Trevor Aaronson is an award winning investigative journalist and contributing writer to The Intercept. His podcast ALPHABET BOYS and the subject of his other works focuses on the use of informants in Law Enforcement. We discuss the use of sting operations and how the informant has evolved into a more proactive role over the last few decades. Season 2 of Alphabet Boys centers around a singular motivated informant who somehow ends up working for the FBI, DEA and, he claims, the CIA. Live Drop 66 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information ..read more

Professor Dahl asserts that the pandemic was a global failure of intelligence, including not only the traditional intelligence agencies that should have been able to do better, but perhaps even more importantly, a failure of the complex system of medical and public health surveillance that is designed to anticipate threats just like this one. He specifically cites a lack of warning and failure of receptivity. Secondly, although the US and the rest of the world have taken some useful steps to improve our intelligence and warning about disease threats, we are still vulnerable to what expert ..read more

Brittany Butler is a former CIA targeting officer with first-hand knowledge in the recruitment and handling of spies, and dismantling of terrorist networks abroad. A staunch advocate Middle Eastern women's rights, Brittany has worked to protect the rights of disenfranchised Afghan women and girls, and works within her local community to resettle Afghan refugees. The first in a series, THE SYNDICATE SPY combines facts with fiction, of how female intelligence officers utilize both intellect and skills to see beyond religious and cultural barriers in order to bring peace to this war-torn region ..read more

Alma Katsu is an accomplished writer and intelligence professional with an extensive career spanning over 35 years. She has held senior analyst positions at various federal agencies, providing policy advice to military and government officials on national security issues. Additionally, she has worked as a senior technology policy analyst for the RAND Corporation and operates as an independent consultant and technology futurist, providing expert guidance to clients in both government and private industry. In addition to her contributions to the fields of intelligence and technology, Katsu is al ..read more

Rebecca Donner is the author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days.  Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin the Rote Kapella. She recruited Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and wrote leaflets that denounced Hitler..When war broke out Mildred became a spy, sending top-secret intellige ..read more

Jack Devine's career at the CIA spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including the fall of President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the Iran–Contra affair in the mid-1980s, and the fight to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Devine would go on to run the Counter Narcotics Center   in the 1990s, and helped oversee capture Pablo Escobar in 1993. In this interview we talk about his initial impressions of Santiago in 1971, the vast difference between liberalism and communism, and he clarifies the extent and l ..read more

Ann Hagedorn discusses her new book SLEEPER AGENT – about the little known Soviet-trained atomic spy who got away. George Koval was born to Russian immigrant parents and raised in Sioux City, Iowa. At the age of 17, he emigrated back to Russia in 1932 where, after university studies, he was discovered and trained by the GRU.  He returned to the US, registered for the draft and used his scientific background to secure an assignment at a Uranium and Plutonium production site at Oak Ridge, Ohio.  There he had full access to all facilities and passed along information to Mosco ..read more

Marc Polymeropoulos has had to live with the consequences of decisions made under the most high-stress circumstances you can imagine as a senior intelligence officer in the CIA, retiring from his 26 years of service as one of the CIA’s most decorated field officers. In his book Clarity in Crisis, Marc shares how true leaders need to lead in and through times of crisis and thrive under conditions of ambiguity, rather than message their way out or duck from hard decisions. Far from mere theory, Marc outlines the unique and specific mindset and strategies he himself practiced and honed ..read more

In his new book Proof of Life, American author Daniel Levin dives into the Syrian shadows - an underground industry of war where everything is for sale: arms, drugs, even people. In this thriller/memoir he draws on his perceptions and experience as a a lawyer turned armed conflict negotiator who, for the past twenty years, has worked with governments and development institutions worldwide. After a fairly worldly upbringing, he served in the Israeli Special Forces, studied law, taught in Arabic, and now uses his extensive Middle Eastern contacts and cultural understanding for dip ..read more

Back in April 2021, Todd Bensman talked with me about the nexus between immigration and national security in his book America’s Covert Border War: the Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration.  Todd is an award-winning journalist who transitioned to a career as a national security intelligence professional for the Texas Department of Public Safety and then returned to writing and publishing. We talk about the threat of muslim extremists crossing and the varied and circuitous international routes they may take - how some, like some Haitians now, can cross from ..read more