The CIA recently declassified a trove of records from its in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence. The collection has profiles of the spooks of yore, analysis of things like how the Iran-Contra story was originally leaked, and accounts of pivotal moments in the agency’s history.
Far from the stilted bureaucratic tone you might expect, some of the articles are written in a pretty engaging and even literary style, and make for good reading.
This is how the agency describes the records:
This collection of declassified articles includes studies on the leadership of the individual DCIs and other senior Agency officers; histories of CIA directorates and their activities; tutorials on improving intelligence tradecraft; ever-changing intelligence challenges and national security threats to the U.S.; and specific events in which intelligence played a role in informing policymakers or influencing outcomes.
The Village Voice has combed through a newly declassified archive from the CIA, and today we release a formerly top-secret transcript detailing the interrogation of a New York City-based operative in 1983. The interview, chilling in the almost robotic interplay between the two parties, was carried out by an agent of a still-unnamed foreign government, represented only by the moniker “A.I.”
The lesson here is that sometimes the CIA trolls its own employees. Read on to see the joke.