Whale Hunting is a weekly newsletter delving into the secret worlds of money and power that Project Brazen became obsessed with ever since its multi-year investigation into the globe-sprawling 1MDB scandal starting in 2015. That project changed our entire worldview. We wrote a book about it.

Jho Low, the fraudster who orchestrated the $6 billion theft from 1MDB and is still at large, was the ultimate whale. The term comes from nightclubs and casinos, who use it as a codeword for big spenders. Our use of the term is broader. The whales are the people, usually armed with extraordinary amounts of money, that play a larger role in global affairs than their public profile might suggest. Sometimes they’re a public figure doing unexpected things behind the scenes. Understanding who they are and what they’re up to is an eye-opening experience that will change how you interpret the daily news.

Welcome to Gateway, a multimedia investigation where we’ll take you into the heart of Europe’s cocaine underworld and reveal the massive, secret economy it has spawned.

Telling this story means documenting the rise of street dealers and their customers in the hipster havens of Antwerp and Rotterdam and across northern Europe, chronicling how old Italian—and Colombian—dominated order gave way to a diverse array of criminal organizations at open war with one another.

We’ll also lay out the big picture: What happens—and who pays the price—when there’s too much drug money for the economy to absorb?

There’s the world you think you know and understand. Then there’s the world behind that one, the one you don’t often get to see—the one that informs our world, shapes it, and drives it, from the smoldering frontlines of eastern Ukraine to the marbled halls of Washington, D.C. That’s the world of espionage; and that’s the world of the Brush Pass.

A weekly newsletter exploring the shadowy world of national security and intelligence, the Brush Pass will feature original analysis, reporting, historical excavation, and interviews with ex-spies and other national security experts. You’ll read about covert operations across the globe, become wise to the innerworkings of secret bureaucracies, and hear incredible stories from CIA, NSA, FBI, and other intelligence officials.