21 articles
Ali Soufan (علي سوفان)
Ali Soufan, also known as Ali H. Soufan, is a Lebanese American former FBI special agent who investigated al-Qaeda, interrogated key detainees after 9/11, and wrote The Black Banners.
Constantine Dobrowolski
Constantine Dobrowolski (1906–1944?), Red Army artillery captain who defected to Nazi Germany in August 1941, became 'Agent 30' and 'the Butcher' in Chernihiv, and was grandfather of MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli.
David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims
David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims: 2022 ICIG complaint and July 2023 House testimony by a former USAF major alleging secret UAP crash-retrieval programs; Pentagon and AARO found no supporting evidence.
Death of Gareth Williams
The death of Gareth Williams, a Welsh GCHQ codebreaker on secondment to MI6, remains unexplained after he was found in a locked holdall in his London flat in 2010.
Elizabeth Hanson (CIA officer)
Elizabeth Curry Hanson (1979-2009), American CIA targeting officer from Rockford, Illinois, Colby College class of 2002; joined CIA 2005, hunted al-Qaeda leaders including bin Laden, killed in the December 30, 2009 Camp Chapman suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan.
Gina Bennett
Gina Bennett, retired CIA counterterrorism analyst and University of Virginia 1988 graduate, authored the 1993 first warning about Osama bin Laden, built the interagency al Qaeda working group, and stayed at Langley on 9/11.
Gregory Coleman (FBI special agent)
Gregory Coleman, retired FBI special agent (served 1989–2015) who led the Jordan Belfort/Stratton Oakmont securities fraud investigation, portrayed by Kyle Chandler in The Wolf of Wall Street; now founder of Coleman Worldwide Advisors.
Hanns Scharff
Hanns Joachim Scharff (1907–1992), Luftwaffe master interrogator at Auswertestelle West who questioned over 500 Allied pilots without coercion; his friendly, knowledge-illusion methods became the experimentally studied Scharff technique.
Igor Gouzenko
Igor Gouzenko was a Soviet cipher clerk in Ottawa who defected in 1945 with documents exposing a Soviet spy network, often called the start of the Cold War.
James R. Fitzgerald
James R. Fitzgerald, retired FBI supervisory special agent, criminal profiler, and forensic linguist known for the Unabomber manifesto analysis; also called Jim "Fitz" Fitzgerald, first FBI-trained forensic linguist.
Joan Clarke
Joan Clarke, full name Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray (1917–1996), was an English mathematician who broke German naval Enigma codes at Bletchley Park during World War II.
John Beieler
John Beieler is an American computational political scientist who works on automated political event data and was named the intelligence community's first Chief AI Officer in 2024.
John Kiriakou
John Chris Kiriakou is an American former CIA officer who became the first to confirm publicly, in 2007, that the agency waterboarded detainees under the terror-war interrogation program.
Katharine Gun
Katharine Gun, GCHQ Mandarin translator and whistleblower, leaked the 2003 NSA Koza memo asking GCHQ to spy on six UN Security Council delegations before the Iraq war vote; her Official Secrets Act prosecution collapsed in 2004.
Malcolm Nance
Malcolm Wrightson Nance (born 1961) is an American retired Navy senior chief cryptologist, counterterrorism author, MSNBC analyst, and 2022 Ukrainian Foreign Legion volunteer; author of Defeating ISIS and The Plot to Destroy Democracy.
Michael Scheuer
Michael Scheuer, former CIA analyst and chief of the bin Laden unit Alec Station (1995/1996-1999), author of Imperial Hubris (2004) under the pseudonym Anonymous, resigned from the CIA in November 2004 to criticize U.S. counterterrorism policy.
Miles Taylor (security expert)
Miles Taylor, American national security expert and former DHS chief of staff (2019), author of the anonymous 2018 New York Times 'Resistance' op-ed and book A Warning, revealed October 2020; targeted by Trump's April 2025 clearance memorandum.
Mordechai Vanunu (מרדכי ואנונו)
Mordechai Vanunu (מרדכי ואנונו), Israeli former Dimona nuclear technician born 1954 in Morocco, revealed Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in 1986, was abducted by Mossad in Rome, served 18 years including 11 in solitary, and remains under annually renewed movement and speech restrictions since his 2004 release.
Peter Wright (MI5 officer)
Peter Wright was a British former assistant director of MI5, the service's first scientist, known for Spycatcher, his 1987 memoir the Thatcher government spent years trying to suppress.
Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb (1918-1999), American biochemist and head of the CIA's Technical Services Division, ran the MKULTRA mind-control and LSD experimentation program (authorized 1953), later destroyed its records in 1973 and testified to the Church Committee.
William O'Neal (informant)
William O'Neal (1949–1990), FBI informant, infiltrated the Illinois Black Panther Party as Fred Hampton's security chief, supplied the apartment floor plan used in the December 4, 1969 raid that killed Hampton and Mark Clark, was exposed in 1973, and died in 1990.