SpyTalk

Welcome to SpyTalk, now entering its 15th year! Led by Jeff Stein, a talented team of experienced investigative journalists, writers, and experts is ready to give you an inside look at the national security landscape. Look out for our launch in mid-September. You might recognize Jeff from his years as the Spytalk columnist at Newsweek, as well as his previous roles at The Washington Post and Congressional Quarterly, where he was the founding editor of the notable CQ/Homeland Security. This time, Jeff has brought together a remarkable group of seasoned journalists, including Elaine Shannon, known as TIME magazine's “queen of drugs and thugs,” and Peter Eisner, a skilled investigative writer and former deputy foreign editor at The Post, among others.

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New in SpyWeek: More Hegseth Follies and China Spying Worries

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Seth Hettena

HEGSETH LEAKS, KEYSTONE COPS EDITION: The White House isn’t happy with a Pentagon leak investigation after an advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed an aide had been outed by a National Security Agency wiretap. Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Hegseth, was initially blamed for the leak of an allegedly Top Secret document to a reporter that outlined options for the U.S. military to retake the Panama Canal.
Chinese Students Do Pose Security Threat, Former Top CIA Counterspy Says

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Michael Isikoff

In the fall of 2021, the CIA sent a highly unusual top secret cable to its officers around the globe. The agency had been plagued by compromises and sloppy tradecraft, resulting in serious setbacks in some overseas missions, the cable explained.
Now the Day is Over

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein

The Washington Post has an article today about he problems in recruiting agents in the world. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/28/cia-spy-china-russia-ratcliffe/) and considering all I have read recently in sorting out real defectors from fake defectors, I am even more convinced that open source intelligence with an organization that can check it out and understand it, will be the best way to go. But I am open to discussion.
Now the Day is Over

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein

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New in SpyWeek: Murder in the O.E.B.

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein

Slaughter on 17th Street: The White House National Security Council, which lost its director and deputy director over the Signalgate scandal and pressure from far right activist Laura Loomer, shed half its remaining 350 staff members in a mass eviction on Friday.
Death of a Master Manipulator

1 week ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends. Ledeen was featured prominently inThe Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday.
Former Trump CIA Director’s ‘Top Secret’ Memo-for Campaign Cash

2 weeks ago | spytalk.co | Michael Isikoff

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Former Trump CIA Director’s ‘Secret’ Memo-for Campaign Cash

2 weeks ago | spytalk.co | Michael Isikoff

It was an email guaranteed to grab my attention. “A former CIA Director needs you to read this,” read the subject line. I hastily clicked it open, of course, and discovered, much to my surprise, I was being given “exclusive access” to a “secret memo.” A reporter’s dream, even if, as I was instructed, all this was being shared on a “strictly off the record” basis. Alas, the memo didn’t contain any national security secrets.
The Fatal Cost of Twisting Intelligence

2 weeks ago | spytalk.co | Jeff Stein

News that DNI Tulsi Gabbard had fired two senior intelligence officials because their findings on Venezuela had displeased her sent me scurrying for the origin of the phrase, “Don’t kill the messenger.“ Turns out there are lots of strands to its provenance, but one I’m partial to was the story told by Plutarch about an ancient Armenian general, Tigranes, who so disliked a messenger’s word that a Roman general was close on his heels that “he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man dared...
New in SpyWeek: High Drama as Tulsi Nips at CIA, NIC in Bid to Save Agency

3 weeks ago | spytalk.co | Seth Hettena

TULSI’S GAMBIT TO SAVE ODNI: This week brought a flurry of sudden firings and relocations at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, now helmed by former Hawaii Democrat-turned-Trump loyalist Tulsi Gabbard. Officially, it’s all about “deep state leaks” and “politicization,” but let’s be real—that’s just cover. What’s actually happening? Gabbard is in full turf-defense mode, trying to save her office (and her team) as Trump openly toys with scrapping ODNI altogether.