Spy Talk

Charlie Sheen, Anna Chapman marry, flee in UFO

Jeff Stein — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:47:20 EST

Now that I have your search-engine’s attention …

Thank you, thank you very much, dear readers, for spending another year with me at SpyTalk.

Alas, however, SpyTalk is going dark.

It’s time to get off the blogging hamster wheel, at least for awhile. I'll be elsewhere in The Post from time to time, as well as other media outside the company, but the daily deal here is done.

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Green Berets should take over Army some day soon

Jeff Stein — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:41:39 EST

Nearly 10 years after U.S. special operations troops rode horses into battle on the Afghan plains, one might think that the brass hats at the top of the Army would include a Green Beret.

But one would be wrong, as a military friend pointed out to me today. It’s true that Gen. David Petraeus and his two top guys in Afghanistan, generals David Rodriguez and William Caldwell, are career airborne officers — the jumping-off point for a career in the Rangers and Special Forces.

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Couples, CIA-style

Jeff Stein — Fri, 4 Mar 2011 17:29:35 EST

Robert Baer, whose CIA exploits and exasperations in the Middle East were immortalized in the 2005 George Clooney thriller “Syriana,” has a new role: conjugal co-author.

“The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story,” Baer’s fifth book, is his first written with his wife, Dayna, a CIA security specialist. They met during a covert mission in Sarajevo in 1994.

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Spy bloggers not ‘friending’ U.S. targets, Centcom says

Jeff Stein — Wed, 2 Mar 2011 13:31:02 EST

The U.S. Central Command says its new “Persona” social media "infiltration" software is designed to cozy up to extremist bloggers overseas, not law-abiding Americans chatting on Facebook or similar sites.

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Gaddafi poison-gas videos fakes or frauds

Jeff Stein — Tue, 1 Mar 2011 14:55:00 EST

You Tube videos purporting to show Moammar Gaddafi’s preparations for using chemical weapons on protesters are either crude propaganda or the product of Libyans who simply don’t know what they are looking at--or both, experts say.

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Libya's poison gas unaffected by turmoil, official says

Jeff Stein — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:30:46 EST

A senior administration official said Monday that the White House had no reason to believe the current turmoil in Libya has made its chemical weapons stockpiles more vulnerable to theft.

Experts believe that Libya destroyed about 3,300 bombshells designed to carry mustard and sarin gas chemicals years ago, as part of its deal to end decades of economic and diplomatic isolation with the West.

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Musa Kusa, Libya's ‘envoy of death,’ escapes UN sanctions list

Jeff Stein — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:39:14 EST

Musa Kusa, the Libyan foreign minister who became known as “the envoy of death,” is not on the United Nations sanctions list, a notable omission that has lit up the exile tweetersphere.

Kusa earned the grisly moniker years ago for his role in assassinating and kidnapping opposition figures abroad. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Kusa, Gadaffi’s intelligence chief at the time, was directed to cooperate with the CIA on terrorism. The U.S.-educated Kusa reprised the role when the strongman decided to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction programs in exchange for lifting sanctions against the country for its role in the 1989 downing of PanAm Flight 103.

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