“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Donald Trump Presidential candidate July 27 2016
July 27 2023 — On July 27 2016, Donald Trump crossed the Rubicon when he called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. From that instant on, Trump was at war with the CIA. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“We began talking about the war, which, in the late summer of 1940, was looking most extremely black. Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state. She said that she knew a good deal about munitions and various secret weapons … and that she was thinking seriously of quitting MGM and going to Washington, DC, to offer her services to the newly established Inventors’ Council.”
George Antheil Composer, pianist, inventor
Hedy Lamarr, ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ (ca 1940)
November 9 2024 — Today is the 110th anniversary of Hedy Lamarr’s birth! Often called “The Most Beautiful Woman in Films,” Hedy Lamarr’s beauty and screen presence made her one of the most popular actresses of her time. However, it is less well-known that Lamarr was also an inventor. Along with composer George Antheil, she patented a frequency-hopping system during World War II that later paved the way for technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
A good idea never gets old, and the frequency-hopping system patented by Lamarr and Antheil continues to find new applications. Long before two documents from Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. Intelligence Community was still using Leon Theremin’s brilliant espionage technology, I thought that frequency hopping might offer a powerful way to conceal microwave-based espionage attacks. However, I chose not to speak out at the time for fear that it could inspire harmful uses of the idea by the wrong people. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_Today
“My purpose was… to send a signal that the United States was prepared to replace the animosity between [the U.S. and Iran] with a new relationship… At the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our relationship. The most significant step which Iran could take, we indicated, would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages held there.”
US President Ronald Reagan (November 13 1986)
November 3 2024 — On November 3 1986, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the Iran–Contra scandal. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped, thereby, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua while at the same time negotiating the release of several U.S. hostages. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress. This affair is usually regarded as one of the most important scandals in US modern history. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Maybe you’re mistaken–maybe this first part of the Kryptos code is really not a polyalphabetic Vigenere Tableau after all — maybe it’s a different type of code entirely. Or maybe it is a Vigenere code, but it’s been double or triple encoded — or maybe it was encoded backwards.”
David Stein CIA analyst Directorate of Intelligence
November 3 2023 — Kryptos is a sculpture by the American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia. Of the four parts of the message, the first three have been solved. The last part of the message remains as one of the most famous unsolved code in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Governments lie. They do it all the time. And, much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the US government is no exception.”
Ted Koppel “The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War.” ABC News July 1, 1992
October 31 2023 — Time really flies when you are having fun… On this day seven years ago, I announced that I would start a rather long series regarding Suspicious Aviation Tragedies. I will take this opportunity to look back and reflect on what we have learned during these years. I will also speculate on what we may hope to find out in the near future. Finally, I will provide a few words of advice regarding the matters that still need additional work. Remember: Truth never dies. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Hemingway may have said ‘yes’ to the Soviet recruitment pitch, but unless there is some additional trove of material in the NKVD archives that argues otherwise, it is clear Hemingway was never a productive Soviet agent.”
CIA website — Intelligence in Literature and Media
American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) working at a portable table while on a big game hunt in Kenya, September 1952. (Photo by Earl Theisen/Getty Images)
October 28 2024 — On October 28 1954, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Ernest Miller Hemingway “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” Hemingway was aware of his long surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, who were suspicious of his links with Cuba, and it has been argued that this surveillance may have pushed him to the brink. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“The bravery of these two men cannot be overstated. Chris and Chief put the lives of others ahead of their own. That is heroism defined.”
George J. Tenet Director of Central Intelligence (May 2004)
October 25 2024 — Mueller and Carlson were paramilitary contractors from Special Activities Division, killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on October 25, 2003. On May 21, 2004, these officers’ stars were dedicated at the CIA memorial ceremony. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“I heard one day that one of our local operations had gone awry, that a helicopter had been forced to make an emergency landing, hurting someone in the process. It turned out to be much worse than that. Dave had been horribly burned by a white phosphorous grenade. It was a windy day, and the helicopter pilot had apparently requested that a smoke grenade be thrown to show him wind direction as he landed in a small area. A white phosphorous grenade had been used by mistake.”
A friend of Dave Lee Konzelman David
October 24, 2024 — David Lee Konzelman died on October 24, 1971, at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from injuries sustained on September 13, 1971. The injuries occurred when a phosphorus grenade exploded in his hand while he was serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“Though he never said so explicitly, President Ronald Reagan ended America’s military commitment to a strategic mistake that was peripheral to America’s interests. Three-and-a-half months after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. military personnel — and after repeatedly pledging not to do so — Reagan ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Lebanon.”
Foreign Policy
October 23 2024 — The Beirut barracks bombings were terrorist attacks that occurred on October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces — members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon (MNF) — killing 241 U.S. and 58 French servicemen, six civilians, and the two suicide bombers. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
“And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets.”
I explain a few things Pablo Neruda
October 21 2024 — Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician. On October 21 2018, The Spy Museum tweeted: “Today in #SpyHistory – The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to former KGB agent and Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, 1971.” Really? Where is the evidence that Neruda was a KGB agent? Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
