Do You Want to Take a Peek into the Secret World of CIA? Read on to Find Out Some Facts about the CIA.
If you’ve watched the Netflix mini-series, Wormwood, you’ll remember the story of Frank Olson. He fell to his death in 1953 from a New York hotel. Suicide was blamed but turns out Olsen was covertly dosed with LSD by a colleague. Both men worked for the CIA… as crazy as that sounds, here are some more facts you didn’t know about the CIA.
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1
The CIA Reads More Than 5 Million Tweets per Day
Aluxers, it’s not just Facebook stalking you… Techspot calls them “vengeful librarians, which is an unusual description of a CIA agent, but this specific department of the CIA reads your tweets all… day… long.
And honestly, they don’t care about your thoughts on Glenn Close not winning an Oscar or what you did with your mom on Mother’s Day on Sunday – they’re trying to gauge people’s reactions to world events. And you can bet it’s not just Twitter they’re scrolling all day long.
By keeping a tab on what’s being posted, it gives the CIA a good idea of what’s happening IRL.
But what we’ll share next is something that is certainly not real – as you’ll see with these mistaken identities.
2
The Starbucks Located at CIA Headquarters May Not Use Names for Orders
Erin will not become Air Inn, Reece won’t be called Breeze or Lisa won’t be spelt as Leesah, because if there’s a Grande being ordered at Starbucks at CIA headquarters, you will not know who it belongs to.
The CIA Starbucks in Virginia even has a special name – Store Number 1. According to the Washington Post, the top sellers at Store Number 1 are the lemon pound cake and vanilla lattes during the day, and Frappuccino’s and double espressos at night.
Store number 1 is one of the busiest in Virginia and employees may not write down CIA staffs name on cups, for obvious reasons.
3
The CIA Have New Cloud Contracting Enterprises
CIA agents may not be willing to divulge their information to Starbucks, but they’ll be indulging all their information to a multibillion-dollar cloud contract.
At the end of 2020, the CIA “awarded its long-awaited Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E, contract to five companies—Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM,” according to nextgov.com.
The CIA have used Amazon Web Services to supply their cloud computing needs since 2013, and this shift will mean they have multi-cloud posture, using the best cloud provider for specific areas of work.
The contract is speculated to be worth tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.
Aluxers, be sure to stay up to speed by subscribing to our channel – we keep you up to date of all the happenings – from the CIA upgrading cloud contracts to which countries have the highest taxes – look out for that one later this week!
4
The CIA Once Tried to Weaponize Lightening
Perhaps an agent was inspired by Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, but thunderbolts of lightening turned out to be too frightening for the team in 1967.
The idea was brought forward by a scientist, whose name has since been redacted in the declassified document from the CIA’s archive, according to Forbes. The scientist proposed that the CIA harness the lightning and then use it to destroy a certain area without any evidence of what caused the lightning storm. Aluxers, this is the most basic explanation. And it may seem nuts now, but during that time, controlling the weather was quite a popular concept.
And while the facts and the idea was appealing to the CIA, it never struck home.
5
Former CIA Director Speaks about the Good and the Bad
Former CIA Director John Brennan released his memoir in 2020 called Undaunted. In the book he writes about the things he regrets and the things he is proud of. He narrates the book himself on Audible, and we recommend you give it a listen using our free download. Go to alux.com/freebook.
Of his regrets, he goes back to September 11. At the time he was the deputy executive director of the CIA.
After the attack, the CIA ran a rendition and interrogation program for suspected terrorists. Basically, Aluxers, the interrogation included torture methods and Brennan said one of his biggest regrets was not trying to “reduce the severity of some of those enhanced interrogation techniques,” as quoted in an interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.
6
Gina Haspel – the First Female CIA Director
On the last full day of Trump’s presidency, Gina Haspel handed in her resignation. As reported by Forbes, “According to Axios, Trump “spent his last year in office ruminating over Haspel” and reportedly weighed firing her on multiple occasions for a perceived lack of loyalty.”
Haspel had been with the intelligence agency for 36 years and held the post of director for almost 3 years.
As tweeted by the CIA, “The #CIA workforce thanks Director Haspel for her 36 years of dedicated service to the American people. You have broken barriers and empowered the next generation of CIA officers.”
There were reports and allegations that Haspel was involved in the CIA’s torture program and oversaw a CIA “black site” prison in Thailand.
https://youtu.be/zlVUSJyZl9Q
7
How Woke Are the CIA Really?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock Aluxers, you’ve no doubt seen the ‘woke’ recruitment ad. The torture controversy has nothing on the reaction that the new ‘woke’ CIA is causing.
The video that has caused the uproar is titled, “Humans of CIA,” and highlights a Latina intelligence officer who says, “I am a cisgender millennial, who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.”
This video has both the left and the right infuriated, albeit for different reasons.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior officer added that the CIA were not trying to be woke, but rather aiming at pushing diversity efforts, according to theguardian.com.
8
Did the CIA Invent Bitcoin?
Aluxers, this question has been asked a few times on Quora and the replies are intriguing. While most people argue that it wasn’t the CIA who invented bitcoin, the facts do lean towards the NSA or National Security Agency being behind it.
As reported on ccn.com, “both the NSA and bitcoin share a secure hashing algorithm – SHA-256.
Satoshi Nakamoto allegedly means “Central Intelligence.”
Cryptocurrency would benefit the deep state.
Bitcoin could help the FBI catch criminals.
And when you hear our next story, you might agree that it’s not the CIA that began bitcoin.
If you are interested in reading up more about bitcoin, check out Top 10 Companies That Hold the Most Bitcoin.
9
Former CIA Director Believes Bitcoin Is Too Transparent For Criminals
Many people believe the facts that crypto is a breeding ground for criminals, but former acting CIA Director, Michael Morell, claims that criminals would not be able to use the Bitcoin network as the transactions are too transparent.
According to an article by David B. Black, a Forbes contributor, the Crypto Council for Innovation, paid Morrel to make these claims so that companies dealing with crypto are not deemed part of any criminal dealings.
Aluxers, you know our thoughts on Crypto and bitcoin, and if done with knowledge and through the correct channels, can be highly profitable. Which is why we’ve created Bitcoin Essentials. In our opinion, it’s the best blockchain and bitcoin resource if you want to get started with crypto.
Got to alux.com/bitcoin and enrol now!
10
How Much Does a Highly Placed Spy Cost?
A career as a spy sounds rather glam, especially if you compare it to the spies you see in the movies. They’re the ones with the briefcase stuffed with cash, passports and sleek gadgets.
They’re living it up in 5-star hotels, dining, gambling, and making out with their choice of the hottest men and women.
In reality, a spy is not nearly as glamorous and doesn’t earn nearly as much.
According to asiatimes, “there are only five known instances of Americans being paid about US$1 million dollars to spy on their country, over careers that in each case spanned two decades.”
Some notable spies include Aldrich Ames. He was the son of a CIA analyst, and joined the CIA as a low-level document’s analyst. He volunteered to spy against the US to KGB agents and got paid $50,000. After that, he went to Rome and between 1986 and 1989 was paid roughly $1.8 million to pass information on to Soviet Agents.
Earl Pitts spied on the USA through the FBI for the Soviet Union and Russia and got paid $65,000 in 1995. Robert Hanssen got $50,000 for handing over documents to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
Rather save face Aluxers and ditch the career of spying.
11
Facebook Being Secretly Run by the CIA
When we’re not given all the information about anything, it’s easy to speculate and make up theories about it… and this is exactly what The Onion did. The Onion is an American satirical digital media company and newspaper organization.
The Onion “reported” that Facebook is a massive online surveillance initiative run by the CIA with Mark Zuckerberg as the lead agent on the program. And in true Onion style, it was believed by many. What did ring true with their report was how easily we divulge all our information on social media, and how all the facts and information we share is a “dream come true” for the CIA.
12
The CIA Adds a New Category to Its World Factbook
On the CIA’s website, they’ve got their world factbook, where they provide basic intelligence facts on many categories including “history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.”
They recently included a new category – Environment. Some interesting facts they’ve added are:
- More than 20 percent of the Solomon Islands’ GDP comes from forestry revenues.
- Liechtenstein recycles nearly 65 percent of its municipal solid waste.
- More than 80 percent of Comoros’ land area is used for agriculture.
It’s definitely worth a follow.
13
The CIA Is a Great Place to Find Love
And we don’t mean digitally!
A bonus about finding love at the CIA is that you know the facts that the person has had extensive background checks and they’ve got nothing to hide.
The CIA have published a “Love at Langley” series on Instagram, showcasing 3 couples from the CIA. Two couples met at the agency while one couple met just before. The series is part of the “Humans of CIA” series that we mentioned earlier.
14
The CIA Built a Catfish Robot Spy and Named Him Charlie
And he probably didn’t get paid either!
It was during the 90s and the CIA wanted to create an un-crewed underwater vehicle to “study the feasibility of unmanned underwater vehicles and other aquatic robot technologies” for the purpose of collecting intelligence and facts, according to popularmechanics.com.
To ensure nobody spotted their underwater vehicle, they designed it to look like a catfish and Charlie was born.
Whether Charlie was successful in his endeavours is unbeknown to us.
15
CIA Releases Entire Collection of UFO-Related Documents
Aluxers, if you are keen to peruse all the information and facts the CIA has on anything UFO related, you now can.
Over 30 years of information of UFO records have been made available for you to download. Amongst the hoards of information, you’ll find 2,700 pages of UFO-related documents.
We won’t spoil your fun, go download them at The Black Vault.
Question:
What can you to our list of things you didn’t know about the CIA? We’d love your input!
