NPR: Here & Now
Spymasters’ Documentary Goes Into The Minds Of CIA Leader

NPR: Fresh Air
Top CIA ‘Spymasters’ Agree: We Can’t Kill Our Way Out Of Terrorism

Variety Sirius Pop Politics Radio Show:
‘Spymasters’ Depicts ‘Battle for the Soul’ of CIA in War on Terror

The Alan Colmes Show:
When The Bush Administration Knew 9/11 Was Coming

The Dave Coombs show:
“The Spymasters,” narrated by Mandy Patinkin, is the brainchild of Chris Whipple.

Kilmeade and Friends: Fox News Radio
Spymasters’ Documentary Goes Into The Minds Of CIA Leader

PRESS

‘The Attacks Will Be Spectacular’

“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack.

Chris Whipple on Spymasters and the ‘Sobering’ New Security Threats

It was wall-to-wall mavens, moguls and machers at Michael’s today. ‘Tis the season and all that. I was joined by media multi-hyphenate Chris Whipple, whose work as a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker has garnered him a case full of Peabody and Emmy Awards — and more war stories than I could possibly even try to cram into one column.

‘We can not kill our way out of this’

After 9/11, did the urge the strike with vengeance seriously weaken effective intelligent gathering analysis and espionage?

Showtime’s CIA Documentary Takes On New Relevance After the Paris Attacks

Before he wrote Harlot’s Ghost, his novel about the Central Intelligence Agency, Norman Mailer wrote an essay proposing five “models” for understanding the organization. He knew (and Le Carré did, too): The CIA is a vast bureaucracy staffed by gifted, if not necessarily glamorous, civil servants.

New CIA Documentary Puts Spymasters Under the Klieg Lights

George Tenet, the former CIA director, has been understandably reluctant about giving interviews since he resigned from the spy agency 11 years ago. After all, he was the nation’s top intelligence officer during three of the nation’s most troubling espionage failures: the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia; the September 11, 2001, attacks; and George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, which the CIA enabled with its false finding that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

How the makers of ‘The Spymasters’ got former CIA directors to open up

In the opening act of the documentary “The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs,” former Director Leon Panetta admits to authorizing a 2010 drone strike that killed an Al Qaeda member implicated in the deaths of seven CIA operatives.

The Spymasters helps viewers understand the mindset behind controversial decisions.
Pardon the unintended wordplay, but the signature moment of Showtime’s remarkable new documentary, The Spymasters—CIA In The Crosshairs, comes near its end, when a producer asks Mike Morrell, the agency’s former acting director, about the implications of what are known in the killer-drone biz as “signature strikes”—missile attacks on unidentified people not because they’re known terrorists, but because a drone operator thinks they might be based on the fact that they’re carrying weapons or otherwise behaving suspiciously.

Fighting Terrorism Was the Biggest Weakness of the Bush Administration

When Donald Trump impugned the honor of his brother earlier this year, Jeb Bush proudly fell back on the achievement of the Dubya administration that has endured in public memory, despite his other failures: “He kept us safe.” Even in 2008, at the nadir of Bush’s presidency, Americans still gave him a fair measure of credit in this area. But the impression that Bush was successful, or even especially well-focused, on protecting Americans from terrorism is an inversion of reality, and the fact that it can still be asserted with a straight face is the residue of one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in American history.

Bush and Cheney were warned. Bush and Cheney yawned. And then 9/11 happened

Bombshell new interviews with CIA officials make clear what we’ve always suspected: Their negligence is horrifying.

Documentarian Chris Whipple has some new bombshell revelations about how the Bush administration ignored the advance warnings of 9/11 in story for Politico, “The Attacks Will Be Spectacular,” a spin-off of his documentary, “The Spymasters,” set to air this month on Showtime, in which he interviews all 12 living former CIA directors.

JOHN BRENNAN
CIA DIRECTOR, 2013 –

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS
CIA DIRECTOR, 2012-2013

LEON PANETTA
CIA DIRECTOR, 2009-2011

GENERAL MICHAEL HAYDEN
CIA DIRECTOR, 2006-2009

PORTER GOSS
CIA DIRECTOR, 2004-2006

GEORGE TENET
CIA DIRECTOR, 1997-2004

JOHN DEUTCH
CIA DIRECTOR, 1996-1997

JAMES WOOLSEY
CIA DIRECTOR, 1993-1995

ROBERT GATES
CIA DIRECTOR, 1991-1993

JUDGE WILLIAM WEBSTER
CIA DIRECTOR, 1987-1991

STANSFIELD TURNER
CIA DIRECTOR, 1977-1980

GEORGE H.W. BUSH
CIA DIRECTOR, 1976-1977

MICHAEL MORELL
ACTING CIA DIRECTOR, 2011, 2012-2013

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN
ACTING CIA DIRECTOR, 2004

JOSE RODRIGUEZ
CHIEF, CIA COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, 2001 – 2004

COFER BLACK
CHIEF, CIA COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, 1999 – 2001

GINA BENNETT
SENIOR CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST