Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will repatriate the bodies of an American citizen who was killed in fighting in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and that of a Turkish citizen who was found dead. The Russian private military chief Prigozhin announced his plans on May 25, as part …
Read More »Cartel Carpet Shoes on the Border: A Fake Set of Green Beret Slippers, Discarded in No-Man’s Land
They look like a cross between a cheap Halloween costume and a shorn teddy bear, but these cartel carpet shoes are not for play. Our correspondent Heath Hansen spotted a set of “Special Forces” slippers recently along a remote region of the U.S.-Mexico border, where he monitored cartel activity – …
Read More »MiG Pilot Viktor Belenko: ‘I Am the Luckiest Man Alive’
by Susan Katz Keating In retrospect, it seems fitting that I met Viktor Belenko in Reno. He was a gambler hanging out in a gambling town, surrounded by pilots in their fast moving aircraft, barreling wildly around pylons. I went there many years back, looking for stories to be found …
Read More »CIA Recruitment Video Asks High Ranking Russians to Get in Touch
In a nod to the treasure that is HUMINT, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency published a video on Tuesday aimed at well-connected Russians who love their country but not what its leaders are doing. The cinematic, evocative video features a fictional well placed Russian government worker who loves both country and family. …
Read More »Agilite’s K-Zero Plate Carrier Is So Comfortable My Buddy Swiped It From Me
by Susan Katz Keating So, my K-Zero is missing. For those of you who are not up to speed on the plate carrier drama, there was an issue previously when I asked my friend Skip to help test the K-19 carrier from Agilite. The plan was to see whether the …
Read More »Wagner’s Prigozhin Tells Snipers to Adjust Aim When Trying to Shoot Him From Afar
by Susan Katz Keating Russian snipers who want to take out Yevgeny Prigozhin can look through their scopes to find instructions on a wall inside their target’s office, the Wagner Group leader said. Assassins can read the instructions from their sniper nests across the river in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin said. …
Read More »‘The Taliban Are at My Door’: The Whispered Message From a Friend in Afghanistan
by Susan Katz Keating “The Taliban are behind my door.” The whispered words came through the phone in the pitch of night, hours after Kabul fell on August 15, 2021. My friend “Hakim,” a man I had been trying from afar to help leave Afghanistan, called me from inside his …
Read More »Col. Nick Rowe: Long-Ago Conversations With a Special Forces Legend
by Susan Katz Keating “There’s a certain sound…” The song stuck with him for years afterwards. He was being marched to his execution in the jungles of Vietnam, and had been ordered to carry a radio to pick up “Radio Hanoi,” but he secretly dialed in to a station that …
Read More »Drug Mules Hate Submarines, But Chapitos Insist on Using Them to Smuggle Fentanyl
by Susan Katz Keating Smugglers for the Chapitos branch of the Sinaloa Cartel balk when ordered to pull “submarine duty” along the group’s fentanyl trafficking routes, a security official told Soldier of Fortune. “They hate the submarines,” the official said. “They don’t want to go near them. But the Chapitos …
Read More »‘Thank You, Captain Obvious’: Pentagon Tells Defense Officials Not to Leak Classified Material
by Susan Katz Keating In the wake of the “Digileaks” documents case, the Pentagon told top defense officials this week to refrain from leaking classified material – and brought smirking commentary from those who shared copies of the lengthy memo. “Don’t turn me in for sending you this,” one contact …
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