jeff Stein May 4

SpyTalk

My Jason Matthews

Printed newspapers arrive these days like the Pony Express, containing dispatches on events days earlier that have already been parsed widely on the Internet. So it was Tuesday morning when a delivery driver tossed The Washington Post onto my driveway that included…

2 years ago · 11 likes · 8 comments · Jeff Stein

The Crazy CIA Plot to Kill the Other Castro

The CIA wanted a pilot to sabotage Raul Castro's plane—while he was flying it.

Peter Kornbluh Apr. 25

SpyTalk

The Crazy CIA Plot to Kill the Other Castro

In early March 1960, a special team of CIA officials and operatives gathered for the first meeting of the new “Branch 4 Task Force,” which was dedicated to overthrowing Fidel Castro in Cuba. Less than a year earlier, the CIA believed the bearded revolutionary was on their side of the Cold War and would cooperate in ferreting out the Communists in Cuba. But now, after he’d ousted a pro-U.S. regime (which was widely reviled and corrupt…

2 years ago · 3 likes · Peter Kornbluh

New JFK Assassination Documents? Meh

What's really stunning is the sensational media coverage and the National Archives' release of informants' personal data.

Gus Russo Dec. 15

SpyTalk

New JFK Assassination Documents? Meh

AS DIRECTED by President Biden, the National Archives on Wednesday released almost 1,500 new documents, some comprising hundreds of pages, on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Biden has given federal agencies one more year to release the remaining 14,000 pages…

2 years ago · 10 likes · 16 comments · Gus Russo

Spooks on the Rio: U.S. Spy Agencies’ Little Known Homeland Security Role

CIA, DIA, FBI, satellites, military play major parts in U.S.-based globe-spanning network

Todd Bensman Apr. 4

SpyTalk

Spooks on the Rio: U.S. Spy Agencies’ Little Known Homeland Security Role

In 2017, an informant for the Texas Department of Public Safety inside Mexico reported that three suspected Pakistani al-Qaeda operatives were about to cross the border. The alarming report landed on my desk because I worked for DPS’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, where I managed an analytical team that worked such threat matters alongside federal agencies inside the Austin-based Texas Fusion Center…

2 years ago · 4 likes · Todd Bensman

Bill Burns' CIA and the Roads Not Taken

The spy agency’s new chief gets a second chance to tell truth to power

Jeff Stein Mar. 18

SpyTalk

Bill Burns' CIA and the Roads Not Taken

William Joseph Burns is probably the most anticipated new CIA boss to arrive in Langley since, well, George Tenet in 1997. The agency’s hardest core former operators have been gushing about Burns since President-elect Joe Biden tapped him in January to run the battered spy agency—an unusual toss of bouquets from the dark side to a career diplomat, to say the least…

3 years ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · Jeff Stein