The CIA likes to fashion itself as a heroic agency that helps to protect national security and uphold democracy around the world. However, Hugh Wilford’s book, The CIA: An Imperial History (Basic Books, 2024), shows that the CIA draws directly from British and French colonial precedents, and adopts the same...
Abigail Spanberger follows the model of the CIA throughout the developing world In late May, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed collective bargaining rights legislation— Senate Bill 378 and House Bill 1264—that would have allowed half a million Virginia public workers to organize into unions and be able to negotiate their...
Between 1975 and 1989, the primary U.S. intelligence agency leveraged various financial assistance programs to shape Portuguese democracy and prevent the country from falling under Soviet influence. Here’s how. The involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Portugal is widely acknowledged. In fact, it was primarily thanks to...
Danny Casolaro Was Planning to Meet with Key Figures in Nugan Hand Bank and Members of Australian Government Commission Before He Was Murdered On August 10, 1991, Danny Casolaro was found lying dead in a tub of bloody water in a hotel room in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The...
Mike Pompeo, CIA Director and Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, has long been a Ukraine war hawk, calling Russia’s actions genocide, stating that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine (when its people voted overwhelmingly to be part of Russia) and consistently advocating for increased...
A decorated hero in WW II, he ran death squad operations in North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the Cold War; and was fired by Jimmy Carter for challenging civilian authority over the military. When Philip Agee resigned from the CIA in the late 1960s, he embarked on a...
For over seven weeks, events in Nicaragua have devolved into an increasingly common scenario for leaders who find themselves at odds with Washington: the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, stands accused of “killing his own people” after authorities have used “lethal force” in quelling recent protests. The unrest, which has resulted in...
Part 3: “Subversion.” "On Company Business" is an in-depth look into the origins, history, and inner-workings of one of the world’s most powerful, but least understood, covert intelligence gathering organization: the Central Intelligence Agency.
We can all agree that U.S. foreign policy must be changed and that to achieve that the mind—not to mention the heart and soul—of the American public must be changed. But what do you think is the main barrier to achieving such a change in the American mind? ...
With the confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director, there’s rightfully great interest in her record regarding torture. Contrary to the rhetoric--and with barely a word about the utility of torture in rigging the case for the Iraq invasion--the actual ends of torture are incredibly worse than the gruesome means. Of course, there...