Podcast
CovertAction Bulletin
Hosted by CovertAction Magazine · EN
CovertAction Bulletin is the official podcast of CovertAction Magazine which began publishing in 1978 as a newsletter called Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB) and later as CovertAction Quarterly (CAQ). CAIB was cofounded and copublished by Ellen Ray, William Schaap, and Louis Wolf, along with former CIA agents such as James and Elsie Wilcott, and infamous whistleblower, Philip Agee.The magazine developed a following not as a conspiracy-theory-related publication, but as a source for reliable, consistent, and accurate investigative reporting. In 2018 we launched on the web at CovertActionMagazine.com where you will find hundreds of articles that blow the whistle on U.S. imperialism and plutocrats worldwide.
16episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Are We in the Middle of a Socialist Revival?
6d ago00:53:41Tap to summarizeFrom the Governor of California to the Mayor of Pensacola and Senate seats in Massachusetts, Ohio and beyond, socialist candidates and ideas are gaining momentum across the country. They’re talking about common-sense ideas that resonate with everyday people - things like public seizure of the 100 biggest corporations, abolishing the Supreme court, reparations for Black Americans, slashing the Pentagon budget, abolishing ICE, expanding housing, public transit and access to medical care and much more.The popularity of socialist candidates and ideas is a reflection of the multiple crises of capitalism that get worse every day. As people can’t afford the basics for survival like food, transportation and shelter, it’s clear that the money is there - but capitalist governments prioritize spending it on war, terrorizing communities with immigration raids and bailing out giant corporations.Also on this episode, we discuss the baseless early-morning raids that happened last week targeting organizers with the immigrant rights group VC Defensa in Ventura County, CA. Listen to our 2025 interview with two VC Defensa organizers: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/07/30/covertaction-bulletin-ventura-county-organizes-against-ice/Support the show
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Close Encounters of the Distraction Kind
2w ago00:54:01Tap to summarizeThe Pentagon has released hundreds of declassified files, pictures and videos relating to UAPs - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena - more popularly known as UFOs. The materials date back to the late 1940s and include firsthand but generally uncorroborated narratives from military officers and civilians as well as grainy photos and videos that could really be anything.Various government and private investigations into whether extraterrestrials have tried to make contact have never come up with anything conclusive. But since the end of World War II and the start of the Space Race and the Cold War, UFO culture in the United States has always intersected with fear of others and distrust in the system on the one hand, and government secrecy and coverup on the other hand - going as far as the Pentagon testing planes and surveillance equipment and blaming sightings on aliens.Many questions are still open. Are we alone? Have we been visited? But perhaps most importantly, why is the Trump administration releasing these files now?Plus: Sign the petition to pardon whistleblower John Kiriakou: https://change.org/PardonJohnSupport the show
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May Day and the Power of the General Strike
3w ago00:54:58Tap to summarizeIn over 3,500 cities and towns across the United States, workers took to the streets on May 1st for a day of no work, no school, and no shopping on the fourth day this year of mass organized action. Following the January 23rd and 30th shutdowns that started in Minneapolis and spread coast to coast and the No Kings Day in March, May Day was the latest in what’s becoming a building process of collective power and consciousness. Around the world, May Day or International Workers’ Day, is a celebration of the power of workers and our movements. Many countries mark it as an official labor holiday.ICE raids continue to terrorize immigrant communities around the country. The fragile ceasefire with Iran is marked by regular threats to resume and intensify with a ground invasion. Trump on Friday signed another executive order trying to starve the Cuban people of resources by further restricting trade. Gas prices and costs of consumer goods continue to soar. And the Supreme Court has taken another step in rolling back hard-won civil rights in its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, attacking core provisions of the Voting Rights Act. It’s becoming more clear to so many that only the power of the people will stop the attacks of the Trump regime and the system it represents.Support the show
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Age Verification: Backdoor to Surveillance & Censorship
Apr 2200:55:36Tap to summarizeImagine being forced to prove how old you are - and having it verified by a third party - before unlocking your phone or signing up for a social media site. That’s the goal of legislation introduced or passed in some U.S. states, the UK and Australia. Age verification requirements for social media and “adult content” are being proposed across the US, Europe and beyond with the justification of protecting children. But verifying your age basically means scanning your ID, and therefore tying your online presence with your real-world identity. Not only will this exclude millions of people who don’t have government IDs, it attacks people who need to speak out anonymously against injustice, including whistleblowers. Even beyond age verification for social media, California’s Assembly Bill 1043 goes into effect on January 1st, 2027 and requires operating systems - Windows, macOS and Linux among others, to perform age segmentation at the base level of the phone or computer system.The surveillance state loves the idea of age verification, which does very little to protect children as it claims to do - but does a lot to silence dissent, prevent the spread of information and silence free speech.Support the show
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Secret Court Reauthorizes Secretive Spy Program
Apr 1500:52:53Tap to summarizeCongress is set to vote soon on reauthorization of the Section 702 warrantless surveillance program, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. 702’s authorization expires on April 20th. On its surface, the program allows intelligence agencies to spy on non-citizens outside the United States - without their knowledge, or the consent of their governments. But people inside the US can be and are caught up in this surveillance if they’re in contact with targets of the program for any reason - including,as noted by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, “business or personal reasons” not associated with any criminal activity.The intelligence community is on a propaganda tour ahead of the renewal votes, saying the program helped them prevent an attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Austria and to kill El Mencho, a Mexican cartel leader. But regardless of the vote, the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has already approved the program through March of 2027 - regardless of what Congress votes on regarding the renewal of Section 702.PLUS: Democrats are ignoring their own recent history of criminalizing student protest to claim there are no left-wing protests under Trump as the midterms come up - and more.Support the show
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Trump’s Threats Further Destabilize World Order
Apr 800:51:54Tap to summarizeNOTE: This episode was recorded hours before the announcement of the 2-week ceasefire on April 7th.Just a day after Donald Trump made a national prime-time address on April 1st claiming the US is “winning and winning big” in the war on Iran, an American F-15E Strike Eagle fighter plane was shot down over a mountainous region of eastern Iran, kicking off a frantic search-and-rescue and a covert misinformation operation by the CIA within Iran. The U.S. military has over 200 F-15E planes, at a cost in 2026 dollars of $65 million each and the next-generation F-15EX set at about $100 million each. The war on Iran has cost about $43 billion so far.But at an Easter luncheon earlier on April 1st, Trump also said he told Russel Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, “Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care.” and went on to say, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things,” saying that the federal government’s priority should be wars and weapons while people still go hungry, without housing and without healthcare. And he’s effectively threatened genocide against the Iranian people and the entire region.The Trump administration and Project 2025 have been shaking the core of civilization like an earthquake shakes a building. The question of what comes after this structure breaks is at the core of how we move forward.Support the show
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Eyewitness Cuba: Solidarity, Not Blockades
Apr 100:56:33Tap to summarizeCuba is set to receive oil for the first time in 2026, following the March 31st arrival at Matanzas Bay of the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin with over 730,000 barrels, or 100,000 tons, of crude oil. The tanker and its owner, the state-owned company Sovcomflot, have had sanctions on it since 2024. Late last year, the Trump administration announced severe tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba and, after the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, prevented Venezuelan ships from reaching the island. All of this on top of decades of sanctions put the island into a severe fuel shortage, an attempt to strangle and starve the population. The delivery of the Russian tanker is a much-needed event and pokes a hole in the U.S. blockade of Cuba, but much more remains to be done.Also in March, the Nuesta America convoy to Cuba brought people from around the hemisphere and the world to Cuba in solidarity, bringing with them aid including solar generators and solar panels to help Cuba advance its renewable energy infrastructure in the face of the blockade. Our guest today was part of the Youth Brigade of dozens of organizers who went to Cuba, where he met, exchanged and stood together with Cuban youth, building bonds of solidarity. We’ll now welcome Phill Campbell, an organizer and member of Artists Against Apartheid to the show.Support the show
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Deception, Oppression & Cover-Ups: Mueller Was No Hero
Mar 2500:51:36Tap to summarizeFormer FBI Director Robert Muller died on March 20th. He entered into that position on September 4th, 2001. Within eight weeks of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI had arrested over 1,200 people - mostly Muslim men in the United States. None of them were shown to have any connection to Al Qaeda, but that didn’t deter the FBI and its partners in local law enforcement agencies like the NYPD from heightening their surveillance of Muslim communities, even sending informants into mosques.All of this was done under the presidencies of George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, who convinced the Senate to allow Mueller to serve an extra two years on top of the 10-year term for FBI directors. It was also under the shadow of the War on Terror, powered by the PATRIOT Act to destroy lives and curtail rights abroad and at home.But Mueller underwent an image transformation about a decade ago. Rather than rightly being decried as an enemy of the people and of civil liberties, he led the charge on the so-called Russiagate hoax, kicking off years of delusional frenzy among liberals that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to get Donald Trump elected.Support the show
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Pentagon, AI Giants Aim for Increased Lethality
Mar 1800:53:58Tap to summarizeSwarm Forge. Ender’s Foundry. Project Grant. Open Arsenal. These are the names of just some of the “Pace-Setting Projects” that Pete Hegseth identified in a January memorandum on the “Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War.” Their names are as hard to take seriously as “Operation Epic Fury,” but like the war, the Pentagon’s AI initiatives are already having a significant impact on the world. AI systems were reportedly used to select targets for more than 1,000 attacks in the first days of the war on Iran. It’s investing heavily in targeting systems, data collection and analysis, and even autonomous weapons that can take instructions and then independently engage in missions, destroying and killing without immediate human feedback.Private companies won’t be left out of it, either - the Pentagon plans to “leverage the hundreds of billions in private sector capital investment being made in America’s AI sector through our growing array of creative partnerships with America’s world-leading companies.” From Palantir and Anduril to xAI, OpenAI and Google billions of dollars continue to be spent every year on using AI to “increase lethality” - to make the U.S. military even more of a threat around the world.Support the show
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Even Soldiers Don't Want War
Mar 1100:52:13Tap to summarizeThe 82nd Airborne Division has canceled a training exercise to keep the Division ready to deploy with just 18 hours of notification for what it calls “forcible entry parachute assaults.” Parts of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, are being moved from South Korea to the Middle East. As we are recording on Tuesday, March 10th, Pete Hegseth said it would be “yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran - the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes” with the Pentagon claiming more than 5,000 targets have been hit inside the country - including what we now know was a double-tap strike on a girl’s school in Minab last week.While the Pentagon is playing up its use of technology and in particular AI in war, the fighting by and large still requires people flying the plains, maintaining the equipment, and filling those often-referenced “boots on the ground.” According to the Center on Conscience and War, their phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from service members and families looking for options to refuse to fight Trump’s war.We’re joined by Mike Prysner, the Executive Director of the Center on Conscience and War, which you can find online at https://centeronconscience.org.Support the show
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