Jonathan Broder

2 weeks ago | spytalk.co | Jonathan Broder

More than two decades after the United States invaded Iraq on the basis of phony evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the growing prospect of another war, this time pitting the U.S., Israel, or both, against Iran over its nuclear program, hovers like a ghost over Washington’s calculations in the Middle East.

2 months ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein |Jonathan Broder

A draft plan to close several American embassies and consulates across a wide swath of sub-Saharan Africa has alarmed U.S. intelligence veterans with deep experience on the continent, one of whom called it “the greatest single threat to the United States and its closest allies in my lifetime.” “By ceding this continent to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and global terrorist organizations, the Trump Administration risks losing inroads that have kept the U.S. intelligence community abreast and...

2 months ago | spytalk.co | Jonathan Broder

After the CIA’s disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the agency was left blind on the communist controlled island, its counter-revolutionary spies and paramilitaries either killed or rounded up, interrogated and imprisoned.

Mar 12, 2025 | spytalk.co | Jonathan Broder

The long-bubbling suspicion that Donald Trump has long been in the pocket of Russian President Valdimir Putin received a fresh supply of ammunition last month when Alnur Mussayev, a former Soviet/Kazakh intelligence chief, alleged on Facebook that the KGB recruited Trump during his Moscow visit in 1987 and gave him the codename “Krasnov.” The allegation, which has not been specifically corroborated, has caught fire on social media, with tens of millions of hits, but remains untouched by...

Feb 28, 2025 | spytalk.co | Jonathan Broder

Veteran U.S. intelligence operatives fear that the recent agreement between the United States and Russia to rebuild their respective embassy and consular staffs as part of a normalization of their long-strained relations will increase the number of Russian spies in the United States at a time when the FBI lacks the resources to monitor their activities.