Tag: espionage
FBI: Chinese Spies May Have Sought To Breach Lax Security At Mar-a-Lago

FBI: Chinese Spies May Have Sought To Breach Lax Security At Mar-a-Lago

The FBI is conducting an investigation of a possible attempt by Chinese intelligence targeting Trump and his private Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

The Miami Herald reports that the investigation is being led by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in South Florida, with the FBI taking the lead.

A breach in security at Mar-a-Lago prompted the new investigation after a Chinese woman was arrested by the Secret Service on the grounds of the resort. The woman, Yujing Zhang, was in possession of a thumb drive containing malicious malware.

She was attempting to attend an event advertised on Chinese social media by Li “Cindy” Yang. Yang is the “massage parlor” founder in the middle of a human trafficking investigation. Yang is accused of selling access to Trump and has been photographed at Trump events alongside members of his family.

The FBI’s investigation highlights the security risk Trump has created through the regular use of his properties for conducting official government business, including meeting with foreign leaders.

Instead of using federal facilities like Camp David, which the Secret Service can secure, Trump has chosen to base himself at Mar-a-Lago, using his presidency to advertise his properties over his constitutional responsibility to secure the nation.

“We are ripe for the picking by the Chinese, the Russians, and any number of other adversaries and the president is making us more vulnerable,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), in a CNN interview discussing the breach.

The FBI investigation at Mar-a-Lago further highlights other existing security problems Trump has created.

These include his then-deputy national security adviser discussing giving nuclear information to Saudi Arabia via her personal email, as well as Trump’s decision to override warnings from intelligence agencies and grant security clearance to several members of his administration, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Kushner is also under fire for circumventing protocol and using his personal WhatsApp account to conduct foreign policy through an insecure channel.

America’s vulnerabilities are being exposed to such a severe level that the FBI is now involved. Just so Trump can add a few dollars to his fortune.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

IMAGE: Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Li “Cindy” Yang, massage parlor owner and suspected human trafficker, at Mar-a-Lago.

Snowden Says He Left Clues About Data He Stole But NSA Missed Them

Snowden Says He Left Clues About Data He Stole But NSA Missed Them

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Fugitive whistle-blower Edward Snowden said in a magazine interview published Wednesday that he is sure his former employers at the National Security Agency are tracking his communications while in exile in Russia.

In a lengthy interview with Wired magazine, the 31-year-old former NSA contractor wanted on U.S. charges of theft and espionage also said he would gladly return home and face prison for his disclosures on massive private data collection if that would serve to end what he sees as the U.S. intelligence agencies’ surveillance abuses.

“I told the government I’d volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,” Snowden told the Wired article’s writer, James Bamford, during a series of interviews at an undisclosed hotel in Moscow. “I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can’t allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I’m not going to be part of that.”

During the interviews conducted in late spring, Snowden said he deliberately left a trail of “digital bread crumbs” so the NSA would know which secret documents and data files he had taken with him when he fled his contractor job in Hawaii 14 months ago.

He told Wired that the agency’s report that he took 1.7 million files with him suggested they had missed the clues he left so NSA officials could take whatever steps were necessary to protect sources and revise operational practices.

“I figured they would have a hard time,” Snowden said of his evidence trail. “I didn’t figure they would be completely incapable.”

Snowden told Bamford that the final straw for him was the NSA’s MonsterMind operation, a malware-detecting program that can retaliate against the source of infection without any human involvement in the decision. The source of cyber attacks can be disguised, he noted, opening the possibility of striking back at an innocent target and provoking confrontation.

Fellow intelligence agency employees had become inured to the wide-scale intrusions on private communication by the agency, Snowden said, a jaded indifference he didn’t want to acquire.

“It’s like the boiling frog,” Snowden told the magazine. “You get exposed to a little bit of evil, a little bit of rule-breaking, a little bit of dishonesty, a little bit of deceptiveness, a little bit of disservice to the public interest, and you can brush it off, you can come to justify it. But if you do that, it creates a slippery slope that just increases over time, and by the time you’ve been in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, you’ve seen it all and it doesn’t shock you.”

Snowden said he left when he did and disclosed the surveillance excesses “before he too was boiled alive,” Bamford wrote.

AFP Photo

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Arthur J. Walker, Who Sold Secret Navy Files To The Soviets, Dead At 79

Arthur J. Walker, Who Sold Secret Navy Files To The Soviets, Dead At 79

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times

Arthur J. Walker, a conspirator in one of the biggest U.S. spy cases since World War II, was a surprisingly trusting soul.

When FBI agents wanted to talk to him in 1985 after arresting his brother John on suspicion of espionage, Walker voluntarily chatted, over several sessions, for a total of 32 hours — without a lawyer.

When a prosecution witness at Arthur’s trial had a hard time identifying him in a Virginia courtroom, he helpfully raised his hand. After all, he had been wearing a hairpiece when the witness last saw him.

And even after U.S. District Judge J. Calvert Clarke Jr. took all of 16 minutes to convict him of espionage, Walker asked his astonished attorney, “What do you think, maybe a two-year suspended sentence? I won’t have to go to prison, will I?”

He was given a life term, but under federal sentencing guidelines that were stiffened after his conviction, he was eligible for parole. Another hearing was to be held next month.

Walker, who made $12,000 for selling classified documents to Soviet agents through his brother, died July 5 in a federal prison in Butner, N.C. He was 79. His death was confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. No cause was disclosed.

John Walker, who is incarcerated in the prison where his brother died, is said to have throat cancer. He is to be released next May, according to federal authorities.

When the family espionage ring was uncovered, John was cast by authorities as its amoral mastermind, a manipulator who got his son Michael, his older brother Arthur, and his best friend Jerry Whitworth to join him.

John Walker started spying in 1967 during his Naval career and sold the KGB “vital U.S. cryptographic secrets that had allowed Russian agents to decipher approximately one million coded Navy dispatches,” wrote Pete Earley, author of “Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring.”

By comparison, Arthur, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, seemed to be a small fish. He was convicted of stealing two sets of documents, both with the government’s lowest classified designation, from a Virginia defense contractor that employed him as an engineer. He later said he used the windfall for a new set of brakes, a gas grill and a toupee. He also gave some of the money to his brother to repay a business loan. Bailing Arthur out after the failure of his car stereo business, John urged him to take a defense job for its proximity to military secrets.

Walker admitted to FBI agents that he photographed documents but insisted that they were worthless. He said he chose those particular items only to convince his brother that he had no access to anything important. The documents concerned repairs on a class of Navy amphibious assault ships and detailed plans for responding to emergencies on the Blue Ridge, a communications ship.

Testifying during Walker’s trial in Norfolk, Va., a Navy official described the documents as “a Bible for sabotage.” Walker did not testify, nor did any witnesses appear on his behalf. He asked that his case be heard only by a judge, fearing backlash from jurors in a region with a huge Navy presence.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1934, Arthur James Walker grew up in Richmond, Va., and West Scranton, Pa. He enlisted in the Navy in 1953. He and his wife had two daughters and a son. Information on surviving family members was not immediately available.

AFP Photo / Lionel Bonaventure

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White House ‘Outs’ CIA Station Chief By Mistake

White House ‘Outs’ CIA Station Chief By Mistake

Washington (AFP) – The White House accidentally revealed the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan during President Barack Obama’s surprise visit to the country on Sunday.

The top agent’s name was revealed in a pool report sent out by a Washington Post reporter to journalists based on a list of officials provided by the White House who were taking part in a security briefing for Obama at Bagram Air Base.

The pool report is an eyewitness account of the president’s activities written by a pool reporter on behalf of his colleagues that is sent out by the White House to thousands of journalists.

When the reporter realized what had happened, he notified senior White House officials and they provided a new list of officials for the pool report that was missing the name of the man revealed as “chief of station” in the earlier report.

Officials also asked reporters traveling to Afghanistan with Obama to withhold the CIA station’s chief’s name.

The name of top CIA agents in a country is usually not publicized to protect the officer and his family from possible terror attacks or repercussions.

Most other top espionage services in a nation and the host country will however know as a matter of course the identity of the official.

In theory it is a crime to intentionally expose the identity of a covert CIA officer.

Obama flew overnight Saturday to Afghanistan to greet U.S. troops in the country on the Memorial Day weekend when America honors its veterans and fallen warriors.

He arrived back in the United States early Monday to lead Memorial Day commemorations at Arlington Cemetery outside Washington.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb