Analysis: Secret Service failed Trump because it can’t keep up with the growing threat

July 15, 2024 by 13 Comments

Trump 2016THE UNITED STATES SECRET Service is among the world’s most prestigious law enforcement agencies. Its institutional experience in protecting US presidents and presidential candidates dates to 1901. Given its high-stakes protective mission —safeguarding the executive leadership of the world’s most powerful nation— the agency has historically placed emphasis on flawlessness: it simply can’t afford to fail.

Yet it did just that on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. Presidential candidate Donald Trump did not survive the attempted assassination because his Secret Service detail neutralized the threat to his safety in time. Instead he survived because the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, from the small suburb of Bethel Park in Pittsburgh, missed. How are we to explain this abject failure by one of the world’s most venerated law enforcement agencies?

POLICING IN A DEMOCRACY

Unlike tyrannical regimes, where law enforcement is nearly omnipresent, policing functions in democratic societies are relatively limited. They rely on what can be essentially described as a numbers game. Under this model, the effectiveness of policing functions inherently rests on the assumption that the vast majority of the population will comply with legal norms voluntarily, and that it will do so most of the time.

Thus, the sustainability of law and order in democratic societies hinges, not just on the capabilities of the enforcement agencies, but significantly on the general populace’s commitment to uphold the rule of law. This tacit social contract allows law enforcement agencies to operate with a relatively small logistical footprint. It also allows police forces to focus their efforts on a relatively small number of individuals, or groups, who do not adhere to the law.

WIDESPREAD BREAKDOWN

The US has relied on this model of policing since the Civil War. However, this model tends to falter once a substantial segment of the population refuses to voluntarily adhere to legal conventions. In such a scenario, the sheer number of non-compliant individuals can overwhelm the policing system, leading to a widespread breakdown in law and order.

The US has witnessed such incidents with alarming intensity in recent years. Examples include the 2014 Bundy standoff and the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by armed groups of anti-government extremists. It also witnessed the —often gratuitously violent— George Floyd protests, as well as the armed occupation of the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, in 2020.

Most notably, America witnessed widespread civil disobedience on January 6, 2021, when thousands of frenzied Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and attempted to bring an end to the Constitutional order in one of the world’s oldest democracies. In addition to exposing the fragility of American democracy, the January 6 attack drew attention to the ineffectiveness of the state’s policing functions, thus further-eroding public trust and compliance.

AMERICANS ARE EMBRACING VIOLENCE

There is no denying that Americans are viewing violence as an element of national politics with an alarming rate. Last summer, a survey conducted by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats revealed that 4.4 percent of the adult population of the US —12 million Americans— believed that violence was justified to restore Donald Trump to power. Granted, very few of those survey responders would actually be willing to act on such extreme beliefs. But even a mere 1 percent of those 12 million people who appear to endorse violence in support of Trump amounts to 120,000 individuals. That’s an enormously large number of radicalized Americans. Read more of this post

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Opinion: Fumbling Russian spies fail to stop ISIS-K attack, despite warnings from U.S.

March 25, 2024 by 7 Comments

Crocus City Hall attackNO COUNTRY HAS BETTER intelligence on the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (known as ISIS-K) than the United States. American forces have faced ISIS-K almost from the moment the group was founded in 2015 in Pakistan, just a few miles from the Afghan border. It was there that a group of disaffected members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP, commonly referred to as the Pakistani Taliban) began turning their backs on al-Qaeda, which they saw as a failing brand, and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

By 2017, ISIS-K had begun to draw to its ranks hundreds of fighters from central and south Asia, who were inspired by the group’s goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the lands of the greater Khorasan. The term refers to a historical region that extends from eastern Iran and Turkmenistan, to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, containing all of present-day Afghanistan, most of Uzbekistan, and even some parts of the Russian Caucasus. Like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) during its heyday, ISIS-K aspires to establish control over a territorially unified entity and then use perpetual war to expand its influence in central Asia and beyond.

Until 2021, the biggest obstacle to ISIS-K’s plan for regional domination was the U.S. By some accounts, American forces and Western-trained Afghan commando units had managed to eliminate more than half of ISIS-K’s 4,000-strong base in northeastern Afghanistan. Since the hurried U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021 (which was marred by an ISIS-K suicide bombing that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. troops), ISIS-K has expanded its reach beyond all prior measure. The group has since claimed responsibility for attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and now Russia, that have killed over 600 people and injured thousands.

A primary reason for the proliferation of ISIS-K’s terrorist activity is that the U.S., which has more intelligence than anyone on the group, issues warnings that are not being taken into consideration by the group’s primary targets, namely Afghanistan, Iran, and Russia. Indeed, despite the Washington’s best efforts, its warnings about pending ISIS-K attacks have been ignored by the group’s primary targets. A few days after an ISIS-K attack killed nearly 100 people in Kerman, Iran, The Wall Street Journal claimed the U.S. government had provided Tehran with “a private warning” of an imminent terrorist threat from ISIS-K. If that is true, then the Iranians clearly did not heed Washington’s warning.

It now appears that, once again, Washington had considerable intelligence insight into ISIS-K’s plans to strike inside Russia. On March 7, the U.S. embassy in Russia warned on its website that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts”. The warning provided no specifics. However, seeing how U.S. authorities issued private warnings to Iran, a country with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, then it is highly likely they provided similar information to Russia, which at least hosts American diplomats and intelligence officers on its soil. Yet, not only did the Russians ignore these warnings, but they openly dismissed them. Read more of this post

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Ukraine’s spy services are using assassinations as weapons or war, report claims

October 25, 2023 by 1 Comment

Security Service of Ukraine SBUTHE GROWING LIST OF assassinations of prominent Russians and Ukrainian separatists shows that the Ukrainian intelligence services are using “liquidations” as a weapon of war, according to The Washington Post. Citing “current and former Ukrainian and United States officials”, the paper said on Monday that funding and training by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) explains much of the success of Ukraine’s covert operations against Russia. However, the CIA is not involved in Ukraine’s state-sponsored assassination efforts at the operational level, and some US officials are uneasy about these activities.

A CIA Spy Directorate in Ukraine

In 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, Ukrainian intelligence services were in an almost paralytic state. Like most of Ukraine’s state sector, the intelligence agencies were endemically bloated and closely resembled Soviet-style bureaucracies in sluggishness and corruption. More importantly, they were “riddled with Russian spies, sympathizers and turncoats”, according to observers. Few were surprised when, almost as soon as Russia annexed Crimea, the local head of the domestic security agency, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) defected to Russia.

According to The Washington Post, immediately after the Russian invasion of Crimea, the CIA sought to prevent further Russian encroachment in Ukraine. That is why in 2015 it built the SBU’s Fifth Directorate. That entirely new directorate was —and today remains— insulated from the rest of the SBU. The CIA also reportedly built a new division, complete with a brand-new headquarters building, inside Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR), which operates as the intelligence wing of the Ministry of Defense.

Active-Measures Training

Seeing the GUR as a more agile and flexible agency than the SBU, the CIA began to train GUR paramilitary “spetsnaz” divisions in “active measures” —a term that describes methods of political warfare, ranging from propaganda, sabotage operations, and even assassinations. However, The Washington Post claims that the CIA training focused on “secure communications and tradecraft” with an eye to enabling GUR teams to operate covertly behind enemy lines using clandestine maneuvers. Targeted assassinations were not included in the training. Read more of this post

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NSA, CIA senior officials address artificial intelligence threats and opportunities

October 2, 2023 by Leave a comment

Paul NakasoneLAST WEEK, TWO SENIOR UNITED States intelligence officials shared rare insights on artificial intelligence, as they discussed some of the opportunities and threats of this new technological paradigm for their agencies. On Wednesday, Lakshmi Raman, Director of Artificial Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, addressed the topic during an on-stage interview at Politico’s AI & Tech Summit in Washington, DC. On Thursday, the National Security Agency’s outgoing director, Army General Paul Nakasone, discussed the same subject at the National Press Club’s Headliners Luncheon in the US capital.

Nakasone (pictured) noted in his remarks that the US Intelligence Community, as well as the Department of Defense, have been using artificial intelligence for quite some time. Thus, artificial intelligence systems are already integral in managing and analyzing information on a daily basis. In doing so, such systems contribute in important ways to the decision-making by the NSA’s human personnel. At the same time, the NSA has been using artificial intelligence to develop and define best-practices guidelines and principles for intelligence methodologies and evaluation.

Currently, the United States maintains a clear advantage in artificial intelligence over is adversaries, Nakasone said. However, that advantage “should not be taken for granted”. As artificial intelligence organizational principles are increasingly integrated into the day-to-day functions of the intelligence and security enterprise, new risks are emerging by that very use. For this reason, the NSA has launched its new Artificial Intelligence Security Center within its existing Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. The mission of the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center is to develop links with the private sector in the US and its partner nations to “secure emerging technologies” and “harden the US Defense Industrial Base”.

Nakasone added that the decision to create the Artificial Intelligence Security Center resulted from an NSA study, which alerted officials to the national security challenges stemming from adversarial attacks against the artificial intelligence models that are currently in use. These attacks, focusing on sabotage or theft of critical artificial intelligence technologies, could originate from other generative artificial intelligence technologies that are under the command of adversarial actors.

Last Wednesday, the CIA’s Raman discussed some of the ways that artificial intelligence is currently being put to use by her agency to improve its analytical and operational capabilities. Raman noted that the CIA is developing an artificial intelligence chatbot, which is meant to help its analysts refine their research and analytical writing capabilities. Additionally, artificial intelligence systems are being used to analyze quantities of collected data that are too large for human analysts to manage. By devoting artificial intelligence resources to the relatively menial and low-level tasks of data-sifting and sorting, the CIA enables its analysts to dedicate more time to strategic-level products.

At the same time, however, the CIA is concerned about the rapid development of artificial intelligence by nations such as China and Russia, Raman said. New capabilities in artificial intelligence, especially the generative kind, will inevitably provide US adversaries with tools and capabilities that will challenge American national security in the coming years, she concluded.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 02 October 2023 | Permalink

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Chinese government arrests second alleged CIA spy in 10 days

August 23, 2023 by Leave a comment

Chinese Ministry of State SecurityFOR THE SECOND TIME in 10 days, the government of China has announced the arrest of a Chinese government employee on suspicion of spying for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In a statement issued on Monday, China’s civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), said it had launched an investigation into an official of a government ministry, who was allegedly caught conducting espionage on behalf of the CIA.

The MSS statement did not name the government ministry where the alleged spy works. But it identified the accused by his surname, Hao, describing him as a 39-year-old Chinese national. According to the MSS statement, Hao spent a number of years as a graduate student in Japan. While he was studying in Japan, he allegedly visited the United States embassy in Tokyo, in order to apply for a travel visa. During his visit to the embassy, he met a United States embassy official, who befriended him.

Over time, Hao allegedly formed a close relationship with the unnamed American embassy official. The latter treated him to meals, sent him gifts in the mail, and secured funds for him to conduct research. Eventually, the embassy official introduced Hao to another American official, who, according to the MSS, was a CIA case officer. The CIA case officer allegedly recruited Hao to spy for the United States and instructed him to seek employment at “a core and critical department” of the government upon his return to China.

After completing his studies in Japan, Hao returned to China and secured employment in a government agency. He continued to meet regularly with his alleged CIA handler and other CIA officers, who to whom he “provided intelligence” in return for “espionage funds”, according to the MSS statement. The statement said that Hao’s case remains under investigation and that no official charges have yet been filed.

The MSS statement about Hao’s case came exactly 10 days after the spy agency posted on its WeChat social media account that it had caught another government official spying for the CIA. On August 11, the MSS said it had detained an alleged CIA spy named Zeng, whom it described as a 52-year-old “staff member of a Chinese military industrial group and an important confidential employee” of the Chinese state. Zeng had reportedly been sent to Italy by his employer, presumably in order to pursue graduate studies or receive technical training. While in there, he was allegedly accosted and eventually recruited by an employee of the United States embassy in Rome.

It is not known if the two cases are in any way connected. Government officials in Washington and at the United States embassy in Beijing have not commented on the story.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 23 August 2023 | Permalink

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China arrests government worker who gave CIA ‘core information’ about military

August 14, 2023 by 1 Comment

US embassy Rome ItalyA CHINESE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE gave “core information” about China’s military to the United States, after he was recruited by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer in Italy, a Chinese state agency has said. The allegation was made in a statement that was issued on Friday by China’s civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), on its WeChat social media account.

The MSS statement did not specify the period during which the alleged espionage took place. But it named the alleged spy as “Zeng” and described him as a 52-year-old “staff member of a Chinese military industrial group and an important confidential employee” of the Chinese state. According to China’s state-owned newspaper The Global Times, Zeng had been sent to Italy by his employer, presumably in order to pursue graduate studies or receive technical training. While in Italy, Zeng was allegedly accosted by an employee of the United States embassy in Rome, which the MSS identified as “Seth”.

According to the MSS, Seth was a CIA case officer, who befriended Zeng through “dinner parties, outings and trips to the opera”. The Chinese man “developed a psychological dependence” on Seth and was “indoctrinated” by him “with Western values”, the MSS statement claims. Seth eventually convinced Zeng to sign an agreement with the CIA to conduct espionage, after which the Chinese man allegedly received intelligence tradecraft training. Upon returning to China from his stay in Italy, Zeng is alleged to have carried out espionage on behalf of his CIA handlers. The MSS claims Zeng gave his CIA handlers “a great amount of core intelligence” during “multiple secret meetings” with them.

The information Zeng is alleged to have provided to the CIA concerned “key developments about China’s military” to which he had access through his employer. In exchange for this information, Zeng is accused of having received “a huge amount of [financial] compensation” by his CIA handlers. The latter also promised him that they would help his family emigrate to the United States, as per the MSS statement. The spy agency said that Zeng remains in detention while the case is under investigation. The MSS statement also warned other Chinese citizens living or traveling abroad of “the risks and perils” of recruitment by Western spy agencies.

The Reuters news agency said it contacted the United States embassy in Beijing about the MSS allegations, but received no response.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 14 August 2023 | Permalink

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Brazil judges block international requests to extradite alleged Russian spy

July 31, 2023 by 1 Comment

GRUTHE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT IS blocking requests from the United States and Russia to extradite an alleged Russian deep-cover spy, whose forged Brazilian identity papers were discovered by Dutch counterintelligence. Sergey Cherkasov was expelled by authorities in the Netherlands in June 2022, after he attempted to enter the country using a Brazilian-issued passport under the name of Victor Muller Ferreira.

Within a few days of his expulsion, Dutch and American counterintelligence had outed Cherkasov as an intelligence officer of the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known as GRU. Cherkasov is alleged to have built his forged identity over several years, while operating in Brazil and the United States. Upon returning to Brazil, Cherkasov was sentenced to 15 years in prison for using forged Brazilian identity documents.

Last week, Cherkasov’s sentence was reduced to 5  years, after a court in Brazil dropped some of the initial charges that had been filed against him by the Brazilian government prosecutor’s office. Cherkasov’s lawyers are now arguing that their client does not pose a flight risk and should therefore be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence outside of prison, wearing an electronic tagging device.

These recent developments are of concern to authorities in the United States. The latter have filed an extradition request for Cherkasov, claiming that he spent several years as a graduate student in an American university while using his forged Brazilian identity papers. During that time, Cherkasov is alleged to have repeatedly communicated with his Russian intelligence handlers, supplying them with information about American politics and policy.

However, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security of Brazil said on Friday that Washington’s extradition request had been denied and that Cherkasov would remain in Brazil. The apparent reason for the denial is that Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court had already approved a similar extradition request for Cherkasov, which was filed in April by the Russian government. Moscow claims that Cherkasov is wanted in Russia for narcotics trafficking. The Russians also deny that the alleged spy worked for the GRU or any other government agency.

Yet, despite claims to the contrary, the Brazilian government appears to be essentially stalling on Moscow’s extradition request. On Friday, Flávio Dino, who serves as Minister of Justice under the administration of President Inácio Lula, stated that Cherkasov would continue to serve his prison sentence in Brazil until further notice. In the United States, CBS News reported that Cherkasov’s extradition to Russia would take place “only […] after the final judgment of all of his cases here in Brazil” has been issued, according to the accused spy’s lawyers.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 July 2023 | Permalink

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Russian intelligence planned to assassinate SVR defector living in the United States

June 21, 2023 by 1 Comment

Aleksandr PoteyevTHE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES planned to assassinate a Russian former intelligence officer, who had defected to the United States and was living in an apartment complex in Florida, according to a new report. The alleged assassination plan is discussed in the forthcoming book Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (Simon and Schuster), authored by Harvard University academic Calder Walton.

According to Dr. Walton, Russian intelligence targeted Aleksandr Poteyev, who served as Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from 2000 until 2010. Poteyev was reportedly in charge of the SVR’s Directorate “S”, which oversees the work of illegals —a term that refers to SVR operations officers who work in without official cover around the world. It is believed that Poteyev began working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1999, as an agent-in-place.

By 2010, when he openly defected to the United States, Poteyev had provided the CIA with information that led to the high-profile arrest of 10 Russian illegals by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some believe that the SVR defector was also responsible for the arrests of Russian spies in Germany and Holland. In 2011, a Russian court tried Poteyev in absentia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Poteyev remains at large and is believed to be living in the United States under the protection of the CIA’s National Resettlement Operations Center.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that it had independently confirmed Dr. Walton’s claims, with the help of “three former senior American officials who spoke” to the paper “on the condition of anonymity”. According to The Times, a 2016 report by the Moscow-based Interfax news agency, which claimed that Poteyev had died in the United States, was part of a deliberate disinformation operation by the SVR, which was aimed at enticing the defector to emerge from his hideout.

When that attempt failed, the SVR allegedly recruited a Mexican scientist who lived in Singapore, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, to travel to Miami, Florida, in 2020, in order to locate Poteyev. But Fuentes attracted the attention of the authorities while driving around in Miami and was subsequently detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents as he was trying to board a flight to Mexico City. Fuentes then provided details of his mission to the FBI. The Bureau eventually determined that the goal of the SVR had been to assassinate Poteyev.

According to The New York Times, the realization that the SVR had planned to carry out an assassination operation on American soil “spiraled into a tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia”, which included cascading sanctions and diplomatic expulsions on both sides. The paper reports that, in April 2021, the White House ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats from the United States, including the SVR’s chief of station, who had two years left on his Washington, DC, tour. The Kremlin responded by expelling an equal number of American diplomats from Russia, including the CIA station chief in Moscow.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 June 2023 | Permalink

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Still unanswered: Trump’s motive for withholding classified documents

June 12, 2023 by 5 Comments

Trump 2016THE 49-PAGE GRAND JURY indictment, filed last week in Florida by the United States Department of Justice, contains 37 criminal charges against former president Donald Trump. The charges can be summarized into a two-fold accusation: Trump is alleged to have stolen more than 300 classified documents upon leaving the White House in January 2021. Moreover, he allegedly schemed with a group of advisors and aides in order to obstruct efforts by the government to retrieve the stolen documents. Both accusations are spelled out in stark detail in the pages of the indictment.

What remains unanswered, however, is the motive. Why did Trump allegedly take several hundred classified documents from the White House? Did he select specific documents to purloin? And, if so, why these specific documents? Lastly, why did the former president go to such pains to frustrate the government’s efforts to recover the documents? There has been intense public speculation about the answers to these questions. Yet the grand jury indictment does not appear to attempt to establish the possible motive behind the alleged crime. Nor Q Quotedoes it need to. Establishing a motive is not required in order to demonstrate the need for a trial, or indeed a conviction. Given the high stakes of this case, however, establishing a motive can provide much-needed clarity in the public sphere.

Accidental or Malicious?

It is important to clarify with precision what the grand jury indictment does not state: its pages do not contain any suggestion that Trump took possession of the classified documents in order to share them with specific individuals or entities, American or foreign. Nor does the indictment suggest that the former president intended to use the classified information in his possession for personal financial gain —for instance to promote his investment ventures at home or abroad, or to gain leverage and win over potential business partners.

So, why did Trump do it? As The New York Times explained on Sunday, the indictment does offer some hints of motives, if one reads between the lines. One possible explanation stems from Trump’s time in the White House, during which he learned to associate his access to classified information as a paramount perk that came with being president of the United States. It follows that, retaining access to classified information was a way for him to maintain control over the office of the presidency. That strong need intensified even more after January 2021, as Trump was clearly “not ready to let go of the perks of holding the highest office in the country”. Indeed, the indictment describes several examples that reveal the strong sense of ownership that the former president felt about the classified documents he kept at his private residence at Mar-a-Lago, as well as his determination to keep them in close proximity to his office and sleeping quarters.

Tertiary Motives

A plausible tertiary motive for Trump’s alleged crimes is the leverage and status that access to secrets can bestow upon an individual. It is possible that Trump viewed the classified documents as the apogee of the long list of his material prizes and trophies —as an important physical legacy of the zenith of his career. That would also explain why he allegedly fought so determinedly to keep the documents in his possession, even after he was told in no uncertain terms by the government that they did not belong to him. Moreover, as The Times notes, the former president may view his classified document collection as a way to insure his legacy —for instance as a means of rebutting critics of his policies and decisions while he was in office, or even as potential “payback against perceived enemies”.

But these motives are probably less prominent in Trump’s mind. A strong and deeply held sense of ownership of government information, no matter their classification grade, is likely the driving motive behind the alleged crimes. As The Washington Post noted in an insightful article in 2022, aides to the former president said that he appeared sincere and genuine about his conviction that the classified documents “were his, not the government’s”. When he was advised otherwise by his own aides, he noticeably “gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires”, according to the paper. His attitude was not a show. It was sincere. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that it has subsided since his indictment.

A Genuine Conviction of Ownership

Trump’s latest legal woes are rooted in his genuine belief that access to classified information is something he is owed —not simply because he served as president of the United States, but because, in his mind, he should still be in the Oval Office. These deeply entrenched beliefs are unlikely to be abandoned by the former president, regardless of the cost. More importantly, these same beliefs are passionately shared by millions of his supporters. The latter are sufficient in number to wreak havoc in the Republican Party and radically reshape American politics for years to come. If Trump avoids trial or a prison sentence, his support base will view such an outcome as a form of noble victory against the “deep state”. It is therefore likely to be energized, possibly like never before. Should Trump be jailed or seek political asylum abroad in order to evade incarceration, the American political landscape will undergo a major earthquake. Regardless of the outcome of this unprecedented saga, stormy waters seem to lie ahead.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 June 2023 | Permalink

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U.S. charges Greek businessman with smuggling military and dual-use goods to Russia

May 22, 2023 by Leave a comment

Rijen NetherlandsThe United States Department of Justice has charged a Greek national with wire fraud and smuggling sensitive military-grade and dual-use goods from the United States to Russia. The suspect, Dr. Nikolaos “Nikos” Bogonikolos, 59, was arrested in Paris, France, on May 9, at the request of the United States, and is currently in custody pending extradition proceedings.

Bogonikolos is a mathematician and self-described “serial entrepreneur”, with business activities dating back to 1987. He has authored and co-authored academic articles, holds a number of patents, and has published a book entitled Total Process Security Reengineering. Following the ECHELON revelations in the late 1990’s, he authored a report (.pdf) entitled “The Perception of Economic Risks Arising from the Potential Vulnerability of Electronic Commercial Media to Interception” as part of a study for the European Parliament.

In 2005, Bogonikolos received his PhD from the Kharkov National Economic University in Ukraine, focusing on applications of artificial intelligence in the field of economics. According to his own claims, he has been active as an entrepreneur or researcher in some 40 countries, including Russia. Bogonikolos is the founder of a Greek-based company called Aratos Group. In 2016, Aratos Systems BV was registered as legal entity in The Netherlands. Since 2020, the company has been located in the town of Rijen, which is also home to the main operational military helicopter base of the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

Aratos Systems BV describes itself on its website (currently offline) as an “independent and leading member of the Greek Aratos Group”. Its activities, as declared to the Netherlands chamber of commerce, are “the collection, processing, protecting, and selling of earth observation data to public and private parties”. Aratos Systems also “owns and runs a fully equipped Satellite Ground Station constantly connected with EUMETSAT” —the latter being the European operational satellite agency for monitoring weather, climate and the environment from space.

Last week, the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service and the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service raided the Aratos Systems offices in Rijen. According to the unsealed complaint (.pdf) it is believed that Bogonikolos was contacted in December 2017 by representatives of an illicit Russian procurement network that acquires sensitive military-grade and dual-use technologies, under the direction of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Elements of that network are often referred to by Western government officials as “the Serniya Network” or “Sertal”, among other names. In December 2022 the United States charged five Russian nationals, including a suspected intelligence officer, believed to be part of that network, as well as two United States nationals.

In December 2017, Bogonikolos allegedly accepted an invitation to travel to Moscow alone for a meeting. The complaint cites an email exchange between senior members of Sertal and Serniya Network, including Yevgeniy Grinin and Aleksey Ippolitov, who are both wanted by the FBI. In the email exchange, it is suggested that Bogonikolos is a “supporter of the Orthodoxy” and that he sees it as “the basis of friendship with Russia”.

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U.S., Russian spy agencies publish rival ads encouraging would-be informants

May 18, 2023 by 2 Comments

Russia Ukraine WarRIVAL ONLINE CAMPAIGNS BY American and Russian intelligence agencies are encouraging each other’s citizens to contact them, share information and possibly even defect. At least three ads have been  on social media, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issuing the earliest one in February of this year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its Russian counterpart, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), are now believed to have published similar ads.

The FBI ad initially appeared on Twitter, directing users to the website of the Bureau’s Washington Field Office. There, a text in Cyrillic urges Russian nationals to “change [their] future” by contacting the FBI. The CIA followed suit on Monday of this week by posting a video on its new channel on Telegraph, a popular social media platform among young Russians. The CIA video portrays frustrated Russian government employees morally torn by the Kremlin’s policies. It concludes with them contacting the CIA through a secure online connection. A narrator’s voice states, “my family will live with dignity thanks to my actions”. Viewers are then assured that their safety is the CIA’s highest priority, should the choose to do the same.

Shortly after the CIA video appeared online, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Director of Information, Maria Zakharova, said that the Russian government would respond “appropriately” to what she called a “CIA provocation”. On Wednesday, a number of Western media outlets reported that the SVR had unveiled a short recruitment video seemingly targeting Americans. The video, shared on Telegram, includes archival news footage of United States military and police personnel, flag-burning demonstrators, and protests against abortions. It concludes with footage of President Joe Biden overlaid with a sniper crosshairs. A narrator states in English: “If you want to help normalcy, help the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation”.

Amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, both the United States and Russia are engaging in extensive cyber-enabled operations aimed at each other’s targets. However, these recruitment videos underscore the continued need for highly placed human sources and their central role in multi-platform intelligence collection efforts.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 May 2023 | Permalink

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China sentences US citizen to life for espionage following closed-door trial

May 15, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hong KongA CHINESE COURT HAS sentenced a United States passport holder to life in prison on espionage charges, following a brief closed-door trial. However, no information has been made available about the precise charges against him. Closed-door trials are frequent occurrences in Chinese courts, especially in cases relating to national security, which include charges of espionage against the state. However, life sentences are exceedingly rare for espionage cases.

The individual convicted in this case has been named in media reports as John Shing-Wan Leung, 78. He is reportedly a permanent resident of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, over which Beijing has near-absolute control. It is not known if Leung was a Chinese citizen at any time in his life. China does not recognize joint citizenship and requires its citizens to drop their Chinese citizenship when swearing allegiance to another country. The Reuters news agency reported on Monday that Leung was at some point a member of two American-based Chinese expatriate groups, which it described as “pro-China”. These are the United States-China Friendship Promotion Association and the United States-China Friendship Association.

Leung is believed to have been arrested in Hong Kong in 2021 by local Chinese counterintelligence officers. He has been held in prison ever since his arrest. A press release issued on Monday by the Intermediate People’s Court in Suzhou, a city located in southern Jiangsu province, 700 north of Hong Kong, said Leung had been found “guilty of espionage”. The press release added that Leung had been “sentenced to life imprisonment and deprived of [his] political rights for life”. However, the statement provided no information about Leung’s alleged crimes, or the country he was found to have spied for.

According to the BBC, the United States embassy in Beijing refused to discuss the details of this case, stating only that the United States government was aware of Leung’s conviction. An embassy spokesperson told the BBC that “the Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 May 2023 | Permalink

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US-led ‘Five Eyes’ alliance dismantled Russia’s ‘premier espionage cyber-tool’

May 11, 2023 by 3 Comments

Computer hackingAN ESPIONAGE TOOL DESCRIBED by Western officials as the most advanced in the Russian cyber-arsenal has been neutralized after a 20-year operation by intelligence agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The operation targeted Turla, a hacker group that cyber-security experts have long associated with the Russian government.

Turla is believed to be made up of officers from Center 16, a signals intelligence unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the Soviet-era KGB’s successor agencies. Since its appearance in 2003, Turla has used a highly sophisticated malware dubbed ‘Snake’ to infect thousands of computer systems in over 50 countries around the world. Turla’s victims include highly sensitive government computer networks in the United States, including those of the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the United States Central Command.

The Snake malware has also been found in computers of privately owned firms, especially those belonging to various critical infrastructure sectors, such as financial services, government facilities, electronics manufacturing, telecommunications and healthcare. For over two decades, the Snake malware used thousands of compromised computers throughout the West as nodes in complex peer-to-peer networks. By siphoning information through these networks, the Turla hackers were able to mask the location from where they launched their attacks.

On Tuesday, however, the United States Department of Justice announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), along with its counterparts in the United States-led ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing alliance, had managed to dismantle Snake. This effort, codenamed Operation MEDUSA, was reportedly launched nearly 20 years ago with the goal of neutralizing the Snake malware. In the process, Five Eyes cyber-defense experts managed to locate Turla’s facilities in Moscow, as well as in Ryazan, an industrial center located about 120 miles southeast of the Russian capital.

The complex cyber-defense operation culminated with the development of an anti-malware tool that the FBI dubbed PERSEUS. According to the Department of Justice’s announcement, PERSEUS was designed to impersonate the Turla operators of Snake. In doing so, it was able to take over Snake’s command-and-control functions. Essentially, PERSEUS hacked into Snake and instructed the malware to self-delete from the computers it had compromised. As of this week, therefore, the worldwide peer-to-peer network that Snake had painstakingly created over two decades, has ceased to exist, as has Snake itself.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 May 2023 | Permalink

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US arrests two over alleged clandestine Chinese police station in New York City

April 18, 2023 by 2 Comments

Chinese Ministry of State SecurityTHE UNITED STATES HAS arrested two residents of New York City for allegedly conspiring to create and operate a clandestine police station run by the Chinese government in the borough of Manhattan. The arrests come a month after authorities in Canada launched an investigation into allegations that the Chinese government was running at least two clandestine police stations in Montreal and four more in Toronto.

The allegations first surfaced in a 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders, a Spanish-based non-government organization that focuses on the state of human rights in China. The report, titled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild”, claimed that China’s Ministry of Public Security, in association with Chinese diplomatic facilities around the world, operated dozens of clandestine police stations in over 50 countries. Their official mission, according to the report, was to service the needs of Chinese citizens living abroad, as well as visitors from China. However, these clandestine police stations were “actively […] engaging in covert and illegal policing operations” targeting Chinese citizens and expatriates, according to Safeguard Defenders.

On Monday, two New York City residents, Chen Jinping, 59, and Lu Jianwang, 61, were arrested and charged with conspiring to operate as unregistered agents of the People’s Republic of China. They were also charged with obstruction of justice in connection with the Department of Justice’s investigation into their activities. United States government prosecutors allege that Chen and Lu were behind the establishment of a clandestine police station in Manhattan. According to the indictment, the Manhattan police station —the first of its kind in the United States— was operated by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). It is reported that the station was shut down by the MSS in late 2022, soon after Chinese officials became aware of an investigation into the activities of the station by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A representative of the United States prosecutor accused the Chinese government of engaging in a “flagrant violation” of American sovereignty with “actions that go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct”. Meanwhile, Chen and Lu appeared before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Monday. They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 April 2023 | Permalink

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United States charges Russian spy who lived in Maryland using forged identity

March 27, 2023 by 2 Comments

US Department of JusticeA RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE, who lived in Maryland using forged Brazilian identity documents, has been charged with espionage and other crimes by the United States Department of Justice. Victor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian national, was stopped from entering the Netherlands in June of last year, where he had intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an intern.

Shortly after Muller was stopped at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport, the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) revealed that he was in fact Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a 36-year-old Russian citizen. According to the AIVD, Cherkasov had worked for over a decade as an intelligence officer for the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known in the intelligence field as GRU.

A few days after Cherkasov returned to Brazil, a federal court in Guarulhos, a suburb of Sao Paolo, found him guilty of having used the identity of a dead Brazilian citizen to forge identity papers, which he then used to enter and leave Brazil 15 times over 10 years. The 10-year period had started in 2010, when Cherkasov had entered Brazil using his real Russian identity. But when he left the country a few months later, he did so using the forged identity that had allegedly been provided to him by Russian intelligence. Having examined the charges against Cherkasov, the court jailed him for 15 years.

Now the United States Department of Justice has charged Cherkasov with a list of new crimes, including acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power and repeatedly carrying out visa, bank and wire fraud. The charges resulted from an investigation that was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence division, in coordination with the Bureau’s Washington Field Office.

The charges stem from the years 2018-2020, when Cherkasov used his forged Brazilian identity to enroll as Master’s student at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Cherkasov successfully completed his graduate degree in 2020. Two years later, he left for the Netherlands, where he hoped to enter employment in the ICC.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 March 2023 | Permalink

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