As if Illegal Mass Surveillance does not have enough downside, now it has also become a National Security risk??? -SF Federal officials fear that national security may have been jeopardized when the company building a sensitive phone-number database violated a federal requirement that only U.S. citizens work on the project. The database is significant because…
Category: Intelligence Tradecraft
Espionage Files: How the CIA Writes History
Excellent read on the dark History of CIA and one of their most influential and controversial figures. -SF LAST SUMMER I PAID a visit to Georgetown University’s Lauinger Libraryas part of my research on legendary CIA counterspy James Jesus Angleton. I went there to investigate Angleton’s famous mole hunt, one of the least flattering episodes of his…
Espionage Files: Ex-Cia Officer to be Extradited to Italy to Stand Trial
I have been following this case since 2003. This is an interesting but tragic story in how espionage blowback has NO statute of limitations. For those of you who want to read the backstory on this, check out A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial.-SF An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that…
Espionage Files: Pakistani Spies Behind the 2009 FOB Chapman Attack?
Anybody who has done any amount of serious reading about 9/11 knows that Pakistan is an ally of the U.S. in name only; they have been supplying the Taliban with intel and arms for decades and indeed did support Bin Laden and his ilk during the early parts of the War in Afghanistan in 2003…
Espionage Files: South Korea Announces Defection of North Korean Intelligence Official
A North Korean intelligence official who sought refuge in South Korea last year is the most high profile defector to the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953, according to authorities in Seoul. An announcement issued by the South Korean government last week said the defector is a colonel in the Korean…
The Surveillance State: The CIA is Investing in Firms that “Mine” Your Twitter and Instagram Data
SOFT ROBOTS THAT can grasp delicate objects, computer algorithms designed to spot an “insider threat,” and artificial intelligence that will sift through large data sets — these are just a few of the technologies being pursued by companies with investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm, according to a document obtained by The Intercept….
Espionage Files: Why Computers May Never Replace Human Spies
If legendary British spy-turned-KGB mole Kim Philby was alive to offer arrested U.S. Navy officer Edward Lin advice — regardless of his guilt or innocence — we know what it would be. Despite repeatedly coming under suspicion, Philby fed British and American secrets to Moscow for three decades before ultimately defecting in 1963. His…
Espionage Files: Ex-Mossad Chief Meir Dagan and The Limits of Power
On March 17, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan passed away at the age of 71. An examination of Dagan’s career illuminates how creative thinking and bold approaches can enable intelligence organizations to adjust to changing environments, while at the same time demonstrating that the use of power has its own limitations. It also sheds light…
Espionage Files: Pakistani Intelligence Possibly Financed 2009 CIA Outpost Bombing
Pakistan’s powerful spy agency may have provided the funding for a deadly 2009 suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan that ranks as one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, according to a newly declassified State Department cable. The heavily redacted cable, sent about two weeks after the attack on Dec. 30,…
Espionage Files: Naval Espionage in an A2AD Age
U.S. Navy Lt. Edward Lin, a native of Taiwan, speaks about his path to US citizenship at a naturalization ceremony in Honolulu, Hawaii, in this US Navy handout photo taken December 3, 2008. Lin, a US Navy officer with access to sensitive US intelligence, faces espionage charges over accusations he passed state secrets, possibly…