Lee Smith in Tablet chronicles the discovery of two apparent Pakistanis (probably working for Iranian intelligence) who spent nearly two years in a Washington, D.C. building literally filled with U.S. law enforcement employees from multiple agencies. Which is the more disturbing: the men’s possible mission as an advance party for assassins, or the fact that it took a U.S. postal agent to uncover their plot?
Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.
