Do you have hot skills doing "detailed social media research and analysis" and "on-the-ground native research and analysis"? Do you like foreign travel? Maybe you're the secret military contractor Uncle Sam needs to mine Twitter and Facebook to "identify violent extremist influences."
Please Help Us Sketch Out Kevin Shields' Brit-Pop Conspiracy Theory

Kevin Shields, the extremely wise and plugged-in founder of fuzz-gods My Bloody Valentine, just dropped a bomb on the British public: Brit-pop—the "Cool Brittania"-era explosion of ghastly, derivative rock'n'roll from the likes of Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and any other number of one-word bands—was in fact a conspiracy…
This Is the NYPD's Secret Spy Cab
In Enemies Within, the new book from Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on the NYPD's indiscriminate and probably illegal spying program, reference is briefly made to a "real yellow cab, complete with an authentic taxi medallion registered under a fake name" used by the…
The NSA Can Search Everybody's Email But Its Own
The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.
The Mystery of Israel's 'Prisoner X'
A byzantine international spy scandal has been unravelling over the past two weeks with no end in sight. It involves double-agents, Mossad assassinations, nuclear sabotage, and the too-good-to-be-true code name "Prisoner X."
Six Degrees of David Petraeus: The Nick Denton Connection
The Petraeus scandal has taken a terrifying turn. The ever-widening circle of dark and shifty characters involved in the CIA sexcapade now includes figures associated with the Lincoln Group, the secretive Iraq and Afghanistan propaganda contractor famous for paying Iraqi newspapers to run fake pro-American news…
Why Has the Other Woman In the Petraeus Sex Scandal Lawyered Up?
Among the many odd, swirling facts surrounding the unfolding David Petraeus scandal: Jill Kelley, the longtime friend of the former CIA director who reportedly went to the FBI complaining of harassing emails from Petraeus' mistress Paula Broadwell, has reacted to the mess by bringing out the scandal equivalent of…
CIA Director David Petraeus Has Resigned, Citing an Extramarital Affair
David Petraeus, the national-security golden-boy who rose from commander of CENTCOM to head of the CIA (and was often mentioned as a potential future GOP presidential candidate), has reportedly resigned, citing an extramarital affair.
New York Times Reporter Gave CIA Flack a Sneak Peek at Maureen Dowd's Column
New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti e-mailed an advance, unpublished copy of a Maureen Dowd column dealing with the CIA to an Agency spokeswoman last year, according to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. Depending on whom at the Times you ask, that was either "much…
Our Pals the Israelis Are Pretending to Be CIA Agents
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So we should all be proud that, according to a Foreign Policy investigation by Mark Perry, Israeli intelligence officers pretended to be CIA agents so they could recruit Pakistani religious fanatics to assassinate Iranians. How sweet.
The Letter a CIA Chief Wrote to His 3-Year-Old Son on Hitler's Personal Stationery
On the day Germany surrendered in 1945, legendary CIA chief Richard Helms—then an officer serving overseas in the OSS—somehow laid hands on some of Adolf Hitler's personal stationery. So naturally he jotted a note to his toddler back in the states about the nature of evil.
This Is What a CIA Black Site Looks Like
The Associated Press' Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman—who have been having a very good year—have tracked down the CIA secret prison where Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other ghost detainees were tortured and interrogated. It's on a residential street in Bucharest (here it is on Google Maps). Its code name was Bright Light.…
Iran Arrests 12 CIA Agents As Beirut Pizza Hut Sits Empty
Earlier this week we learned that Iran and its pal Hezbollah had caught dozens of CIA spies who always met at a super-secret Pizza Hut in Beirut (using the super-secret code word "PIZZA" to communicate meeting times). Now an Iranian parliamentary leader says that 12 of the spies have been arrested and jailed in cells…
Iran and Hezbollah Caught All the CIA Spies at Pizza Hut
The CIA has basically lost its network of spies in Lebanon and suffered a major setback in its efforts to infiltrate Iran, all because it screwed up basic tradecraft—including communicating with spies on trackable cell phones and using the indecipherable code word "PIZZA" to denote planned meetings at a Beirut Pizza…
CIA Won't Give Ex-Agent a Copy of the Book He Wrote Because It's Classified
Former military intelligence officer Anthony Shaffer is suing the Pentagon and the CIA over their extraordinary attempts to censor Operation Dark Heart, the book he wrote recounting his days as a military spy in Afghanistan and elsewhere. One problem he's run into: The government has the original unredacted manuscript…
Lose Your Keys? It Was Probably a Russian Spy
Russian spies have launched a campaign of psychological harassment against U.S. and British diplomats living there, the Guardian reports, by breaking into their homes and moving things around just to fuck with their heads.
Chief of CIA's 'Global Jihad Unit' Revealed Online
The CIA is having trouble keeping its secret agents off the internet. First, it allowed the White House to publish a photograph of the man behind the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. And now the identity of the woman who runs its "Global Jihad Unit"—and who has a long (if pseudonymous) history of being associated…
Fox News Broadcasts Photo of Covert CIA Agent
Fox & Friends hopped into the wayback machine this morning to summon outrage about a post we published 23 days ago. They're angry—like a lot of people—that we pointed to a man in photos distributed by the White House and AP as the likely head of the operation to kill bin Laden. In expressing that anger, they published…