This is a must read. Some in the military thought COSVN was little more than a myth. Frank says one of the CIA's most prolific spies during the war was in that command, and was handled by John Stockwell at one point.
National Security Reporter. Features in Politico, Rolling Stone, Wired, Foreign Policy. Working on a book on the history of deep cover for Penguin-Random House. It’s always Berlin 1989 somewhere. Email: thebrushpass1@protonmail.com
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This is a must read. Some in the military thought COSVN was little more than a myth. Frank says one of the CIA's most prolific spies during the war was in that command, and was handled by John Stockwell at one point.
Look, the treatment of Denmark alone would have been a presidency-dominating scandal in another era.
I can
Time to turn back the GWOT, so neither party can ever abuse these authorities again
Spurious appeals to national security “emergencies” to justify fiat authorities are incompatible with a democracy governed by the rule of law.
Woo is a form of romantic irrationalism, which sprung from the counter-enlightenment. It was always essentially reactionary. Paging Isaiah Berlin!
Robert E. Lee killed more U.S. troops in battle than Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined
Trump just ended the century-old "de minimis" exemption, which allowed items worth less than $800 to be shipped to the country duty-free, or without having to pay any tariffs. In response, postal services from around the world have begun suspending shipments to the US www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...
I don’t think Kirkpatrick was on that cowboy shit Bissell—brilliant yet reckless—was pushing
Going through declassified docs from that era and Kirkpatrick emerges as such a sharp thinker
A counterfactual for intel history nerds only: I wonder how much mess the CIA might have avoided in the late 1950s/early 1960s if Lyman Kirkpatrick had not fallen ill and had been named clandestine service chief.
Tata Tarot Truth-Teller Tryst Turns Tricky www.thecut.com/article/astr...
This is one of the funniest stories I’ve read in a long time www.thecut.com/article/astr...
People don't want to think about anything, they just want to watch their Tik Toks. Now the Tik Toks will talk back to them. What could go wrong?
Like cybersecurity regulations a decade ago, but somehow even scarier
Good thing we’re not already suffering a crisis of truth in American society
We’re in deep trouble and it’s going to get worse
We’re not equipped for this as a species. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...
Thrilled to see my book DEVIL REACHED TOWARD THE SKY as NPR's "Book of the Day" today: www.npr.org/2025/08/28/n...
“Pet-loving ICE agent seeks loving, committed relationship. Must be comfortable with long, irregular hours and me kidnapping children”
Trying to imagine the DC dating-app scene right now—“purged CIA officer looking for casual fling; please, no DMs from out-of-state occupying National Guardsmen”
Hypocritically-adhered to though they were, I did prefer the era of “norms” to the new-model “transvaluation of all values”
If there was a preliminary investigation within CIA counterespionage itself, that might explain it. But only a tiny fraction of those cases are referred criminally, and even fewer lead to high-profile raids on the subjects homes.
I could write a long analysis of this story, but question #1 is: if there was an open investigation of Bolton before Trump returned to office, why would Ratcliffe be briefing Patel on it? Someone with FBI or DOJ would, not the CIA Director
Going to throw out some big words, but: anyone knowledgeable about 4th party collection, parallel construction of criminal cases from sensitive intel, & (possibly) how liaison services play provide CIA requested info, will find a LOT interesting in the reporting. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...
There are certainly Trump-supporting corners of the FBI, but they have alienated large swaths of the Bureau. And the CIA isn’t a security service as such, but there’s a lot of dypepsia there too
Funny that it took until the Second Trump admin for the GWB-era vision of the DNI as the head of the IC to really materialize
Most powerful DNI ever. CIA has never been rolled like this in the previous two decades.
It remains staggering to me that, in the absence of meaningful penalties for the people at fault, this has simply become a part of ordinary modern life.
To underline this somewhat: I cannot overstate the reverence that firefighters are held in the rural West. Wildfires are an object of pure terror and everyone—everyone—understands how important the work is that firefighters do.
So do you like it or not
If you want to nudge people to the other side, this is a great way to do it. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Here's what the third day of elementary school looked like in Mount Pleasant, Washington DC.
Amazing! Excited to read
I love Chicago for so many reasons, but here are 3: 1. The Green Mill, the best jazz club in the country 2. Montrose Point park, especially when it’s warm and a cool breeze blows off the lake, which is so blue you swear it’s the Caribbean 3. The most majestic skyscraper architecture in America
I was a spy catcher. Our numbers are dwindling under this administration: www.notus.org/trump-white-...
Felony charges for boo-boos whose remedy used to be a trip to Haagen-Dazs
oh I know you agree, it’s just, you read stuff like this
I mean, for god’s sake. www.masslive.com/news/2025/08...
That’s the main you want chairing Senate Intel (alongside Moynihan! What I would give!)
I also think a lot about Barry Goldwater at SSCI in the 80s. He did not give a fuck that he was an R under an R president. He was chairman of the Senate Intel committee and demanded Reagan respect his constitutional prerogatives.
Because of my book research, I’ve been digging around a lot in Church-era stuff. It is wildly bracing to inhabit a world where congress takes its constitutional responsibilities seriously, across parties. Serious people, serious times, looking at serious issues.
*If* a new equilibrium!
Yes but this is a break in the American constitutional order. We’ve had them before; it’s just a matter of when a new equilibrium is reached, and when. It may take 3 years, it may take 23 years.
There’s no status quo ante
American citizens have a better legal infrastructure protecting them, but as we’ve seen, even legal permanent residents and other visa holders have been subject to treatment that is clearly autocratic.
Here’s my quibble: the American legal system contains truck-sized loopholes that a president can drive through to govern in an autocratic fashion, and bipartisan restraint previously arrested usage of those laws. No more.
He genuinely cares about it and has staff that is passionate and knowledgeable and nonpartisan.
Pentagon's innovation unit chief resigns in latest shake-up reut.rs/4oT02t6
Venezuelan man moves to US to help support his autistic brother, gets autism awareness tattoo. He is deported to an El Salvadorian gulag by ICE as a suspected gang member, spends four months in prison there.
Hell yes. A million times hell yes to this.
Garrett refuses to pull his punches or tiptoe around things. In this moment, that takes real bravery, and I respect him a great deal for it. You should read this, and really think about what he’s laying out so dispassionately and unnervingly.
The prolonged public torturing of a single man because the state cannot admit to its errors is not something that occurs in a free country
Hey man, that’s one of the best tv shows of all time!
Let a thousand PhDs bloom.
Read this. U of C is an incredible place, and I’m so lucky I got to study there, even for a short time. An institution dedicated to the life of the mind, and with an extraordinary tradition of scholarship in the Humanities. What’s happening there is tragic.
Comically bad. Get this man an editor!
m.youtube.com/watch?v=llY1...
Can I get an encore?
This is basically an American version of the Al Qaeda monkey bars videos.
“Runnin’” is an all-time track
The WSJ editorial board stands up for small-l liberalism, once a cornerstone of the American political system, now under siege from within. www.wsj.com/opinion/john...
I believe their argument was that he had declassified them. If so, they should be released unredacted on the ODNI website.
Here’s where national security reporters are ahead of their colleagues in other parts of U.S. media: they’re calling purges purges. No equivocation, no double-speak, no allusions
Don’t like the considered assessment of seasoned intelligence professionals? You can just decapitate the agencies that tell you things you don’t want to hear.
This below is the Rosetta Stone to truthful reporting in our current era.
Out in California, Sikh immigrants have really stepped up in the trucking industry. They have cool, colorful designs on their trucks and you can now find delicious chai and snacks at extremely remote truck stops in the desert!
That’s the way
Having their sick son die in the Donbas meat grinder is just a cosmic cruelty.
It wasn’t a threat, it was a tragedy, but the provision of the award was a pure intelligence play.
That’s because it was always “don’t tread on ME; I derive psychosexual pleasure from watching the state tread on YOU”
From what’s been reported, their son was mentally ill. It’s just salt in a wound.
I cannot think of an analogue in modern American history from a former CIA Director or senior diplomat.
Not just the family of an American. The son of a *former senior CIA official.* Beyond bizarre.
For real
Amazing opportunity. Andrew is a superb editor and Wired is on fire right now.
Hmmmmmmmmmm
It’s going to take a generation to repair civ-mil relations. When it’s healthy it’s like air; you don’t even notice its (manifold) benefits. But when it’s polluted, it affects everything.
The harrowing story of the protagonist aside, some fantastic reporting here by Seth Harp on how JSOC employs commercial cover and builds complex “legends” for its operators to conduct assassination, rendition, and espionage operations abroad. www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Hahahaha no I just Missed it I agree 100 percent
Oh man
Literally he’s filming a scene there for the movie where the finale for Miami Vice was supposed to be. The Mann remembers
incredible performance especially because he doesn’t remember making the movie
He’s gonna film it in Heat 2 though
One can only dream about the finale if Fox hadn’t freaked out and bolted
It answered a lot of questions I had and raised a lot more
You are going to draw many a moth to the flame with this one
Executed by some brilliant DO officers
Maybe the second best Radiohead record