“Cretton [Real name : Swiss Inspector Hans Knaus] expressed his concerns (…) The first was that the CIA had planted the chip [PT/35(b)] in the wreckage found at Lockerbie. [Detective Superintendant (SIO) Stuart] Henderson and I told him this thought had also crossed our minds. Neither of us believed the CIA or any government official would do such a thing, but we had discussed the possibility.”
FBI Agent Richard Marquise
Dick Marquise (Patrick J Adams); DS Ed McCusker (Connor Swindells); Tom McCulloch (Kevin McKidd) (Image: Mark Mainz/BBC/Netflix)
March 28 2025 — The BBC and Netflix have released first-look pictures of The Bombing of Pan Am 103, the forthcoming drama based on the “true story of the bombing of a passenger flight over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988” and the quest to bring the perpetrators to justice. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Today we pay tribute to fallen officer Robert W. Brown Jr., who died in the line of duty in February 1968. Although his sacrifice has long been honored as a star on the wall, his name was only made public during this year’s annual Memorial Ceremony on June 6 [2025].”
Central Intelligence Agency Facebook (June 24, 2025)
June 25, 2025 — In a recent post about the CIA Memorial Wall, I pointed out that the numbers quoted by the CIA director don’t add up. Getting the math right might seem like a small detail — but when it comes to honoring fallen officers, precision, like truth, matters. Unfortunately, the CIA’s latest release isn’t an improvement. According to the agency, U.S. Marine Captain Robert “Bob” Wilson Brown’s sacrifice has long been honored with a star on the wall. That is simply not true. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Today we pay tribute to fallen officer Robert W. Hubbard, who died in the line of duty in February 1968. Although his sacrifice has long been honored as a star on the wall, his name was only made public during this year’s annual Memorial Ceremony on June 6 [2025].”
Central Intelligence Agency Facebook (June 23, 2025)
June 24, 2025 — In my last post about the CIA Memorial Wall, I pointed out that the numbers quoted by the CIA director don’t add up. Getting the math right might seem like a small detail — but when it comes to honoring fallen officers, precision, like truth, matters. Unfortunately, the CIA’s latest release isn’t an improvement. According to the agency, U.S. Marine Captain Robert Walker Hubbard’s sacrifice has long been honored with a star on the wall. That is simply not true. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“There have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed—usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors—and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.”
Edward Luttwak
Dr A. Q. Khan
May 3 2017 — If this story is a CIA success, what does a CIA failure look like? In his first public speech, CIA Director Mike Pompeo told his audience that one the CIA’s great successes was to shut down the A. Q. Khan’s nuclear network. As often with Mike Pompeo, that statement needs a bit of “Facts Checking”. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“History will one day have its say. It will not be the history that will be taught in Brussels, Washington, Paris or the United Nations, but the history which will be taught in the countries that have won freedom from colonialism and its puppets.”
Patrice Lumumba
Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba with UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1960. (Photo: Ben Martin / Getty)
June 22, 2025 — On June 17, 2025, the Belgian federal prosecutor formally requested the prosecution of Étienne Davignon, former diplomat and powerful figure in Belgian and European circles, for his alleged role in the illegal arrest and transfer of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. At 92 years old, Davignon may soon face trial for events that took place at the very start of his career — and at the violent dawn of Congolese independence.
The charges are striking: “unlawful detention and transfer of a prisoner of war,” deprivation of a fair trial, and “humiliating and degrading treatment.” While the accusation stops short of naming Davignon as complicit in Lumumba’s execution on January 17, 1961, it breaks a long-held taboo — publicly implicating a senior Belgian official in the Cold War-era operation that led to the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister.
But as the Lumumba case finally inches toward a courtroom, another unresolved death from the same geopolitical storm looms in the background: Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General who died under suspicious circumstances in a plane crash on September 18, 1961 near Ndola. Are we finally approaching a moment of accountability — not only for colonial crimes, but for the covert decisions that shaped post-independence Africa? Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Bernard Kalb resigned today as chief spokesman for Secretary of State George P. Shultz in protest of the government’s disinformation program directed at Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.”
Los Angeles Times (Oct. 8, 1986)
April 14 1986 — Reagan Strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi
April 5 2025 — In a piece published by the Washington Post on April 7 2017, Amber Phillips wrote that President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 bombing raid on Tripoli and Benghazi was retaliation for the 1988 attack on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. At the time, I would have bet the farm that this would be the most idiotic story ever reported by the Washington Post. On February 11 2020, Greg Miller taught me a good lesson: ‘The worst is — always — yet to come.” Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Basic values paradoxically lead to their own decline through the accumulation of wealth and possessions.”
Robert K. Merton The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action (1936)
June 20, 2025 — The law of unintended consequences describes how deliberate actions — especially by governments — often lead to outcomes that sharply diverge from their original intentions. These consequences may be beneficial, harmful, or entirely unrelated. While economists and sociologists have long understood this, politicians often fail to anticipate it. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Prior to launching strikes on Iran, Israel shared intelligence with the United States… However, U.S. intelligence officials were unconvinced, seeing it instead as a continuation of research halted since 2003.”
Wall Street Journal June 18, 2025
On the same page? “President Trump and I actually agree on the need to stop these wasteful regime change wars… We just disagree on how to lead.” — Tulsi Gabbard
June 18, 2025 — Former President Donald Trump made no secret of his deep distrust for the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence establishment. Throughout his first term, he clashed with officials over everything from Russian election interference to the supposed threat of Iran. So, when Trump nominated former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, the move shocked many—but also made a certain kind of sense. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Exactly the same forensic scientists who produced the wrongful conviction of Guiseppe Conlon, the Maguire family and of Danny McNamee, and had been stood down for the role they played. Yet here they were. Without them, there wouldn’t have been a prosecution, far less a conviction in Lockerbie. (…) What shocked me most was that I thought that all that had been gone through on Guildford and Birmingham, the one thing that had been achieved was that nobody would be convicted again on bad science. But yet in the Lockerbie case, it isn’t just the same bad science, it is the same bad scientists.”
Gareth Peirce — Solicitor for the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six
In the Name of the Father is a 1993 Irish-British-American biographical courtroom drama film co-written and directed by Jim Sheridan. It is based on the true life story of the Guildford Four, four people falsely convicted of the 1974 IRA’s Guildford pub bombings, which killed four off-duty British soldiers and a civilian.
July 10 2017 — A self-confessed IRA bomb maker who has said he was part of the group responsible for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings has issued an apology. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Only a month after arriving, Bill was killed by bombs that two young boys tossed into a café. He was not the intended target. A promising young officer, a promising young life, taken in error. Taken because Bill Boteler was ready to go to a place of hazard for his country. He is one of the original 31 stars.”
Heroes – William Pierce Boteler (CIA Website)
June 16, 2025 — William P. Boteler was fatally injured by a bomb blast at the `Little Soho’ restaurant in Nicosia, Cyprus. He succumbed to his injuries a few hours later, at the age of 26. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today
