Category: Events

Articles in this category

Lincoln's last turd — A purported piece of human waste attributed by a Pennsylvania circus-freak-show museum to Abraham Lincoln on the night of his assassination; auctioned for $5,000; subsequent DNA analysis disproved the attribution. John Kiriakou's failed bid for the artifact is the anecdote that, recirculated in early 2026, made him an internet meme figure.
Richard Welch — CIA Athens station chief assassinated December 23, 1975; the first victim of [Revolutionary Organization 17 November](/wiki/revolutionary-organization-17-november)
Senate Torture Report — The December 2014 executive summary of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study of the CIA's post-9/11 detention and interrogation program; the first public disclosure of techniques including rectal feeding with hummus, sexual assault with broomsticks, and prolonged sleep deprivation.
Stephen Saunders — British defense attaché in Athens assassinated by Revolutionary Organization 17 November in March 2000
Dasht-i-Leili massacre — Late-November 2001 mass suffocation of approximately 2,000 surrendered Taliban prisoners in unventilated shipping containers in the Afghan desert; the prisoners' surrender was negotiated by the CIA via the Northern Alliance, the transport order was issued by the CIA, and the operation was overseen by Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum; John Kiriakou in 2009 as Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator attempted to reopen the case under a 2008 Obama campaign promise; the CIA's classified response was, per Kiriakou, "go fuck yourself."
Iran 12-Day War — 2025 Israeli air campaign against Iran during which Israel killed at least fourteen Iranian nuclear scientists by destroying the apartment buildings they lived in; preceded for each scientist by Farsi-language telephone calls from Iranian-Jewish Mossad and Shin Bet officers offering defection in lieu of certain death; characterized by John Kiriakou as a categorical departure from CIA targeting doctrine in its acceptable-civilian-casualty calculus.
Kuwait Liberation Day — February 1991 expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait by the U.S.-led coalition; John Kiriakou entered the country with U.S. Marines on the day of liberation; the small American flags waved by the crowds — and the post-liberation arrival of Democratic and Republican National Committee personnel ostensibly to assist the country's transition to democracy — were, per Kiriakou, the work of professional propagandist John Rendon.
Ninth Circuit contractor ruling (2025) — Approximately July 2025 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling, in a case brought by Abu Zubaydah against CIA contractors who had tortured him, holding that contractors operating under a written CIA contract are legally protected as agents of the agency; extends Executive Order 12333 authority to contractor operations including the Blackwater assassination program; received almost no U.S. media coverage.
Qala-i-Jangi uprising — The late-November 2001 prisoner uprising at a fortress in northern Afghanistan during which CIA officer Mike Spann was killed; the event during which the American al-Qaeda figure John Walker Lindh was captured; among the first major firefights of the post-9/11 Afghan campaign.
Vault 7 — The 2017 WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of pages of CIA Directorate of Science and Technology documents — leaked by agency engineer Joshua Schulte — revealing CIA technical capabilities including remote takeover of internet-connected cars, conversion of smart-TV speakers into covert microphones, and the planting of Russian or Persian language fragments in foreign systems to mislead attribution.