Leonidas Vargas-Vargas and the Business of Medellín’s Vacuum
Even as Pablo Escobar’s death was supposed to break the Medellín network, the intelligence shows a machine that merely swapped its leaders for smarter brokers.
By Harlan Pryce ·
intelligence failure
A Fraudster’s Lisbon Trip and the End of the SNOW Case
The Security Service used a convicted trickster to monitor a Canadian engineer, a move that ended in a German interrogation and the total collapse of a high-stakes double agent operation.
By Constance Bell ·
The 1950 Deadline and the Russian Atomic Program
A 1949 meeting of Britain's top military chiefs identified a specific window for a Soviet strike on Scandinavia, while the head of intelligence was quietly purged from his post.
By Roy Castellano ·
Kofi Annan and the 1995 Silence of National Intelligence
Eight thousand lives were lost in a 'safe area' while the world's most powerful spy agencies ensured the peacekeepers on the ground remained effectively blind.
By Marcus Boone ·
Father Georg Leiber and the OSS Plot to Kill Hitler
The names of assets are gone, but the records of a failed hit on the Führer and a slaughter in Slovakia remained hidden for decades in a curated paper trail.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Three Plans and the Forced Retention of East Timor
The blood-soaked streets of Dili were the result of a deliberate choice kept hidden in an intelligence report that parsed the Indonesian military's intent to ignore a democratic vote.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the Secret Cancer That Blinded Washington
A 1977 secret report swore the Shah was in fine health and Iran was stable, while the monarch was dying of cancer—a delusion that left the US blind to the coming revolution.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Robert Gates and the CIA’s Failure to Predict a Collapse
Intelligence analysts saw a strategic reorganization of power where a systemic meltdown was actually occurring, missing the social volatility that would end the Soviet Union.
By Roy Castellano ·
Viewer 025 and the DIA's Pursuit of a Target Vessel
A target vessel was tracked via 'solo mode' remote viewing, but the actual results of the mission were scrubbed from a record kept secret for ten years
By Eleanor Voss ·
Senior Officials and the 'Photo Gap' That Nearly Started a Nuclear War
Kept secret for decades and still under appeal, a Top Secret report describes how White House officials suppressed missile warnings to avoid "international incidents" while the world tipped toward war.
By Roy Castellano ·
40 Targets and the Army's War on Psychic Boredom
Kept secret until 2003, a report on the Army's attempt to replicate psychic spying shows a desperate struggle to turn subjective guesses into hard intelligence
By June Hargrove ·
CIA’s Fatal Math and the Ayacucho Jailbreak
A 1982 intelligence review predicted a Maoist insurgency would be 'shattered' by the military, prioritizing a 'favorable human rights image' over the reality of the coming slaughter.
By Harlan Pryce ·
Donald Maclean Used Five Aliases to Mask Soviet Spying in Washington
He spent decades in the heart of the British Foreign Office feeding secrets to Moscow before vanishing into the USSR with Guy Burgess in 1951.
By Harlan Pryce ·