Full Prof at James Madison University & Director of Intelligence Analysis program. Editor of journal Intelligence & National Security. Former CIA analyst

Harrisonburg, VA
Joined July 2022
New in SpyWeek: Ratcliffe’s Tightrope, Hegseth’s Spy Plans, Iran’s Retaliation Plots, CIA Contractor Arrest , by @SpyTalker open.substack.com/pub/spytal…
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This is the definition of informational dysfunction: not sending inconvenient info up the chain. It’s exactly what US intel assessments found about Russia pre-Ukraine invasion.
"The director won’t protect even our most respected analysts when they tell hard truths, so they stopped telling them and learned to avoid topics the White House didn’t want to hear,” newly retired CIA official tells @shaneharris theatlantic.com/national-sec…
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"The director won’t protect even our most respected analysts when they tell hard truths, so they stopped telling them and learned to avoid topics the White House didn’t want to hear,” newly retired CIA official tells @shaneharris theatlantic.com/national-sec…
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Some truth here. Every CIA case officer would agree (seriously). I used to take taxis in the middle east sometimes for hours at a time and using different drivers to practice my (very mediocre) language skills, maybe during a SDR or too 😏, and to get an unscientific but quite valuable idea of some street sentiment. Was always worried I was missing what was happening by being isolated in diplomatic quarter crowd. Hit the streets, and taxi drivers were helpful. So yes, ask your driver what’s up in their country!
If you want to know what life is really like somewhere, talk to a taxi driver. Mine to Malaga airport has lived in Marbella 20 years, drives an uber part time and works as a bouncer at one of the top clubs by night. In one ride I got housing, prices, schools, jobs, and stories I definitely can't post here.
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Some travel with the team this week; gives me an opportunity to catch up on some much-needed reading!
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The middle class was a 50-year fluke designed to stop communism during the Cold War. The threat is gone, so the elites are taking it apart. You're not falling behind. You're being pushed back into peasantry.
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welcome to life kids, here’s your screen. you absolutely have to learn how to use this thing because your entire professional and social life will be plugged into it. just don’t get lost in the infinite addiction portal that is also on there for some reason haha ok kids have fun
This is an incredible project: NBC News asked parents to check their kids' YouTube history during school hours — and the results show kids are spending huge chunks of the day watching videos that have nothing to do with learning nbcnews.com/specials/hooked-…
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George Lucas’s told David Prowse he owed him nothing for playing Darth Vader on Return of the Jedi. The film grossed $475 million on a $32.5 million budget. The 6-foot-six actor who physically played Darth Vader across the trilogy was left with zero backend residuals. In the video below, recorded 30 years later, Prowse notes that the last time he spoke to Lucas was at the end of Jedi in 1983, right before the invitations stopped. Across the 3 films of the 1977–1983 trilogy, the 47 year old actor spoke every single line inside the heavy suit on set. He only found out his voice was dubbed by James Earl Jones while sitting in the theater on premiere night with 0 advance warning from the studio. When he demanded his percentage, letters claimed the film turned £0 in net profit. In 2010, exactly 27 years after release, Lucasfilm cut him off completely over public disputes, sealing his bitterness in a 2011 memoir before his death in 2020 leaving behind a cold, unbending ledger: $475 million box office. $32.5 million budget. £0 in residuals. The suit became a multi-billion-dollar icon. His voice was replaced. His residual never arrived. Look at the facts. A multi-billion-dollar franchise built on his back, and £0 to show for it. Standard accounting, or a calculated corporate erasure?
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GenX didn't grow up with safe spaces. We grew up with dodgeballs flying at our heads at 40 mph while the PE teacher smoked a cigarette.
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Before 9/11, CIA repeatedly retained intelligence on Mihdhar and Hazmi even as the FBI was trying to connect them to AQ. The new evidence on the Saudi-linked network around them makes that pattern more consequential... full paper here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…
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Closing our "25 Years Decoded: NSA & 9/11" series: NSA Deputy Director Tim Kosiba recounts working in a forensic lab on 9/11, the instant shift to protecting families, the rise of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), and his pledge to keep “never again” alive. Learn more. #25YearsDecoded #NSAstories #WeWillNeverForget
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How to read a professor's door
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Sources: Meir Zamir, “The role of MI6 in Egypt’s decision to go to war against Israel in May 1948,” Intelligence and National Security 34:6 (2019) (tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1…) Zamir’s article in Haaretz, September 14, 2014 (“U.K. Intel Encouraged Arab Armies to Invade Israel in 1948”) (haaretz.com/2014-09-14/ty-ar…) French-Syrian documents summarized in Jewish Virtual Library, “French Intel on British Support for Arabs Influences Jews’ Decision to Declare Independence.” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org/fre…) Ben-Gurion’s diaries and Maurice Fischer’s Paris reports track the same warnings from July 1947 through May 12, 1948. Glubb Pasha’s own book: A Soldier with the Arabs.
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“…the book complements in useful and sometimes surprising ways well-known previous studies, from Fred Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon to Inderjeet Parmar’s Foundations of the American Century.” @fmkaplan @USEmpire @Georgetown_UP
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