NEW YORK (AP) — A Russian banker who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in what the government portrayed as a Cold War-style spy ring was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in a U.S. prison. Evgeny Buryakov, 41, also was fined $10,000 by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman, who said the sentence reflects the seriousness of…
Category: Intelligence Tradecraft
Surveillance State: New Israeli Facial Imaging Claims to Be Able to ID Terrorist and Pedophiles?
I know we joke a lot about national security technology becoming more and more like “Minority Report”, but folks, this is already been purchased by DHS. This is Happening. -SF “Faception” Technology can match an individual with various personality traits and types with a high level of accuracy A Tel-Aviv based start-up company says it…
Espionage Files: Portuguese Spy Caught Passing ‘NATO Secrets’ To Russian Handler In Rome
The Kremlin’s espionage offensive in Europe came to the surface on Tuesday after a Portuguese spy was arrested in Rome for allegedly passing NATO secrets to a Russian intelligence officer. The supposed double agent, identified by the local media as Frederico Carvalhão, is a member of the Potugal’s SIS intelligence service, the country’s equivalent of MI5, responsible for…
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part I
The Great Leader’s Shadow War In the late 1960s, North Korean president Kim Il-sung sent commandos to infiltrate South Korea In the fall of 1966, things really began to change on the Korean Peninsula. The armistice agreement that had marked the de facto end of the Korean War in 1953 had created a demilitarized…
Future Warfare: 21st Century DIY Insurgency
It started innocuously enough. The prime minister-for-life never missed the annual “Liberation Day” parade. With the drums and platoons thundering, nobody noticed as the quadcopter, barely larger than a sparrow, floated down toward the dais, its faint whirr drowned out by the industrial machinery rolling by in formation. It was at once a child’s birthday…
Espionage Files: Operation CONDOR and Chile’s Bloody Past
If you have never read about the bloody past of Chile in the 70’s and the bloody reigns of Allende and Pinochet (whom the CIA helped install in a coup), you should definitely do some reading, if your google-fu is strong, you should have no trouble finding quality reading; You can start with this 2013…
Espionage Files: Documentary on CIA to Air on CBS Tommorrow at 8pm CST
“THE SPYMASTERS” REMASTERED: If you missed Showtime’s “The Spymasters: The CIA in the Crosshairs” when it aired last fall – you get another shot on Saturday May 21nd at 8PM CST. on CBS. The original documentary included interviews with every living CIA Director. It is unclear if they all will be in this version – since…
Surveillance State: Inside The NSA’s Real-Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG)
It is a very common trend to see “Counter-Terrorism” programs and technology that were once used to save American Military and Civilian lives in war get re-directed to spy on American citizens in Peace time. This is something to keep in mind with this program. -SF Relentless attacks on American military personnel at the height…
Book Review: Playing to the Edge, American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
by Michael V. Hayden Penguin, 448 pp When Michael Hayden was a young air force officer in the 1980s, the military stationed him as an intelligence attaché in Bulgaria. There, the man who would rise to the top of the American intelligence community in the post–September 11 era lived under constant surveillance: he and his…
Spy Books Worth A Damn: “Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran”
MISSING MAN: THE AMERICAN SPY WHO VANISHED IN IRAN By Barry Meier Farrar Straus Giroux, $27.00, 273 pp. The American public — especially the media — tends to demand, “Who’s to blame?” when a person vanishes in a foreign land with no explanation as to why, or whether, he is being held. Such is the…