Pictured here is our July 25 and September 12 2023, meeting speaker, former senior CIA operations officer John Atwell who delivered the second half of a presentation entitled, “Spies in Paradise.” Mr. Atwell, who is also the author of The Island Intelligencer (a monthly column in the Hawaii Tribune Herald about espionage and national security issues) and editor of the Weekly Intelligence Notes (an online magazine for the Association of Former Intelligence Officers), informed the audience about electronic and human intelligence collection activities around our islands over the past few years, to include: a Russian spy ship off the coast, Chinese intelligence balloons overhead, Hawaii-born-and-raised CIA ops officers who were arrested in Honolulu for working for Chinese intelligence, the flight from Hawaii (and defection to Russia) of NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and intelligence activities by our own government and adversarial nations affecting the recovery effort in Lahaina.