I rarely discuss hot potato topics, but this week it became painfully clear that the CIA I joined in 1985 is not the CIA of today. the nonpartisan rule I entered on duty the day after Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. At that time, it was made crystal clear to me...
You saw it here first. I'm finally writing a spy thriller. Well, part of one. Spy-sourced thriller I've been invited to contribute a chapter to a spy thriller that tackles Havana Syndrome. Different chapters will be written by former CIA officers, many of whom like me...
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...
We sometimes learn--or relearn--life lessons in unexpected places. I recently joined 14 women creatives at a gathering hosted by award-winning writer and filmmaker Rebekah Iliff at Free Dreaming Farm in Springfield, TN. The gathering followed the tragic shooting in...
You’ve been granted a tour of the original Central Intelligence Agency headquarters building outside Washington, DC. Pass the statue of Nathan Hale as you walk through the big glass doors of the front entrance. Try not to gawk. Once inside, the Great Seal stretches...
Elon Musk hardly needs an introduction these days, but here goes. He’s the richest man in the world, has a droll sense of humor, is a naturalized US citizen (born in South Africa) and has 7 children. Founder of blazing-into-the-future companies Tesla and SpaceX, on 30...
Chris Reed, deputy editorial and opinion editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, recently wrote a piece entitled “Add Mexico to Afghanistan, Iraq to list of nations U.S. has severely wronged.” I was surprised to find that the article centered on the views of Don...
On his radio show National Security This Week, thriller author and former US military intel officer Jon Olson asked me why I'd specialized in Western Hemisphere issues as an intelligence officer. Related: National Security this Week broadcast Build things and Fix...
I had a retirement photo opportunity with then-CIA Director John Brennan. He greeted me with a CIA keepsake coin and a firm handshake. We posed for the photographer and chatted for a minute about favorite assignments over my 30 year career. He asked me what I...
Before retiring, I took a seminar about transitioning to the private sector. All the students were fellow CIA intelligence officers. At one point, somebody raised a hand and said what everybody was thinking: “I’ve been an intelligence officer my entire professional...
What did I do? Whenever I’m asked, “What did you do in the CIA?” I’m a bit stuck. There’s no good snappy answer. I did a variety of things, many of which can't be defined in layman's terms. One of the reasons for such a varied career was that I was balancing work and...
FLYING Several years ago, my husband got his private pilot’s license and we owned a small Piper aircraft. Our son was in kindergarten and promptly fell in love with all things aviation. This rubbed off on me. Our family was soon immersed in flying stories, books about...
What the heck is OSINT My resume includes this line: OSINT Analyst/Editor, Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Wrote, edited, and briefed analytical conclusions and OSINT reporting content to all levels of inter-and intra-agency audiences. OSINT is shorthand for...
Competing Motivations As happened so many times over the course of a 30-year CIA career, I was either a participant or an observer in a dialogue. Not the conversation that happens when you are both talking about the same thing or want the same thing, but a...
CIA career During my 30-year CIA career, it was always impressed upon me that we were stewards of the taxpayer’s money. With that in mind, there was effort to make sure the CIA and sister agencies got value for the money when it came to intelligence collection....
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