The CIA's Afghan Death Squads
A U.S.-backed militia that kills children may be America’s exit strategy from its longest war.
Great articles, every Saturday.
A U.S.-backed militia that kills children may be America’s exit strategy from its longest war.
Andrew Quilty The Intercept Dec 2020 40min Permalink
Inside Trump’s battles with U.S. intelligence agencies.
Robert Draper The New York Times Magazine Aug 2020 30min Permalink
A profile of Erik Prince, then the CEO of America’s largest and most controversial mercenary force, Blackwater, who happened to be a C.I.A. agent.
Adam Ciralsky Vanity Fair Jan 2010 25min Permalink
For more than 50 years, world governments have trusted a single Swiss code-making machine company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers, and diplomats secret. It turns out that company was run by the CIA.
Greg Miller Washington Post Feb 2020 Permalink
How digital detectives unraveled the mystery of Olympic Destroyer—and why the next big attack will be even harder to crack.
Andy Greenberg Wired Oct 2019 30min Permalink
How killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.
Michael Hastings Rolling Stone Apr 2012 30min Permalink
Best Article Reprints Arts Movies & TV
How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran. The declassified story that became Ben Affleck’s Argo.
Joshuah Bearman Wired Apr 2007 20min Permalink
A two-part series on America’s role in the Syrian civil war.
Shane Bauer Mother Jones Jun 2019 2h Permalink
Last week, as America’s top national security experts convened in Aspen, a strangely inquisitive Uber driver showed up, too.
Julia Ioffe GQ Jul 2018 15min Permalink
To the KGB and back.
Jason Fagone Washingtonian Feb 2018 20min Permalink
Did a school for spies get conned by a fake spook who molested students?
Ian Shapira Washington Post May 2017 10min Permalink
"There is a real danger here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him."
Glenn Greenwald The Intercept Jan 2017 10min Permalink
A ragtag band of pirate-Jihadists grab Americans from a diving resort in the Phillipines and lead them on an odyssey through the jungles of an archipelago with the competing interests of the Phillipines’ Navy and Army, the U.S. Military, and the C.I.A. thwarting their rescue.
Mark Bowden The Atlantic Mar 2007 45min Permalink
The story of William Morgan: American, wanderer, Cuban revolutionary.
David Grann New Yorker May 2012 1h25min Permalink
A conversation with the former head of the NSA.
John Meroney Playboy Oct 2016 25min Permalink
The stories of women who “are operating at unprecedented levels on every floor of CIA headquarters and throughout its far-flung global outposts.”
Abigail Jones Newsweek Sep 2016 30min Permalink
Oliver Stone wanted a hit—and the chance to put America’s most iconic dissident onscreen. The subject wanted veto power. The Russian lawyer wanted someone to option the novel he’d written. The American lawyer just wanted the whole insane project to go away. Somehow a film got made.
Irina Aleksander New York Times Magazine Aug 2016 30min Permalink
The writer investigates her late husband Ted Streshinsky, whose photographs documented the 1960s, and J. Edgar Hoover’s attempts to label him a Soviet spy.
Shirley Streshinsky The American Scholar Jun 2016 25min Permalink
Jason Matthews worked at the CIA for more than 30 years. Then he started writing spy novels.
Josh Eells Men’s Journal Sep 2015 20min Permalink
Wayne Simmons was ideal conservative commentator. A former C.I.A. operative, he ate lunch with Donald Rumsfeld, took trips to Guantánamo aboard Air Force Two, and pumped the party line on Fox News. There was only one problem: Simmons had never been in the C.I.A.
Alex French New York Times Magazine Mar 2016 20min Permalink
On applying to work as an undercover agent.
Jennifer duBois Lapham's Quarterly Feb 2015 15min Permalink
The life of Adolf Tolkachev, Soviet dissident and CIA spy.
David E. Hoffman The Atlantic Aug 2015 15min Permalink
The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. DeHart—and his parents—say he’s being framed over his knowledge of CIA secrets.
David Kushner Buzzfeed Mar 2015 40min Permalink
A three-part investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s CIA-backed Contra rebels, and California’s crack epidemic in the 1980s.
Backers of CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in the early 1980s to help finance war – and a plague was born.
How a smuggler, a bureaucrat and an ambitious teenager created the cocaine pipeline.
The impact of the crack epidemic.
Gary Webb San Jose Mercury News Aug 1996 Permalink
Stolen time with the writer as he neared the end.
Jeff Himmelman New York Times Magazine Apr 2014 20min Permalink