Mr. Atwell is a former CIA Senior Operations Officer, newspaper columnist on espionage issues, and college lecturer on intelligence and national security matters. He is also the editor of the Weekly Intelligence Notes, a periodical of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. An experienced public speaker, he is regularly booked to address groups of law enforcement professionals, private security professionals, military retirees, academics, and historical and philanthropic organizations.

Mr. Atwellʻs 23-year CIA career took him to every continent save Antarctica. He began as an intelligence analyst, while still in college, writing assessments for the White House, Pentagon, and other power centers of the nation. After leaving the Agency, he worked with the Department of Homeland Security for an additional five years before retiring from government service.

Mr. Atwellʻs wife, Esther Atwell, is also a former CIA officer. They were engaged in spy training and actual operational activities together, while raising four children who were unaware of their parents’ true profession. The couple does joint speaking on espionage matters and, based on their past professional experience, security consulting.

Mr. Atwell’s newspaper column, The Island Intelligencer, can be accessed here: https://islandintelligencer.substack.com/
His profile can be further explored here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpaulatwell/

Slideshow Lectures (Current Intelligence Issues, History, Virtual Tours)

Spies in Paradise
Slide presentation and lecture on real espionage events in the Pacific Islands (Hawaii, in particular) in the past few years. From arrested CIA moles to North Korean satellites taking photos of bases to Russian spy ships and Chinese balloons snooping around the islands, and more.

Foreign Intelligence Services of the World (including New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., Canada)
Slide Presentation and lecture. A survey of friendly and hostile foreign intelligence services around the globe, including discussion of the similarities and differences to their U.S. counterparts (CIA, NSA, FBI, DIA).

Espionage: What's New in This Old Profession
Slide presentation and lecture on developments in the intelligence world in the past 10 years--cybersespionage, the rise of open source intelligence, foreign intel agencies attempting assassinations in the United States, AI, quantum cryptography

Spy Skills: Read the News Like an Intelligence Officer (Intro to Media Literacy)
Slide presentation and lecture. Learn to identify misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and methods and tools for identifying sound sources of information using techniques of CIA analysts.

Intelligence History: Espionage in the Revolutionary War
Slide presentation and lecture. Discusses one hero (Hercules Mulligan) and one heroine (Lydia Farrah) and tradecraft of that era (code books, aliases, cover, signaling systems, etc.). Joint talk with Esther Atwell (former CIA officer and spouse).

Intelligence History: Women of Espionage
Slide presentation and lecture delivered by former CIA Collection Management Officer Esther Atwell. Explores the role of women in spying—Rahab in the Bible, Matahari, legendary WWII spy of the OSS Virginia Hall, CIA Director Gina Haspel, ODNI Director Avril Haines.

Intelligence History: Origins and Early Days of the CIA
Slide presentation and lecture. Explores the creation of the OSS and the transition of that organization into the CIA. Discusses authorities, famous cases, intelligence failures up through the Cold War, and how the organization is different today.

Intelligence History: Japanese Intelligence Activity in Hawaii That Enabled the Pearl Harbor Attack
Slide show and lecture. Covers the activity of a Japanese intelligence officer working under diplomatic cover in Honolulu to fine tune the final attack runs, a Nazi spy working in Hawaii to help Japanese intelligence with covert finances and signaling, the first Japanese-American in the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence whose job it was to root out spies, and the spy tradecraft being used during that time.

Intelligence History: The World's Second Oldest Profession - Espionage in the Bible
A survey of espionage accounts in the Old Testament that are the root of the claim that spying is the world's second oldest profession. Examples include Moses' dispatch of a reconnaissance team into Canaan and Joshua's deployment of two spies into Jericho.

Virtual Tour: Take a Peek Inside CIA Headquarters
Join former CIA Senior Operations Officer John Atwell—who walked the Langley campus as a child of two Agency officers and, from the age of 20, as a staff officer himself—for a virtual tour of one of the most high security properties in the United States. Slide presentation and lecture. A visual virtual tour, and first-hand descriptions, of the highlights of the CIA Headquarters grounds (the unbroken cryptogram sculpture in the courtyard, statues of Nathan Hale and Harriet Tubman and Wild Bill Donovan, the A-12 Oxcart Spy Plane, a piece of the Berlin Wall, famous campus families of groundhogs and fox and koi), the CIA entrance hallways (with memorial to the fallen, engraved mottos, etc.), and some of the holdings of the CIA museum.

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Workshops (groups of 12 or less)

Spycraft Workshop: Surveillance Detection (Small groups. Live exercise onboard. Involves a walk about the ship.)
How can I determine if I am being followed? What are the different types of surveillance? What’s the difference between surveillance detection and counter surveillance?

Spycraft Workshop: Dead Drops (Small groups. Live exercise onboard.)
How do you signal an agent that it is time to retrieve a dead drop? How to do you plan out and place a dead drop?

Spycraft Workshop: Disguises (Separate lecture and practical.)
Part I involves a slide show lecture (how Hollywood helped the CIA develop disguise methods, the basics of effective disguises, how to create disguises with typical household items, etc.). Part II, for those interested in trying out their new knowledge, involves participants bringing clothing, make up, and personal item props to workshop their own disguise. (Part II is best done with a smaller group of 12 or less).

Spycraft Workshop: Brush Passes (Small groups. Live exercise onboard.)
How do you plan and execute a brush pass? What are the different types? In an age of technology, why are they still used today?

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Workshops For Children (kids of all ages, groups of 12 or less)

Spy Kids: Secret Writing
Learn from a former CIA officer how to send messages in secret writing—with invisible ink—using household supplies.

Spy Kids: Codes and Templates
Learn from a former CIA officer how to encrypt messages using simple codes and hide secret messages in plain sight with templates—techniques employed throughout history.

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Interactive, Speaker-led Audience Discussion

Fireside Chat with a Spy (For large audience or more intimate setting over a meal/drinks.)
Slide presentation and open discussion that allows participants to ask about life undercover, using disguises, working in alias, meeting with "bad guys," living and working abroad in the shadows.

The Real Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Family Life as Spies
Slide presentation and open discussion, including Esther Atwell (spouse and also a former CIA officer), about raising kids and holding down the domestic front while running clandestine ops, living undercover, conducting surveillance, and taking calculated risks without the kids (or the extended family) knowing.

Ethics in Espionage
A discussion on how ethics is taught and practiced within a profession that relies on lying, cheating, and stealing. Plenty of room for Q&A and audience participation in discussion. (Usually lots of questions in the audience on this one.)

Spy Movie Night and Q&A
Royalties allowing, a film based on real espionage operations is presented in a group setting (or watched privately in cabins) followed by discussion led by a former CIA Senior Operations Officer, who will put the operational elements of the film into context, discuss how realistic various parts of the film are, allow for questions.

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Other

Dinner With Spies
Book the real Mr. And Mrs. Smith (two former officers of CIA’s Directorate of Operations, a married couple) to join your family for a meal to discuss living life undercover, working in disguise and alias, raising a family while hiding their real jobs, how to enter the intelligence profession, how sit-down meals are key to recruiting new secret agents abroad, and more.

*Custom destination-specific talks, workshops, and other engagements available on request. Large audiences, small gatherings, personalized engagements over meals or drinks. (Wine tasting "Spying and Sippinʻ" events are popular in some locales, for instance.)

My wife and I completed our first engagement as cruise ship enrichment speakers in August 2024, a 12 day voyage requiring 6 different presentations. We received an outpouring of positive feedback from the guests and ship crew. We are also regular speakers for philanthropic and historical societies, military retiree groups, and police and security professionals organizations.

The following recent Cruise History has been recorded for this candidate.