Tag: Spies

Was It Worse Than Anal Leakage?

While I was nursing a bad eye there was a incident where someone threw a bunch of tp secret documents about Ukraine and other allies onto the internet.

With the news there was much speculation on who would do a dastardly thing. First it was a Russian operation….then it was disinformation to try and break the support for US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.

Who would do such a thing?

Well that question has been answered.

FBI arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard as the suspected leaker of the classified documents from the Pentagon and other US government agencies that have surfaced online.

Jack Teixeira was first named before the arrest as the potential leaker by The New York Times. The paper conducted an investigation with the website Bellingcat, which is funded by the EU and often praised by US intelligence officials, to identify the leaker.

According to the Times report, the paper discussed Teixeira with US government officials and asked for a comment from the FBI before the agency made his name public.

“Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information. Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said after the arrest.

Teixeira is a member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, but it’s not clear how the young airman would have access to so many top-secret documents. According to the Times, he was promoted to airman first class last July, the third enlisted rank.

He worked for the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is located at a base in Cape Cod. His job title was a Cyber Transport Systems Journeymen, which entails repairing communications equipment.

Teixeira is accused of posting the documents on a server on Discord, a messaging platform mainly used by gamers. The chat where he was sending the documents was private and had about 25 members, a group of young men and teenage boys.

One member of the Discord server was said to start releasing the documents in other chat rooms in March, and the documents were eventually discovered by the Times. According to The Washington Post, there were 300 photos of documents that Teixeira allegedly posted.

A 17-year-old who was a member of the Discord server and spoke to the Times described the person who allegedly leaked the documents as “antiwar” and a “Christian” who just “wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on.”

(antiwar.com)

Now the deflections in the beginning do not seem to be accurate.

So was the Guardsman a Russian spy?

So just how damn good is our cyber security?  How much cash have we thrown at cyber and this happened?

U.S. national security agencies are reviewing how they share their most sensitive secrets inside the U.S. government, and dealing with the diplomatic fallout from the release of dozens of confidential documents, three U.S. officials said.

Investigators are also working to determine what person or group might have had the ability and motivation to release the intelligence reports, said one of the officials. The leaks could be the most damaging release of U.S. government information since the 2013 publication of thousands of documents on WikiLeaks.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/intel-leak-has-us-officials-bracing-impact-home-abroad-2023-04-10/

Maybe we should re-think a lot about our cyber-security.

Then there is MSM’s treatment of this situation.

US Department of Justice charged Airman First Class Jack Teixeira with copying and sharing information “connected with” or “relating to” the “national defense.” The government alleges that Teixeira is the man behind “leaks” of classified information which worked their way from the Massachusetts Air National Guard to a Discord chat server for gamers and thence to social media and, finally and unfortunately only very partially, to the US “mainstream” media.

At this point, due to mainstream media’s refusal to do its job, the public doesn’t know very much about the content of the leaked information, but from what we do know, that information had little or nothing to do with any plausible conception of “national defense,” at least where the United States is concerned.

Mainstream Media Turn Coats on ‘National Security’ Leaks

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Women’s History #5

World War 2 brought the capabilities of women as spies and resistance participants to the forefront…..these brave women were part of the war effort working for a section known as the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive)….

There numbers were decimated by either incompetent leadership or a spy within the organization….I feel it was a little of both.

But let’s look at the brave women of World War 2……

After France signed an armistice with Germany in June 1940, Great Britain feared the shadow of Nazism would continue to fall over Europe. Dedicated to keeping the French people fighting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged the United Kingdom’s support to the resistance movement. Charged with “set(ting) Europe ablaze,” the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, was born.

Headquartered at 64 Baker Street in London, the SOE’s official purpose was to put British special agents on the ground to “coordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries.” Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton borrowed irregular warfare tactics used by the Irish Republican Army two decades before. The “Baker Street Irregulars,” as they came to be known, were trained in sabotage, small arms, radio and telegraph communication and unarmed combat. SOE agents were also required to be fluent in the language of the nation in which they would be inserted so they could fit into the society seamlessly. If their presence aroused undue suspicion, their missions could well be over before they even began.

Extensive training in resisting interrogation and how to evade capture underscored the gravity of their missions. Fear of the Gestapo was real and well-founded. Some agents hid suicide pills in their coat buttons in case they could not escape. They knew it was unlikely they would see their homes in the British Commonwealth again, but accepted the risk.

Irregular missions required irregular materiel. The SOE Operations and Research section developed unique devices for agents to use in sabotage and close-range combat. Their inventions, including an exploding pen and weapons hidden in everyday objects like umbrellas and pipes, would even inspire Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Operations and Research also developed a foldable bike called the Welbike, but it was unreliable on rough terrain. Most of the groups’ inventions, like waterproof containers that protected agents’ supplies during parachute jumps, were more practical.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Female-Spies-Of-SOE/

I have watched several documentaries on those women and their stories need to be told and told often.

Sadly their contributions to the war effort have mostly been overlooked or forgotten…..that needs to change.

Be Smart!

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Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That MAGA ‘Hot Babe’

I do enjoy a good ‘ba-zinga’….and this is a great one.

Another MAGA supporter has been outed for being a Chinese spy….

Another pro-MAGA activist has been outed as a Chinese spy, according to the Washington Post.

Just as Elon Musk is taking over Twitter, the company uncovered three China-based operatives pretending to be influencers in American politics as part of an effort to polarize Americans ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

In a cache of data released by the site, nearly 2,000 users were uncovered as they claimed election-rigging and attacked members of the transgender community. They also promoted pro-China narratives to their American audience.

“The disclosure by Twitter adds to what is known about China-based efforts to influence American audiences by mimicking the strategies Russia-based operatives used to stoke cultural and political tensions during the 2016 election,” said the Post. “In September, Meta announced it had disrupted a China-based operation seeking to influence U.S. politics. The U.S. government also has issued warnings about Chinese influence efforts, as have a spate of reports from cybersecurity firms including Google’s Mandiant, Recorded Future and Alethea Group.”

Another network in Iran was uncovered with people claiming to be based in the U.S. or Israel, data showed. An account using the same name and logo was also present on YouTube, TikTok and Reddit.

“This is equal opportunity hyper-partisanship, a tactic that’s been more embraced by Russia,” said Graham Brookie, head of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab. “It’s the same theory of the case: A weakened adversary is one that allows you to shape geopolitics more.”

https://www.rawstory.com/maga-republican-uncovered-chinese-spy/

AS the tale unravels it gets more and more humorous….

I do love a good spy story.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Spies Like Them

I worked for a time in the intel service of my country….but before that I was fascinated by spies and the life they lived….so what better topic than to give some history about?

Espionage, or the act of intelligence gathering, is as old as civilisation itself.

In Ancient Rome, plain-clothes military scouts known as ‘speculatores’ infiltrated enemy territories to gather information. And in Tudor England, elite ‘spymasters’ used networks of informers to defend the interests of the crown.

Espionage took on a new urgency in the 20th century, as emergent technologies and global conflicts led to the advent of complex, globally influential new spy networks. Intelligence organisations, throughout World War One, World War Two and the Cold War, deployed elite secret agents to gather intel and ultimately gain the upper hand.

Here are 8 of the most notorious spies in history, from Queen Elizabeth I’s 16th-century spymaster to the Serbian-born agent who may have inspired the character of James Bond.

8 of the Most Notorious Spies in History

I have always been fascinated by the history around Mata Hari….

Dancer, courtesan and alleged spy Mata Hari is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.

She first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of Asian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning “eye of the day” in Malay. In reality, Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876, and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She acquired her superficial knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances when she lived for several years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mata-hari-executed

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Return Of Maria Butina

Closing Thought–22Sep21

Or maybe you may remember her as Anna Chapman.

Still nothing?

Let’s take a shirt trip in the “Way Back” machine……

The alleged Russian spy capturing most of the media attention today is Anna Chapman. The New York Post describes her as “a flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty” with a “Victoria’s Secret body” who is accused of passing info to Russian handlers weekly since January. Her Facebook page has all kinds of “suggestive self-portraits,” notes Lauren Frayer at AOL News. Chapman is 28, divorced, and reportedly has a master’s in economics and an online real estate business. She lives in a swanky part of New York City’s financial district.

An FBI agent was to set her up by posing as a handler and asking, “Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?” She was to answer, “No, I think it was the Hamptons.” She never showed up for that rendezvous, however, perhaps because she smelled a rat. Moscow, meanwhile, has acknowledged that some of those arrested are Russian citizens but criticized the State Department for its “Cold War-era spy stories,” reports AP.

After her arrest along with several other members of her American cell the clarity of her mission was exposed….

The US government on continued to flesh out its case against the 29-year-old Siberian woman accused of spying for Russia, and its most recently revealed allegations include offers of sex and contacts with the spy agency that succeeded the KGB. Prosecutors laid out the allegations in documents filed Wednesday in court in an attempt to have Maria Butina detained until her trial; a judge on Wednesday afternoon denied her bail, the Huffington Post reports. Characterizing her as an “extreme” flight risk, the documents noted she has access to money and cited surveillance video that indicated she was actually planning to leave. The AP reports her apartment lease is up at the end of the month and her belongings were already boxed at the time of her arrest. More:

  • The Anna Chapman reference: The FBI uncovered Twitter communications between Butina and a Russian official identified by NPR and CNN as Alexander Torshin, whom the US sanctioned in April. NPR reports he was allegedly her point of contact within the Russian government. One alleged message from Torshin sent in March 2017: “You have upstaged Anna Chapman. She poses with toy pistols while you are being published with real ones.”
  • And another: Butina allegedly sent Torshin a photo showing her near the Capitol on the day of Trump’s inauguration. His alleged reply: “You’re a daredevil girl! What can I say!” The AP reports Butina replied, “Good teachers!”
  • More on Torshin: He was part of a group sanctioned due to their ties to Vladimir Putin and the hand they had in “advancing Russia’s malign activities.” He has been a National Rifle Association life member since 2012.
  • Her other alleged connections: Per CNN, prosecutors allege Butina was in contact with members of the Russian FSB, the successor to the KGB, and that she also communicated with a billionaire who she referred to as her “funder.”
  • What each side alleges: Butina’s lawyer says she was simply a student studying at American University who “at most” was trying to strengthen relations between the US and Russia. Prosecutors allege Butina had been instructed to use contacts she was forging at the NRA and conservative groups to amass info on US officials and politics.
  • Sex: The court papers reference a Person 1 with whom Butina had a relationship; NPR identifies him as political fundraiser Paul Erickson. But the FBI alleges Butina “offered an individual other than Person 1 sex in exchange for a position with a special interest organization. Further, in papers seized by the FBI, Butina complained about living with Person 1.” That organization was not named.

Butina was deported back to Russia where she became an instant personality and national hero……and that brings us to  today……

Butina is running for the Russian parliament with an unusual backer…..

Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina has been elected to the lower house of Parliament in her home country but not in her home city.

BusinessInsider reported Sunday that Butina was elected to represent the rural region of Kirov Oblast, about 2,700 miles from her hometown Barnaul, Altai Krai. When she was just 19, she served on the public council of Altai Krai.

She appeared in the U.S., claiming she was a “gun-rights activist,” focusing on meeting leaders involved in the National Rifle Association (NRA). She connected with GOP officials and political leaders to set up a “back-channel” with the Kremlin. Butina remains to insist she was never a spy for Russia but pleaded guilty to being a Russian foreign agent in 2018.

One of Butina’s big supporters for her election was Patrick Byrne, the supporter of President Donald Trump, who spent a lot of time at the White House as Trump crafted his protest losing the 2020 election. The two had previously been lovers, prior to Paul Erickson. Byrne told Insider that he gave the donation to her political campaign because he had “a desire to let her land on her feet and restart her life in Russia.”

https://www.rawstory.com/maria-butina-patrick-byrne-russian-political-donation/

Interesting, eh?

Why would this American former CEO, a raging Trumper,  care about Russian politics?

Or is she back to her old infiltrate thing?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are These From “Q”?

“Q”?

The equipment dude from James Bond movies…..he had amazing gadgets….

He was the one that provided James with all those fantastic tools like a collapsible helicopter, a watch for track radiation, a car with injection seat and oil jets, etc……you get the picture, right?

Well in real life none of those are provided to field agents….however there were some really cool stuff….there was a glove gun, lipstick gun, coal bomb and my favorite the “rectal kit”……

Spying became an integral part of the Cold War. Both sides went out of their way to acquire as much knowledge as they could about each other. While Hollywood has romanticized the whole image of espionage, the real thing is far from romantic. It is a dangerous cat and mouse game that typically results in torture, prison, or execution for the spy if caught by the opposing team.

During the Cold War, spies had to prepare themselves for the worst. Their ability to blend with their surroundings was vital to their survival. The USSR and the US spent large amounts of money training, recruiting, outfitting, and deploying spies all around the world. This resulted in many technological innovations, all the way from tiny spy cameras to deadly assassination weapons.

…read more….

8 Amazing Spy Gadgets Used During the Cold War

Whatcha think?  Cool right?

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Spies Among Us

Time for the old professor to offer up some history….this post is about the 10 most famous spies…..

These are someone’s idea (not mine) of the most famous spies……

In and out of wartime, spies play an essential role in information gathering for their nations (and, on occasion, as double-spies for other nations). The spies listed here are the most famous in history.

1. Mata Hari Born: 1876; Died: 1917

Top 10 Famous Spies

These people are someone’s idea of the most famous spies….I disagree…..but it depends on where you stand I guess……

Me?

I like the spies for Washington during the Revolutionary War and the female spies used by the sides in the American Civil War….

First is Washington’s spies…..

In the summer of 1778 George Washington authorized the formation of a secret chain of agents known as the Culper Ring. Operating in British-occupied New York, this spy ring gathered and shared military intelligence on the British Army’s tactical operations using a coded language and a disappearing ink dubbed the ‘sympathetic stain.’ Those involved in the Culper Ring did so at great personal risk to their lives and honor–covertly traveling through occupied territory and swearing oaths of allegiance to the king–all the while passing information to Washington.

The following excerpt from Alexander Rose’s, Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring, describes the establishment of the Culper Ring and the risks involved with eighteenth-century espionage.

https://www.amrevmuseum.org/read-the-revolution/history/washingtons-spies

Then onto the American Civil War…..

Hundreds of women served as spies during the Civil War. Here’s a look at six who risked their lives in daring and unexpected ways

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-spies-of-the-civil-war-162202679/

A little more on these women…..

https://www.thoughtco.com/female-spies-of-the-confederacy-4026015

Please if you have any others to add do so….I want to add Tubman to the list……

Class Dismissed!

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“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–28Jan19

What the Hell is DIA?

30 years ago very few Americans had evn heard of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)….it was ultra secret and a bit shadowy…but recently the former head of DIA has made the news and a DIA contractor has been killed in Syria….so once again…what the Hell is the DIA?

DIA, provides military intelligence to warfighters, defense policymakers and force planners in the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, in support of U.S. military planning and operations and weapon systems acquisition.  We plan, manage, and execute intelligence operations during peacetime, crisis, and war.

Our diverse workforce is skilled in military history and doctrine, economics, physics, chemistry, world history, political science, bio-sciences, and computer sciences to name a few. We travel the world, and meet and work closely with professionals from foreign countries.

To this day few people know exactly what the DIA does…it came to be a thing when Obama fired the head of the DIA, Flynn…..but functions are still in the shadowy world of intelligence.

This is a new day and a new transparency…..

…the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., gave a wide-ranging interview in which he discussed the DIA’s core mission. Ashley noted that the DIA is charged with producing foundational military intelligence for consumption by warfighters and senior leaders to avoid surprise and prevent or decisively win wars.

As a DIA veteran, however, I’ve always worried that descriptions of the agency’s core mission have typically been overly broad and never been quite so clear cut. Ambiguity over the DIA’s responsibilities prompted Congress to probe more deeply into the specifics of how the agency is charged with supporting U.S. national security and defense objectives. Specifically, Section 2432 of the latest proposed Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 seeks “to prevent imbalanced priorities, insufficient or misaligned resources, and the unauthorized expansion of mission parameters” of the DIA. It further calls for “a repeatable process for evaluating the addition, transfer, or elimination of defense intelligence missions, roles, and functions, currently performed or to be performed in the future by the Defense Intelligence Agency.” Thus, a clearer explanation of what the DIA does and, more importantly, what it is supposed to be doing is in order, and I try to provide that here.

https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/explaining-the-dias-critical-role-in-national-security/

Just another cog in our National Security…..

Hopefully I help my reader understand the function and the necessity of this “agency” within our intel community.

Scholarly Spies

I have always liked history and I have always found the stories of spies in World War Two just fascinating…..most Americans have forgotten some interesting people that were among the first to spy on the Nazis in France after the invasion of 1940.

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. To save the City of Light from destruction, however, at the last moment Paris was declared an open city. The Germans marched in unopposed on June 15.

Five days later, in the distant village of Vicq-sur-Breuil, Agnès Humbert, an art historian and one of the millions of refugees on the road, happened to hear General Charles de Gaulle’s famous address to the French people from London. While hardly anyone knew who de Gaulle was, and while those who did called him a crackpot, Humbert was immediately jolted out of her despair over the fall of France. In her diary for the day she wrote, “I feel I have come back to life…. He has given me hope, and nothing in the world can extinguish that hope now.”

http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/the-scholarly-spies/

Hope this history lesson will at least inform my reader as well as entertain….all there is to say now is…..Class Dismissed

Closing Thought–13Apr18

The poisoning of the ex-Russian spy in England got me to thinking about my youth and all the spy novels that I read…of course the sex was a cool part but I also was interested in the ways there were to kill their opponents…..poisoning was one way….but do you know some of the most clever ways?

http://www.dw.com/en/spy-assassinations-the-top-5-deadly-poisons/a-42909685

One final note….that poisoned spy and his daughter now that they are getting better may be in for a move…

A former Russian spy and his daughter who were poisoned by a nerve agent are not only feeling better, they may move to America. A top Whitehall official tells the Sunday Times that Sergei and Yulia Skripal could be “offered new identities” and relocated to the West—if not the US, then another country in the “five eyes” intelligence-sharing agreement that also includes New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. “The obvious place to resettle them is America because they’re less likely to be killed there and it’s easier to protect them there under a new identity,” the source says, per Reuters. The source adds that MI6 intelligence has been talking to the CIA about resettling the Skripals. The British Foreign Office is yet to say anything about the report.

Maybe then the next time an attempt is made on his life the US will get all the press….after all is that not what it is all about?