the CIA

A trail of dirty money

19 August 2023 9:00 am

In 2015, a dedicated DEA agent pursues a Mafia capo involved in a vast cocaine shipment, a Hezbollah militia leader and an elaborate Middle Eastern arms-trafficking ring

Russia’s long history of smears, sabotage and barefaced lies

12 August 2023 9:00 am

Mark Hollingsworth describes how the KGB became the world’s most industrious conspiracy-theory factory, with its agents of influence dedicated to sowing maximum confusion

Behind the Five Eyes intelligence alliance

30 July 2022 9:00 am

In February 1941 four US officers were landed from a British warship at Sheerness, bundled into vehicles and driven to…

From salivating dogs to mass indoctrination: Pavlov’s sinister legacy

25 September 2021 9:00 am

Peter Pomeranzev describes the refinement of thought-control techniques over the past century – and the worldwide competition to employ them

Hubris, blunders and lies characterised the war in Afghanistan from the start

28 August 2021 9:00 am

There was certainly no shortage of excellent advice about war in Afghanistan offered to many American leaders by many people over many years, says Justin Marozzi

Rumbles in the jungle

26 August 2017 9:00 am

A CIA agent, a naive young filmmaker, a dilettante heir and a lost Mayan temple form the basis of Ned…

An innocent abroad defies South Africa’s insane colour code

16 May 2015 9:00 am

At the eye of apartheid South Africa’s storm of insanities was a mania for categorisation. Everything belonged in its place,…

Gyalo Thondup (right) pictured with the Dalai Lama on their arrival in India in 1959

From diplomacy to disillusion with the Dalai Lama’s big brother

18 April 2015 9:00 am

Can there ever have been another book in which one of the authors (Anne Thurston in this case) so effectively…

The gripping story of the failed NKVD officer who fooled the FBI and the CIA

21 February 2015 9:00 am

This is not quite another story about a man who never was. But it is about a man who certainly…