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Welcome to SpyTalk, now in its 15th year, where Jeff Stein leads an all-star team of veteran investigative reporters, writers and subject-matter experts who will take you behind the scenes of the national security state. Coming in mid-September.
You may remember Jeff as the Spytalk columnist for years at Newsweek, and before that, at The Washington Post and before that Congressional Quarterly (where he was also the founding editor of the influential CQ/Homeland Security). This time around, however, he’s added to his team such veteran journalists as Elaine Shannon, TIME magazine's “queen of drugs and thugs,” and Peter Eisner, a prolific investigative author and former deputy foreign editor at The Post. And more. Source
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| Scope | International |
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| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesI’m running down the road tryin’ to loosen my load...
Rhode Island Iobstah. Mmmm. Yes, Virginia, we do take time off—and this is one of them. Due to the press of events since late February, I’d pretty much given up my annual late summer truck north to my ancestral home of sorts in Rhode Island.
A Forgotten Vonnegut Spy Novel Offers Warnings for Today
Cover of the first edition In 1961, eight years before Slaughterhouse-Five made him famous, Kurt Vonnegut published Mother Night, a novel about fascism, complicity, and the lies people tell themselves in order to keep going. I came to Vonnegut through Slaughterhouse-Five, like everyone else in my generation. I went back to Mother Night recently, expecting another war novel. It isn’t one, really.
How the Russians Got Inside My Phone Original
The FBI’s warning about Russian hackers infiltrating Signal accounts largely flew under users’ radar. (Image by BleepingComputers.com) If you’re a journalist these days and you get a call from the FBI, as I did the other day, your first instinct is to be on guard. Did the bureau want to grill me as part of a leak investigation?
Ratcliffe in Moscow Original
The unannounced flight of CIA Director John Radcliffe has stirred up a lot of fervid speculation over the reasons for the trip.
New in SpyWeek: Only the Intelligence News Worth Your Attention
Legal proceedings in the 40-year-old bombing have new wrinkle. Pam Am 103, Still: The trial of a former Libyan intelligence official charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland has been delayed because of “the discovery of new evidence that defense attorneys want to examine,” reported the A.P. Monday.
How Roy Cohn Lives on in Donald Trump
The scoundrel of Kai Bird’s meticulous biography of Roy Cohn, the heavy-lidded villain of mid-20th-century America, is as much Donald Trump as Cohn. Cohn died of AIDS 40 years ago, just after he was disbarred. That’s time enough for him to be fading into footnotes, despite his notoriety in the 1950s as chief counsel to Sen. Joe McCarthy, the Commie hunter. But Cohn’s legacy lives on in Trump. Lessons learned: Always attack. Never apologize. Deny. Sue. Countersue. If you lose, declare victory.
My Troubling Introduction to China’s All-Powerful “Boss AI”
Every breath you take. (You Tube) There are few more enthusiastic evangelists for the promise of AI than Kai-Fu Lee. Suave and charming, with a taste for fine wine (and a Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon), Lee founded the Beijing-based Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital giant that is helping to finance some of China’s most innovative tech firms on everything from robotics to advanced facial recognition.
Straight Talk on the CIA’s Mixed Past and Current Troubles
Dearlove and former CIA chief Leon Panetta teamed up to construct a serious online forum for pressing national security issues, particularly involving intelligence. Investigative CIA historian Tim Weiner joined the show last week. Rarely does one hear a discussion of the CIA, its fraught history, and its current challenges that’s altogether clear-headed, very well informed and devoid of cant or prepackaged partisanship.
The Final Word on Carlos the Jackal
Photograph of Carlos from a fake passport under an assumed name, circa 1974 IN THE END, IT WAS CARLOS THE JACKAL’S TESTICLES THAT DID HIM IN. Having boasted of bedding more than 400 women and killing 83 people by his own hand, he was suffering from a condition known as varicocele—“essentially a varicose vein in the scrotum,” as author Joby Warrick puts it.
New in SpyWeek: That CIA Mystery Plane, the Iran Threat to Kill Trump, Israeli and Russian Intrigue, and More
Trump slipped away from Air Force One in a catering container. Did an Israeli intelligence report cause panic? (CBS). Israeli Plane Trick?