Many years ago, my husband and I bought a single-engine Piper 180 airplane. He’d go out to the small airport 30 minutes from our house, expand his piloting skills and get a break from his high-pressure job as an intelligence officer. Yes, it’s fairly expensive to own...
Need Father's Day ideas? How about a couple of thrilling spy reads? As a retired CIA officer, I can vouch for the authenticity of each book on this list. Well-crafted, spine-tingling action, authentic details that comes from a deep well of research and/or personal...
Eighty years ago, a dead British naval officer named Bill Martin washed up on a Spanish beach. He was a landing craft expert with a fiancée named Pam. They'd gone to the theater in London a few days before his plane crashed in the Atlantic with no survivors. Based on...
I took multiple polygraph tests during my 30-year career as an intelligence officer with the CIA. The theory behind the poly is that basic bodily functions (breathing, heart rate, etc) react if you lie. Every test followed the same procedure. I sat in a comfortable...
As fallout over the firing of Fox New anchor Tucker Carlson and CNN’s Don Lemon continues to percolate, I recall the Cold War techniques to decode the news used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was never solely about spies meeting in dark alleys. Consider...