The stories of women who “are operating at unprecedented levels on every floor of CIA headquarters and throughout its far-flung global outposts.”

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.

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.

Jason Matthews worked at the CIA for more than 30 years. Then he started writing spy novels.

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.

On applying to work as an undercover agent.

The life of Adolf Tolkachev, Soviet dissident and CIA spy.

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.

Stolen time with the writer as he neared the end.

What the CIA really knew about Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who disappeared in 2007.

Why Obama won’t rein in the NSA.

A captured bank robber makes a remarkable claim.

On the renaissance in psychedelic research.

The origin story of the C.I.A.’s covert drone war, which began with the 2004 killing of a Pashtun militant, the result of a secret deal for access to Pakistani airspace.

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.

The story of Thor Holm Hansen—”Norwegian country singer, a former Outlaws motorcycle chieftain, and an ‘ambassador at large’ to a rebel Haitian government”—who claims to be back in Florida to locate his missing daughter.

In November 1985, a woman who appeared to be a homeless drifter staked out the offices of 80-year-old banker Nicholas Deak, waited until he returned from lunch, then executed Deak and his secretary. As police wrestled her to the floor, she said “Don’t hurt me. He told me I could carry the gun.”

How John Kiriakou, a public opponent of US torture policy, became the first CIA officer convicted of leaking classified information to the press.

The disappearance of the mysterious “Pakistani asset” that helped the CIA zero in on Bin Laden.

A CIA veteran remembers his Soviet nemesis, Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, who was the chairman of the KGB for a single day during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and committed suicide in Moscow in March.

The story of a Ponzi schemer who became the mark.

Uncovered letters reveal ties between the literary magazine and the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom.

The story of William Morgan: American, wanderer, Cuban revolutionary.

How killing by remote control has changed the way we fight.