Spying & Spies in the USA (merged thread)
Marine took files as part of spy ring
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Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern California.
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The case is an intelligence nightmare, said defense analysts briefed on it.
They also said it unmasks the military's growing role in post-Sept. 11 domestic security and confirms that U.S. officials believe al-Qaeda is active in the United States.
“It gives operational security people brain cooties to think about an incident like this,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank that focuses on emerging security concerns.
Changes in Espionage by Americans 1947-2007
Northrop Grumman Technical Services, 13 Mar 08: Changes in Espionage by Americans: 1947-2007
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This report documents changes and trends in American espionage since 1990. Its subjects are American citizens. Unlike two earlier reports in this series, individuals are compared across three groups based on when they began espionage activities. The three groups are defined as between 1947 and 1979, 1980 and 1989, and 1990 and 2007. The subset of cases that began since 2000 is given additional study. Findings include: since 1990 offenders are more likely to be naturalized citizens, and to have foreign attachments, connections, and ties.
Their espionage is more likely to be motivated by divided loyalties. Twice as many American espionage offenders since 1990 have been civilians than members of the military, fewer held Top Secret while more held Secret clearances, and 37% had no security clearance giving them access to classified information. Two thirds of American spies since 1990 have volunteered. Since 1990, spying has not paid well: 80% of spies received no payment for espionage, and since 2000 it appears no one was paid. Six of the 11 most recent cases have involved terrorists, either as recipients of information, by persons working with accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in protest against treatment of detainees there. Many recent spies relied on computers, electronic information retrieval and storage, and the Internet. The current espionage statutes have to stretch to cover recent cases that reflect the context of global terrorism.....
Complete 113 page report at the link.
Outsourcing Intelligence Collection
Why take the risk, when it's so much more lucrative here: http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/
Official resigns over alleged spy ring
Important note : CIA has hissy fits over independents.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A man accused of running an illegal contractor spy ring in Afghanistan has resigned from the Air Force, still maintaining his innocence, and still facing possible criminal charges.
Two investigations continue in a case that has tested the definition of what contractors are allowed to do in war zones.
Air Force civilian employee Michael Furlong, together with his boss, Mark Johnson, resigned in July after the Air Force inspector general told the men they'd face official censure for how they ran an information gathering network in Afghanistan.
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Tampa-based International Media Ventures (IMV) shut its doors, turned radioactive by association with the investigations, even as high-ranking Pentagon officials praised IMV's work gathering social and civil data to map Afghan society — work that is now being carried out by another contractor.
Another one of the firms involved, Strategic Influence Alternatives, went back to the business of protecting corporate executives overseas.
Clarridge is now shopping his human-intelligence networking skills to other foreign intelligence agencies, and to U.S. agencies like the FBI, the defense officials say. Clarridge would not comment for this story.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...f43ae05ecf9b3b
Va. man allegedly worked for Syrian intelligence
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McLEAN, Va. (AP) — A Syrian-born, naturalized U.S. citizen has been indicted on charges of spying on U.S. activists opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and providing intelligence to that country's intelligence agents.
According to an indictment unsealed Wednesday, Mohamad Soueid (SWAYD) of Leesburg, Va., was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiring to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government. Soueid was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday afternoon.
http://news.yahoo.com/va-man-alleged...3Rpb25z;_ylv=3
VA man charged for working for Syrian intelligence
A naturalized US citizen was arrested in Northern Virginia yesterday, and later charged in Federal court on accusations that he gathered information on anti-Al Assad regime activists within the United States. Additionally, the criminal compliant against him also cites an allegation that he even made a trip to Syria recently and met with President Al-Assad himself.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z4
Indictment, Press Release and ... Really ?
Here is the US v Soueid indictment; and the DoJ Press Release explaining it (snip of what crimes are charged):
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Soueid, aka “Alex Soueid” or “Anas Alswaid,” a Syrian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged by a federal grand jury on Oct. 5, 2011, in a six-count indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia. Soueid is charged with conspiring to act and acting as an agent of the Syrian government in the United States without notifying the Attorney General as required by law; two counts of providing false statements on a firearms purchase form; and two counts of providing false statements to federal law enforcement.
As this is an indictment released by DoJ in the wake of "Fast and Furious", I do take to heart the obligatory disclaimer at the Press Release's end:
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The public is reminded that an indictment contains mere allegations and that a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The crimes charged are not based on "new laws" - nor, on any novel interpretations of old laws (from the indictment):
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Count 1 - 18 U.S.C. § 371: Conspiracy to Act in the United States as an Agent of a Foreign Government
Count 2 - 18 U.S.C. § 951: Acting in the United States as an Agent of a Foreign Government
Count 3 - 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(6): Material False Statement on a Firearms Purchase Application
Count 4 - 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(1)(A): False Statement on a Firearms Purchase Application
Counts 5 and 6 -18 U.S.C. § 1001: False Statements
Whether the evidence will back up the indictment's factual allegations remains to be seen.
This seems a probably questionable statement:
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from Fuchs
Strange accusations. ....I'd be at a loss to name any German law that he'd have violated if it happened in Germany.
but it's not worth for me an email to Germany to find out.
Regards
Mike
American spies 1947-2015: official report
An official DoD report 'The Expanding Spectrum of Espionage by Americans, 1947–2015', which is the report is the fourth in the series on espionage by Americans that the Defense Personnel and Security Research Center (PERSEREC) began publishing in 1992 and published in August 2017, but appeared on my Twitter feed today.
Link:https://publicintelligence.net/perse...-by-americans/
The publishers explain, so not the DoD:
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The report describes characteristics of 209 Americans who committed espionage-related offenses against the U.S. since 1947. Three cohorts are compared based on when the individual began espionage: 1947-1979, 1980-1989, and 1990-2015. Using data coded from open published sources, analyses are reported on personal attributes of persons across the three cohorts, the employment and levels of clearance, how they committed espionage, the consequences they suffered, and their motivations. The second part of the report explores each of the five types of espionage committed by the 209 persons under study. These include: classic espionage, leaks, acting as an agent of a foreign government, violations of export control laws, and economic espionage.
The introduction has some gems:
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Three-quarters succeeded in passing information, while one-quarter were intercepted before they could pass anything. Sixty percent were volunteers and 40% were recruited. Among recruits, 60%were recruited by a foreign intelligence service and 40% by family or friends.Contacting a foreign embassy was the most common way to begin as a volunteer.
Catching Russian spies with a Russian-American
Classic story and hat tip to WoTR. It is within a wider article on immigrants and national security.
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The FBI, too, has benefitted from the service of immigrants. A particularly striking example in the national security realm is that of
Dimitry Droujinsky, the son of Russian immigrants to Palestine who later came to the United States. Droujinsky had a multi-decade career in the FBI; his specialty was impersonating KGB officers to ensnare Americans who had spied for Moscow. His career reached all the way into the late 1990s when he came back from retirement to help
bring to justice David Sheldon Boone, a former National Security Agency official who had sold sensitive documents to Moscow in the last days of the Cold War. Boone had Russian-language training and might not have been fooled by an FBI agent who had learned his Russian in a classroom.
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/th...us-hard-power/
Chinese Spies Engaged in Massive Theft of U.S. Technology
A report by Bill Gertz, ex-WaPo, which uses Congressional testimony as the foundation. Two small quotes:
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Gone was any dedicated strategic [counterintelligence] program, while elite pockets of proactive capabilities died of neglect....We know surprisingly little about adversary intelligence services relative to the harm they can do.
Link:http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...-s-technology/
James Clapper has written the best book on intelligence in a generation.
A book review by Bruce Reidel that is titled 'Order from Chaos' which starts with:
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The former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the author of 'Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence' at a critical time in our nation’s history, and he offers a crucial insight into the threat we face from a foreign adversary. His great sense of humor also makes the book a pleasure to read.
Link:https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order...ce-challenges/
Afghanistan: a war of error
A devastating IMHO review of Steve Coll's book (see Post 37 on the Pakistani ISI thread) by Edward Luttwak, although it's real focus is the CIA (the other half of the relationship). There several illustrations why:
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abysmal “tradecraft”...Raymond Davis had a bank statement listing the CIA as his employer in his car when he was arrested by local police in Lahore on January 27, 2011....the linguistic incompetence of almost all CIA analysts that really matters – an incompetence that goes right to the top....secretaries of state and generals seem to have believed that the cultures of Afghanistan are flexible, fluid and malleable..
He ends with:
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ntelligence is an ancillary function, so it may be that the CIA’s systemic shortcomings are irrelevant to the preordained outcome in Afghanistan. This does not diminish the virtues of Steve Coll’s excellent book – a rem#arkable feat of extended reportage soundly constructed out of telling details and a great number of effective character portraits.
Link:https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/p...-coll-luttwak/
Who was the CIA traitor and how was he id'd?
Via Newsweek and based on a new audio-only book:
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Now we know, according to an posthumously published book by the late David Wise, the authoritative espionage writer who died from pancreatic cancer last month. The informant, Wise writes, was Alexandr Shcherbakov, a down-on-his-luck former KGB officer who delivered the Kremlin’s dossier on Hanssen to an FBI counterspy who had pursued the case for years.
Link:https://www.newsweek.com/who-dimed-o...anssen-1196080
As Trump escalates rhetoric, Iran's wartime preparations include terrorist attacks...
I thought we'd had a post on the ex-USAF lady, a linguist, who appears to have defected to Iran, the search function fails to help. So as a stop gap here is a February 2019 BBC report:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47230150
So here is an article that appears to have considerable help from "informed persons" in the USA. The title suggests Iran is preparing it's options to say the least.
Link:https://news.yahoo.com/as-trump-escalates-rhetoric-iran-is-making-its-own-plans-for-a-potential-war-084500212.html?
