The assassination of Richard Welch in Athens in 1975 came as the Church Committee was beginning its final report; the White House and the CIA claimed, without proof, that the committee's investigation of CIA actions exposed Welch's identity. Welch's deputy in Athens now speaks out.
Historian David S. McCarthy puts a new CIA-sponsored podcast in the context of decades-long efforts by the Agency to portray itself as the good guys in a dangerous world while obscuring their role in creating the danger.
On withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration touted its "over the horizon" capability to track and target terrorists from afar. If the strategy proves out, it should mean the ability to fully decouple antiterror operations from foreign military presence.
The common objectives and concerns that engaged the Central Intelligence Agency at its 1947 founding are familiar to the intelligence community today, showing the continuity of American involvement in other nations' affairs.
A town hall meeting in Los Angeles grew heated when the CIA director denied allegations published by reporter Gary Webb that the Agency was involved in importing and distributing drugs to South Central Los Angeles.
When Henry Kissinger sought to assert American control of Caribbean bauxite ore reserves, he set off a political dirty war that poisoned the Jamaican interior and destroyed prominent strains of cannabis in the name of marijuana interdiction.
Jonathan Stevenson's new book on Philip Agee, who left the CIA and exposed its operations in Latin America, struggles to portray the complex mix of principle and egotism that drove its subject.
Ben Tumin's "Skipped History" video series returns with a discussion of the 1954 Guatemala Coup, drawing on the work of Greg Grandin, Stephen Kinzer and Steven Schleshinger, and Vincent Bevins.
Muckrock invites interested historians and history enthusiasts to participate in a project to make declassified Presidential intelligence briefings more widely accessible.
Dwight Eisenhower oversaw an aggressive building of American intelligence capability toward the USSR, moving espionage to a more prominent role in Cold War foreign policy. This included ordering the CIA to tunnel into East Berlin to tap Soviet phone lines.
The Chilean author Ariel Dorfman warns that while his country elected a democratic socialist in a landmark election, it was unprepared to deal with violent and ruthless efforts to maintain the status quo. Joe Biden is no socialist, but if he wins, his administration and Americans at large must be similarly prepared.
The arrest of Silvercorp mercenaries in Venezuela echoes a long history of the U.S. government supporting private troops to overthrow foreign governments.
“No Boy Scout: CIA Operations Officer Lucien Conein” tells the story of a polarizing French-American paramilitary specialist who served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II and in its postwar successor agencies.
A former congressional staffer says withholding damning evidence from Congress and using civilians to carry out presidential or intelligence agency agendas links the Ukraine crisis to other scandals.
