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Espionage

Sabotage Without Warning: ​Why the Gray Zone Could Be America’s Biggest Blind Spot

Sabotage Without Warning: ​Why the Gray Zone Could Be America’s Biggest Blind Spot

EXPERT BRIEFING — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced this week that 32 people have been detained since the start of Moscow’s war with [...] More

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The Latest

How Does the CIA Recruit Russian Spies?

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — As any good intelligence officer will tell you, recruiting spies is a tough business. Not only do you have to identify - and [...] More

Spies Who Come Out in the Summer

CHALK MARKS / OPINION — Intelligence officers in the CIA talk about three things when they are together in the field:How bad things are at [...] More

'Lamps are Going Out all over Europe' when it comes to Russian Espionage

OPINION — The day before Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey remarked to a friend that “the lamps [...] More

Chalk Marks: A Review of The Sympathizer

ENTERTAINMENT — “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.”This opening sentence of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is one of the [...] More

Why 'Ronin' is an Espionage Classic

CHALK MARKS / COLUMN — If you craft a list of professionals who by virtue of their job knowingly undertake an effort they expect to go badly, it will [...] More

E-Commerce Lessons for Espionage

OPINION — I recently enjoyed an overdue reunion with some college friends, wrongly assuming war stories from this retired CIA officer would wow my [...] More

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Why the Classic Movie 'Spy Game' Gets it Right

OPINION — Many moons ago, when I started my training as an operations officer, the world and country were in a different place. Everyone I knew [...] More

Gen Z and CIA is a Relationship in Need of Counseling

OPINION — As a mere “wretched pensioner” in retirement (words taken from my good friend and former CIA colleague Doug Wise), I spend a great deal of [...] More

The Best Reads of 2023: A Holiday Gift Guide

The Best Reads of 2023: A Holiday Gift Guide

HOLIDAY SPECIAL REPORT - In this season of giving, your friendly neighborhood Cipher Brief “Undercover” team - which spends the bulk of the year [...] More

702 is the Spy Tool that Americans need now

OPINION — The Intelligence Community (IC), in a recent press release, said it will lose what it has “used every day to protect the nation from [...] More

The Dark Joys of 'Patriot'

OPINION/ENTERTAINMENT — It’s a truth about clandestine operations that you can do everything right, and things will still go wrong. The wise ops [...] More

'Lioness' is Entertaining. Is it Realistic?

OPINION — It’s been true for a long time that female intelligence professionals have been giving the CIA and the United States a tremendous advantage [...] More