A Look At The U.S. Air Force’s Top-Secret Spy Agency Big Safari

The Colonel and His Labyrinth -- Vocativ

Inside Big Safari, the Air Force’s top-secret spy agency

The man on the other line didn’t seem happy. “We are a secretive and shadowy organization that has been in existence for over 60 years,” he said.

The man’s name is Col. Edward Topps. He’s the leader of a mysterious Air Force agency known as “Big Safari.” Last month, he called me out of the blue, after I’d written a story about a top-secret spy plane mission. Topps’ unit had paid Sierra Nevada Corporation—a major private defense firm—tens of millions of dollars to gather intel on Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels.

There had been no bidding process for the contract, which is a red flag, given the Pentagon’s history of how it spends taxpayer money. So I decided to take a closer look.

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My Comment: I suspect that there are some in the U.S. Air Force (and also in the intelligence community) who are not happy with this story and the exposure that it is causing.