The Washington Times updates us on the latest with former colleague Russ Tice: Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by…

Just in case you thought CIA officers were in danger of not being able to set foot in Rome any time soon . . . The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. – because it would tend to support President Bush’s use of NSA domestic surveillance,…

I really enjoy reading William Arkin’s Early Warning blog. Our opinions on the intel business don’t always jibe (96Bs and 98Cs will never get along all that well) but in his latest post he hits what I think is a home run: And sorry for being cynical, but when I lived in Washington, from 1978-1993,…

Very clever. Makes me wish I’d kept up my script-writing skillz. http://www.applefritter.com/bannedbooks

Thomas Joscelyn writes in the Weekly Standard about James Risen and his sources: On NBC’s “Today” show this morning, New York Times scribe Jim Risen told Katie Couric that he hopes he will not have to reveal his sources to a grand jury and declared his story to be the exact opposite of the Plame…

Given my background I may be slightly biased, but I’ve never been a big fan of leakers of classified information. The whole point of keeping stuff classified is that it isn’t supposed to be out on the front page of the NY Times. That we tend to over-classify things is another issue. The bottom line…

From Newsday: Letters home filled with tales of death and danger, bravery and boredom are a wartime certainty. And now, as hundreds of soldiers overseas have started keeping Internet journals about the heat, the homesickness, the bloodshed, word speeds from the battlefront faster than ever. More and more, though, U.S. military commanders in Iraq and…

And they said that no one from the JTF would ever amount to anything:   The spookiest venture capital firm on the planet has hired a new CEO. In-Q-Tel – the CIA’s venture capital unit – has tapped Amit Yoran as the successor to Gilman Louie, according to a report in the Washington Business Journal.…

Such an effort is almost a waste of time (almost) since you’re starting long after the gun has gone off, but it is a nice way to reboot the mental OS out of hibernation and get back into the swing of things. So, where to begin?This gem from Reuters is a nice starting point: A…

. . . another reason why the polygraph isn’t a very good tool for screening out potential spies and leakers: Clearly the people who are leaking about Plame, the rendition program, NSA interceptions, etc. are in positions that require periodic testing. Either their kung fu is so strong they can’t be accurately read by the…