This is John Batchelor, speaking later today with the author Lisa Mundi, the new books The Sisterhood,

The Secret History of Women at the CIA.

And from that conversation, this small revelation of Afghanistan after the Soviet

withdrawal after the US turned its attention to other parts of the globe. A young woman assigned to Afghanistan, which

was not a popular place to be at the CIA, starts to notice something anomalous. The young men who've gathered

there to fight the jihad are not going home. Why?

Elisa explains. This is how you build step by step actionable

intelligence. Except the secret history of women at the CIA, the sisterhood.

The one thing, and this is a perverse irony of the Iron Curtain.

So for so many decades, the Iron Curtain was an area where there was no development

that all there ever was was fencing and landmines and and so but there was never any kind of

industry and there was no settlements that now the Iron Curtain is the most green part of Europe.

In fact, for a lot of it's now a big green zone. It's called a green belt because it's just essentially

woodlands.

In Hungary, when you go to the site, what you see is the overgrown woods.

The very woods, the East Germans tried to pass through,

this incredibly scary dark wood at night when they're fleeing

essentially armed guards now is just this beautiful pastoral space

its hills its pastures it's, but it also has no sense of carrying this mark of history.

And so Lazzlow has this profound way of referring to it as Anus Mundi, is how he describes it, this place that's completely

unremarkable and hidden into the bushlands between states and the peripheries.

You would never know that it held this powerful story of not just the party,

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