Alan Kohler spent 27 years at the FBI, where his priority for decades, was hunting down spies who were operating in the United States.  As Assistant Director of the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, Kohler had a hand in nearly every espionage operation the Bureau conducted.  He also served as Acting Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch and was Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence Division before he retired last year and joined The Cipher Brief’s Expert Network.  He is also President of Pamir Consulting. State Secrets sat down with Kohler to uncover some of the highlights of the cases he was involved in that made national and global headlines.  In his first podcast interview, we also talked about why espionage and elections are still very top-of-mind for him – particularly when it comes to Russia and China.  

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 The Cipher Brief made its first reporting trip to Ukraine in February of 2022.  That’s when we first met Tymofiy Mylovanov, the President of the Kyiv School of Economics. When we sat down with him then, Ukraine was preparing to mark one year since Russia’s brutal invasion.  Mylovanov was sober at the time about what it would take to win the war and rebuild the country.  Just over a year later, with an aid package that has been held up for months in Washington - I sat down with him again to talk about  what it will take to rebuild Ukraine even as the war rages on - and why he still has hope even amid the challenges – for what lies ahead. 

UKRAINE’S BRIGHT HOPE TO BUILD BACK STRONGER

Dave Pitts was the CIA’s last man on the ground in Afghanistan as U.S. troops pulled out of the country in 2021. Even though he began his career as a humble private in the U.S. military, he quickly moved into special operations and eventually, to the CIA where he retired last October as the Assistant Director of CIA for South and Central Asia.  In his first podcast interview, Dave talks with State Secrets Podcast host Suzanne Kelly about how much the world has changed since his early days of fighting terrorism in the military and why it’s more important than ever for the U.S. to be leading in today’s world.

From Special Operations to the CIA: Assessing the Complexity of the Global Environment

Retired Rear Admiral Mike Studeman is the former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence. He has extensive experience in intelligence, foreign policy, defense and China.  So, it wasn’t a surprise when Taiwan’s Vice President-Elect Hsiao – someone he had briefed along with President Tsai when he was the Navy’s Indo-Pacom Director for Intelligence – invited him back to Taiwan, this time for a series of high-level visits. Studeman met with the chief of the general staff in Taiwan as well as the chief of the Navy.  He visited shipbuilding centers and met with leaders of think tanks and when we met up with him, he and his delegation had just returned from the Kinman Islands.  Those are the off-shore islands, just a few miles from the coast of China where there have been a series of confrontations as Chinese Coast Guards have flexed their ability to enter the restricted waters.

Live from Taiwan :A Debrief with RADM Mike Studeman (Ret)

Former Director of CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (and Cipher Brief Expert) Andrew Boyd talks to State Secrets about the dynamic relationship between villains, victims and vendors operating in cyberspace. The CIA, he says, has been paying close attention to cyberspace “since the dawn of IP”, so what lessons can he share about how spies, thieves and nation states are using the domain to find and exploit victims and how the private sector and government are partnering to track them down.

Villains, Victims and Vendors in Cyberspace

Recent U.S strikes against Iranian proxy groups in Syria and Iraq may be just the beginning of a multi-tier response by the U.S. after the killing of three service members in Jordan last month and it’s raising questions about just how far the U.S. should go in limiting Iran’s ability to use these groups to launch attacks against Americans. Former CIA Deputy Assistant Director of the Near East Mission Center and former Chief of Analysis in the Iran Mission Center Andy Dunn talks to State Secrets about what it will take to deter Iran.

Secrets of Espionage

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