Cover Stories: Spies, Books & Entertainment

Jack Downey was an up and coming young Yale student.  When he graduated in 1951, like a surprising number of his fellow Elis, he signed up to work for the CIA looking to serve and for adventure. A little more than a year later, during the Korean War, he found himself on a transport airplane attempting an "agent extraction" over China.  The plane was shot down and Downey spent the next 21 years in...

Julia Davis joins us to discuss her new book: "In Their Own Words: How Russian Propagandists Reveal Putin's Intentions."  Davis regularly monitors Russian state TV and posts videos and writes columns providing translations and context about some of the crazy things are being fed to Russian viewers.  We talk with her about the odd collection of TV hosts, commentators and pundits who over the past s...

David Ignatius is an award-winning columnist for the Washington Post, a frequent national security commentator on cable TV, and the author of New York Times bestselling novels.  His twelfth novel, Phantom Orbit , like all the previous ones - reveals a deep understanding of the way governments and espionage agencies work. Many of his novels have presciently foreshadowed real-world threats. We'll ta...

Stuart Eizenstat is one of the most experienced diplomats in U.S. history. In this episode we talk with him about his new book "The Art of Diplomacy" in which he discusses some of the most important international agreements over the past 50 years. For his book, Ambassador Eizenstat interviewed about 150 key U.S. and foreign officials ranging from Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense and ma...

Arnold Punaro spent 24 years as a U.S. Senate staffer including 14 years as the Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Since leaving government in 1997 he has advised the Senate, Department of Defense and other Executive Branch agencies on navigating the complex process of getting Senate approval for Presidentially appointed positions. We'll talk with him about why getting a nomine...

ABC News journalist George Stephanopoulos joins us to discuss his new book  "The Situation Room: The Inside Story of President in Crisis." As someone who became intimately familiar with the SITROOM during the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos is our guide with stories about the crisis management center came to be created under JFK and shares dramatic stories of hinge points in history that we...

Dmitri Alperovitch likes to sound alarm bells when it comes to global security. He -- like many others -- started piecing together what was happening along the Russian border with Ukraine in late 2021 and predicted that Russia would indeed invade Ukraine. In his new book, World on the Brink, Dmitri shares his thoughts on how World War III might begin ... and no surprise, Taiwan is at the heart of...

Long-time New York Times correspondent joins us to his new book: "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West"   In the book, Sanger talks about the perilous times the United States finds itself – and the world of trouble presented by Russia, China  - and their military, economic, and technological challenges. Read The Cipher Brief print review of the...

CNN anchor and Chief National Security Analyst Jim Sciutto is out with a new book called "The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China and the Next World War." Drawing on his reporting from current hot spots like Ukraine, Taiwan and the Middle East - and in depth interviews with top U.S. and foreign leaders, Sciutto has written about the precarious nature of global security and how developments in ea...

Cipher Brief Expert Retired Admiral Jim Stavridis has witnessed today's complicated national security environment firsthand while he served in the Navy and now, as he helps others navigate it from the private sector. He has teamed up with author and former Marine Elliott Ackerman – who served in Iraq and Afghanistan - to foreshadow what national security threats are lurking around the corner and t...

Veteran journalist Steve Coll is out with a new book dissecting the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein.  We talk with him about his discovery of unpublished and underreported information  which sheds new light into how "human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris lead to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our time." After listening to the podc...

Best-selling NYT author Mark Greaney returns for his third appearance on a Cipher Brief podcast – this time to mark the publication of his latest novel "The Chaos Agent" which is the latest in his "Gray Man" series. In the new novel Greaney mines the headlines about artificial intelligence. The book connects a car accident in Japan, a  drowning in Seoul, a home invasion in Boston, and someone kill...

Award-winning author Tess Gerritsen, perhaps best-known for her medical and crime thrillers (like Rizzoli & Isles that was adapted for television), is trying her hand at the espionage game with her new thriller The Spy Coast. It seems in real life, the award-winning author noticed something a little odd about her neighbors in the small Maine town she calls home. She did some investigating of her o...

Just in time for the opening of spring training – we talk with author Adam Lazarus about his book: "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams."  Lazarus tells us about iconic Americas met during the crucible of combat during the Korean War. USMC  Captain Ted Williams, already a famed baseball player recalled to active duty to fly combat and soon...

Tammy Kupperman Thorp is chief spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency. Her principal role is communicating with major media organizations on matters of national security and helping CIA Director Bill Burns communicate with the Agency's worldwide workforce.  But an interesting side aspect of her job involves coordinating the CIA's contact with the motion picture and television industry an...

Serial best-selling author George Galdorisi has written a ton of books, mostly novels including including several of the rebooted Tom Clancy Op-Center series . But now he and co-author Kevin McDonald are out with a very useful work of non-fiction giving aspiring writers tips on how to write, publish and sell a book. Practical advice from someone who has been there, done that – and will help you do...

Former Washington Post correspondent Liza Mundy is out with a new book called: "The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA." Mundy who previously wrote a New York Times bestseller "Code Girls" about female codebreakers of World War II turns her expert eye to telling the stories of three generations of women at the CIA. Mundy reveals a portrait of a workplace hampered by bias and male e...

Admiral Jim Stavridis has an amazing resume. Retired 4-star officer, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Dean Emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University and current Vice Chairman of the Carlyle Group and Chair of the Rockefeller Foundation. But our focus of this podcast (recorded live at The Cipher Brief's Annual Threat Conference at Sea Island, GA) instead is on h...

Former CIA officer David McCloskey is out with his second novel.  His first, Damascus Station, received glowing reviews. Now he is back with a tale that Cipher Brief Russia experts say "brilliantly captures the nuances of field work in hostile environments" and provides a "propulsive thrill ride and a moving portrait of life, betrayal, and vengeance in Putin's Russia."  We will talk with him about...

Michael O'Hanlon's 2023 book, Military History for the Modern Strategist earned rave reviews from Cipher Brief Experts like General Stan McChrystal. Cover Stories co-host Suzanne Kelly sits down with the author to talk about the constant themes that emerged as he studied seven major wars and the three lessons that McChrystal called 'required reading for policymakers'.

A new book, End Game First by Cipher Brief Expert Vice Admiral Mike LeFever (Ret.) and Concentric Chairman Roderick Jones draws on the experience of both men to take crisis management from their military and law enforcement backgrounds to the boardroom, sharing what they learned guiding their own company through the COVID crisis.

Netflix has just started streaming a 8-episode series called "Spy Ops" which they where intelligence operatives from the CIA, MI6, Mossad and elsewhere share insider stories of spy craft, Cold War campaigns, and coups carried out by covert operatives. Featuring interviews with real officials, officers, and spies. We will get a preview of  Spy Ops  from one of executive  producers, John Loew, and c...

CIA Alum turned author Alma Katsu takes a 'ripped from the headlines' story about what happens when a CIA Case Officer spots a UFO while stationed overseas. Katsu is definitely exploring new territory here, not only in the subject matter, but in how she is reaching readers as well.  Cover Stories co-host Suzanne Kelly talks with Katsu about her new mission to reach more readers by coupling good wr...

Like so many American teens in the mid-1980s, Scott Kartvedt saw the movie "Top Gun" and decided: "I want to do that!" Unlike most of them though – he actually pursued it.  After graduating from college with a business degree he decided that a career in accounting didn't offer the thrills he was seeking – so he joined the Navy, flying F/A-18s. He also joined the Blue Angels and ended up on giant p...

A book by British former intelligence official and award-winning journalist Michael Smith has written a book about how U.S. and British intelligence formed a close working relationship at the start of World War II and continue to build on it to this day. The cast of characters ranges from Winston Churchil, Ian Fleming, John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and even Edward Snowden.  The book was publi...