CIA

Curious minds tend to be interested in various things, from plants and animals to laws of physics and ballet, among others. That’s why seeing netizens delve deeper into another random topic nowadays is becoming far less surprising, yet not less interesting.Take the discussion started by ‘sceneybeanie’, for example. The user asked members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community about the craziest declassified CIA documents, and apparently, quite a few redditors had something to share. Scroll down to find their answers on the list…

This year, long-time contributor Sankar Ray (7 January 1941-21 February 2023) moved on to greater, better Books pages in the unknown beyond. Ray, who lived in Kolkata, reviewed a range of books for Hindustan Times tackling those to do with the environment, pandemics, the CIA, politics, slave rebellions and Marxism with equal erudition. Every review he wrote displayed the depth of his knowledge and the breadth of his reading and his contributions enriched the Books page immensely. Sankar Ray (Courtesy the subject)…

The London-based investigative journalists whose earlier books include The Exile, Deception and The Siege, lays bare the US official policy of torture or “Enhanced Interrogation” as the CIA calls it. This book focuses on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a stateless Palestinian, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and was held six months after 9/11 and accused of being number three in the Al-Qaida. Tortured in custody, two decades on, he continues to remain imprisoned in Guantanamo, “incommunicado forever”, without being charged with…

It was in 1975, when Carl Resnikoff and his girlfriend, Judith Gipson, took a bucolic ferry ride to Sausalito, a city located on the north end of Golden Gate Bridge, that a revolution in youth culture, music, emotion and imagination would take place. It was on that ride that the two undergraduates took capsules filled with MDMA powder for the very first time. Resnikoff, a biophysics major at Berkeley, had synthesized the drug himself. As the boat cut through the water of the San Francisco Bay, Gipson began to feel “a…

High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens. They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics,…

CIA thriller ‘Amateur’ gets Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson on its cast ( Photo Credit – IANS ) Actors Holt McCallany and Julianne Nicholson are the newest additions to the cast of ‘Amateur’, the CIA thriller that Rami Malek is leading for 20th Century Studios. The actors join an ensemble that will also include Rachel Brosnahan, Caitriona Balfe, Laurence Fishburne and Adrian Martinez, as previously announced, reports Deadline. Based on a novel by Robert Littell, Amateur tells the story of Charles Heller (Malek), a…

On February 26th officials from the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, came to a striking conclusion. Their own agents in Belarus had defied orders and attacked a Russian surveillance plane earlier that day. American spies were listening in. They noted the morsel of intelligence in a highly classified slide on the war in Ukraine circulated by America’s joint staff on March 1st. Within days that report, and 50 others, had been printed off and uploaded to the internet. It appears to be America’s most serious…

Oscar-winning actor Nicole Kidman has signed on to star in writer-producer Taylor Sheridan`s upcoming CIA drama `Lioness`. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a USA-based entertainment news outlet, the new show is "based on a real-life CIA program and follows Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a rough-around-the-edges but passionate young Marine recruited to join the CIA`s Lioness Engagement Team to help bring down a terrorist organization from within." Kidman will be seen playing Kaitlyn Meade, the CIA`s senior…

Whenever the CIA lends its expertise to a film or television production, there’s a 99 percent likelihood that the project in question requires intimate knowledge of how the organization works, or there are technical advisors ensuring the filmmakers keep things as realistic as possible. That extra one percent is there for a reason, though, which is where How the Grinch Stole Christmas comes in. Star Jim Carrey came perilously close to quitting the festive blockbuster due to the rigors of getting in and out of costume,…

At this point in time, it is safe to assume that the Bourne franchise is dead in the water. After a near-perfect initial trilogy, the series began to wobble with 2012’s The Bourne Legacy, a bizarre wish-fulfilment fantasy that answered the perpetually unasked question: “What if Jason Bourne, but Hawkeye?” 2016’s Jason Bourne was an attempt to right the ship, bringing back Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, but it floundered because it forgot to have a plot or any discernible point. There was a Bourne TV show in 2019, but…