Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current Affairs

Love to see Shane Harris, formerly of Chatter, on this podcast. Shane, now with The Atlantic, is experienced and well spoken in the Intelligence sector.

I had subscribed to this podcast a while back but was not a regular listener. I tended to put them in the queue but somehow always pushed them back. Finally, I got to listen to a handful of them. The episode descriptions look enticing but when you get down yo listening to them they are crashingly disappointing. The host has a nice manner about him but then you realize he’s just a pushover. He needs to give us what’s on the tin. Take this recent episode with John Sipher, apparently ex-CIA, but from his own version of his bio it seemed right away something was off. He was eager to talk about himself but somehow his life didn’t seem to add up to that of a CIA officer, if you omitted the long list of countries he had been stationed in, which he reeled off repeatedly. All his comments were just general reporting information about the Soviet Union and latterly Russia that you would get from any newspaper. I had to remind myself that this episode was supposed to tell us at least something and perhaps even a great deal about the three security services in Russia: GRU, FSB, SVR. Was there anything about them in the 75 minute session? Nothing, not a word. The host gestures to them at the beginning and Sipher promptly changes the subject and feeds us generic pap about US foreign policy. The producers need to be more discerning about who they have on and there needs to a plan for the interview. A desultory discussion about foreign affairs is not what we need. Also Sipher sounded like an imposter —okay I’ll use the f-word, a fraud— and more interested in ginning up clients for his “consulting” business, where all he’d give them is generic information that you’d get for free the Reuters news service.

There are far too many people rating the podcast 1 star because they don’t agree that certain people are lacking intelligence. Overall the podcast is awesome…if you can look past your own opinions.

Seem to have a bias view of what they’re talking about and also tends to talk about topics don’t really understand. For example, a Brit talking about US congressional and presidential authority and admitting he doesn’t know. Pretty high level take on extremely nuanced topics. Hard pass