Watching President Donald Trump berate the leader of Ukraine in the Oval Office last Friday, many Western officials were appalled. But they weren’t surprised. They have long understood what is now obvious to anyone who watched the ostensible photo op […]
American Allies Don’t Trust Trump With Their Secrets Read More »
President Donald Trump’s firing of the country’s most senior military officer on Friday night rattled the foundations of the armed forces. It also intensified an already-furious game of “who’s next” among senior lawmakers and Washington officials, who have been trading
Trump’s Military Purge Has Washington Asking ‘Who’s Next?’ Read More »
This week, CIA personnel came to a “fork in the road.” That’s the official euphemism for a buyout that the Trump administration has offered federal government employees, among them the more than 20,000 who work for the intelligence agency. But
The Spies Are Shown the Door Read More »
“Having the best spies, the best collection systems, and the best analysts will not help an intelligence service if it leaks like a sieve,” the former CIA speechwriter Charles E. Lathrop remarked in The Literary Spy, a book of quotations
DOGE Raises Red Flags for National Security Read More »
In September 2016, the CIA sent a classified memo to the FBI, which was investigating Russian interference in the presidential election. According to Russian intelligence sources, Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to publicly tie Donald Trump to the country’s
How Far Is John Ratcliffe Willing to Go? Read More »
The panic set in just before midnight last Tuesday. “She’s in trouble,” one U.S. intelligence officer fretted as Kamala Harris’s blue wall looked ready to crumble, all but ensuring that Donald Trump would head back to the White House. “This
Trump’s ‘Deep State’ Revenge – The Atlantic Read More »
The panic set in just before midnight last Tuesday. “She’s in trouble,” one U.S. intelligence officer fretted as Kamala Harris’s blue wall looked ready to crumble, all but ensuring that Donald Trump would head back to the White House. “This
Trump’s ‘Deep State’ Revenge – The Atlantic Read More »
In June, Ivan Raiklin, a retired Green Beret and pro–Donald Trump activist, sat down for a chat with Cliven Bundy, a Nevada cattle rancher who instigated an armed standoff with federal authorities in 2014 over his refusal to pay grazing
Trump’s ‘Secretary of Retribution’ – The Atlantic Read More »
In what turned out to be the last few months of Yahya Sinwar’s life, U.S. and Israeli officials worried that the architect of the October 7 attacks might never free the hostages they believed he had hidden in the twisting
The ‘Moment of Chaos’ That Hostage Families Were Waiting For Read More »
