In unusual move, US spy agencies say they won’t share intelligence with Biden for now

November 11, 2020 by 9 Comments

ODNI DNI

THE COORDINATING AGENCY OF the United States Intelligence Community has said it will not share national security information with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden until he has been officially “ascertained”. The term refers to a process described in the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which provides instructions for the orderly and peaceful transition of power in the US.

The process of transition includes giving the American president-elect access to the same national security information that the sitting president has access to. This process, described as “uncontroversial” by observers, has been followed without fail since at least 1963, when the Presidential Transition Act became law. However, in a statement published on Tuesday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said it would not support “a potential presidential transition” until “ascertainment of the candidate” by the administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) has been completed.

The GSA, an independent US government agency with a personnel force of over 12,000, chaired by Emily Murphy, must sign an official letter of “ascertainment” before the transition of power becomes official. However, this has not yet happened, as the sitting US president, Donald Trump, is refusing to concede the election, citing irregularities and fraud. The ODNI said on Tuesday that it would “not have contact with any transition team until notified by the GSA administrator”.

Furthermore, Biden has not been given access to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), an analytical compendium of timely information that is produced by the US Intelligence Community every morning. The Democratic Party candidate for president confirmed that he had been given no access to the PDB, which typically requires authorization by the sitting president. In a separate development, it was reported on Tuesday that the State Department is refusing to facilitate telephone calls between Biden and leaders of foreign countries, as is typical during the presidential transition process.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported late on Tuesday evening that the White House instructed US federal agencies to continue preparing the Trump administration’s budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which is due in February —three weeks after Trump is scheduled to depart the White House, based on the election projections of every major US news network.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 November 2020 | Permalink

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US official who penned anonymous 2018 New York Times article reveals his identity

October 29, 2020 by 1 Comment

Miles Taylor

A UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT official, who in 2018 wrote an anonymous editorial in The New York Times claiming to be part of a secret group of insiders trying to thwart President Donald Trump’s policies, has revealed his identity. The September 2018 editorial raised eyebrows in Washington for claiming that “many Trump appointees have vowed to […] thwart Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office”. The president called the article treasonous and urged the Department of Justice to investigate its source.

In 2019, the same government official published a book, titled The Warning, with the author identified only as “Anonymous — a senior Trump administration official”. In the months that followed there was intense speculation in Washington about the identity of the author. The list of possible candidates included Vice President Mike Pence, then-United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, and a host of senior officials in the Department of Defense.

On Wednesday, the anonymous author voluntarily revealed his identity. He is Miles Taylor, a Trump appointee, who served in various posts in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2017 until 2019. When he left the DHS, Taylor was serving as Chief of Staff to DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf. He had previously served as Chief of Staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. In August of this year, Taylor became the highest-ranking former member of the Trump administration to endorse Joe Biden for president. He now works as Head of National Security for Google.

The revelation prompted an immediate response from the White House, with the president’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany describing Taylor as “low-level, disgruntled former staffer”. Speaking at a rally in the US state of Arizona, President Trump called Taylor a “sleazebag” and “a low-level lowlife that I don’t know”. However, the Associated Press reported late on Wednesday that “as DHS chief of staff, Taylor was in many White House meetings with the president on his border policy and other major Homeland Security issues”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 October 2020 | Permalink

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Trump plans to axe defense secretary, FBI, CIA directors, if re-elected, say sources

October 26, 2020 by 4 Comments

Donald TrumpIF RE-ELECTED IN NOVEMBER, United States President Donald Trump has laid out plans to replace the secretary of defense, as well as the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to a new report. The website Axios, which published the report on Sunday, said the US president and his senior advisors have drafted a much longer list of names of senior military and intelligence officials who will be axed in November. However, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel top the list, said Axios.

The website cited two sources who have allegedly discussed with President Trump himself the fate of these and other officials. The sources told Axios that CIA Director Haspel is “despised and distrusted almost universally” within the president’s inner circle, whose members view her motives with “a lot of suspicion”. Another source familiar with “conversations at the CIA” told Axios that Haspel intends to step down —and possibly retire— “regardless of who wins the election” in November.

Trump is also “incensed” with FBI Director Wray, because he told Congress last month that the Bureau had not detected significant election-related fraud with either online activity or mail-in ballots, according to Axios. Additionally, the president reportedly lost trust in Defense Secretary Esper after he objected to the White House’s plan to deploy active-duty military personnel in major American cities, in response to popular protests sparked by allegations of abusive practices by law enforcement.

Axios added that, despite President Trump’s critical comments about his Attorney General, William Barr, in recent weeks, he has no “formal plans” to replace him at the present time.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 October 2020 | Permalink

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Dutch hacker says he logged into Trump’s Twitter account by guessing password

October 23, 2020 by 1 Comment

Twitter IA

A DUTCH ETHICAL COMPUTER hacker and cybersecurity expert claims to have logged into the personal Twitter account of United States President Donald Trump, reportedly after guessing his password. The hacker, Victor Gevers, took several screenshots of the private interface of Trump’s Twitter account, and shared them with Dutch news media, before contacting US authorities to notify them of the breach.

Trump attributes much of his popularity and electoral success to social media, and is especially fond of Twitter as a means of communication. He has tweeted nearly 20,000 times since 2015 (including re-tweets), with at least 6,000 of those tweets appearing in 2020 alone. His personal account, which uses the moniker @realDonaldTrump, has almost 90 million followers.

But Gevers, a self-described ethical computer hacker, cybersecurity researcher and activist, said he was able to guess the American president’s password and log into his Twitter account after four failed attempts. The hacker claims that Trump’s password was “maga2020!”. According to Gevers, Trump’s account did not require a two-factor authentication log-in process, which usually requires a password coupled with a numeric code that is sent to a user’s mobile telephone. As a result, Gevers said he was able to access Trump’s private messages on Twitter and —had he wanted to— post tweets in the name of the US president. He could also change Trump’s profile image, had he chosen to do so.

The Dutch hacker took several screenshots of the webpages he was able to access and emailed them to Volkskrant, a Dutch daily newspaper, and Vrij Nederland, an investigative monthly magazine. Shortly after accessing Trump’s account, Gevers said he contacted the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He said the US president’s password was changed “shortly after”, and that he was then contacted by the US Secret Service.

Also on Thursday, a Twitter spokesman said the company’s security team had seen “no evidence to corroborate” Gevers’ claim. He added that the San Francisco, California-based social media company had “proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government”. Such measures included “strongly” encouraging such accounts to enable two-factor authentication, said the spokesman. But he did not specify whether Trump’s account had activated this feature. The White House also denied Gevers’ claim, calling it “absolutely not true” and adding that it would “not comment on security procedures around the president’s social media accounts”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 23 October 2020 | Permalink

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Foreign spies target Walter Reed hospital for Trump’s health data, say experts

October 6, 2020 by 1 Comment

Donald Trump

Intelligence agencies from all over the world are almost certainly targeting the medical facilities and personnel involved in providing healthcare to United States President Donald Trump, according to intelligence insiders. The purpose of these efforts, which are considered “routine tasking” in intelligence circles, is to determine the status of America’s continuity of government plans and to acquire advanced warning of the plans and intentions of the White House, according to sources.

At least two reports emerged in the past few days about the strong probability that foreign intelligence operatives are currently seeking to collect sensitive biomedical information about Trump, who is battling a coronavirus infection. SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein wrote on Sunday that foreign spies are likely involved in efforts to place sources in places where discussions about the health of the American president are occurring. The targets of these efforts are not necessarily White House or other Trump administration officials. On the contrary, according to Politico’s Lara Seligman and Natasha Bertrand, these operations can target hospital staff, including doctors and administrators, as well as cleaners who have access to the US president’s bodily fluids and waste.

Some observers have criticized conflicting information given to the media about the US president’s health, as illustrated by White House physician Sean Conley’s comical efforts to evade the topic last week, after he was asked repeatedly by reporters if Mr. Trump had been on supplemental oxygen. Foreign spies are likely to have accessed detailed information about the US president’s health, and may have better information on the subject than the American public, said Politico.

Another intelligence tasking that foreign spies may be involved in is exploiting Mr. Trump’s time of physical weakness for propaganda purposes. The aim of such efforts would be “to paint America as unable to handle the pandemic”, thus creating “a crisis of confidence in the chain of command” and casting doubt on the ability of America to protect its senior leadership from the pandemic, according to intelligence insiders.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 October 2020 | Permalink

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Republican ex-intelligence officials launch high-profile campaign against Trump

August 21, 2020 by 11 Comments

Trump CIAA group of former United States senior intelligence and national security officials, who support the Republican Party, launched today a campaign to deny Donald Trump a second term as president. Calling itself Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden, the group launched its high-profile campaign with a full-time ad in the business broadsheet The Wall Street Journal.

The ad is signed by 73 members and supporters of the Republican Party, who served in senior intelligence and national security posts under presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. The list of signatories includes former Air Force Secretary Mike Donley, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director General Michael Hayden. William Webster, who served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA, and Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, also signed the ad.

The text of the ad accuses the US president of corruption and lambasts him for lacking “the character and competence to lead this nation” in a time of crisis. It argues that Trump is “unfit to serve as president” because he “solicited foreign influence”, “disparaged [the US] armed forces, intelligence agencies, and diplomats”, and “imperiled America’s security”. In these and other ways, says the Republican group, Trump has “demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term”.

This development highlights the contentious and at times downright adversarial relationship that has existed between the White House and parts of the United States Intelligence Community during Trump’s presidency. At the same time, such a high-profile effort by established intelligence and national security figures to deny the US president a second term in office, could be used by the Trump campaign as evidence of his crusade against what his supporters refer to as the ‘deep state’. The term refers to a purported network of unelected interests that resist the president’s efforts to implement his political agenda.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 21 August 2020 | Permalink

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Chinese state-linked operatives funded Trump campaign to gain access, says report

June 30, 2020 by 3 Comments

Trump and Xi JinpingA report in The Wall Street Journal claims that individuals and groups with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army donated substantial funds to the re-election campaign of United States President Donald Trump, in return for access to the White House.

The paper claims that nearly half a million dollars were donated to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign on behalf of Chinese-linked interests soon after he was sworn in as president in January of 2017. Some of these donations were allegedly among the biggest made to the campaign. The list of donors is headed by four men, according to The Journal, some of whom are naturalized Americans of Chinese background, and at least one is a Chinese citizen and American permanent resident, which means he does not get to vote in the United States. He is believed to have donated $150,000 to the Trump re-election campaign.

Many of these donations are gathered through an organization that was created in the United States in 2017 to help the president get re-elected in 2020, says the paper. Funds raised by the group are funneled to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee. However, according to The Journal, the people behind the organization have ties to Chinese diplomats in the United States, as well as to the Chinese state.

The paper claims that the money given to the Trump re-election campaign earned some of these donors physical access to the White House and the president in at least one occasion, in May of 2017. Among those who were invited to visit the White House was a personal adviser to Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Others have ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said the paper. It added that some of these donors have also attended Trump re-election campaign strategy meetings and meetings of the Republican National Committee.

The Wall Street Journal allegations came just days after Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, claimed in a new book that the president solicited his Chinese counterpart for help in securing his re-election. In his new book, The Room Where it Happened, Mr. Bolton claims that the American president asked Mr. Xi to have China purchase billions of dollars of American soybeans, so that farming communities in the Midwest would continue to support the Trump ticket come 2020.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 30 June 2020 | Permalink

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NSA director claims Bolton’s book would cause ‘irreparable damage’ to US secrets

June 19, 2020 by 3 Comments

Paul NakasoneThe director of America’s largest spy agency claims in a signed affidavit that a forthcoming book by John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, would critically compromise intelligence secrets if published. Bolton served in that capacity from April 2018 until September 2019. His memoir of his time as President Trump’s national security advisor, titled The Room Where It Happened, is scheduled for publication on Tuesday.

But the White House has sued Bolton, claiming that he did not follow the requirements of his pre-publication screening process by government officials. President Trump’s legal team also claims that, if published, the book would damage critical areas of United States national security.

On Wednesday, the White House’s stance on the book was affirmed by the director of the National Security Agency, General Paul M. Nakasone. In a signed affidavit filed in US District Court in Washington, Gen. Nakasone said he had been asked by the legal adviser of the National Security Council to review “a limited portion” of the draft manuscript of Bolton’s book. He added that he had identified “classified information” in that portion of the manuscript, some of which was classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive and Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) level.

According to Gen. Nakasone’s affidavit, “compromise of this information could result in the permanent loss of a valuable SIGINT source and cause irreparable damage to the US SIGINT system”. SIGINT refers to the gathering of intelligence by intercepting communications signals in the form of information exchanged orally between people or mediated via electronic means.

Gen. Nakasone goes on to state that the unauthorized disclosure of the information contained in Bolton’s book could “reasonably […] be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage” to US national security. This includes causing “considerable difficulties in US and allied relations with specific nations”. The NSA director does not detail the precise damage that Bolton’s revelations could cause to US national security, stating only that the information would compromise an intelligence-collection “capability” that “significant manpower and monetary investments have been and continue to be made to enable and maintain”.

Alongside Gen. Nakasone’s affidavit, the Department of Justice submitted an emergency filing on Wednesday, seeking to block the publication of Bolton’s book on national security grounds. Another affidavit was filed on Wednesday by John Ratcliffe, President Trump’s newly appointed Director of National Intelligence.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 19 June 2020 | Permalink

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Pentagon study warned about global crisis caused by ‘novel respiratory disease’

April 6, 2020 by 1 Comment

DoD Pandemic reportA United States Department of Defense report warned about the danger of a global crisis caused by a “novel respiratory disease”. The existence of the 2017 study adds to the mounting skepticism about President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that the coronavirus pandemic “blind- sided the world” and “came out of nowhere”.

The 103-page report is titled USNORTHCOM Branch Plan 3560: Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Disease Response, and was presented to the leadership of the US Northern Command headquarters in January 2017. It discusses the possible causes of a “clinically severe pandemic” and outlines the complications that it is likely to cause around the world. It also proposes an array of possible responses to such a crisis by the US military. A draft of the report was published online by The Nation earlier this month. The American newsmagazine said that it obtained the report from “a Pentagon official who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal”.

The Department of Defense study bases its analysis on data acquired from recent pandemics, such as the 2012 Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS coronavirus) and others. It discusses “coronavirus infections” and warns that “[t]he most likely and significant [pandemic] threat is a novel respiratory disease, particularly a novel influenza disease”. The report then goes on to describe the medical supply shortages that would be caused by a coronavirus pandemic. It does so with a stunning degree of accuracy that mirrors the situation that the US is currently experiencing due to COVID-19. For instance it states that global “[c]ompetition for, and scarcity of, resources will include […] non-pharmaceutical Medical Countermeasures”, namely medical masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment needed by healthcare workers.

It also warns that dire shortages in medical equipment will be hampered by inadequate logistical support and will have “a significant impact on the global workforce”. Furthermore, the Pentagon study appears to anticipate a “worldwide competition” for ventilators and other hi-tech medical devices associated with intensive care units, as well as a scarcity of hospital beds. It ominously states that “even the most industrialized countries will have insufficient hospital beds” to accommodate the numbers of those who will need to be hospitalized due to having been infected by the virus.

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that, starting in January of this year, the US Intelligence Community repeatedly warned the White House about “a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic” requiring “swift action to contain it”. The paper cited “a US official who had access to intelligence reporting” about the coronavirus, who said that “the system was blinking red” in January.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 April 2020 | Permalink

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US intelligence warned White House about COVID-19 threat in January, report claims

March 21, 2020 by 5 Comments

Coronavirus Task ForceThe United States Intelligence Community issued “ominous classified warnings” in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus, but the White House failed to take timely action, according to an investigative report published on Friday in The Washington Post. The paper said that, in their totality, the Intelligence Community’s reports warned about “a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic” requiring the US government to take “swift action to contain it”.

The paper cited “a US official who had access to intelligence reporting” about the virus, who said that “the system was blinking red” in January. The “ominous” reports were disseminated to members of Congress and to senior officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump. Sources told The Washington Post that the reports did not attempt to forecast when the virus might begin to spread in the US, or what public health measures should be taken to prevent a possible outbreak. Such policy-related decisions are usually “outside the purview of the [intelligence] agencies”, said the US official.

However, the warnings were frequent and began to increase in volume by the last week of January, according to the article. By early February, the majority of the intelligence reports that were disseminated to the White House concerned COVID-19, sources said. Among other warnings, the reports cautioned President Trump that Chinese government officials were deliberately minimizing the extent and seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Washington Post cites “two senior administration officials” who claim that the president’s advisers found it difficult to draw his attention to the intelligence reports about COVID-19. It was only on January 18, less than a week before China began to place millions of its citizens on lockdown, that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar was able to secure access to the Oval Office and speak directly with President Trump about the virus. Soon afterwards, Dr. Robert Kadlec, HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a classified meeting. The Post cites four anonymous US officials, who said that Dr. Kadlec gave his presentation jointly with members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They discussed the global health implications of COVID-19 and warned it was a “serious” threat that would require Americans “to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives”.

But the president was “dismissive”, said administration officials, allegedly refusing to believe that the virus posed a major threat to the country. On February 24, when, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 53 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US, President Trump tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”. In the weeks that followed, said the administration officials, the White House “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen”. Currently there are in excess of 20,000 COVID-19 cases in the US, a number that appears to double every 48 hours. Read more of this post

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Trump thought Erdoğan was “bluffing” about invading Syria, sources claim

October 15, 2019 by 2 Comments

Turkey SyriaSenior White House officials close to United States President Donald Trump believed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was bluffing when he threatened to invade northern Syria, according to sources. For over two years, most of northern Syria has been controlled by American-supported Kurdish militias, who were instrumental in helping Washington defeat the Islamic State. But the growing strength of the Kurdish forces alarmed Turkey, which views Kurdish nationalism as a bigger threat than the Islamic State.

Since 2016, Ankara repeatedly threatened to invade northern Syria and disarm the Kurdish groups, which it sees as terrorist. It had refrained from doing so due to the presence of American troops in the area. However, according to news website Axios, key officials in the Trump White House were convinced that Turkish President Erdoğan would not have his troops invade northern Syria even if the American forces pulled out. In making this claim, the website cites six unnamed sources “with direct knowledge of the situation”, some of whom were allegedly “in the room with the two leaders and had access to their phone calls going back several years.

In one of these phone calls, which took place in 2017, President Erdoğan allegedly informed the US leader of his government’s intention to “move in to take care of the Kurdish threat” in northern Syria. But President Trump cautioned him about making such a daring move. He reminded the Turkish leader that, by invading northern Syria, Turkey would become responsible for the tens of thousands of Islamic State supporters and their families who are kept in detention camps. Ankara would also face mass international condemnation and possible sanctions from the United States and Europe. Moreover, the US-trained and -supplied Kurdish forces would arguably create a military quagmire for Turkish troops in the region. At that point Turkey “would own” the problem and would not be able to “come to [the US] for help”, according to Trump.

The Axios report claims that, until last week, the White House thought that “Erdoğan would never actually go through with his long-threatened Syria invasion”, because doing so would be detrimental to Turkish interests in the region. Based on that conviction, President Trump finally decided to call Erdoğan’s bluff by pulling American Special Forces troops out of northern Syria, in the belief that Tukey’s response would amount to nothing further than a few airstrikes and small-scale cross-border incursions. That belief was behind the White House’s surprise decision to suddenly pull its troops from northern Syria, according to Axios’ sources.

The report did not mention whether the US Intelligence Community’s reports to the White House concurred with the US President’s conviction that Turkey would not invade northern Syria even in the absence of US troops. The question is, in other words, did Trump made up his mind about Erdoğan’s intentions to invade northern Syria because, or despite the conclusions of his own Intelligence Community?

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 October 2019 | Permalink

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White House whistleblower is a CIA officer, report claims

September 27, 2019 by 6 Comments

Donald TrumpThe individual who filed a report claiming that United States President Donald Trump sought help from a foreign country to win the 2020 election is believed to be a male employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. The man, who is legally classified as a whistleblower, filed the report on August 12. It was released for publication on Thursday and is now available [.pdf] online. It claims that Trump tried to “solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 US presidential election. The basis of this claim refers to a telephone exchange between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, which took place on July 25.

The whistleblower’s report states that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine. The implication of the whistleblower’s allegation is that Trump sought to subvert the election effort of one of his main rivals for the US presidency. The whistleblower report, along with transcripts and memoranda that describe the July 25 telephone conversation between the two heads of state, form the basis of an impeachment inquiry that has been launched by Trump’s political rivals in Congress.

On Thursday, The New York Times cited what it said were three people who knew the identity of the whistleblower. The paper said that the whistleblower is a male employee of the CIA. In the past, the man had been assigned to work in the White House, said The Times. The secondment of CIA personnel to the White House is a regular occurrence. CIA personnel are temporarily assigned to perform duties relating to National Security Council meetings, or manage the White House Situation Room. They also monitor and help manage the White House secure communications system. The paper said that the CIA officer’s White House secondment had ended and that he had returned to the CIA headquarters by the time the July 25 telephone call between Trump and Zelensky took place. In his report [.pdf], the whistleblower states that he was “not a direct witness to most of the events described”. However, he cites accounts of these events by “multiple officials” who shared the information with him “in the course of official interagency business”.

Some have criticized The Times for leaking information about the whistleblower’s place of employment and past assignments. They argue that the information could allow the White House to identify the source of the complaint. By law, whistleblowers in the US have the right to remain anonymous, and thus be protected from possible retaliation from those whom they accuse of abusing their power. But the paper claims that the American public has a right to information about the whistleblower’s “place in government”, so as to assess his credibility and evaluate the significance of his allegations.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 September 2019 | Permalink

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CIA denies Trump’s mishandling led to alleged exfiltration of senior Russian asset

September 10, 2019 by 8 Comments

Trump CIA - JFThe United States Central Intelligence Agency has questioned the accuracy of a media report, which claimed that “repeated mishandling” of intelligence by President Donald Trump resulted in the exfiltration of a high-level source from Russia. According to the American news network CNN, the CIA carried out the exfiltration operation in 2017. Despite the success of the operation, the removal of the asset has left the US without this high-level source at a time when it is most needed, said CNN. The network cited “a person directly involved in the discussions” to exfiltrate the asset, but said it was withholding key details about the case in order to “reduce the risk of the person’s identification”.

According to CNN, the CIA asset was so highly placed inside the Kremlin that the US had “no equal alternative” inside the Russian government. The asset was in a position to provide “both insight and information” on Russia’s secretive President, Vladimir Putin. But by 2016, the sheer length of the asset’s cooperation with the CIA had caused some intelligence officials at Langley to consider exfiltrating him from Russia. Typically agents-in-place have short careers; they are either captured by their adversaries or are exfiltrated once their handlers start to believe that they are burned out or that their life may be in danger. But exfiltration operations in so-called “denied areas” —regions or countries with formidable counterintelligence resources that make it difficult for the CIA to operate there— are rare.

The CNN report claims that the decision to exfiltrate the high-level source was taken after a May 2017 meeting between Trump and Putin, with the participation of senior American and Russian officials. The latter included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-Ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak. Citing an American “former senior intelligence official”, CNN alleges that Trump “repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence” at that meeting, which could have led to the exposure of the CIA’s asset. At that time, the CIA decided that it was time to exfiltrate the asset and proceeded to do so successfully.

But the CIA disputed the accuracy of CNN’s story. The agency’s Director of Public Affairs, Brittany Bramell, dismissed what she called “CNN’s narrative” as “inaccurate”. She added that the agency’s judgements about exfiltrations of agents are “life-or-death decisions” that are based solely on “objective analysis and sound collection”, not on “misguided speculation that the President [mishandled] our nation’s most sensitive intelligence —which he has access to each and every day”. CNN said on Monday that Trump and “a small number of senior officials” were told about the exfiltration in advance. The news network also said that it was not privy to details about the extraction operation or about the current whereabouts of the exfiltrated asset.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 10 September 2019 | Permalink

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Trump’s photo tweet gave away US secrets, say experts

September 2, 2019 by 8 Comments

Satellite reconnaissanceA tweet by United States President Donald Trump may have compromised secrets about America’s reconnaissance satellite capabilities, according to experts who analyzed it over the weekend. The American president posted a message about Iran’s space program on his personal Twitter account on Saturday, August 30. The message read: “The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One”.

Trump was referring to an apparent rocket launch failure that happened on Friday, August 29, at the Semnan Space Center in northern Iran. The suspected rocket failure caused significant damage to Semnan’s Site One launching pad, some of which appears to have burned down. It is thought to be the second such incident in Iran and it must be a source of frustration for Tehran, which has been trying to place a new satellite in orbit for almost a year now. Washington and other countries have criticized Tehran’s space program, saying it is a disguised missile program that could potentially be used to launch a nuclear bomb.

Along with his written message, the US president tweeted an aerial photograph showing the damage at the Semnan Space Center. Some have since claimed that the photograph, which Trump appears to have taken from a printed document given to him by a US spy agency, offers “an unprecedented example of US spy satellites at work” and inadvertently reveals some of America’s most closely guarded satellite capabilities. Experts say they have been able to determine that the photograph was taken by a satellite, rather than a surveillance aircraft or unmanned drone. Some say they have even been able to pinpoint the exact satellite that was used to generate the image, by analyzing the angle of the photograph. It is believed that it was taken by USA 224, which is one of America’s top-secret optical reconnaissance satellites.

More importantly, the US president’s tweet may have provided Washington’s adversaries with an example of the precise power of America’s reconnaissance satellites. Their exact surveillance capabilities are a closely held secret that is known by specialists at the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, two of America’s most obscure intelligence agencies. It has long been speculated that the images captured by American spy satellites far surpass the 25 centimeter resolution that is available to commercial satellite services. A number of experts have suggested that the photograph tweeted by Trump displays a resolution that “is amazingly high” and must be “at least 10 centimeters, if not better”. One specialist juxtaposed the image tweeted by the US president next to an image of the same launch site taken with a commercial satellite. The difference is indeed remarkable. One expert told the NBC news network that Trump’s “utterly careless” tweet would “have global repercussions”.

Last year Nada Bakos, who spent 20 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote an editorial in The Washington Post in which she warned that foreign intelligence agencies were paying close attention to the US president’s tweets. Bakos argued that President Trump’s “Twitter feed is a gold mine for every foreign intelligence agency”. She added that, throughout her CIA career, she and her team “never had such a rich source of raw intelligence about a world leader, and we certainly never had the opportunity that our adversaries (and our allies) have now”, because of Trump’s social media presence.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 02 September 2019 | Permalink

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Trump says US will not use spies on North Korea, then appears to retract statement

June 13, 2019 by 5 Comments

Trump CIA - JFUnited States President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would not allow American intelligence agencies to use spies against North Korea, raising eyebrows in Washington, before appearing to backtrack a day later. The American president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, when he was asked about a report that appeared in The Wall Street Journal that day. According to the report, Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, held regular meetings with officers of the US Central Intelligence Agency before he was assassinated with VX nerve gas at a busy airport terminal in Malaysia in February 2017. The Wall Street Journal’s claim was echoed by a book written by Washington Post correspondent Anna Fifield, which also came out on Tuesday. In the book, entitled The Great Successor, Fifield claims that Kim had traveled to Malaysia to meet his CIA handler when he was killed.

On Tuesday, President Trump said he had seen “the information about the CIA, with respect to [North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s] half-brother. And I would tell [Kim] that would not happen under my auspices, that’s for sure”, said the US president, before repeating, “I wouldn’t let that happen under my auspices”. Reporters interpreted Trump’s comments to mean that he would not use human assets or any other kinds of informants to collect intelligence on the regime of the North Korean leader. As can be expected, the US president’s remarks raised eyebrows among lawmakers and national security experts in Washington. It was suggested that Trump appeared to voluntarily eliminate a potentially invaluable tool of intelligence collection from America’s arsenal. The president’s comments were even more peculiar given the hermetically sealed nature of the North Korean regime, which Western spy agencies would argue necessitates the use of human assets for intelligence collection. Moreover, President Trump’s comments appeared to once again place him at odds with his own Intelligence Community, as previously in the cases of Iran’s nuclear program, the current status of the Islamic State, or Russia’s meddling in American political life.

On Wednesday, however, the US president appeared to backtrack on his comments. When asked at a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda about his earlier remarks, Trump denied that he had implied the US would not use spies to collect information on North Korea. “No, it’s not what I meant”, the president responded to the reporter who asked him the question. “It’s what I said and I think it’s different, maybe, than your interpretation”, said President Trump, but refused to elaborate on what he actually meant with his statement on Tuesday. The Reuters news agency contacted the CIA seeking an official statement on the US president’s remarks, but the agency said it had no immediate comment on the issue.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 June 2019 | Permalink

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