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  • Originally published 03/31/2014

    MIT Historian Sues U.S. Intelligence Agencies over Mandela Files

    Shapiro said while it is generally accepted—though unproven—that U.S. spy agencies supported the apartheid regime in Africa and, specifically, were involved in the freedom fighter’s arrest, much of that remained unreported by the press, even in the torrent of coverage following Mandela’s death in December.

  • Originally published 08/23/2013

    CIA closes office that declassifies historical materials

    The budget ax has fallen on a CIA office that focused on declassifying historical materials, a move scholars say will mean fewer public disclosures about long-buried intelligence secrets and scandals.The Historical Collections Division, which has declassified documents on top Soviet spies, a secret CIA airline in the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis and other major operations, has been disbanded. The office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests will take over the work.

  • Originally published 08/16/2013

    CIA acknowledges existence of Area 51 testing ground

    LAS VEGAS (AP) — The CIA is acknowledging the existence of Area 51 in newly declassified documents.George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of Area 51 had been redacted....

  • Originally published 07/28/2013

    Edward Snowden vs. Robert Seldon Lady

    This, then, is our world: a single megapower has, since September 2001, been in a financing and construction frenzy to create the first global surveillance state; its torturers run free; its kidnappers serve time at liberty in this country and are rescued if they venture abroad; and its whistleblowers -- those who would let the rest of us know what “our” government is doing in our name -- are pilloried.

  • Originally published 07/22/2013

    Harris Tweed was Cold War ‘uniform’ for CIA

    WHILE British secret agents of the 1970s were portrayed on TV in tight blue jeans, shirts with huge collars, ludicrous wide ties and brown cardigans – a la The Professionals – their real-life equivalents on the other side of the Atlantic opted for … Harris Tweed.The American hero behind the Iran hostage rescue featured in the film Argo has revealed the fashion style of CIA agents during the Cold War as he was honoured for services to the famous Scots cloth.Tony Mendez was played in the Best Picture of the Year Oscar-winner by Ben Affleck, whose Harris Tweed jacket is giving the fabric its highest-profile Hollywood exposure in years.Former agent Mendez, speaking in New York, confirmed that the movie reflected reality and that Harris Tweed had been “part of what every agent wore” during his time in the service.....

  • Originally published 07/09/2013

    Soviet-era listening stations still operating

    The world has been somewhat surprised by recent reports of the National Security Agency's massive electronic spying operations around the globe. But they're not the only ones with their ears to the proverbial ground. Just about every nation is engaged in some sort of electronic espionage. Russia, for example, still has an array of massive listening stations, ready to snoop on whoever's talking.It's a legacy of the Soviet Union, which  ran one of the largest of those electronic eavesdropping networks as it tried to gain any intel it could on the U.S. and its allies. Those old Soviet eavesdropping stations still exist. Some are rusting away in former Soviet countries. Others are still operational.Intelligence historian Matthew Aid just got ahold of a recently declassified CIA document listing the locations of 11 KGB strategic radio interception stations throughout Russia and the rest of the old Soviet Union....

  • Originally published 07/08/2013

    Austin Goodrich, Cold War CIA officer and CBS correspondent, dies at 87

    Austin Goodrich, an undercover CIA officer during the Cold War who also worked for several years as a CBS television correspondent before his identity was unmasked, died June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.He had Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Kristina Goodrich said.Mr. Goodrich, a rugged onetime football lineman, fought in World War II and later studied in Sweden while he was attending the University of Michigan. He joined the relatively new Central Intelligence Agency soon after his graduation from Michigan in 1949.While stationed in Oslo and Stockholm early in his clandestine career, he sought a suitable occupation to cover his true profession. He assumed a dual identity as reporter and spy....

  • Originally published 05/07/2013

    William Dalrymple briefs the White House on Afghanistan

    William Dalrymple goes to Washington. The lively historian was invited last Friday to give a briefing to the White House on the history of Afghanistan in the mid-19th century, the subject of his best-selling book Return Of A King.“It was a briefing with National Security, the CIA and Defense,” says Dalrymple, though he was too discreet to name the individuals. “They were incredibly well briefed about the current situation in Afghanistan but people in those positions don’t necessarily have the cultural and history background.”...

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