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Daniel N. Hoffman

Daniel N. Hoffman

Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.

Columns by Daniel N. Hoffman

CIA Rebuilding Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Gina Haspel and CIA stream recruitment efforts

Last month, for the first time ever, the CIA began airing recruitment videos on entertainment, news and lifestyle streaming services. And the clandestine life appears to have its attractions.

July 2, 2020
Vendors wear face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus and wait for customers at a night market in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, March 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Taiwan rises to coronavirus challenge despite Beijing’s hostility

Taiwan implemented a comprehensive plan created in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic in 2003, fortifying the roof, as the British are fond of saying, when it was sunny. At the first notification that a new virus strain had appeared in China, Taiwan reacted with efficiency and alacrity.

March 26, 2020
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping talks by video with patients and medical workers at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Tuesday, March 10, 2020. China's president visited the center of the global virus outbreak Tuesday as Italy began a sweeping nationwide travel ban and people worldwide braced for the possibility of recession. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via AP) **FILE**

Xi Jinping’s coronavirus Chernobyl exposes China’s fatal vulnerabilities

Three-plus decades later, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed Communist China's fault lines, lines eerily similar to the Soviet Union's. There are the same obsequious political apparatchiks, the same brittle and opaque bureaucracy, and the same state-controlled media deployed not to inform the public but to preserve the regime's control and protect the regime's image abroad.

March 12, 2020
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with President Obama in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 5, 2016 in this file photo. (Associated Press) **FILE**

Obama’s Russia failures can’t be repeated in 2020 vote

The 2020 presidential election is in the Kremlin's crosshairs. Following DNI official Shelby Pierson's recent classified briefing to lawmakers, rumors are swirling about Russia aid to President Trump and Democratic front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders. It appears Mr. Putin again is purposely advertising Kremlin interference to tarnish the candidates' reputations and sow chaos here.

February 27, 2020
The intelligence community might not be on the hook to provide a definitive scientific analysis of climate change and global warming, but intelligence analysts can play a key role in assessing how climate change is already affecting our national security. (Associated Press/File)

Intelligence community can help on climate change

The intelligence community might not be on the hook to provide a definitive scientific analysis of climate change and global warming, but intelligence analysts can play a key role in assessing how climate change is already affecting our national security and what the trend lines suggest.

February 13, 2020
CIA Director Gina Haspel leads a team that runs the spies behind enemy lines and produces the analysis on which President Trump and his team rely. (Associated Press/File)

Gina Haspel keeps CIA intelligence honest, apolitical

The recent successful U.S. strikes against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and top Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani have highlighted the crucial, multifaceted role of the intelligence community in U.S. national security.

January 30, 2020
Former Iranian hostage William J. Daugherty stands Wednesday June 29, 2005, in front of his home in Savannah, Ga. Daugherty, a retired CIA staff officer, was held hostage in Iran for 444 days after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian militants. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton) **FILE**

U.S. hostages of Iran embassy takeover deserve compensation

There is no question that 9/11 victims deserve restitution, but it shouldn't come at the expense of our fellow U.S. citizens who were held hostage in Iran. The attack and takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was the Iranian regime's first act of terrorism against the U.S.

January 16, 2020
This photo provided by his family shows Darren James LaBonte, 35, in Afghanistan in 2007. Mr. LaBonte was one of seven CIA employees who died when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a U.S. base in Khost, Afghanistan on Dec. 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Courtesy of LaBonte's Family) ** FILE **

CIA patriots killed in the 2009 Khost attacks will be remembered

We honor our fallen colleagues by carrying on with the mission. That is why on Dec. 30, I remember our brave Khost Base patriots who gave their lives in service to a grateful nation, "far from home," as then-CIA Director Leon Panetta said, "doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism."

December 26, 2019
FILE - In this Sept. 30, 2019, file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at a dinner marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist Party is holding a key meeting amid a drastically slowing economy, ongoing protests in Hong Kong and pushback abroad against Beijing's global ambitions. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

A primer on China’s spy war targeting the U.S. and the West

Rather than becoming the "responsible stakeholder" that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick forecast in 2005, President Xi Jinping has chosen instead to unsheathe China's aggressive military, economic and political policies to confront the United States and its allies.

December 12, 2019