Former CIA Director John Brennan openly described a recruitment practice in which the agency pays foreign assets and later “reminds” them of that payment to pressure them into continued cooperation as a form of blackmail. In the cold war, coercive leverage could be applied with relatively low reputational cost. In the modern era, the pool of potential sources is now global, hyper-connected, and extremely aware of the risks of cooperating with a service that might later blackmail them. | Disclosu