As part of an unprecedented clampdown on security leaks instated by the Obama administration, John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, has been charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists. According to a report in The LA Times, 47-year-old Kiriakou, who worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, has been charged [...]

News about an Iranian court sentencing an alleged American spy to death is now hitting the mainstream media like a storm. However, the blog IntelNews.org covered the story weeks ago, when writer Joseph Fitsanakis reported on the release of the video tape by the Iranians of Amir Mirzaei Hekmati admitting that he was a CIA [...]

The severity and the extent of the CIA’s involvement with Nazi war criminals has remained undisclosed for years, with the U.S. Department of Justice stifling masses of pages and documents of a frank and open history of how the U.S. government collaborated and even protected Nazis. In 2005, the National Security Archive finally posted formerly [...]

In 1997, the IC community held the first “National Colloquium on International Systems Security Education (NCISSE). In 1998, the National Security Agency established a program to identify Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence – colleges and universities capable of educating students in computer security and other IC skills. Since then, other IC agencies established similar [...]

On September 22, 2011, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates received the National Constitution Center’s 2011 Liberty Medal to honor of his five decades of service. Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W. Bush as Director of Central Intelligence. [...]

The post World War Two power struggle saw the development of strange and even dangerous interrogation tactics. Hypnosis, drugging and torture became common experiments among the KGB, other Eastern Bloc communist countries and the United States. According to a CIA report, the pro-Communist sentiments expressed by an American released from Communist prisons led the American [...]

On August 11, Clair E. George, C.I.A.’s deputy director of operations for three years of the Reagan administration and central figure in the Iran-Contra Affair, died of cardiac arrest at the age of 81. As the third in command of the C.I.A, George was responsible for clandestine activities across the globe. One of his specialties [...]

In 2006, New York Times reporter James Risen released his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. The book chronicles the missteps and oversteps of U.S. intelligence, which range from illegal wiretapping and secret prisons, to a blatant misinformation campaign. Since its release, the book has received great [...]

A former CIA agent, Glenn Carle, has written a controversial memoir enlightening readers of his time spent at “Hotel California”, where he was ordered to torture a prisoner using a method known as “psychological dislocation”. It was a man he believed to be innocent. So controversial is Carle’s book that, for the past two years, [...]

The National Security Archive at George Washington University produced an important documentary chronicling the history of human rights abuses and torture at Guantanamo Bay. In 2004, photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison at Guantanamo Bay went public, sparking international outrage. The National Security Archive compiled hundreds of pages of documents and spent 8 [...]