The XX Committee

intelligence, strategy, and security in a dangerous world

John Schindler
@20committee

THE SNOWDEN OPERATION

Russia against the Western
Intelligence Community

Snowden i s a Fraud
June 12, 2015
In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who
actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the
many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious
charges of criminality and abuse. Ive been one of the public faces of what may be called
the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding
on this debate.
No American ally was rocked harder by Snowdens allegations than Germany, which has
endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening in on senior German
officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. Although these stories included a good deal
of bunkum from the start, they caused a firestorm in Germany, particularly the alleged
spying on Merkel, which was termed Handygate by the media.
In response, Germany tasked Federal prosecutors with looking into the matter and, they
if determined there was sufficient evidence, to press charges against NSA for breaking
stringent German privacy laws. The investigation, led by Harald Range, Germanys
attorney general, has been slow and diligent, examining all possible evidence about NSA
spying on Germany. Here Snowdens purloined information would play a key role.
However, the matter has become politically fraught. In the first place, senior German
security officials were circumspect about the case, since Berlin is heavily dependent on
NSA for intelligence on vital matters like terrorism. Worse, follow-on Snowden
revelations showed that the BND, Germans foreign intelligence service, and NSA are
close partners, and the BND has itself been spying on EU neighbor states that are
friendly to Germany such as Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
To top it off, last months major hack of the Bundestag, Germanys parliament, turns out
to have been the work of Russians, apparently state-sponsored. In reality, the major spy
threats to Germany are not NSA, but Russians and Chinese, as Ive been saying for some
time and, to be fair, so have German security officials, though they got drowned out in
the public hysteria over Snowden.
Now we learn that Ranges prosecutors are dropping their year-long Handygate inquiry,
for want of hard evidence. Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe arent saying much, beyond
that they simply dont have evidence of spying that would stand up in court. Back in
December, Attorney General Range offered a warning about the dubious nature of much
of the evidence against NSA:
The document presented in public as proof of an actual tapping of the mobile phone is
not an authentic surveillance order by the NSA. It does not come from the NSA database.
There is no proof at the moment which could lead to charges that Chancellor Merkels
phone connection data was collected or her calls tapped.

Got that? Thats the polite, legalistic way of saying the Snowden claims are backed by
faked NSA documents, as has been clear for some time to anybody who understands
counterintelligence and the SIGINT system. This should surprise no one, since using fake
or doctored Western intelligence documents to embarrass democracies is a venerable
tradition for Russian intelligence the proper espionage term is Active Measures and
since Snowdens been in Moscow for the last two years and shows no signs of going
anywhere else anytime soon, two and two can be added together here.
To make matters worse for Snowdens fans, a report about the Handygate inquiry being
dropped in the magazine Der Spiegel, which has been a key player in the Snowden
Operation, includes the painful truth. While some have clamored to get Snowden out of
Moscow to testify before prosecutors, Berlin understood how politically tricky that
would be. Moreover, prosecutors determined that Ed simply didnt have much to say.
As a prosecutor explained, Snowden provided no evidence that he has his own
knowledge (keine Hinweise dafr, dass er ber eigene Kenntnisse verfgt). In other
words, Ed doesnt actually know what hes talking about. This is not news to anybody
who understands how NSA and the Allied SIGINT system actually work.
Snowden was an IT guy, not a SIGINT analyst, and in his final position he was working as
a contracted infrastructure analyst for NSAs Information Assurance arm, i.e. the
Agencys defensive side, which protects classified U.S. communications networks.
Snowden was never a SIGINTer, working on the intelligence collection side of the house,
and he doesnt seem to understand how that complex system, built over decades,
actually functions.
This is why Snowden has made so many odd, contradictory, and even outlandish
statements over the past couple years about SIGINT, which have caused those who
actually understand how NSA works to scratch their heads Ed doesnt know any better.
Its been obvious for some time to insiders that, for reasons we still dont fully
understand, Snowden decided to steal something like 1.7 million classified documents
from NSA servers through internal hacks. About 900,000 of those documents came from
the Pentagon and have nothing to do with intelligence matters.
Theres no way Snowden could have read more than a tiny fraction of what he stole,
nobody has that much time, and its clear now that Ed, an IT guy and a thief, who was
never any sort of spy as he portrays himself, would not have understood all those NSA
documents he made off with anyway.
Snowdens been living under the protection of Putins Federal Security Service now for
two years, functioning as a pawn of Russian intelligence. When his secret relationship
with the Kremlin started remains an open question, but that he has one now can only be
denied by the foolish (witness the weak lies told by his supporters about Eds FSB ties),
since when you defect, you wind up in the care of that countrys security service. Thats
how it works in America, and I dont hear anybody seriously suggesting that Putins
Kremlin is more liberal in these matters than the FBI or CIA.

In light of these revelations from Germany, its worth pondering whether Ed was always
just a pawn, a talking head, for others with agendas to harm Western security. As were
now in the Cold War 2.0 with Russia that I warned you about after Putins theft of
Crimea, this seems like a more than academic question.
For two years now, Ive been trying to inform the public about whats really going on
behind the Snowden Operation, using my understanding of how the SpyWar actually
functions, and Ive gotten a lot of grief for it from Eds hardcore fans. News out of
Germany cant help but lead me to point out that, well I told you so.

Snowden and R ussi an Intel lig ence :

An Update
January 12, 2015
Now that Ed Snowden has been in Russia for more than eighteen months, having
settled into a cosy domestic arrangement with his dancer girlfriend, his long-term
presence in Putinistan has become a bit of an embarrassment to Eds admirers who
possess any sense of honesty and/or decency. His sponsor and protector is a KGB thug
who does smash-and-grabs against other countries, and for normals this is a tad
incongruous with Snowdens saintly status as a human rights activist without par.
However, rather than moderate their claims, the Snowden Operation has chosen to
double-down. In a recent interview, the most famous of all NSA defectors stated,
They talk about Russia like its the worst place on earth. Russias great, without
clarifying who exactly they might be. Ed was at pains to make clear that he has not
yet wound up the vodka-swilling basket-case that most Western defectors to Moscow
become if they stay for very long.
Now we have one of the members of the Snowden Operation inner circle explaining
that Russian intelligence did, in fact, attempt to recruit Ed to work for them, but he
declined. According to Sarah Harrison, the pitch came in mid-2013 when Ed was stuck
at Sheremetyevo airport for six weeks, but the defector didnt give anything to the
Russians at all, and the FSB never tried to recruit Ed again, giving him asylum without
anything in return.
Sarah Harrison, of course, is the Wikileaks stalwart who was dispatched by Julian
Assange, her collaborator/lover/whatever, to Hong Kong to escort Ed on his fateful trip
to Moscow. Ive pointed to Wikileaks, in particular its transparent ties to Russian
intelligence, as a key aspect of the Snowden Operation, and now that Assanges
operation is parroting the latest Kremlin-approved USA-did-it disinformation about
the recent Paris terrorist attacks (which today was repeated by none other than Sergey
Lavrov, Russias foreign minister), this issue needs to be explored more than ever
not to mention that it was Wikileaks that told Ed to go to Russia and stay there.
Moreover, the notion that Ed was not approached by Russian intelligence until he
reached Moscow is transparently laughable to anybody even marginally acquainted
with the real-world of espionage, as I explained many months ago. To repeat myself:
What can be dismissed out of hand is the notion that, while staying in Hong Kong a year
ago, Ed met with Russian spies sorry, diplomats at their consulate there and, all
of a sudden, decided to hop a flight to Moscow. Espionage simply does not work that
way, folks. We can only guess at what was on Eds mind, but those who know the
Russian special services understand that such a scenario is so implausible that it can
be ruled out altogether. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) simply does not
allow American intelligence personnel theyve just met to jump on a flight to Mother
Russia. That never happens.

We also have the expert testimony, last May, of Oleg Kalugin, a retired KGB general,
that of course Snowden is working for Russian intelligence. Kalugin made his
bones heading Line KR, the legendary foreign counterintelligence arm of the KGBs
elite First Chief Directorate: in other words, his job was recruiting and running agents
just like Ed Snowden. Unless you happen to know more about Line KR operations
than MajGen Kalugin, I recommend you take his word on this one.
Sarah Harrison, after more than eighteen months of flat-out denials that Russian
intelligence had anything to do with her client/buddy Ed, now concedes that the FSB
did have a chat with the defector. However, she maintains:
1. Ed said no and gave the Russians nothing, ever.
2. The FSB never asked Ed again to cooperate.
3. The Kremlin was fine with this and allowed Ed to stay in Russia indefinitely
despite his non-cooperation.
If you believe any of these assertions, much less all of them, please do not discuss
important matters like intelligence when adults are present, since you appear a fool
and Putin patsy.
As the wheels long ago came off the Snowden show as anything other than a Russian
disinformation operation, Ed and his circle of helpers are now resorting to lies so
laughable that you wonder how dumb they think the Western public actually is. To
be fair to Putin, if Westerners can believe Ed Snowden is a human rights hero,
despite mountains of contrary evidence, why wouldnt they also believe that the
Obama administration is really behind terrorism in France?

How Many Snowdens Are There?

November 24, 2014
The sensational case of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor gone
rogue, and Russian, with something like 1.5 million highly classified documents, making
this the biggest compromise in all intelligence history, has caused embarrassment and
worse at NSA and across the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Since Snowden held highlevel security clearances, the expensive and time-consuming vetting process for which is
supposed to weed out obvious troublemakers, many questions have been raised about
how this could have happened.
The short, and painful, answer is that Snowden was far from the first bad apple to have
beaten the ICs security clearance system, and he surely wont be the last. Like so
many things across the Federal government, and particularly the Department of
Defense (DoD), a great deal of once-critical missions have been outsourced since the
1990s, leading to gross incompetence and corruption by for-profit companies.
(Outsourcing is a fully bipartisan boondoggle that nobody inside the Beltway wants to
look into very deeply, since so many cash in on it, one way or the other.) In Snowdens
case, the firm that handled the collection of data for his clearances, USIS, stands
accused of fraud on a truly massive scale, having simply faked 665,000 background
investigations between 2008 and 2012. Its little wonder that Snowdens clearances
were handled poorly.
Just how flawed the DoD security clearance system is was further highlighted by the
September 2013 spree shooting at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard that killed a dozen
people. The shooter, Aaron Alexis, was a Navy contractor who held a Secret-level
clearance, and despite a serious incident with police indicating grave mental disturbance
that should have resulted in the suspension of said clearance, and with that employment
termination, the system failed to work and nothing got reported through proper
channels. Since Alexiss background investigation (BI) was handled by of course
USIS, one wonders how much had actually been investigated about this troubled young
man in the first place.
That said, the BI for a Secret-level clearance is pretty perfunctory, amounting to a
glorified criminal background check, while that conducted for the Top Secret/Sensitive
Compartmented Intelligence (TS/SCI) level, like Snowden possessed, is far more detailed
and comprehensive, at least in theory. Hence the old IC joke that TS/SCI means youre
not a felon while Secret means we dont know that youre a felon.
To obtain TS/SCI clearances, applicants are subjected to an intricate examination of
their life called a Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) that is intended to weed
out the criminal, the untrustworthy, the habitually mendacious, the psychologically
unfit, as well as those with connections to hostile foreign countries. To get a job at one
of the big IC agencies your SSBI will include psychological tests and a polygraph
examination about counterintelligence matters and perhaps your lifestyle (if both its
termed a full scope polygraph examination), the latter being largely an inquiry into
criminal matters, especially drug-related, and any truly deviant sexual tendencies. The

idea is to weed out those with foreign allegiances and/or who are vulnerable to
exploitation by foreign intelligence services.
The polygraph is a controversial topic that I dont intend to explore in detail here. In the
hands of an experienced examiner, it can be a valuable interrogation tool; regrettably,
the IC has too few veteran polygraphers, thanks in large part to the fact that its a
boring and underappreciated job that most people leave as soon as they can transfer
into something more satisfying and sexy. In the hands of an inexperienced examiner,
the polygraph can be worse than useless, while using it with broad-brush questions
leads to many false positives and inconclusives (known as INCs in the trade). In my
time in counterintelligence, I saw the box perform both splendidly and miserably: it all
comes down to the examiner and his or her ability and sixth sense in interrogation. A
security panacea it is not and will never be.
Once you get cleared the process continues, however they call it a lifetime secrecy
oath with good reason and you will be subjected to periodic reinvestigations every
five years if you hold TS/SCI, every decade if you have a Secret-level clearance. Since five
(or ten) years can be a long time, serious incidents that may impact ones clearance
status are supposed to be reported through channels here the Alexis case highlighted
the failures in the system or are otherwise supposed to be self-reported.
Holders of TS/SCI clearances especially who undeniably surrender a fair amount of
privacy and freedom when they take on the responsibility are supposed to inform
security without delay regarding important life incidents or changes, including
criminality (Um, I got a DUI.), finances (Yeah...I owe a bookie $43,000 ponies
werent going my way.), foreign travel (Im taking my kids on spring break to
Iran!), and foreign entanglements (Im dating a stripper from China...were cool,
right?). Needless to add, some people are quicker to report these things than others,
and reinvestigations can reveal interesting facts. In my time in counterintelligence, I
heard them all.
Of course, people who are warped enough to betray their oath and the country are not
likely to self-report their misdeeds, la Snowden, so the burden falls on vigilant
security and especially co-workers to make note of such things and pass on relevant
information. Except they dont. Rather, they hardly ever do. I was involved in several
espionage investigations, and the one constant was that co-workers never reported
their concerns, which turned out to be considerable, to the proper authorities. Nobody
wants to be a rat, moreover theres a very human tendency at work whereby no one
wants to think the worst of a co-worker perhaps a coffee club buddy or carpool
friend. Americans are an optimistic people, you know.
Just how weak this reporting system is across DoD was laid bare by the recent case of
Vice Admiral Timothy Giardina, who until a few months ago was the deputy commander
of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in English, his was the second hand on the
trigger of Americas vast nuclear arsenal. It would be hard to overstate the responsibility
in his hands. Regrettably, VADM Giardina was leading a secret life based on obsessive
gambling, at which he was spending something like fifteen hours a week, which would
qualify as a part-time job. One wonders how he had time for this when his full-time job
was among the busiest anywhere in DoD or the U.S. Government.

VADM Giardina was well known at several casinos around Omaha, Nebraska, where
STRATCOM is headquartered, and he seemed to lose more than win. As revealed in a
recent investigation by the Associated Press, the admiral was hailed as Navy Tim at his
homes-away-from-home, who knew more about him than STRATCOM or the Navy did.
Indeed, his official employers only learned of VADM Giardinas habit when he was
arrested for passing homemade fake chips; employing skills not taught at the Naval
Academy or any Navy school I attended, VADM Giardina had converted $1 poker chips
into the $500 kind. Casinos frown on this sort of thing, and the admiral was arrested and
subsequently banned for life from certain casinos. Before that ban was in place, VADM
Giardina kept gambling there, even after his arrest, so serious was his addiction.
It was this arrest that alerted his employers and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service
(NCIS) before that, they had no inkling about the admirals habits. When asked by a
casino security officer about the protocols he, as a TS/SCI (plus) holder, was subject to,
Giardina replied, (What) theyre really trying to do is find out if you got, you know, if
youre having sex with animals or something really crazy or youve got this wild life that
you could be blackmailed into giving military secrets out. We can only hope that Russian
and Chinese intelligence whose interest in the deputy commander of STRATCOM
would be difficult to overstate were as blissfully unaware as the U.S. Navy was about
his private life.
Why Giardina wasnt caught beforehand isnt difficult to discern. Nobody likes to tell
security, those sneaky and snoopy guys down the hall, about their counterintelligence
concerns regarding a co-worker particularly when that co-worker is your boss and a
three-star admiral. Despite the fact that the admiral, on advice of counsel, refused to
cooperate with NCIS, Giardina is getting kid-glove treatment. He was found guilty in
May 2014 of two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer: lying to an investigator and
passing fake gambling chips. Giardina was given a written reprimand and ordered to
forfeit $4,000 in pay; he will retire with one less star and still get a very handsome
pension. Needless to add, the APA (Admirals Protective Association) remains a
powerful force, and those lower in rank would never be dealt with so kindly. In identical
circumstances, less senior officers would see a pension-less future while enlisted
personnel would face prison. Giardina continues to profess a sort of innocence; perhaps
he can help O.J. Simpson find the real killers someday.
I wish I could tell you this is an anomaly. It is not; it is entirely normal in U.S. military and
intelligence circles these days. Rank has its privileges and connections matter more
than rules and regulations. I will share with you just one case, among many, that I was
involved in. The individual in question had gotten an job at an IC three-letter agency
through connections. Although this persons initial SSBI had revealed anomalies, related
to hostile foreign intelligence no less, they were brushed aside due to said connections.
Upon reinvestigation, it was learned that this person had some serious personal issues.
Specifically, there was domestic violence involving guns plus a suicide attempt. Police
were called and there were reports. Worse, the individual had lied to officers of the
court about all this. By any standard, this was a seriously disturbed individual. This was
all reflected in the paperwork given to DoD investigators.
You know what happened? Absolutely nothing. Last I heard this person still has TS/SCI
clearances and is working for the IC. Making big money, no less. I wish I could say Im

shocked, but I no longer am. How many Snowdens are there? Is it a handful? Dozens?
Platoons? Battalions?
I dont know and I no longer venture a guess. Despite recent, ahem, setbacks, the IC
has asked for more taxpayer money next year. If this is money well spent I shall defer
to you as a taxpayer. I dont think its worth having vastly expensive intelligence
agencies if you cant keep secrets and prevent those secrets from being broadcast to
the world...but then Im kinda old school about that sort of thing.

New Intelligence Cooperation Between

Moscow and Tehran
October 24, 2014
Given the difficult, indeed parlous, relationship between many Western states and
both Russia and Iran, any collaboration between Moscow and Tehran is an important
factor for Western capitals to consider. While relations between the Iranian
revolutionary regime and the Kremlin have often been poor, and sometimes actively
hostile, there has been detectable warming in recent years as the Russians and
Iranians find themselves on the same side in the bloody wars in Syria and Iraq.
An indication of how cozy things are getting between Moscow and Tehran came this
week with a visit to Iran by Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russias National Security
Council, who met with Iranian counterparts to discuss mutual threats. As Patrushev
explained, Iran has been one of Russias key partners in the region and it will remain
so in future ... [we] have similar and close views on many key regional issues and we
had a serious exchange of views on the situation in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
But this was not just a diplomatic gab fest. In the first place, Patrushev is a career
intelligence officer and one of President Vladimir Putins closest confidants. A
Brezhnev-era counterintelligence officer with the Leningrad KGB, just like Putin,
Patrushev served as head of the powerful Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to
2008, leaving that position to take over the National Security Council.
Patrushev has all the hardline anti-Western views one would expect from a devoted
Chekist. In a recent interview, he explained that the West, and especially the United
States, are behind a comprehensive plot to destroy Russia, using nefarious diplomatic
and economic means. Patrushev, stating explicitly that Russia and America are again
in a Cold War, blamed Washington, DC, for the wars in Chechnya and Ukraine, adding
that, through international economic institutions, the Americans destroyed
Yugoslavia and plan to do the same to Russia, citing alleged US/NATO plans for the
dismemberment of our country.
Im sure Patrushev and the Iranians therefore saw eye-to-eye on a great many things
when they sat down to chat. Of greatest importance is the new intelligence
cooperation agreement between Moscow and Tehran that Patrushev nailed down
during his visit. The main agenda item is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
between the countries national security councils, which was signed this week. This is
the vehicle for increased intelligence sharing between Russia and Iran and, while it
will focus heavily on issues of mutual concern in the Middle East and Central Asia,
Russian media reports make clear that this is the beginning of a strategic intelligence
partnership.
Although Russian and Iranian intelligence, once bitter enemies, signed a limited MOU
back in 2001 focusing on counterterrorism, that led to little actual cooperation. The
wars in Syria and Iraq, however, have changed things. Last year, the two interior
ministries agree to cooperate on police intelligence matters. Now, however, a full

intelligence alliance has been agreed to. As a Russian report on Patrushevs visit
explained:
The events in Syria and Iraq, where contacts between the Russian and Iranian special
services have not only been resumed but have also proven their mutually advantageous
nature, particularly in assessing the threats and plans of local bandit formations, both
secular and Islamist, with respect to Russian facilities in Tartus in Syria, have impelled
Moscow and Tehran to the idea of the need to formalize these contacts in the shape of a
permanently operating mechanism. Russian special services also valued the volume of
information, voluntarily conveyed by Iran to our specialists, on the potential activity of
the Israeli Air Force against the Russian humanitarian convoys to Syria in the period of
the sharp aggravation of the situation in that country in the summer of last year.
Let there be no doubt that this new espionage alliance is aimed directly at the United
States and Israel. As the report added, the Iranians are prepared to provide Russia on a
permanent basis with information on American military activity in the Persian Gulf
obtained from their own technical intelligence facilities in other words, the Russians
and Iranians will be sharing SIGINT, the most sensitive of all forms of intelligence
gathering.
Relations between Putins Russia and revolutionary Iran have been warming up in recent
years on all fronts diplomatic, economic, and military and now theres an important
intelligence dimension too. Given the power and long reach of the intelligence services
of both Iran and Russia, this is a development that should cause serious concern in
Western capitals as well as many in the Middle East.

Update
on
Espionage Scandal

Polands

New

October 21, 2014

The other day I explained what we knew so far about the major espionage scandal that
emerged last week with the arrests of a Polish army officer and a dual-national attorney
in Warsaw who are suspected of spying for Russian military intelligence (GRU). As usual,
case details are starting to emerge, and here they are.

New information from inside sources close to the counterintelligence investigation

indicates that the officer in question, Zbigniew J., is a lieutenant colonel serving in the
Ministry of Defense (you can see a blurred photo of him here). He has been working for
GRU for several years, and has been on the radar of Polish military counterintelligence
since 2011, and his motivations were financial as well as vague personal problems.
That said, he came cheap, as the total compensation package for his espionage came to
less than 100,000 zlotys about USD 30,000 presumably because his information
was not assessed as particularly valuable by the Kremlin.
His job in the education-morale affairs office of the MoD allowed him to visit military
units across the country and report to GRU what he found. While such information
about unit morale and movements would not be without value to Moscow, neither
should it be confused with high-priority intelligence. Based on current information, it
appears that there is no significant threat to NATO based on Zbigniew J.s case. He met
with his handler, a GRU officer serving at Russias Warsaw embassy under diplomatic
cover, every few months, exchanging information for relatively small sums of cash. There
is no doubt his actions were witting: J. knew full well what he was doing. He was aware
of his involvement in foreign intelligence, stated a Polish investigator.
I already profiled the other suspected spy, Stanisaw Szypowski, in some detail. The
lawyer-lobbyist, unlike the colonel, did not spy for money, rather out of patriotic (i.e.
pro-Russian) motives. He, too, met regularly with GRU diplomats in Warsaw; only in
this sense do these two cases appear to be connected. Szypowski was considered
reasonably effective by Moscow at getting access to influence in Polish governmental
circles, and he aspired to getting a job in the economics ministry. Indeed, it was his
pushiness about getting such a job that seems to have caused Polish
counterintelligence to take action to shut Szypowski down, as he knew what he was
doing: He operated with full awareness. He provided the Russians with information
concerning the Polish energy sector. He was cautious. For example, he would go to
meet with GRU residents without his telephone, so as not to be traced, explained a
Polish spy-hunter working the case.
Since both suspects were known to Polish counterintelligence for some time, the
question to be asked is why Warsaw decided to arrest them publicly now. The answer is
not difficult to determine. In the aftermath of Russias war on Ukraine, which was
spearheaded by GRU and its little green men, the Poles are deeply worried about
espionage and covert action. As well they should be, as GRU is assessed to have at

least a dozen officers serving at Russias Warsaw embassy, plus others undetected.
Russian espionage against Poland has been rising in recent months, to include drone
flights over Polish territory, and with these arrests Warsaw is letting the Kremlin know
that it does not have a free hand to engage in Special War against Poland. While neither
of these men is exactly James Bond, there is a message here that will not be missed in
Moscow.
It has been reported that Warsaw now plans to declare several GRU diplomats
persona non grata and expel them from Poland. Such would be the logical step in the
aftermath of the arrests, and a standard part of the spywar, and it will cause GRU
some trouble, as it will have to rebuild damaged networks. But nobody in Warsaw
expects that the expulsion will buy more than a bit of time to improve their
counterintelligence methods against the rising Russian espionage threat. All of NATO
should be doing the same.

Poland and NATOs New

Espionage Scandal
October 18, 2014
Two days ago, Polish security officials arrested two men on suspicion of espionage for
Russia. Given the current climate of high tension on Polands eastern frontier, thanks to
Russias war on Ukraine, the timing of this arrest is important. For NATO, too, the stakes
are high.
Polish officials have been tight-lipped about the case and the names of those under
arrest have not been released. However, we know that one man is a colonel in the Polish
military, assigned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) in Warsaw, while the other is an
attorney in Polands capital, a dual Polish-Russian national who works on economic
matters.
Although the men were arrested on the same day, their cases were investigated
independently; it is not yet clear whether they are linked. Polands Internal Security
Agency (ABW) has said little about this affair, officially not citing which country the men
are believed to have spied for, although an ABW spokesman stated coyly, I think you
can probably guess which country. Yesterday, however, a member of the parliamentary
commission for the security services revealed that the men had been secretly working
for Moscow, specifically for Russian military intelligence (GRU).
Anytime a colonel in the defense ministry is suspected of espionage is a moment to
worry Polish counterintelligencers will be very busy in the weeks ahead trying to
assess the damage but to make matters worse, it has been revealed that the officer
had access to NATO secrets, so the Atlantic Alliance must now assume the worst. Polish
counterintelligence has a long history of tangling with GRU, and the results have not
always been edifying for Warsaw, as Ive previously explained, because the Russians
excel at espionage.
We can take the Polish MoDs word that the charges facing these men are very serious
indeed. Warsaw has promised to reveal more details of this case in a few days, and Ill be
reporting on that and giving my analysis. Watch this space.
UPDATE (18 OCT, 1400 EST): It has been confirmed that the lawyer under arrest,
Stanislaw Sz., works for the Warsaw firm Stopczyk & Mikulski, where he was engaged
on a project to build a terminal for importing LNG at Polands Baltic Sea port of
winoujcie, which has strategic significance as it is intended to reduce Polands
high dependence on Russian LNG. He only received Polish citizenship two years ago,
and according to todays reports his main target for GRU was the Sejm, the Polish
parliament, and he had compiled lists of possible recruits. In other words, he was not
merely an agent but was charged with recruiting others news analysts, PR
specialists and experts, politicians, and those employed in the energy sector. A new
statement from an anonymous source that Stanislaw Sz. had patriotic motivations.
He was professionally trained in espionage and behaved very carefully, implies that
he may be a GRU Illegal, i.e. a spy operating under what U.S. intelligence terms non-

official cover (although the Russian concept of Illegal is a good deal more specialized
in tradecraft terms) which represents a more serious problem for ABW and the Polish
government. More is sure to emerge in this case.
UPDATE (18 OCT, 1630 EST) A Polish website has revealed that the lawyer suspects
full name is Stanisaw Szypowski (left), who goes by the nickname Staszek. The site

includes a video clip of Szypowski discussing (in Polish) business opportunities in

Belarus. He is a well-known lobbyist in Warsaw who made his presence known at the
Sejm and at key NGOs, which is standard GRU practice, as Ive explained before.

Obamas Big Fat Intel Scandal

September 30, 2014
The rise of the Islamic State* has engendered a full-blown foreign policy crisis in
Washington, DC. After more than three years of an extended Mission Accomplished
victory lap following the death of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs in
May 2011, the Obama White House has hit the wall with the sudden appearance of the
decapitating jihadists of the Islamic State, who now control substantial chunks of both
Syria and Iraq and a lot of oil to boot.
The September 2012 disaster at Benghazi ought to have been a wake-up call that Salafi
jihadism was down but not out, and still bent on killing Americans, but wasnt. Now the
administration is confronted with a major problem that its not exactly been quick to
deal with; Ive explained how the Islamic State can be defeated, but the White House
doesnt seem to be in any big rush to do that. Moreover, Obamas policy to degrade and
defeat the Islamic State is riddled with contradictions, thanks largely to the confusionmasquerading-as-strategy that has plagued Obamas Middle East forays since the
beginning of his presidency, and nowhere more than Syria.
Not surprisingly, Obama has played defense with the media and commentariat about all
this, and that came to a head Sunday in a TV interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes.
Kroft pitched Obama a lot of softballs, some of which the president handled better than
others, but it was the Commander-in-Chiefs comments on the Intelligence Community
(IC) that have garnered the most attention, especially this part:
Steve Kroft: How did [ISIL] end up where they are in control of so much territory? Was
that a complete surprise to you?
President Obama: Well I think, our head of the Intelligence Community, Jim Clapper,
has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in
Syria.
Steve Kroft: I mean, he didnt say that, just say that, we underestimated ISIL. He said, we
overestimated the ability and the will of our allies, the Iraqi army, to fight.
President Obama: Thats true. Thats absolutely true.
To anyone even passingly acquainted with inside-Beltway politics, the president just
blamed the IC for the ISIL debacle, make no mistake about it. A couple weeks back, Jim
Clapper gave an interview to David Ignatius, the doyen of Washington, DC intelligence
reporters, in which he indicated that he felt the IC indeed had underestimated ISILs will
to fight, while overestimating the battle-worthiness of Iraqs U.S.-built military, drawing
an analogy to flawed intelligence assessments of the Viet Cong, a war that Clapper
participated in as a junior intelligence officer. But Clapper did not say that the IC got the
rise of ISIL wrong, per se, and there is the critical rub.
Spies dont take kindly to being thrown under the bus by the Commander-in-Chief,
particularly on national television, and within hours the leaks began to flow, and it was

soon apparent that Obama had misspoken, to be charitable. Either the president
doesnt read the intelligence hes getting or hes bullshitting, explained a former IC
insider to Eli Lake of The Daily Beast.
It soon emerged that three top administration officials had explicitly warned about
the rise of ISIL since the fall of 2013, to no apparent effect on the White House. One
of them was Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, the outspoken former director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, who minced few words about his views on the rising ISIL
threat. Perhaps not coincidentally, Flynn was ousted at DIA this summer in a rather
public fashion, a defenestration that cannot look very wise in retrospect.
To make matters worse, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the chair of the House Intelligence
Committee, stated Monday that actually the IC had been warning the White House
about the emergence of ISIL as a serious threat in Iraq and Syria for over a year, to no
effect. This was not an Intelligence Community failure, but a failure by policy makers to
confront the threat, Rogers explained, adding that the incompetence of the Iraqi
military, which fell apart before ISIL, was well known to anybody in Washington, DC
who cared to know clearly implying that the White House did not.
It has since emerged that President Obama has not exactly been paying attention to
intelligence. This has been rumored for years, but now we have some data. Every
president gets a tailor-made Presidents Daily Brief (PDB), a very closely held and highly
classified document (for the background of the PDB this is a good primer). It turns out
that, since becoming Commander-in-Chief, Obamas overall attendance rate at his PDB
is only 42.4 percent, while in his second term so far its lower, 41.3 percent. Moreover,
in 2014, Obama has attended his PDB only 37.5 percent of the time.
Presidential interest in intelligence varies considerably, with some occupants of the
Oval Office taking a hands-on approach to secret matters, while some are more
aloof, but its safe to say that an attendance rate of hardly more than one-third at a
time of crisis, with the world spiraling out of control between Ukraine and ISIL, to cite
only the most pressing security problems today, is difficult to explain.
Its easy for Obamas defenders to dismiss this as mere partisanship, but its not. Ive
long defended Obama against unfair and sometimes unseemly charges from the Right
about his alleged anti-military attitudes or supposed lack of interest in security issues.
That said, we need to get to the bottom of this, given the extent of the strategic debacle
surrounding the rise of ISIL. Partisanship is not the issue here. Indeed, the analytic
element of the CIA that produces the PDB, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), is pretty
much the NPR demographic, so efforts to dismiss this issue as more right-wing
posturing are wide of the mark.
Obama has created a scandal where one did not need to exist, for reasons I cannot
fathom. Picking a fight with the IC is a very bad idea, as anybody acquainted with how
Washington, DC, works is well aware. When thrown under the bus by any White
House, the spooks retaliate with leaks that are often highly damaging to the
administration; this is a venerable game inside the Beltway that wise politicians avoid as
a lose-lose situation. This about turf, not ideology: ask George W. Bush what happened
to his plans for war with Iran once the IC, led by CIA, put out its dovish 2007

National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Tehrans nuclear program, escorted by a barrage

of anti-White House leaks.

The IC is a behemoth of seventeen different and sometimes mutually hostile

agencies residing in six different cabinet departments. Turf issues matter, and the
addition of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI thats Clapper) in the aftermath
of 9/11 has added another layer of bureaucracy rather than fix fundamental problems
with the American intelligence model, some of which are caused by its gargantuan size
rather than mismanagement. There was debate inside the IC about the rise of ISIL, and
Obamas opening the ICs performance on this issue to public scrutiny on national
television means that we have to get to the bottom of this.
Obvious questions present themselves. How often did Obama really get his intelligence
briefings? What did those PDBs say about ISIL? Did Obama or his key staffers interact
with any IC analysts on the ISIL matter? What role (if any) did differing views between
agencies, especially CIA and DIA, impact the information the White House was getting?
Above all, what was the role of the National Security Council and its director, Susan
Rice, in the failure to anticipate the rise of ISIL, despite multiple intelligence warnings?
We need an investigation on a bi-partisan basis, eschewing politics-as-usual, just like
the 9/11 Commission, to get to the bottom of this. The appearance of ISIL is the
biggest terrorism story since the 9/11 attacks, and the American people deserve
answers, given the seriousness of the threat to the United States and our allies posed
by the murderous Islamic State.
I have no doubt that the intelligence backstory to this matter will turn about to be
complicated, between conflicting raw intelligence and the usual bureaucratic catfights between agencies, but the essence of this scandal is simple. The White House
chose to repackage a major policy failure as an intelligence failure and the spooks
who have not been happy about Obamas cavalier attitude towards intelligence,
neither did they appreciate how slow the president was to come to the ICs defense
during the Snowden debacle last year took umbrage and are pushing back with
leaks. More, and worse, leaks are coming; this is how DC works. The IC are not the
people to throw under the bus if a White House wants smooth sailing. How Obama
and his staffers did not seem to know this almost six years into this administration is
the only real mystery in this story.

*Some call it ISIS, the administration prefers ISIL, but if you want to be pedantic
Daish (for al-Dawlah al-Islamiyah) is correct.

More Silly NSA Criticism

November 18, 2014
The surveillance state reform crowd is in the doldrums, now that their wonder-boy
Edward Snowden is in Russia for the long-haul, under Putins watchful eye, and its
been painfully evident for months that major reforms of the National Security Agency
are politically stillborn, indeed they were killed off by Snowden and his traitorous
antics, which left a bad taste in the mouths of normal Americans.
This doesnt prevent the occasional outburst from the NSA-hating contingent, usually
of a very misinformed kind, and today we have a new, rather silly example. I give you
The Real Lesson of Recent Cyberattacks: Lets Break Up the NSA, which advocates
dismantling the Agency, which has two big components: the Signals Intelligence
Directorate (SID) and the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD). The former
conducts electronic espionage against foreigners, while the latter protects sensitive
U.S. defense and intelligence networks from foreigners reading our classified mail.
The author cites several recent cyberattacks on the White House, the Postal Service,
and the National Weather Service, all of which have received press attention, and
rightly so. Then theres the very serious cyberattack on the State Department, which
led to the unprecedented shutdown of States unclassified email system a few days ago.
Its clear the U.S. Government is having problems protecting its less-sensitive
information systems from foreign cyber intrusions, and worse.
Yet in a bout of snark, the author adds as wise commentary:
If only there was a federal agency dedicated to protecting federal information systems
and critical U.S. infrastructure from criminals and foreign attackers. Oh, waitthere is.
Its the National Security Agency. And to all appearances, its botched the job so badly
youd think it wasnt really trying in the first place.

Maybe it wasnt, he adds, veering off into uninformed speculation about how SID
and IAD are in cahoots to violate everyones privacy while letting Beijing read our
mail...or something. The author has so little idea of how NSA actually functions that
his argument is difficult to explain in any lucid fashion.
But the core problem is that the authors central rant is entirely wrong. If he had
bothered to read the IAD mission statement, which is linked in his own piece, it states
the following;
IAD protects and defends National Security Information and Information Systems. In
accordance with National Security Directive 42, National Security Systems are defined as
systems that handle classified information or information otherwise critical to military or
intelligence activities.

Got that? In other words, NSA is not responsible for security of the unclassified
systems at the White House or the State Department, which were recently
compromised according to press reports, and NSA has literally nothing to do with

protecting unclassified information systems at the Post Office or the National

Weather Service. Nice try to pin that on NSA, it just happens to be entirely wrong.
The author does not tell you that those Federal departments and agencies are
responsible for their own cybersecurity on unclassified information systems. Even
inside the Department of Defense, less sensitive systems are handled by the Defense
Information Systems Agency, not NSA, another important fact which the author fails
to disclose. NSAs IAD is charged with protecting the security and integrity of Top
Secret (plus) computer and communications systems that impact military and
intelligence matters....and thats it.
Theres a case to be made that SID and IAD should be separated, though they have
resided together since NSAs creation in 1952. Despite the fact that there is some
mission overlap between them, SID and IAD are headquartered at different locations
and theres not a great deal of personnel exchange between the directorates, not to
mention that SID is far larger than IAD in terms of both budget and personnel.
That said, marrying SIGINT and Information Assurance in a single agency makes more
sense than, say, the marriage of finished national-level intelligence analysis and
national-level human intelligence at CIA, in the Directorate of Intelligence and the
National Clandestine Service, respectively a union that is an accident of history
and is not replicated in most Western intelligence communities.
If you want to separate SID and IAD to weaken NSA, thats fine, just say that. There is no
case for that divorce, however, that can be made on the basis of factually incorrect
arguments such as we have here. It would be wise for authors to have a sense of what
NSA actually does which is not hard to find online before they pontificate about
how the Agency does everything wrong.

Fixing Pentagon Intelligence

September 21, 2014
The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), that vast agglomeration of seventeen different
hush-hush agencies, is an espionage behemoth without peer anywhere on earth in
terms of budget and capabilities. Fully eight of those spy agencies, plus the lions
share of the ICs budget, belong to the Department of Defense (DoD), making the
Pentagons intelligence arm something special. It includes the intelligence agencies of
all the armed services, but the jewel in the crown is the National Security Agency
(NSA), Americas big ears, with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA),
which produces amazing imagery, following close behind.
None can question the technical capabilities of DoD intelligence, but do the Pentagons
spies actually know what they are talking about? This is an important, and too
infrequently asked, question. Yet it was more or less asked this week, in a public forum,
by a top military intelligence leader. The venue was an annual Washington, DC,
intelligence conference that hosts IC higher-ups while defense contractors attempt a
feeding frenzy, and the speaker was Rear Admiral Paul Becker, who serves as the
Director of Intelligence (J2) on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). A career Navy intelligence
officer, Beckers job is keeping the Pentagons military bosses in the know on hotbutton issues: its a firehose-drinking position, made bureaucratically complicated
because JCS intelligence support comes from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
which is an all-source shop that has never been a top-tier IC agency, and which happens
to have some serious leadership churn at present.
Admiral Beckers comments on the state of DoD intelligence, which were rather direct,
merit attention. Not surprisingly for a Navy guy, he focused on China. He correctly
noted that we have no trouble collecting the dots of (alleged) 9/11 infamy, but can
the Pentagons big battalions of intel folks actually derive the necessary knowledge
from all those tasty SIGINT, HUMINT, and IMINT morsels? Becker observed
accurately that DoD intelligence possesses a data glut but an information deficit
about China, adding that We need to understand their strategy better. In addition, he
rued the absence of top-notch intelligence analysts of the sort the IC used to possess,
asking pointedly: Where are those people for China? We need them.
Theres a lot going on in the admirals comments, which hit on important points as the
United States plans for possible war in East Asia rather, one hopes, deterring one. In
the first place, its odd that an intelligence leader would think that understanding an
opponents strategy, much less his grand strategy, is the job of the spooks. That
actually is the job of all senior officers, and such matters are taught at War Colleges
or are supposed to be. That said, Beckers frustration is understandable, since the
Naval War College, allegedly the leading light of DoD education, was just found by the
Navys own Inspector General to be overpriced and underperforming, and some of his
views should be taken in this context.
More important is his allegation that DoD intelligence types have a problem
differentiating forests from trees, and here Becker is entirely accurate. A lot of dots do

not a coherent picture necessarily make, particularly when intelligence analysts lack
necessary knowledge language, culture, history, time in the target country about
the problem at hand. On this charge DoD intelligence, and the whole IC, have little
coherent defense, since decades of favoring diversity of experience over specialized
knowledge among intelligence officers leads to exactly the situation smart people
who know a little about a lot, rather than a lot about a little that Admiral Becker
lamented this week.
The most interesting, and unintentionally revealing, part of the J2s comments came
when he highlighted intelligence legends of the past, whose like cannot be found in DoD
spy circles today, Becker maintained. I am generally skeptical of hoary golden ages in
any organization, since memory plays tricks, yet here the admiral had a point. He cited
Vernon Walters, a legendary Cold War semi-spy. An Army general, Walters was a
polyglot who spoke several foreign languages well enough to serve as translator for
presidents; Walters also served as a CIA top manager and the White Houses secret
emissary to the Vatican. Yet his career was so totally unrepresentative of both DoD and
the IC that he presents a fascinating one-off during the Cold War. One suspects that a
gifted odd duck like Walters would not last long in todays Army; he certainly would
stand minimal chance of becoming a three-star general.
Becker likewise mentioned Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a Navy intelligence officer who
rose to head NSA and serve as CIAs deputy director. A very gifted officer, Inman was
perhaps NSAs best-ever director, and he enjoyed a second-to-none reputation for
smarts. Again, however, Inman represents such an outlier, bureaucratically speaking,
that you wonder what Becker was getting at here. Not to mention that Inman has a
reputation for prickliness, as evidenced by the weird flame-out of his nomination as
Secretary of Defense by President Clinton. (It should also be noted that long-retired
Admiral Inman was a staunch, and rare, public critic of warrantless wiretapping by NSA
after 9/11.)
Yet the most intriguing example of past greats cited by Admiral Becker was the joined
case of Ed Layton and Joe Rochefort. This pair are rightly considered legends in Navy
intelligence circles for their remarkable achievement that enabled American victory at
the June 1942 Battle of Midway, the turning-point of the Pacific War. After Pearl
Harbor, these officers, who were close friends, played a critical secret role in giving
Admiral Chester Nimitz vital information about Japanese intentions. With half his fleet
sunk at Pearl Harbor, and suffering from a critical shortage of aircraft carriers, Nimitz
faced a dire situation in the spring of 1942. Fortunately for him, Rocheforts codebreaking unit in Hawaii was able to provide Nimitz amazing insights into Japanese
plans, thanks to their access to the enemys high-grade naval communications, with
Layton at the admirals side interpreting the top secret information for him.
Rocheforts team accurately predicted when and where the Japanese fleet would
strike, and the outnumbered Pacific Fleet beat them to the punch at Midway. Theirs
was one of the most remarkable stories in the annals of intelligence, and Nimitz
correctly considered Rochefort and Layton to have been his priceless advantage
lurking secretly behind the victory at Midway.
That said, it is more than a little disingenuous for Admiral Becker to suggest that theres
any mystery as to why Laytons and Rocheforts seem not to exist in the 21st

century U.S. Navy. An examination of how those officers became the legends they
remain reveals painful truths about DoD intelligence today. In the first place, Layton
and Rochefort were surface warfare officers (SWOs), i.e. ship-drivers, as were all Navy
line officers in the 1920s who didnt drive submarines or fly airplanes. They were
never in the intelligence career ghetto because it simply did not exist; in the mid1920s, when both junior officers went behind the green door and entered the top
secret world of code-breaking, they were accredited SWOs as there was no career path
yet for spooks in the Navy (back then intelligence and code-breaking were functionally
united in the Navy, only to be separated bureaucratically after World War II, as they
inexplicably remain today).
Rochefort was recruited for the Navys hush-hush code-breaking program in
Washington, DC based on his responses on a crossword puzzle that he sent to a P.O.
Box (this clever yet simple method worked well at quietly identifying sailors who might
excel at cracking codes). He and Layton underwent three years of intense, top secret
training in how to decipher Japanese codes. It was evident to Navy leadership, which
could read a map, that war with Japan was more a matter of when than if the same
is true today with China so a small, elite cadre of officers was developed who could
understand Japan and its navy. After completing their code-breaking course, Rochefort
and Layton were sent to Japan for three years to learn the language, culture and
mindset of the future enemy.
As a result of this rigorous program, by the time war with Japan actually came, the
U.S. Navy possessed officers who deeply understood the enemy linguistically,
operationally, and culturally, with gifted men like Layton and Rochefort leading the
intelligence effort that proved decisive in American victory in the Pacific War. There
is no mystery how this happened: it was the outcome of wise planning. And this sort
of forward-looking thinking in intelligence circles does not happen anymore, and is
the root cause of the dysfunction that Admiral Becker rightly decried this week.
In todays Navy, intelligence and information warfare officers have too little contact
with line officers, who generally view them as spooky and not always helpful.
Moreover, rigid career paths mean that officers on the make will seek a diversity of
assignments, avoiding specialization like the plague on a career that it is. Any
intelligence officer who suggested that s/he should study Chinese naval and
intelligence matters intensely for three years then go to China for three more years to
learn Mandarin and Chinese ways, would be laughed out of the room, between cost
and security concerns, amid whispers of career suicide. This simply is not how the
U.S. Navy or any of our armed services actually works.
Of course, such dysfunction is a choice. I have no doubt that the Navy today possesses
officers of the high caliber of Ed Layton and Joe Rochefort, but how they are groomed,
career-wise, means that such talents are not finding their niche. This bespeaks a
powerful bureaucratic inertia and a fundamental lack of seriousness about the threats
we face. If America wants to avoid a war with China, or win it should it come, the
Pentagon needs to get serious about grooming officers who truly understand the
enemy and his mindset. This cannot be done quickly and requires real talent-spotting
and nurturing; small is beautiful here its a question of quality, not quantity (which is

exactly why the Pentagon, which remains stuck in a mass-production mindset, does
not adopt such common-sense career paths).
Admiral Becker has raised important questions about just how effective DoDs vast
intelligence empire actually is at understanding China. He and those like him the
leaders of our IC have the ability to implement measures that, given time, will get
the Pentagon the gifted and properly educated officers that we need to win future
wars. We possess the talent; what we lack is the seriousness of purpose to break
bureaucratic china to make things actually happen. Theres not much time to waste.
P.S. Admiral Becker also did not address the painful fact that, due to bureaucratic
warfare of a kind only too well known in the Pentagon still, Joe Rochefort received no
career reward for his epic success that led to Nimitzs victory at Midway. Actually he
was punished for it. You can read my write-up of that scandal here.

Snowdens New Lies for Old

August 13, 2014
WIRED has a new interview with Edward Snowden, conducted over several days in
Moscow, which claims to be the most significant media discussion with the worlds most
famous IT contractor since he fled to Russia in June of last year. I wont comment on the
magazine cover shot, with Ed wrapped in Old Glory, representing an American superpatriot, which is a rare breed in Putins Russia.
The interview was conducted by James Bamford, who is anything but an impartial
observer of U.S. intelligence (my views on Bamford have been previously noted here),
indeed he admits to feeling kinship with his subject, and it shows. The piece is filled
with so many fawning soft-balls and obvious unasked questions that it makes previous
media interviews with Ed, which I considered pretty soft-edged, look like
interrogations by Stalins NKVD.
The piece requires a nearly line-by-line analysis of its numerous misstatements, lies and
obfuscations, but I lack the time or inclination for that. Most minds were made up about
Snowden months ago, with some people seemingly uninterested in the obvious gaps and
problems in Eds Official Narrative; regrettably more than a few of these people are in
the tech industry, and the WIRED piece is aimed right at them.
That said, there are a few points that need to be addressed, In the first place, up front
Bamford makes clear that his subject is not in bed with the Russians, despite the fact
that hes just received a three-year residence permit to remain there:
When Snowden fled to Russia after stealing the largest cache of secrets in American
history, some in Washington accused him of being another link in this chain of Russian
agents. But as far as I can tell, it is a charge with no valid evidence.
This begs the question: How far can Bamford actually tell? How informed is our
interviewer about the methods of the FSB, Russias primary security agency? Since
Bamford places this statement early in his interview, preemptively, one wonders what he
thinks would constitute valid evidence of Eds cooperation with the Russian security
services. A press release from FSB headquarters?
As Ive said before, whether Ed was cooperating with the Russians before he reached
Moscow is a debatable question, but his status with the FSB now is not actually an
open matter, as everyone who understands Russian intelligence knows. Bamford
believes his subject is the first Western intelligence defector to Russia ever not to
cooperate with the Kremlins secret services, and that is his right. It is also everyone
elses right to point out this claim is ridiculous.
Without irony, a few paragraphs later, Bamford notes that Snowdens handlers
repeatedly warned me that, even switched off, a cell phone can easily be turned
into an NSA microphone. Who exactly are these mysterious handlers? Bamford
does not tell us. Did he even ask?

Anatoliy Kucherena, Eds Russian lawyer, a man with extensive FSB connections,
recently told the media that his client does not enjoy official Kremlin protection.
Rather his security is handled by unnamed private security experts. Paid for by whom,
Kucherena did not clarify. Relatedly, Bamford observes that Ed, despite a lack of
funds, is doing well in his new home, which is an upgrade from his native country: He
has learned to live modestly in an expensive city that is cleaner than New York and
more sophisticated than Washington. Since Ed clearly isnt footing the bill for his
24/7 security the interview demonstrates that Snowden lives in constant fear of
abduction by American intelligence, even in his undisclosed Russian home who is?
That, like so many things, Bamford does not ask or explain.
The interview brims with many strange and unsupported statements that portray Ed as a
21st century martyr who has offered himself as a sacrifice for Americas myriad sins
against the planet. If you like this kind of thing, you like this kind of thing. Ed explains at
length how easy it was for him to steal all those classified materials from the stupid NSA,
and still the stupid NSA cant figure out exactly what he did, despite Snowdens
charitably leaving behind clues, he says, to assist their investigation. If you prefer your
narcissism unadulterated, this is the interview for you.
There is, however, one substantive issue in the piece that needs to be discussed.
Towards the end, Bamford dramatically explains how it was that his subject decided that
he had crossed the Rubicon, while in a secret NSA facility buried deep under a pineapple
plantation in Hawaii:
On March 13, 2013, sitting at his desk in the tunnel surrounded by computer screens,
Snowden read a news story that convinced him that the time had come to act. It was
an account of director of national intelligence James Clapper telling a Senate
committee that the NSA does not wittingly collect information on millions of
Americans. I think I was reading it in the paper the next day, talking to coworkers,
saying, can you believe this shit?
Snowden and his colleagues had discussed the routine deception around the breadth
of the NSAs spying many times, so it wasnt surprising to him when they had little
reaction to Clappers testimony. It was more of just acceptance, he says, calling it
the banality of evila reference to Hannah Arendts study of bureaucrats in Nazi
Germany.
I wont even address the Obamas-America-as-Hitlers-Germany trope, which is exactly
the sort of nonsense youd expect from a half-educated and self-important auto-didact
like Snowden. To be clear, Ed now says it was Clappers testimony of March 13, 2013
(the time had come to act) that caused him to go rogue and flee Hawaii on the lam two
months later with all those classified documents, after releasing them to members of the
media.
Wait. Wait one minute.
In the first place, its impossible to imagine that even self-proclaimed master-hacker
Edward Snowden managed to steal 1.5 million classified documents off NSA servers in
just a few weeks (although Ed denies the number is that large, he does not refute that
the haul was indeed vast).

More important, Glenn Greenwald, Eds partner in the operation, recently admitted
that he was in contact with Snowden long before Eds alleged awakening and decision to
go rogue. In Glenns words: [Ed] first tried to contact me or did contact me back in
December of 2012, when he sent me an anonymous email.
Are we really expected to believe that Ed began stealing thousands of classified
documents, then reached out to Glenn Greenwald, one of the most vehemently antiAmerican commentators anywhere just, well, because but it was Clappers
comments a few months later that convinced Ed to do something seriously wrong?
At this point, the players in the Snowden Operation cannot even keep their basic stories
straight. This is aided by certain members of the media who refuse to ask obvious
questions about the case, as here. The Bamford interview is nice if you want to feel good
about Snowden and what hes done, but as an effort to record what actually happened
its unreliable. All propaganda is.

This is Why U.S. Intelligence Cant Have

Nice Things
August 4, 2014
Its happened again.
Another 101-level counterintelligence failure has put Washington, DC, in the headlines in
an unflattering way. For the umpteenth time.
Ive been a consistent defender of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) against scurrilous
charges, particularly when these are emitted by uninformed commentators or people
who are collaborating with foreign intelligence services. But I wont defend the
indefensible.
The Associated Press has a new story that details a truly hare-brained American scheme
to foment anti-regime sentiments in Cuba. According to the report, the U.S.
Government, with (unstated) IC support, in late 2009 began dispatching Venezuelan,
Costa Rican, and Peruvian young people to Cuba to stir up trouble for Castro. Some
posed as tourists, others as health care personnel, some of whom used an HIV
prevention program as cover. But their mission, to identify potential social-change
actors, never stood any chance of success.
Because Cuban counterintelligence is legendarily effective, especially on their own turf,
and rooting out yanqui spies is their Job Number One. Its what they get out of bed for
in Havana, frankly. This reality is known to literally everybody in the IC who deals with
Cuban affairs. It was a shock in 1987, when the highest-ranking Cuban intelligence
defector to ever jump ship revealed to the Americans that every single human source
that CIA had run in Cuba since the revolution had actually been a double agent reporting
to Havana but experienced counterintelligence (CI) hands werent all that surprised.
Cuba has a highly accomplished intelligence apparatus that generally runs rings around
American opponents, as Ive explained in detail.
What tough and realistic training did our operatives receive to fend off hard-charging
Cuban CI before they were sent into the lions den? None. As the AP explains, One said
he got a paltry, 30-minute seminar on how to evade Cuban intelligence, and there
appeared to be no safety net for the inexperienced workers if they were caught. In
other words: sayonara, sucker.
The AP found USAID and its contractor, Creative Associates International, continued the
program even as U.S. officials privately told their government contractors to consider
suspending travel to Cuba after the arrest of contractor Alan Gross, who remains
imprisoned after smuggling in sensitive technology.
This is unconscionable, not to mention profoundly stupid. Despite U.S. assurances that
We value your safety, that clearly was not the case. Worse, some of these operatives
were paid barely more than five dollars an hour, below minimum wage, to put
themselves into the sights of Cuban counterspies. Moreover, was no thought given

to how using HIV programs as cover might expose genuine health care workers to
unnecessary risk?
I ought to be surprised, but I no longer am. The dismal performance of U.S.
counterintelligence has reached such unprecedented depths, lower even than in the
lamentable days of the Cold War when the KGB and its partners usually beat
Americans in the SpyWar handily, that I wonder if reform is even possible now. Ive
been firing off flares for years, as have others, no effect.
A decade ago, I thought that the CURVEBALL fiasco, in which an Iraqi defector fooled
U.S. intelligence with false information about his countrys WMD programs, with
disastrous consequences, might spark reform, because it was a flagrant case of what
can happen when CI vetting of sources is inadequate (particularly when its being
done through partners, here Germanys BND).
Nothing happened.
More recently, I thought that the disaster at Afghanistans Forward Operating Base
Chapman at the end of 2009, which killed seven CIA officers and contractors, plus two
foreign partners, when an al-Qaida operative blew himself up, might bring change,
since that tragic incident was a clear case of basic counterintelligence failure,
illustrating the lethal consequences of poor vetting of sources (again including poor CI
liaison work with a partner service, here Jordans).
Nothing happened.
Then, over the last year, weve had the Snowden disaster, the biggest
counterintelligence failure in the history of U.S. intelligence, and probably anybodys.
For want of decent vetting, on more than one occasion, the U.S. IC let Edward
Snowden into the inner sanctum of secrets, and he stole them more than 1.5 million
documents and gave them to self-styled journalists, then fled to Russia, where he
remains. The consequences of this epic failure will be felt for a generation in Americas
spy services.
If this doesnt spur real counterintelligence reform, nothing ever will. Yet I continue
to wonder. Evidence to date indicates that fundamental changes, long overdue in CI
and security, have yet to be implemented across the IC. In customary fashion, we
should expect overreaction in certain areas, which will uncover a bunch of false
moles and traitors, while critical areas will go unaddressed.
Several years ago I explained why reforming CI is so difficult for Washington, DC:
CI professionals are seldom popular. They are spooky by nature, prone to complex
explanations to seemingly unconnected events (to an extent this is a job requirement),
and they seldom bring good news. Who, after all, wants to be told by the hush-hush
guys down the hall that your premier operationthe one that youve been working on
for months if not years, the one that was supposed to make your careeris actually just
a mirage? Moreover, developing a cadre of effective CI officers takes time and talent,
as a good counterintelligence officer must be a genuine expert in his or her particular
region of interest, and he or she must have a detailed, and preferably

encyclopedic, knowledge of the opposing services operations and tactics going back
years or decades. Yet the United States must get serious about counterintelligence if it
wants to protect its interests in a dangerous world. During my time in the intelligence
community, I worked with CI officers from many agencies, including the talented staff of
the CIAs Counterintelligence Center. These people sometimes find it difficult to make CI
work because of the pervasive bias against counterintelligence at Langley. Let it be hoped
that this latest counterspy debacle will force the CIA, and all of our intelligence agencies,
to finally get serious about counterintelligence. This is the real world, not merely a thriller
spy movie.
I stick by all that, and I hereby issue another plea to the IC get serious, at last, about
counterintelligence. The costs of failure are embarrassing headlines in newspapers, and
far worse. If we cant get counterintelligence right meaning we cant protect our
secrets and prevent needless setbacks in operations due to a lack of CI vigilance, or even
common sense I have to wonder what the purpose of our vastly expensive
Intelligence Community actually is.

Berlin : NSA is
German industry

not

spying

on

August 11, 2014

Among the many untruths propagated by the Snowden Operation is the notion that
the National Security Agency is busy spying on private firms to seek economic
advantage for the United States. In Germany especially, this caused a firestorm of
controversy, with many believing that Germanys powerful economy is at risk from
American espionage against German industry.
Left-wingers in Berlin grew sufficiently worried about this issue that they asked the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germanys
counterintelligence agency, to investigate the matter. Their assessment has been
obtained by the Berlin daily Die Welt, which reported its findings today. The BfV is aware
of some 200 cases of potential or actual espionage against German firms since 2005.
However, in only in a few of those cases did the counterspies find concrete evidence of
intelligence service involvement in industrial espionage.
Many such cases involved Chinese individuals and firms, but given their possible ties to
governing structures in Beijing, it was difficult for German counterspies to determine
what was private data theft or the work of an intelligence entity operating through a cutout. In the BfVs words: Because of the close links between the industry and the state,
for example, in the Peoples Republic of China, it is difficult to differentiate whether the
industrial spying was done on behalf of the state or competing foreign companies or
private persons acting on their behalf.
The question of American involvement in industrial espionage against German firms
was investigated closely by the BfV, which came to this conclusion: There is currently
no concrete evidence of potential involvement of U.S. intelligence services in
espionage attacks on German companies, adding, the U.S. Government has assured
the Federal Government several times that its services do not conduct economic
espionage.
Instead, according to the BfV, known cases of industrial espionage since 2005 have
almost exclusively involved spying by China and Russia. The companies have not
reported any indications of spying activities by Western countries, reported German
counterintelligence.

German Counterintelligence and the

American Threat
July 29, 2014
In the aftermath of the Snowden Operations deep impacts in Germany over the last
year (see here, here and here for background), with highly negative effects on the
relationship between Berlin and Washington, DC, it was inevitable that Germany, which
previously had devoted minimal counterintelligence effort against U.S. espionage in
that country, would refocus energies onto what Snowden had exposed. Political
pressure on Berlin to get tough in this arena became overwhelming recently when it
was revealed that CIA had been running a spy inside the BND, Germanys foreign
intelligence service. Although the U.S. Intelligence Community has legitimate reasons
for spying on Germany, which Ive explained in detail here, there can be no doubt that
many Germans feel that important lines have been crossed, and America is not the firm
friend that many in Germany had long believed the U.S. to be.
Just what employing enhanced counterintelligence against American (and British)
espionage in Germany might mean has been clarified in a new and detailed interview
in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, with Hans-Georg Maassen, the director of
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt fr
Verfassungsschutz BfV), which is the countrys domestic intelligence agency,
charged with counterintelligence and counterterrorism. When asked about the impact
of Snowden, particularly if any revelations had surprised German security officials,
Maassen replied:
I was surprised that so many people were surprised. We didnt know that NSA did all
these things. But there were many indications that NSA has great capabilities. And we
knew that NSA has the legal permissions to do what it does. That is to say, we could
assume that it collects data on a worldwide basis, including Germany. However, there is a
difference between assuming and knowing.
FAZ then asked if Snowdens more salacious allegations were true, leading to this answer
from the BfV director:
In counterintelligence, we often have to rely on indications. Rarely is there real proof. We
dont know whether NSA monitors telecommunications in Germany. We dont know
whether the Federal chancellors mobile phone was monitored from the U.S. Embassy in
Berlin. But we are well advised to be watchful and step up security and strengthen our
counterintelligence measures.
The next question dealt with the legitimacy of these alleged U.S. activities, to which
Maassen replied:
Spying has no place in my understanding of friendship. The Federal Government has
made it clear to the United States that we expect different behavior and asked a highranking CIA employee to leave Germany. This was a politically necessary and right
decision. The Americans were surprised at this reaction by [Berlin].

Maassens answer to a question about the alleged CIA source run inside the BND is
interesting:
The point is whether it violates German law. If the United States collects German
information in the United States because we are so careless to let our
telecommunication run via the United States, we really have no reason to criticize it;
nor is our counterintelligence department able to do anything against it. However,
when the Americans tap data lines in Germany or even have human sources, they
violate German law. Then I say: enough is enough; we cannot accept that. In Germany,
German law must be abided by. By the way, I expect an Allied intelligence service to tell
us when someone offers himself as a source.
His answer, which would not be considered credible by many intelligence services, led to
an interesting reply from FAZ: Are you seriously telling us that the BND abides by the
local telecommunications law in Afghanistan and does not tap lines? To which Maassen
said, a bit pedantically: I dont know about that. Im sure that the BND abides by the
laws it is subject to.
FAZ then inquired about the BfVs reaction to Snowden and other revelations, leading to
this answer from Maassen:
After the end of the Cold War, some people thought that we would no longer need a
counterintelligence department because Germany was surrounded by friends. Now, the
political and public perception has changed and people have become aware that its
necessary to give counterintelligence the attention it deserves. I welcome that. We will
restructure our work. Im grateful for the political backing that we have for it now.
Wrapping up the counterspy aspect, FAZ asked specifically what would change, and
Maassen gave as direct an answer as any counterintelligence boss can be expected to:
The United States, the United Kingdom to mention only two examples are still our
partners, I would even say our friends. We need them, and they need us. Yet, as the old
saying goes: Trust is good, control is better. This is why we will increase
counterintelligence activities. This is the lesson we have learned.
In Germanys shoes I would be doing exactly what the BfV is now executing, namely
treating the U.S., U.K. and other members of the Anglospheres Five Eyes SIGINT Alliance
as CI threats that can no longer be ignored. Such is the price of the epic
counterintelligence fail that is the Snowden Operation. Life will get interesting for certain
American and British personnel in Central Europe henceforth.

The Snow den Operation : As sessing

the Damage
July 15, 2014
Its now been over a year since Edward Snowden, the most famous IT contractor in
intelligence history, defected to Moscow. This blog has followed the twists and turns of
this remarkable case in detail, particularly in its counterintelligence aspects, but one of
the most vexing and important issues remains undefined. Namely, how much damage to
U.S. and Allied intelligence and security did Snowdens unprecedented theft of classified
materials actually do?
The National Security Agency and others have been involved in developing a damage
assessment virtually from the moment the story broke; its what intelligence services do
when they have a defector or compromise, since its vital to understand what programs
have been damaged or lost. Snowdens theft was so vast perhaps only 1.5 million
purloined documents rather than the 1.7 million previously suggested that it will
take years for the Intelligence Community (IC) to assess what damage has actually been
wrought here. Moreover, it may be impossible to ever fully answer that question in
detail, particularly if Snowden stays in Moscow, which he shows every sign of doing. The
damage here stretches across so many agencies of the IC and the whole Department of
Defense that this will be truly the mother of all damage assessments, and it is to be
hoped that the public will allowed access to some sort of unclassified version of it, even
if only a summary, to understand what the Snowden Operation has done to the security
of the United States and its allies.
As a political effort, the international propaganda campaign against NSA that is driven
by the Snowden documents has failed to shut down the Agency, which continues to do
its mission with only modest changes, as this blog predicted months ago.
Nevertheless, its obvious to anyone acquainted with intelligence that the operational
and strategic damage to NSA and the IC, in particular to its international partnerships
that are so vital to Western security, is vast and unprecedented. There has never been a
compromise like this, or even close, in the annals of espionage, dwarfing even the
famous case of the KGBs Vasily Mitrokhin.
It is therefore surprising to hear recent statements from NSA and IC leadership that
the current crisis just isnt all that bad. Admiral Mike Rogers, NSAs new director, has
stated that the Snowden damage is manageable while making it clear that from where
he sits, the sky isnt falling. James Clapper, our Director of National Intelligence, has
similarly observed that the damage caused by Snowden is not as great as he and the IC
had initially believed.
There are undoubtedly audiences who wish to hear this good news, and one cannot fault
leaders who try to shore up flagging morale in a crisis. There can be no doubt that NSA
morale today is at its lowest ebb ever, with a workforce dealing with the damage on a
day-to-day basis while worrying about a security overreaction to the Snowden disaster,
which is what the IC usually does in the wake of this sort of lapse. There are

numerous allies, close intelligence partners, who want to be told that all is well, that
NSA is as effective as ever and has brushed off the Snowden case in record time
and that it wont happen again.
Unfortunately, this is not true. It is difficult to reconcile statements from Rogers and
Clapper with ones previously made by General Keith Alexander, the former NSA
director (What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage
to our country and to our allies.) or by Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, the former DIA
director (this has caused grave damage to our national security), who added that the
wreckage goes far beyond the IC, and has serious and disturbing implications for the
Pentagon and the U.S. armed forces too. The unclassified version of DIAs damage
assessment describes Snowdens impact as staggering.
Key allies have been even more frank. Andrew Parker, head of the British Security
Service (MI5), stated that the Snowden-caused leaks from GCHQ, NSAs British
partner, hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and
strike at will, a view that was endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron. Comments
by Paul Taloni, director of the Australian Signals Directorate, NSAs partner Down
Under, were even more detailed: Snowden has effectively informed Indonesia and
PNGs military that Australia knows how to decrypt their comms ... They will
immediately change them as a result, which will directly impact on Australias ability
to minimize future threats.
Dr. Taloni notes an important point, namely that letting targets know they are being
listened to usually means that they change how they communicate, and access is lost,
often for an extended period, and sometimes forever. Thus is intelligence diminished.
Unlike the world of human intelligence (HUMINT), where even a major setback means
a human source, or several, are compromised, in the arena of signals intelligence
(SIGINT), a compromise can shut down a vast array of collection programs and
effectively render you deaf against whole countries. Given the unprecedented extent
of the Snowden compromise, it would be foolish to assume that the SIGINT losses it
has engendered are not commensurately vast.
It needs to be noted that NSA has a long history of avoiding unpleasant truths in cases
of defection and betrayal. The Agency had little to say publicly about the case of William
Martin and Bernon Mitchell, two disgruntled analysts who defected to Moscow in 1960,
while noting internally, in language that seems apt today as well, that the men
possessed greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and
talents and defected to satisfy social aspirations. The Agency was similarly tightlipped
three years later about the case of Jack Dunlap, an Army sergeant assigned to NSA
for a time he was the directors driver who passed classified materials to the Soviets
in exchange for cash; as Dunlap committed suicide before he was convicted of anything,
he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Perhaps the most relevant case is that of William Weisband, who is the only case in
NSA history that compares with Snowden in terms of damage to U.S. and Allied SIGINT.
As Ive explained before, Weisband was a longtime Soviet spy and mole inside U.S.
intelligence who compromised everything he could get his hands on, including
BOURBON, the top secret American-British program that listened in on high-level

Soviet communications, which went dark in 1948 after Weisband told Moscow about
it. He also told them about VENONA, the extraordinarily compartmented program that
decrypted Soviet intelligence communications; thanks to Weisband, the Kremlin knew
about VENONA several years before President Harry Truman was briefed on it. In short,
Weisband practically shut down Western SIGINT against the Soviet Union at the dawn
of the Cold War, when it was most needed, and that damage lasted for years and cost
lives.
NSAs reaction to the case was revealing. In the first place, there was no NSA when
Weisband was arrested in 1950, when another Soviet spy, revealed by VENONA,
fingered Weisband, who was then working in the heart of the SIGINT system, as his
Soviet intelligence handler back in the early 1940s. Weisband was a Russian linguist (it
was his native tongue) for the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), NSAs direct
predecessor, where security was somewhat slipshod. Weisband should have been
caught earlier, his efforts to hide his betrayal were hardly impressive, but nobody was
paying attention.
Seeking to cover up this epic disaster, which AFSA leadership had been quietly expecting
ever since BOURBON was suddenly and inexplicably lost two years before, U.S.
intelligence clammed up. Nobody wanted to admit that our SIGINT system had been
penetrated, and in the climate of the time, Washington, DC, didnt even want to state
publicly that it had an agency that was breaking foreign codes. Weisband was allowed to
slip away without comment.
He did a year in Federal prison for the obscure crime of lying to a grand jury about his
secret Communist affiliations, and was never charged with anything relating to
espionage. He continued his life, becoming an insurance salesman in Northern Virginia,
dying of a heart attack in 1967 (ironically, just at the time the KGB wanted to give him a
bag of cash to help out the old master who had done so much for the Soviet Union).
There was not a peep to the American public about what Weisband had done.
Internally, it was obvious that the damage was so serious that it must never happen
again. Part of the problem was that AFSA was not really a unified agency, rather an
amalgam of preexisting Army, Navy, and Air Force SIGINT services; in particular, it
lacked any unified security and counterintelligence program. President Truman
ordered the establishment of a committee led by the New York attorney George
Brownell to look into improving the flawed AFSA model. Their recommendation was
the establishment of a fully unified cryptologic unit, under the Department of Defense,
with a single security effort to prevent future moles. Thus was the National Security
Agency born in November 1952.
After that, NSA pretty much forgot about Weisband. His co-workers were told to never
discuss the case with anybody. For decades, he simply did not exist; he was not even
mentioned in internal Agency security briefings, and most counterintelligence officials
at NSA possessed only a vague awareness of the Weisband affair, so total was the
amnesia. That only began to change in the mid-1990s, when NSA and CIA jointly
declassified the remarkable VENONA story, in which Bill Weisband had played a sordid
part. Only a half-century after his betrayal did the American public learn about what
Weisband had done, and it was not until 2003 that NSA officials offered a full,

unclassified look at the case to the public, revealing long-suppressed details about
what the traitor had done, and why.
Its natural for the leaders of secret agencies to want to keep their disasters hidden.
Deep down, all spy services want to be like surgeons who bury their mistakes. Yet this
is an unhealthy impulse that must be resisted. NSA will not prevent another Snowden
if the Agency does not honestly assess exactly what happened here. Moreover, the
public has a right to know the actual story, at least in outline, while our allies deserve
better than happy-talk. It is at best odd that IC leadership seems content to
pronounce the case not so big a deal when, in fact, it has been enormously painful for
the Western diplomats from many countries who have had to contend with the
considerable problems caused by the Snowden Operation, to say nothing of the
numerous American firms that have lost business, including huge contracts, thanks to
this affair.
NSA and U.S. intelligence wont be getting past the damage wrought by Edward
Snowden and his partners for many years, and neither will Western diplomacy and the
many businesspeople who did nothing to deserve the loss of income they are now
facing, and may be for a long time. It would be wise of senior U.S. Government officials
to keep this in mind. Moreover, its best to face the painful truth now, because the full
story of this debacle will come out eventually. It always does.
[As always, the authors comments are his own entirely.]

The Three Cs of U.S. Espionage

in Germany
July 13, 2014
New details continue to emerge about the brewing SpyWar between Berlin and
Washington, DC, over alleged U.S. espionage directed at the German government.
While significant questions remain, its becoming clear that Markus R., the thirty-one
year-old employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst BND)
who was spying for the CIA, fell well short of James Bond, having been caught by
German counterintelligence when trying to sell classified materials to the Russians too.
The second espionage suspect, a Defense Ministry official, although under suspicion,
remains free, and that case may be misunderstood: time will tell.
Whats not in doubt is that Germany is a full-fledged panic about American spying that
has already resulted in the departure of the CIAs station chief in Berlin and will surely
bring extra scrutiny to a lot of U.S. activities in Central Europe. Coming on top of the
Snowden Operation, with its clear aim of harming U.S.-German relations, the timing of
all this must be considered suspect as well as inopportune for the West. In response,
German counterintelligence is conducting a molehunt for more U.S. agents who may
be lurking in ministries and agencies, above all the BND, while new press reports that
more than a dozen such spies exist promise that this story is far from over, and the
already rocky relationship between Berlin and Washington, DC, may worsen further.
Given all this, its worthwhile to ask what exactly the U.S. Government secretly wants
to know about Germany. The answer isnt straightforward and its much more nuanced
than most media treatments would have you believe. While the CIA isnt likely to turn
away German officials who volunteer their services to them, neither is there much
active recruitment of German partners. In situations like this, where spy agencies work
closely with each other its called liaison in the trade occasionally lines get
crossed and information gets overshared in a manner than can veer into actual
espionage, sometimes gradually. Personal relationships develop and, well, things
happen; it should be noted that this is fully a two-way street.
Helpfully, Eli Lake over at The Daily Beast has written a nice article that explains what it
is U.S. intelligence actually wants to know about Germany; it sheds light on things that
are understood among spooks but not much among normals. The bottom line is that
American espionage priorities in Germany can be boiled down to the Three Cs:
Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, and Counterproliferation.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which we must not forget were staged from
Hamburg, under the not-very-watchful eye of German intelligence they managed to
shut down the notorious mosque where Mohammed Atta and co-conspirators used to
hang out ... in 2010 counterterrorism became the obvious priority, and so it has
remained for years. After that debacle, German security agencies, above all the
domestic intelligence arm, the mouthful Federal Office for the Protection of the
Constitution (Bundesamt fr Verfassungsschutz BfV), began to treat the terrorist

threat more seriously, with considerable assistance from U.S. intelligence partners.
Nevertheless that relationship can never be seamless, given politics and bureaucracies,
and in reality counterterrorism operations in Germany (or most any partner country, for
that matter) boil down to this. In the event that CIA or NSA (its more often the latter)
gets information about possible terrorist activities in, say, Bielefeld, U.S. officials tell the
Germans about it and there are then three possible responses from Berlin:
A) Great idea, lets run a joint operation against them and figure out whats going
on (the preferred answer).
B) Thanks, but theyre not doing anything illegal under German law, so get back to
us if you develop that sort of information (the lawyerly answer, and German security
agencies are very lawyerly).
C) We know about this, and weve spent the last six months placing an agent inside
this group, well get back to you if we learn more (this may or not be true).
Any answer other than A may result in a U.S. operation on German soil, without
German assistance, what spies term a unilateral, which always runs the risk of
getting caught and something embarrassing happening. Per the old MOSSAD
joke/curse: May we read about you in the newspapers! But in the post-9/11 world,
U.S. intelligence has not been inclined to err on the side of caution when terrorism
may be involved.
Then theres counterproliferation, especially Iranian. Tehran has a lot of businessmen
running around Germany, and some of them are not what they seem to be; many are
engaged in efforts to circumvent international sanctions on their country, and U.S.
intelligence particularly takes an interest in Iranians who are looking to buy materials
that could support the construction of weaponry and, worse, weapons of mass
destruction. There are perennial concerns about German export control officials not
being sufficiently diligent, plus shady German businessmen who will illegally sell
contraband to Iran for the right price. Theres a considerable Iranian intelligence
presence in Germany, and they too can get involved in proliferation, when theyre not
assassinating people in restaurants, so interest in this in Washington, DC, is
understandably high, and has been for many years.
But we must not forget counterintelligence, which is a longstanding German weakpoint
and, given rapidly rising Russian espionage in that country, something that U.S. spies
rightfully fret over, given the very close defense and security relationship between
Washington, DC, and Berlin. Some of this Russian outreach is overt, including former
German chancellors who work for Russian state companies and celebrate their birthday
with Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlins influence operations in Germany, particularly
since the Ukraine crisis erupted, cannot be evaluated as anything less than highly
successful. More than a few prominent German journalists are serving Russian
intelligence, wittingly or otherwise.
But actual espionage, meaning the penetration of government ministries by spies, is a
deep concern too, as its common knowledge that the Russian Foreign Intelligence
Service (SVR) and military intelligence (GRU) have as many officers, including illegals
(meaning deep-cover types posing as civilians without any ties to Russia), in Germany

today as they had at the height of the Cold War. And West Germanys
counterintelligence record during the Cold War was frankly dismal, for many reasons.
East Bloc services had no trouble penetrating West German institutions at the highest
levels. To cite only some of the most famous cases: Heinz Felfe, the BNDs head of
counterespionage, was revealed to be a Soviet spy in 1961, while Otto John, the very
first director of the BfV, defected to East Germany in 1954, and 1974 saw the unmasking
of Gnter Guillaume, a top adviser to Chancellor Willy Brandt, as a spy for East
Germanys legendary Stasi. The Stasi in particular had no difficulty swiss-cheesing West
German institutions with their agents, many of whom volunteered their services to
them; in some cases, these Stasi agents changed the course of Germany history in
unlikely ways that have only come to light in recent years.
Given the extent of attention paid to Germany by the SVR and GRU, U.S. intelligence
would be foolish not to be watching this closely, especially because even closely allied
spy agencies seldom spill the beans about penetrations, which are embarrassing to
admit. Moreover, for all its skills in combating extremism and terrorism, particularly NeoNazis with whom they have a complex relationship the BfV has never been a firstrate counterintelligence service, despite serious efforts now being devoted to the
Russian espionage threat. It is to be expected that German security agencies are
currently penetrated by the Russians and their friends, as they have been since the
Second World War.
None of this is to deny that U.S. intelligence has made mistakes here. Running agents
inside a friendly spy service is always a gamble, and must be assessed based upon risks
and rewards, as may not have been done here properly. At a minimum, it would have
been wise to have put all these agents on ice when the Snowden Operation put the
U.S.-German intelligence relationship in serious jeopardy. Above all, if media reports
are correct and the CIA failed to inform the president of their BND agent Markus R.s
arrest in advance of Obamas phone conversation with an agitated German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, it is a puzzling mystery why CIA Director John Brennan still has a job at
Langley.
Much more will emerge about these cases in coming days, but its important to
maintain perspective about what U.S. intelligence really cares about. It would be
unfortunate if the BfVs scarce counterintelligence resources will now be devoted to
blunting American espionage, as seems almost certain, rather than against the far
greater Russian threat. But such are the ways of the SpyWar ...

The U.S.-Germany Spy Scandal Just Got A

Lot Worse
July 9, 2014
Germany has been in an uproar since the arrest last week of a thirty-one year-old
employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) who stands accused of spying for
the United States. He reportedly began passing over 200 secret documents to the CIA
back in 2012, receiving 25,000 Euros as payment. He was caught when he offered his
services to the Russians as well, an email which German counterintelligence
intercepted. While it cannot be denied that allied spy services do in fact spy on each
other, this seems an unusually flagrant operation, given the already parlous state of
U.S-German relations over intelligence matters.
The reaction to all this in Germany has been highly negative, since this scandal comes
on top of months of allegations of NSA espionage against Germany, care of the defector
Edward Snowden. This has become a major political issue between Washington, DC, and
Berlin, and the revelation that a BND staffer was betraying secrets to the CIA has only
worsened the situation. Reactions have been swift and harsh. Germanys interior
minister called for a new 360-degree approach to intelligence, meaning treating the
United States as a serious counterintelligence threat to Germany, on a par with Russia
and China, while the justice minister hinted at criminal proceedings against the U.S.,
observing that American intelligence services are obsessed with surveillance.
President Joachim Gauck was blunt: If it actually happened that way that a service
probably employed one of our employees from a service in that manner, then indeed
one must say: enough is enough, for once.
And now things have gotten considerably worse. The German media today is filled
with reports that a second German official is under investigation for espionage on
behalf of the United States. The suspect is a member of the Bundeswehr, the German
military, who is reported to have come on the radar of the militarys
counterintelligence arm (MAD) due to his regular unreported meetings with U.S.
intelligence personnel. Experts have already judged the case more serious than last
weeks BND scandal. The soldiers residence and office have been searched by police
and prosecutors are preparing to act.
The timing of all this, given the fragility of U.S.-German relations on security matters,
literally could not be worse. Already many Germans were wondering what sort of ally
the United States actually is. In reaction to last weeks espionage debacle, the Left
Partys chair Katja Kipping stated, There were enough apologies on the phone
meaning the White House reaction to last years NSA brouhaha Now Obama should
quickly get on a plane to Berlin and eat humble pie. One wonders what will be required
now to smooth all this over.
Watch this space, more is coming ...
UPDATE [10 Jul]: German media, which is filled with denunciations of U.S. espionage by
politicians across Germanys political spectrum, is today reporting that the

Bundeswehr espionage suspect, who has yet to be arrested, though is considered to

be under suspicion of being involved as an agent in intelligence activities, worked
in the MoDs Policy Department and is reported to have been in charge of
International Defense Cooperation.

The Snowden Operation Meets ECHELON

June 3, 2014
Today the British website The Register published a detailed expose of above top
secret signals intelligence operations in the Middle East allegedly conducted by
GCHQ, NSAs British partner. This sensational leak, which appeared under the by-line
of Duncan Campbell, is very detailed and unquestionably damaging to Britain and its
intelligence partners. Although this data obviously comes from the haul of classified
information stolen by Edward Snowden, as the author admitted, exactly how
Campbell got hold of them is not clear, though he professed his own heroism for
publishing them, asserting that other British media had refused to print a compromise
this sensitive.
Business Insider today looked into the question of how Campbell obtained this very
valuable information. When asked about this, Glenn Greenwald told them, Snowden
has no source relationship with Duncan (who is a great journalist), and never provided
documents to him directly or indirectly, as Snowden has made clear. For his part,
Campbell flatly refused to illuminate how he got the information, when BI asked him.
The Guardian would seem to be the obvious source here, but they, too, denied any role
when BI inquired: We dont know who Mr Campbells source is. We have always been
open and transparent about all of our reporting partners, the newspapers
representative said. All thats clear at this point, as BIs Hunter Walker put it, is: the
Snowden leaks have leaked.
Nevertheless, the appearance of Duncan Campbell in the Snowden Operation in a big
way (after a fleeting appearance last August) is important for several reasons, not least
that he is the Grand Old Man of anti-NSA/GCHQ propaganda in Britain. Campbell has
been an activist-cum-journalist in anti-secrecy (meaning, of course, anti-Western
secrecy) causes for decades. He has been highly visible in efforts to expose and discredit
NSA activities since the late 1980s, and a decade after that, Campbell was the lead
activist-cum-journalist in the anti-NSA campaign known as ECHELON that swept
Western Europe like wildfire for several years until the 9/11 terrorist attacks pushed it
from the front pages. In addition to numerous articles in the media, in 2000 he wrote an
alarmist and sensationalist study for the European Parliament regarding alleged NSA
capabilities that depicted U.S. and Allied SIGINT as a serious threat to European privacy
while not offering any details about how, for instance, the Russians might be doing the
same or worse.
The role of the Russians behind the ECHELON campaign of fifteen years ago was
detectable by eyes wanting to see, just as with the Snowden Operation today. Many of
the anti-NSA talking points employed by Campbell and others originated in an obscure
book titled Radio-Espionage (PaOuownuoHw) by a couple shadowy Russian authors
and published in Moscow in 1996. It was so subtle that it had the NSA logo right on the
cover, and it was assumed by U.S. counterintelligence that the book had been authored
with help from Russian intelligence. Similarly, several Western security services had
questions about Campbells motivations, too, given his long history of

involvement in activism against Western intelligence that worked to Moscows

benefit and NATOs detriment.
Did Duncan Campbell get this latest Snowden information from the Russians, then?
That certainly cannot be ruled out, and that represents an angle that any
counterintelligence officer would want to investigate. Now two anti-NSA propaganda
operations, of different vintage, have joined forces, if not collided; exactly how and
why isnt clear yet. All thats certain is that the repeated assertions of Glenn
Greenwald that the massive data haul of classified documents stolen from NSA by Ed
Snowden and given to activists like himself was safe and secure, have been shown to
be utterly hollow.

When did Snowden go over to

the Russians?
May 31, 2014
In three weeks, Edward Snowden will celebrate having lived one year in Vladimir
Putins Russia. Everybody familiar with espionage, particularly when it involves
Russians, understands that Ed lives under the watchful care of Russian intelligence, as
he has from the moment he set foot in Moscow. He is working for them now, indeed
he really has no choice. They provide his lawyer, his watchers, and they control his
movements and actions. How this works was recently explained by the retired KGB
general who made his legendary name recruiting and running American traitors just
like Ed.
Naturally, Eds defenders, as well as people uninformed about intelligence theres a
good deal of overlap between those two groups ask for evidence that Ed is working
for the Russians. To ask the question indicates a deep misunderstanding, perhaps
willful, of how the espionage game is played, particularly by Chekists. Vladimir Putins
Russia does not take in American intelligence defectors and if you dont understand
that word, dont question its use here without something in return (see: quid pro
quo, another term thats relevant). We will not have the full story on what exactly
happened with this case for years, maybe decades, probably when a Russian
intelligence officer defects to the West with insider details, as sometimes happens.
Until then, however, much of the essential outline is visible.
The critical question from a counterintelligence viewpoint is: When did Ed go over to
the Russians? That answer will elaborate a great deal about Snowdens true
motivations, and those of his collaborators and co-conspirators. (As readers of this blog
are aware, Ive long advocated an examination of the key role in the Snowden
Operation played by Wikileaks, and its more important than ever since Wikileaks has
admitted they told Ed to leave Hong Kong and go to Russia a year ago.) In the
SpyWar, as its played in the Division I game where the Russians are, defections happen,
and theres invariably a complicated backstory, and this case is surely no exception. Bob
Baer, the famous CIA operations officer and media gadfly in his retirement from
espionage, this week opined that Ed went over to the Russians back in 2007, when he
was serving in Geneva as an IT guy on a CIA contract. That seems plausible, indeed its
the most obvious place to look, given known Russian intelligence tradecraft
(konspiratsiya conspiracy in Russian), but there are other possibilities too. Some
have asked questions about an ethical hacker course Ed took in New Delhi in 2010,
and that seems a story that needs investigation, given Indias longtime reputation as a
playground for Russian intelligence.
What can be dismissed out of hand is the notion that, while staying in Hong Kong a year
ago, Ed met with Russian spies sorry, diplomats at their consulate there and, all
of a sudden, decided to hop a flight to Moscow. Espionage simply does not work that
way, folks. We can only guess at what was on Eds mind, but those who know the
Russian special services understand that such a scenario is so implausible that it can

be ruled out altogether. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) simply does not
allow American intelligence personnel theyve just met to jump on a flight to Mother
Russia. That never happens.
Why not, you ask? In real life, unlike in spy movies, the risks are too great. Deciding to
work with a possible defector, particularly one from your main adversary, is a big step in
and of itself, since both sides play sneaky operational games. In particular, they use
dangles, fake agents who present themselves as tasty morsels, hoping for a bite. They
show up uninvited to talk to the other side secretly, offering the hope of a big
recruitment if youre the Russian intelligence officer working the duty desk the day
that Mr. Walker* comes through the door, your career just got made if this works out.
Remember that for the Russians, penetrations of U.S. intelligence are the Holy Grail of
espionage, while recruiting a spy inside NSA the prime target that Kremlin spymasters
termed OMEGA during the Cold War was the highest of all KGB, and now SVR,
priorities.
But there are risks. Big ones. Mr. Walker may not be real. He (or she) may be testing
you: memorizing names and faces, watching your espionage procedures, seeing how
you and your team react to his showing up at your door. Therefore the SVR, like any
competent intelligence service, first establishes the bona fides of this guy. You do
name checks, you search the internet, you scour your own secret databases, and those
of friendly services, to see if theyve heard of this guy and the exact organization he
claims to work for. Does the story hes telling you seem plausible? Extensive
background checks and maybe polygraphs (note plural) will be ordered. In short, you
need to know: Does this guy check out?
What you really want to avoid is getting deceived and taking the bait on a guy who
actually is working for the other side and playing you. Such a misstep can have grave
consequences. That Mr. Walker is just an attention-seeking fantasist also has to ruled
out, since that will be an embarrassing report back to Moscow too. As the team on the
spot, you need to make sure that this scenario is what it seems to be, so you use a lot of
precautions. You take your time so as not to get burned. Establishing that Mr. Walker
is who he says he is, and not a dangle or a plant or a nutjob, can take weeks, if not
months. And this is just to recruit him as an agent, a witting source of the SVR, to say
nothing of his becoming a defector, which is a much bigger step. You always prefer an
agent-in-place over a defector, since that gets public and messy, not to mention that
the moment he reaches Russia, your defectors information has ceased to be up-todate. A potentially golden source has dried up once he defects.
Letting Edward Snowden move to Moscow was a major decision for the Kremlin, one
with huge political ramifications. We can be certain that such a decision was not made
by a mid-grade SVR officer in Hong Kong, neither was such a choice made quickly by the
Russians, particularly under a president who understands counterintelligence very well.
The reality is that Edward Snowdens relationship with Russian intelligence, whatever it
exactly is, predated his arrival in Moscow on June 23, 2013, probably by a considerable
margin. It did not begin in Hong Kong, but before, possibly long before. It cannot be
ruled out that the SVR (or possibly GRU, Russian military intelligence, which is a
formidable espionage service its own) initially dealt with Ed in a false-flag operation,
masking their true identity for a time, but experts who are acquainted with

Russias special services understand that the Official Narrative, that Ed just up and
moved to Moscow, cannot be true.
Getting to the bottom of this matter is critical to assessing the damage wrought by
the Snowden Operation, which despite the claims of his lawyers, is vast and
unprecedented. Although it will probably take years to unravel the full story of Eds
relationship with Russian intelligence, this matter needs thorough investigation now.
The U.S. Intelligence Community has senior people who, following in the long line of
espionage bosses who really would rather not know the full story behind an epic
traitor, seem to prefer to avert eyes from this issue, just as many journalists do. For
them, as bad as the Snowden story is already, think how much worse it will look if Ed
was really working for the Russians for years: that would be a truly epic
counterintelligence fail, and careers and reputations will be ruined. But we need to
know the full story here if we are to prevent future Snowdens, as we must.
*IC inside joke: People who show up at the door asking to work for you, unsolicited
and unrecruited, are called walk-ins by U.S. intelligence (the Russians prefer the
term volunteer), hence the unknown guy is referred to as Mr. Walker until his
actual identity is established. Relevant analogies to the Snowden case in the annals of
U.S. intelligence are Edward Lee Howard (a failed CIA case officer who defected to
Moscow in 1985) and William Martin and Bernon Mitchell (NSA analysts who
defected to Moscow in 1960): in all these cases the men had contact with the KGB
that long predated their defections; all ended badly.

The Snowden Operation Falls Apart

May 30, 2014
Edward Snowden had his Big Interview on NBC this week, and it was something of a
pace-setter for poor TV journalism, since Brian Williams (who was previously
denounced by Glenn Greenwald for being a servile boot-licker of the surveillance
state), decided to soft-ball the questions and not follow up many weird, disingenuous
statements by Ed. His almost-year in Russia under FSB care has not promoted clear
thinking, while Eds body language indicated serious deception to the trained eye.
NSAs IT contractor on permanent vacation in Russia gave his usual platitudes about
how hes really a patriot and had to steal all those classified IC and DoD documents.
Hes almost thirty-one years old but apparently he had no agency in any of this. Weve
heard it all before.
But The Narrative has begun to fall apart in a manner not even the MSM can avoid
noticing (though the failure of most journalists to pursue certain obvious angles in the
Snowden story ranks as one of the biggest fails in recent American journalism), and this
week NSA released Eds sole communication with the Agency about his alleged
whistleblowing. Recall that Ed has repeatedly claimed that he made numerous
complaints about alleged NSA illegalities up the chain of command, verbally and in
emails. What has come to light is a single, unclassified (FOUO) automated email question
that Ed submitted to the Agencys Office of General Counsel in April 2013 months after
he began stealing TOP SECRET documents and conspiring with Greenwald and others
about a training matter and its a pretty dumb question, frankly, that falls well short of
any normal definition of whistleblowing.
We are expected to believe that Ed was clever enough to steal uncounted classified
NSA documents, the biggest such haul in all history, but did not remember to save
those few, critical emails that would establish that he really is a whistleblower, that he
sought remedy through proper channels before he went rogue. Be aware that every
NSA and IC person I know keeps a file containing hardcopies of all important (meaning
Cover Your Ass or CYA) emails; I learned this in my first week on the job, and that file
was literally the last thing I burn-bagged when I left Fort Meade for the last time. But
Ed, you see, is different. At this point, its simple: he needs to cough up those emails
which NSA says do not exist and provide the names of the supervisors he complained
to, or pipe down.
Last night I appeared on MSNBC to address some of these issues. It was not a level
playing field, since host Ari Melber is known to be quite pro-Snowden (and it showed)
and the other guest was from the ACLU, i.e. Eds lawyers. The clip is here if you wish to
see it. I want to highlight the egregious lie told by the ACLU representative, namely that
NSA cannot find any evidence of damage done by the Snowden Operation. This is so
obviously a lie, as is understood by those who have followed this story in even a cursory
fashion, that its hard to believe even an ACLU lawyer would say this on national
television. In truth, the damage to the security of the U.S. and its Allies caused by the
Snowden Operation, which constitutes the biggest leak in the history of

intelligence, is staggering, as even highly redacted DoD and IC documents have

demonstrated.
Our ACLU friend also indicated that it would be really nice if people, you know, just
stopped spying on each other. That would be nice, but its not going to happen.
Spying is called the Second Oldest Profession for a reason, and its not going away
anytime soon. Espionage is combated with counterintelligence, not by wishful
thinking and lawyerly happytalk. Anybody who thinks Moscow and Beijing will
comply with international understandings to limit espionage needs to keep it down
while the adults are talking. Here on Planet Earth, everybody spies, even the nicest
and most democratic countries. Even Luxembourg yes, Luxembourg has an
intelligence service, and it, too, has been caught up in scandals, recently.
We need to grow up about espionage and have a real, adult debate about it. Snowden,
his retinue, and his defenders, approach the matter like petulant children who hate that
the world does not operate the way they fantasize it does. Thanks to this, and their
continuing baldfaced lies interspersed with ugly smears of their opponents, they have
no place in the grown-up discussion that free societies ought to be having about issues
of intelligence and privacy.

KGB General: Of Course Snowden is

Working for Russian Intelligence
May 23, 2014
As the Snowden Operation devolves into farce, with the inevitable falling-out between
Wikileaks and the Greenwald axis happening online for the world to see, it seems that
Edward Snowden isnt going anywhere anytime soon. What contact, if any, he had with
foreign intelligence services before he fled Hawaii for Hong Kong and then Russia, where
he remains, is an important question that cannot be answered yet with publicly available
information. Indeed, it may take years, perhaps decades for a reliable answer to emerge,
given the nature of the espionage business. However, nobody familiar with spy games,
particularly when Russians are involved, has any doubt the Ed is working for the Russians
now. After all, what choice does he really have?
As if to deflect attention from this obvious truth, today President Vladimir Putin
publicly denied that Ed is their guy: he is not our agent, and gave up no secrets. This
should be taken about as seriously as any Kremlin utterance these days, such as claims
that Jewish neo-Nazis are running things in Ukraine. For good measure, Putin added that
the whole spectacle is really the fault of Americas unprofessional intelligence services,
who failed to do their job and prevent this unprecedented disaster. Vlad sometimes
cant help himself, adding, Russia is not a country that gives up champions of human
rights, meaning Ed.
More important is a new interview with Oleg Kalugin, who is a good deal more honest
than Vladimir Putin. Titled Snowden is cooperating with Russian intelligence, this is
an important development, given Kalugins position. He is something of a legend in
espionage circles, since he was the youngest general in the KGB at the height of the
Cold War, heading up the foreign counterintelligence office of the KGBs elite First
Chief Directorate, its overseas espionage arm. As such, Kalugin was responsible for
overseeing the recruitment of foreigners working in the intelligence business...in other
words, people just like Edward Snowden. Kalugins exploits working against U.S.
intelligence are the stuff of exciting late-night spy stories, and you can read about
some of them in his memoir, which I recommend (if you read Russian, that version is
even better).
I dont know of anybody in the West with better bona fides than Kalugin to discuss the
modus operandi of Russias special services, particularly in their dealings with Western
intelligence sources and defectors. Therefore I am including most of the article, since it
merits reading:
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden probably never
envisioned that hed someday be working for the Russian federal security service, or
FSB.
But according to former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, he is now, albeit as a
consultant or technical advisor.

These days, the Russians are very pleased with the gifts Edward Snowden has given
them. Hes busy doing something. He is not just idling his way through life.
The FSB are now his hosts, and they are taking care of him, Kalugin boldly claimed in an
interview with VentureBeat.
The 80 year-old retired Soviet intelligence officer is Russian spy royalty personified. At 34,
he became the youngest KGB general in history, and Kalugin famously helped run Soviet
spy operations in America during a career that spanned over three decades.
Kalugin and his wife relocated to Maryland after falling out of favor with the Russian
regime in the 1990s. After becoming a vocal critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin
(Kalugin called Putin a war criminal for his second invasion of Chechnya), a warrant was
issued for his arrest. Hes been in the U.S. ever since.
Kalugin still has juice within Russian intelligence circles and maintains contacts with
friends in Russia from his days as a Soviet spy. Kalugin teaches at the Centre for
Counterintelligence and Security Studies and also sits on the advisory board for the
International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Back in Russia, according to Kalugin, Snowden is being handled by the FSB, the KGBs
successor. Kalugin claims that Snowden has shared much of his vast trove of secrets
about the NSA with his Russian hosts, and in the process, has allegedly handed the FSB
one of their biggest intelligence hauls and propaganda coups since the end of the Cold
War.
This claim echoes early warnings from congressman Michael McCaul, senator Dianne
Feinstein, lieutenant generalMichael Flynn, and congressman Mike Rogers, yet no
concrete evidence proves that such an exchange took place. Snowden has consistently
denied claims that he took security documents with him to Russia.
Whatever he had access to in his former days at NSA, I believe he shared all of it with
the Russians, and they are very grateful, Kalugin claims.
It has been over a year since Snowden downloaded thousands of top secret NSA
documents from his stint as a NSA contractor and traveled first to Hong Kong from his
home in Hawaii. He arrived in Moscow August 1 after he failed to gain asylum in 30 other
countries.
Snowdens leaks revealed the NSAs efforts to turn Facebook into a surveillance
machine, the agencys close ties with Google, and the theft of private user data from
firms like Yahoo and Apple. In the wake of these revelations, many of the tech
industrys most powerful firms have frantically adopted new security protocols at
unprecedented speeds.
Snowden shared his haul with security journalist Glenn Greenwald and other media
outlets, like the Washington Post and Germanys Der Spiegel, shedding unprecedented
light on the prodigious intelligence gathering programs of his former employer and
sending shockwaves around the world.

Greenwald, who lives in Brazil but is currently traveling in the U.S., did not return emails
for comment.
These days, exile in Russia means Snowden, 30, has lots of time on his hands. A source in
Moscow with connections to Russian intelligence said the American is believed to be
living, at least part time, in a dacha 70 miles south of Moscow in an FSB retirement
community reserved for favored cadres.
He has lots of free time. He doesnt need to go into the office anymore, Kalugin said.
Snowdens location could not be independently confirmed.
While free to leave Russia, Kalugin claims Snowdens whereabouts are monitored by his
FSB handlers, who allegedly control his spending budget and watch over whom he talks
with.
In Kalugins view, Snowden is guilty of treason.
Of course he is, by American standards. Snowden is a traitor, Kalugin said. When
someone changes sides and goes over to the other side, its a victory, he said.
Snowdens value to his Russian handlers has not totally run its course, claims Kalugin,
and the FSB will allegedly use him as a technical consultant and advisor on topics that
interest them. His travel in the country also may be coordinated by the FSB, Kalugin
said.
But the former KGB general believes that if he wants to, Snowden will have little trouble
integrating himself into Russian culture and digging in for the long haul.
He is not being left alone obviously. The Russians are trying their best to be hospitable,
Kalugin said.
At this point, said Kalugin, who has written three books on his 34 years in Soviet
intelligence, the reception in Russia for him has been exceptionally friendly.
And Im sure that Snowden is enjoying it.

My only quibble there is with Kalugins assertion that Snowden is free to leave Russia.
Count me skeptical there, since it is very much in the FSBs interest to keep U.S.
intelligence guessing as to exactly what Snowden stole, which would be the first thing Ed
would be asked by American interrogators, should they ever get the chance get to talk to
this most unique defector. Otherwise Kalugin has conveyed the essentials of the
Snowden Operation nicely.
It bears noting that Kalugin, who moved to the United States in the early 1990s and
has been an American citizen since 2003, is a sharp critic of Putin and his regime, yet
is a Russian patriot. He retired from the KGB in 1990 and promptly entered politics on
a platform of reforming the countrys repressive security apparatus. He left Russia
when it became clear that reform of that system was impossible.
Despite claims by Putin and FSB that Kalugin is a traitor he was convicted of treason
in absentia by the Kremlin in 2002 he does not see himself as such, and he has not

divulged the identities of Americans who spied for the KGB, commenting only on cases
already known to the public or Western authorities this being a point of honor for the
old spymaster. The sole exception is the case of George Trofimoff, a retired U.S. Army
colonel specializing in military intelligence who in 2001 was convicted of spying for the
KGB, partly on the basis of testimony provided by Oleg Kalugin involuntarily, it should
be noted (in an ugly turn of events, the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed Kalugins
testimony).
I have been acquainted with the general for many years and I can attest that he is an
honorable intelligence officer of the old school who does not make up stories for fun
and profit. He reflects the old German maxim: Nachrichtendienst ist Herrendienst
(Intelligence is gentlemans work). Kalugin spent many years running spies just like
Edward Snowden, winning a raft of KGB medals for his acumen at espionage,
particularly against American intelligence. Until we learn more from Russia, Kalugin has
provided what may be the last word on Edward Snowden and his relationship with the
Kremlin.

Germany wakes up from its

Snowden binge
May 2, 2014
Nearly four months ago I pronounced the end of the Snowden Operation, at least in the
United States. In the aftermath of President Obamas speech on 17 January, which
announced (very) modest reforms to the National Security Agency while maintaining its
foreign intelligence operations intact, NSA has been a closed matter politically in
America, outside the militant fringe that worships Ed Snowden as its messiah and Glenn
Greenwald as his messenger. Leaks derived from Eds stolen haul of classified U.S.
intelligence and defense materials have continued, as presumably they will for a long
time yet, but theyve largely drifted away from front pages; that NSA a foreign
intelligence agency does foreign intelligence just isnt news, much less shocking, to
many Americans anymore.
Overseas has been a different matter, which presumably is the whole point of the
Snowden Operation now, and alleged NSA activities continue to generate headlines
abroad. Germany has been a particular hotspot, which has something to do with so
much of the Ed-centric apparat being based in Berlin, and in no Western country have
the Snowden revelations caused as much pain for the U.S. Government as in Germany,
where the story has been met with that particularly Teutonic combination of navelgazing and hysteria at which some Germans excel. Of course, there has been more than
a bit of hokum surrounding the saga from the outset, including from Chancellor Merkel
herself, while Germanys security services have been well aware of whats really going on
behind the scenes here.
Nevertheless, Merkel and her government cagily did not let a crisis go to waste, seeking
a so-called No-Spy Agreement with the United States, which would amount to something
like making Germany a sixth eye in the U.S.-led Five Eyes SIGINT Alliance, at a minimum.
However, this never stood any realistic chance of coming to pass, for myriad reasons
both political and practical, as Ive said for months, and, in advance of Chancellor
Merkels arrival in Washington, DC, today, the White House has made clear to Germany
that it needs to move on.
What Germany demanded, a bilateral no-spy accord, is something the United States
officially has with no foreign countries, not even with its Five Eyes partners, as
American interlocutors clarified to German counterparts on multiple occasions. The
White House assured Merkel that her communications would not be monitored, but
refused to make promises about any other German officials. This was not the answer
Berlin was looking for, so it walked away. As The New York Times explains:
We were ready to conclude an agreement about intelligence cooperation that
reiterated key principles about our collection activities around the time of the
presidents January speech that put new limits on the NSAs activities, a senior
administration official said. But it was the German government who told us they no
longer wanted to proceed, not the other way around.

They pulled the plug, another official said. What the Germans want, and wanted, is
that we would never do anything against their laws on their territory. That is an
agreement the United States has with no country, the official said.

Foreign intelligence agencies exist to break the laws of foreign countries; if German
politicians do not grasp this their own spies certainly do, and Germanys BND
breaks the laws of many foreign countries every day of the year then perhaps its
best that Berlin collected its marbles and went home. Senior U.S. foreign policy and
defense officials are very busy right now and have bigger issues to contend with than
Germany being peeved about NSA.
Besides, the issue is dying in Germany among normals too. It remains clear that Berlin
will never grant Snowden the asylum in Germany that he so desperately wants, after
nearly a year in Putinistan, while this week he was blocked from testifying virtually to the
German parliamentary commission looking into Eds allegations about NSA activities.
This is an unambiguous signal from Berlin that the tantrum phase is over and there is
no mileage in further irritating Washington, DC, particularly as Europe faces its biggest
crisis since the Cold War with Russias Special War against Ukraine, which of course is
being orchestrated by Eds Q&A buddy in the Kremlin.
Todays edition of the Munich daily Sddeutsche Zeitung has an article entitled The
anger that goes away that elaborates how Berlin has accepted the new status quo
over NSA and Germany is ready to move on from the Snowden drama. As it notes,
despite much noise in the German media about increasing surveillance of suspected
American and British intelligence operations by Germanys domestic security service,
the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a plan to do so having been
prepared, nothing has actually been done: There is little evidence that this will
happen. Even before the Ukraine crisis, the plan had few supporters in the
government. Now, there are none left to be found.
Similarly, close partnerships between the BND and U.S. intelligence have continued
normally, despite the media circus, and BND chief Gerhard Schindler is reported to
have good relations with Admiral Mike Rogers, the new NSA director. The only avenue
left for Germans wishing to punish NSA and the United States for its alleged crimes is
an investigation underway by the Attorney Generals office in Karlsruhe, but this, too,
is stalled, indeed moribund. Without Snowdens testimony it will soon fade away; as
the article notes, Its been common knowledge...in Berlin for weeks that a withdrawal
from prosecution has already been written in Karlsruhe, and its expected that the
attorney generals signature on that document closing the case is imminent. There will
end Germanys Snowden affair, at least as far as Chancellor Merkel and her
government are concerned.
However, let it not be said that Germany and its agencies have done nothing in
response to the Snowden Operation. As Sddeutsche Zeitung observes:
The NSA affair is not without consequences. The BfV has prohibited its employees from
making the usual July 4th visit for Americas national holiday. Previously, U.S. authorities
have usually invited up to a hundred BfV officials and most of them came too. This is
now looks unprofessional.

Im sure the U.S. Intelligence Community can find other guests to take up those empty
seats in time for this July 4th. In the meantime, Germany is dealing with the bad visuals
of having so many of its top businesspeople and politicos appearing decidedly cozy,
even huggy, with Vladimir Putin while Ukraine burns.

How to Win Cold War 2.0

March 26, 2014

To beat Vladimir Putin, were going to need to be a little more like him.
The last two weeks have witnessed the upending of the European order and the close of
the post-Cold War era. With his invasion of Crimea and the instant absorption of the
strategic peninsula, Vladimir Putin has shown that he will not play by the Wests rules.
The end of history is at an endwere now seeing the onset of Cold War 2.0.
Whats on the Kremlins mind was made clear by Putins fire-breathing speech to the
Duma announcing the annexation of Crimea, which blended retrograde Russian
nationalism with a generous helping of messianism on behalf of his fellow Slavs,
alongside the KGB-speak that Putin is so fond of. If you enjoy mystical references to
Orthodox saints of two millennia past accompanied by warnings about a Western fifth
column and national traitors, this was the speech for you.
Putin confirmed the worst fears of Ukrainians who think they should have their own
country. But his ambitions go well beyond Ukraine: By explicitly linking Russian ethnicity
with membership in the Russian Federation, Putin has challenged the post-Soviet order
writ large.
For years, I studied Russia as a counterintelligence officer for the National Security
Agency, and at times I feel like Im seeing history in reverse. The Kremlin is a fiercely
revisionist power, seeking to change the status quo by various forms of force. This will
soon involve NATO members in the Baltics directly, as well as Poland and Romania
indirectly. Longstanding Russian acumen in what I term Special War, an amalgam of
espionage, subversion and terrorism by spies and special operatives, is already known to
Russias neighbors and can be expected to increase.
Read the rest at POLITICO Magazine...

Western
Journalists
Russian Intelligence

and

March 21, 2014

The Russian seizure of Crimea plus Moscows intimidation, and worse, of all Ukraine,
has created an awkward situation for Edward Snowdens fans and enablers. That Ed
has taken up residence in Putins Russia, and continues to pontificate about privacy
and the perfidy of Western intelligence while under Kremlin protection, is a bit much,
so much so that even MSM stalwarts have begun to ask difficult questions about the
whole Snowden-linked apparat.
Judging from their conduct, not to mention the vicious online abuse suffered by
myself and others who have questioned the narrative that Snowden is a purehearted patriot who just happened to wind up in Moscow, it seems justified to ask
about the motivations of Snowdens stalwart defenders in the West. Some may be
pawns of Russian intelligence but most, I suspect, are what Communists once called
Useful Idiots: Westerners whose hatred of their own society is so profound that they
accept baldfaced Kremlin lies uncritically. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that the
egregious Walter Duranty has present-day equivalents.
Yet espionage cannot be ruled out either. Indeed, Moscows powerful intelligence
apparatus has long considered Western journalists to be an easy and tasty target, not
least because so many volunteered their services freely, or at least cheaply. Post-Cold
War revelations made clear that among numerous Useful Idiots in Western
journalists there were paid-up Soviet agents too, who consciously transmitted
Kremlin Line agitprop masquerading as daring journalism.
This rot was present from the start. The father of Central European investigative
journalism, Egon Erwin Kisch, can serve as our Patient Zero. In the waning days of
Austria-Hungary, the young Kisch, who gave himself the sobriquet the raging
reporter, cemented his reputation in 1913 with his scoop about the notorious
traitor Colonel Alfred Redl a sordid tale of espionage, corruption, suicide, and sex
who was probably the Spy of the (20th) Century. Kisch virtually created the image of
the hard-boiled, cynical journalist who went the extra mile to uncover what others
sought to hide: nothing is more annoying than the truth was his mantra.
Yet behind the muckraking there was an unpleasant, if concealed, reality. After 1918, as
he rose to journalistic stardom across Europe, Kisch was a committed Communist who
secretly served Soviet military intelligence (GRU). His solidarity with Moscow was
unshakable, as he was every bit as credulous about the Kremlin as he was incredulous
about everything else, and while he reported on all sorts of scandals that put
bourgeois society in a bad light, he was taking GRU orders. Kischs allegiances were an
open secret in certain circles and even some committed Leftists found his stock line, I
am Stalins soldier, hard to swallow. Through the Ukrainian genocide-famine, the
Purges, all the worst Stalinist excesses, Kisch was a deeply devoted Soviet agent while
posing as a truth-teller to his Western readers. His devoted service to one of the most

murderous regimes in history notwithstanding, there is an Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for
journalists in Germany today.
American journalism, too, had secret soldiers of Stalin in its ranks, and there were
more than a handful. In a case I was involved in decades after the fact, back in the
1940s one of the most prominent members of the U.S. journalistic scene was, we
discovered much later thanks to information derived from KGB sources, also a
devoted secret Communist. He was so overtly pro-Stalin that it creeped out his
fellow-traveling friends, and during World War II he apparently passed U.S. classified
information to the Soviets. However, by the late 1940s, he had a change of heart and
over time became a committed anti-Communist, which was not uncommon back
then. Moreover, there was nothing to be done with the case, as we learned of his
treason decades after the event, which was mitigated by the reality that he
abandoned the Moscow Line early in the Cold War, and he was dead to boot. Its an
interesting file that some researcher will make an intriguing footnote to history out
of decades hence, once its been declassified and released to the archives.
The most notorious case, however, is that of I.F. Stone, Izzy to his legions of admirers
on the Left, who cultivated the image of the muckraking journalist for truth pitchperfectly for decades. It was a fraud. Inconveniently, he was an agent of Soviet
intelligence in the late 1930s, at the height of Stalins purges, and maintained some
sort of witting relationship with the KGB to 1956, when he broke with Moscow later
than many over the invasion of Hungary. KGB efforts to reestablish their
relationship with the elderly Stone, an old master in Chekist parlance, in 1968 were
not successful. The extent to which Soviet connections influenced Stones daring
reporting must remain an open question, but the vehement efforts of his defenders
to deny his ties to the Soviet secret police are thoroughly debunked here.
Needless to add, there is an Izzy Prize to reward special achievement in independent
media in honor of I.F. Stone. Its inaugural winner was Glenn Greenwald, who along
with Jeremy Scahill was recently named to the I.F. Stone Hall of Fame.
For too many decades, among too many Western investigative journalists, secret
loyalty to the Kremlin has been more a feature than a bug. As we enter a Second Cold
War of the Kremlins creation, its time to face up to this reality and start asking
about the real motivations of truth tellers who like to criticize the West while
dodging negative comments about Moscow.

How
Snowden
Russian Intelligence

Empowered

January 20, 2014

As I noted this weekend, the Snowden Operation has entered a new phase and is
approaching its end thanks to President Obamas speech on NSA reforms, and also
because the ties between Edward Snowden and Russian intelligence, which Ive been
mentioning for months and getting vast grief for along the way have become
increasingly obvious and are now being commented on openly by senior American
politicians.
Just what the Snowden Operation has done for Russian intelligence, especially the
powerful Federal Security Service (FSB), which controls domestic security and most of
Russias Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) capability, has been laid out comprehensively in a
recent piece in the Moscow daily Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal, co-authored by Andrei
Soldatov, perhaps Russias best journalist on intelligence matters. Soldatov, a frequent
critic of the FSB and more broadly Putins special services ( a catch-all

term for the Kremlins intelligence and security agencies), does a masterful job of
explaining how Moscow has used the Snowden Operation effectively for its own
purposes, foreign and domestic, so I am posting the article, entitled Year in Review:
The Special Services, in translation in toto:
Thanks to Edward Snowden, the fugitive contractor for the National Security Agency
(NSA) who found refuge in Russia, 2013 will be remembered for the revelations of the
American special services cyber-surveillance of their own citizens as well as citizens of
friendly European states and totally non-hostile Latin American states.
His information, which revealed the methods and scale of electronic interception, made
everyone start thinking about the confidentiality of private life and how to avoid finding
ourselves in a brave new world where nobody will be able to hide anything from the
authorities.
For journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people, Snowden became a hero,
eclipsing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But in Russia, unfortunately, Snowdens
revelations led mainly to negative consequences. They gave the Russian authorities carte
blanche to regulate the Internet and provided a formal pretext for an onslaught on
Internet giants like Google and Facebook.
Last summer, as soon as Snowden had published his first revelations about American
surveillance on the Internet, an offensive against global platforms began in Russia, on the
pretext of protecting our compatriots personal data. Initiatives designed to place
Google, Facebook, and others totally under the oversight of the Russian special services
are being put forward in the State Duma by Deputy Sergey Zheleznyak and in the
Federation Council by Senator Ruslan Gattarov.
The aim is to make the Internet giants site their servers in Russian territory and store
Russian users information only here. In that event all the information that we post on

social networks or that is transmitted through global mail services, messengers, or

video chat rooms will automatically become accessible to the Russian interception
system, SORM (Operational and Investigative Measures System, i.e. domestic SIGINT).
The FSB, the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), and six other special services have
access to it.
The system for the interception of Internet traffic and mobile communications in our
country is not overseen by anyone except the special services. Although formally in order
to intercept citizens information a staffer of the special services must obtain a court
permit, he is not obliged to show it to anyone except his superior officer. The system is
organized technically in such a way that no telecommunications operator or Internet
provider can know what information the special services are intercepting or in what
quantity it is all in the hands of the officer who sits at the control panel and himself
enters the data of those who are to be monitored.
As Snowden made clear to the whole world, it was for precisely this kind of
unsupervised access to communications that the NSA needed to create all the cunning
programs like PRISM, and that is what the NSA is now having to justify. But in our
country unsupervised access by the special services to traffic was provided for from the
outset and this suits our special services completely.
Apart from that, Snowden strengthened Russias position in the struggle to regulate the
global Internet. The point is that Russia does not like the historically established
system whereby regulation of the Internet is mainly in the hands of American
organizations like ICANN and others. At the end of 2012, Russia sought to change the
status quo, attempting to change the rules through the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) and proposing that the possibility of censoring
information on the Internet become global. The attempt failed despite the fact that it
was supported by the majority of the countries of the world, but not by the United States
or Europe, where, in fact, the main organizations are located.
However, thanks to Snowdens information that NSA was intercepting traffic from
citizens of other countries, Russia gained allies on this issue. For instance, the idea of
placing global services under the control of the authorities is now supported in Germany.
Such initiatives will not bring any benefit to users: in general, the creation of artificial
borders will lead to the so-called Balkanization of the Internet, destroying the originally
free structure of the exchange of information on the Internet and restricting the
possibility of free access to information.
The past year or so took place under the black sign of the introduction of censorship in
the Runet (Russian Internet): A blacklist of websites banned by Roskomnadzor
(Federal Agency for Oversight in the Sphere of Communications, Information
Technology, and Mass Media) began to operate in November 2012, and last year grew
to a ridiculous scale. Apart from information about suicide, drugs, and child
pornography, everything was successively blocked on Runet: perfectly decent websites
that are the neighbors of banned sites on the same IP, the Yandex and YouTube services
in certain regions, jokes on Twitter. Furthermore the machine is gathering speed: The
drafters of new laws are threatening to add works of art to the blacklists, and the eve
of the New Year saw the adoption of amendments put forward by Deputy

Andrey Lugovoy who is better known from the story of the poisoning of [FSB defector
Colonel] Aleksandr Litvinenko in London introducing extrajudicial blocking of websites
for inciting extremism and unauthorized demonstrations.
The invasion of citizens private lives, which has been intensifying in recent years,
provoked outrage among communications operators for the first time in many years. In
November Vympelcom criticized the system of legal interception of telephone
conversations and correspondence (SORM). The company sent a letter to the Ministry of
Communications criticizing a draft order by the department imposing new requirements
on the system for the inception of Internet traffic: According to these, the operator must
store all users information for twelve hours.
The FSBs growing appetites in the sphere of surveillance are nothing new, as is indicated
by the twofold increase in the interception of telephone conversations and email over the
past six years: from 265,937 in 2007 to 539,864 in 2012. But for many years none of this
caused a murmur in the industry. Therefore Vympelcoms outrage that the draft order is
contrary to the Constitution, which protects citizens right to confidentiality of
correspondence, seems encouraging.
The point is that the offensive against the confidentiality of private life on the Internet
has recently been proceeding so quickly that it has even frightened the business sector.
Apart from the special services and the law enforcement agencies, new players have
emerged in this field. In 2013 the Central Bank fined two major e-mail services
Rambler.ru and Mail.ru for refusing to provide information about users
correspondence without a court ruling. And recently the department drew up
amendments to the law on insider dealing that would grant the Central Bank access to
the telephone conversations and correspondence of potentially unscrupulous market
players.
The proving ground where the state has decided to use all the surveillance technologies
at its disposal is the approaching Olympic Games in Sochi. There, the authorities have
put into practice a comprehensive approach, bringing together advanced technologies
in the sphere of the interception of information and field surveillance as well as
administrative oversight measures that were tried out back at the time of the 1980
Olympics.
As we have written previously in our investigation, in Sochi, SORM has been
substantially strengthened and local providers have been busy buying equipment
recommended by the FSB in order to meet the states requirements for monitoring
everyone, including athletes and fans. Rostelecom has also installed DPI [deep packet
inspection] equipment on mobile communications networks in the region, making it
possible not only to monitor all traffic but also to filter it by searching for the required
information by keywords. Moreover, DPI helps, if necessary, effectively to identify
users.
But even this was not enough, and in November a government decree came out making
provision for the collection of metadata from all types of communication used by
athletes, journalists, and even members of the Organizing Committee themselves and for
the creation of a database. This will include the names and surnames of

subscribers and information about who called whom and when, all the information will
be stored for three years, and the FSB will have access to it.
For the countrys main special service this year was generally very successful. Yet again,
the FSB extended its powers. This time, the special service was given permission to
conduct surveillance and monitoring for the purposes of protection against threats to
information security. Given that in our country the concept of an information threat is
interpreted very broadly and includes threats to the spiritual life of citizens and the
spiritual revival of Russia, this greatly facilitates the procedure for the interception of
citizens traffic. In 2013, the FSB became the countrys chief cyber department. In
January, by presidential edict, it was instructed to create a system for discovering and
eliminating the consequences of computer attacks on Russian information resources.
In this situation the shocking interception, including gunfire, of the Greenpeace
activists ship is perfectly understandable. The FSB explained that it was acting, in
defense of the interests of the Russian Federation in the Arctic region, and for that
purpose all means are good.
The FSB, to the president, is still the special service that cannot be criticized. Nobody
from the top FSB leadership was punished for the terrorist acts in Volgograd on the eve
of the New Year, which cost dozens of lives, just as there was not a single important
resignation after the hostage-taking incident at the theater center on Dubrovka or the
tragedy in Beslan. Even though a video by Pavel Pechenkin, who blew himself up at the
station, in which he clearly declares his intention of doing something of the kind, was
openly available on the Internet from March 2012, this could not prevent the terrorist
act. The special services knew that he belonged to the ranks of the Dagestani
underground and that he was planning to commit a terrorist act, but they could do
nothing. On the eve of the Olympic Games in Sochi, this looks particularly worrying.

There it is, folks, the truth about the FSB and Putins Russia, which are hosting Mr.
Snowden. It would be nice if free speech defenders and anti-secrecy advocates like
Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald, not to mention Edward Snowden, occasionally
mentioned any of this, which is vastly more invasive of citizen privacy than anything
done in any Western country, but somehow I wouldnt expect them to anytime soon.

The End of the Snowden Operation

January 18, 2014
For over half a year now, the world has been astounded by waves of leaked revelations
of National Security Agency electronic espionage, provided by the former NSA IT
contractor Edward Snowden, who stole something like 1.7 million classified documents
before fleeing to Russia via Hong Kong. Theres never been anything quite like this in
the annals of Americas or really anybodys intelligence system. Snowdens act and
its global media reverberations have been one of a kind.
From nearly the outset, I have drawn attention to the obvious foreign intelligence
connections to the Snowden case and obvious they are to anyone familiar with
counterintelligence, particularly Russian and for some time I have termed this sorry
spectacle the Snowden Operation, since we dont know the covername actually given it
by Russian intelligence. But, at its core, this is simply an updated version of the
operational game played in the 1970s by Cuban and Soviet intelligence with the CIA
defector Phil Agee (KGB covername: PONT), who authored, with KGB help, several
books exposing U.S. intelligence operations, particularly in Latin America. While Agee
didnt tell the Cubans and Soviets much classified that they didnt really know already, at
least generally, for Washington, DC, and particularly for CIA, it was a huge
embarrassment that hampered activities in many countries for many years.
The Snowden Operation has been really no more than the Agee show brought into
the 21st century and the Internet age. Who needs whole books of leaks when there
are websites and journalists happy to disseminate it all, usually with deeply flawed
analysis to boot? Over the last seven months the world has become accustomed to
regular leaks of NSA programs that, before last May, individually would have been
jaw-dropping in many capitals. Now, well, its just Tuesday.
Additionally, the Snowden Operation has engendered not merely complications for
U.S. foreign policy, but a blistering domestic debate to boot, just as its architects
intended. There is now a considerable cadre of Americans, an odd alliance of leftist
bitter-enders, libertarian Randians, and battalions of dudebros who thrive on snark
and hating their parents, that is convinced that NSA is the source of all their
problems. That this is demonstrably untrue has made little difference, and will not.
However, yesterday President Obama ended the political debate about the Snowden
Operation with his much-anticipated speech about NSA and reform, based on the
recommendations of his own panel. As my colleague Tom Nichols and I have long
predicted, the reform package Obama has delivered is a stinging defeat for the NSA
haters. Yes, it will be more difficult for NSA analysts to access metadata, but access it
they will. Yes, NSA collection against top foreign leaders will be restricted, somewhat,
but Agency support to U.S. and Allied diplomacy will continue. The bottom line is that
President Obamas reforms contain no significant changes to how NSA does business as
the leading foreign intelligence agency in the United States and the free world.
These reforms go some distance to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens better, which
Ive wanted for a long time anyway, but even the changes to metadata holdings have

been kicked by Obama to Congress for resolution, which will be difficult, since telecom
companies understandably have little interest in involving themselves further in whats
become a touchy mess. In all, Obama many of whose national security policies of late
Ive been critical of performed masterfully yesterday, delivering a near pitch-perfect
speech and resetting the agenda on intelligence matters.
Predictably, the NSA haters have gone bonkers. Somehow, in a fest of self-delusion
that must rival anything done by the Reverend Jim Jones to his ill-fated followers,
many convinced themselves that Obama might shut down NSA and have its leaders
frog-walked into Federal custody, if not simply shot without trial. Alas, nothing of the
sort was ever going to happen. In part because no White House will ever shut down
its top source of foreign intelligence, or can afford to. But mostly because the
hysterical charges weve seen thrown at NSA that it violates the privacy of hundreds
of millions, many American for months were essentially false.
Haters will hate, as is their wont, and Ive frankly enjoyed the bouts of online hysteria
from Snowden fanboys since yesterday, involving a gnashing of teeth of epic
proportions (for a so-perfect-it-cannot-be-parodied combination of ignorance and
sanctimony, Conor Friedersdorf is impossible to top). But the games over, Obama
just blew the whistle.
Theres much work to be done, naturally, and Congress will spend the rest of 2014
hashing out just what the Presidents reforms should actually look like in application
(expect a long, needlessly drawn out catfight on The Hill, like everything there), but
the White House has shut the door on the ridiculous, overheated spectacle that the
Snowden Operation dumped on our Intelligence Community.
None have any expectation that the leaks will stop, given the unimaginably huge
amount of Top Secret documents from NSA and Allied agencies that Snowden stole,
but the humdrum effect has already set in. The world has become accustomed to
such a regular barrage of revelations about NSA that, unless the Iranians are correct
that aliens really are running things at Fort Meade (theyre not, I checked), few of these
will be front page stories any longer.
The Snowden Operation has guaranteed that NSA has become a global stand-in for
unmitigated evil for certain people, a Keyser Sze who reads your email, and theres
not much that Washington, DC, and its friends can do about that. But the real intent
of Ed, Glenn, and their coterie was never intelligence reform, rather the destruction
of NSA and the Western intelligence alliance. As of yesterday, we know that will not
happen. Henceforth, youll occasionally encounter people who are obsessed with
NSA and think the Agency reads their texts of cat pictures, but these are the same
sort of people who, in a previous age, were obsessed with Knights Templar, Jews, and
Masons, and can be ignored when adults are talking.
I say NSA because the global meme fostered online by the Snowden Operation bears
so little resemblance to what the Agency actually is and does. Planet Greenwald has
done a weirdly masterful job of placing NSA in the same category as UFOs,
Kennedy Assassination, Bigfoot, and Area 51: there actually is something deep

down there that might possibly be true, but its so buried under hyperbole and
fantasy as to be unfathomable as any reality.
I say this with regret, as someone who was calling for reforms of the Intelligence
Community, especially NSA, before anybody heard of Edward Snowden. Real reform is
impossible now, for at least a generation, because the Snowden Operation has so
soiled the cause of real IC reform with treachery, narcissism, crankery, and Putins
Russia. I worry that todays modest reforms may not be able to keep up with rapid
changes in IT. Privacy concerns about NSA are entirely valid, and had the Snowden
Operation confined its leaks to issues of purely domestic surveillance, that healthy
and necessary debate about post-9/11 intelligence might have happened, at last. But
Ed went to Russia, where he remains. The real drivers of the Snowden Operation
never sought a domestic debate about NSA, that was never their agenda, so here we
are. Winston Churchill famously termed the Allied victory at El Alamein in late 1942
as not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. Now were a bit
further along than that in the Snowden Operation.
Discussions of NSA and especially NSA will be prominent online and in the real
world for years to come. The Agency has lost its cover, for better or worse. As Ive
said before, I hope the Agency uses this opportunity to rebrand itself in a spirit of
openness to the American people about its essential mission, which the public has a
right to know more about. Regardless, the Agency will survive and its personnel
military, civilian, and contractor will keep protecting our country and our allies.
Before long people will be asking, What ever happened to that strange guy who
defected to Russia? Once the Snowden Operation kicked off when exactly that
was remains an open question of high interest to counterintelligence investigators in
dozens of countries there was never going to be any other outcome.

Sweden Exposes the Snowden-Greenwald

Fraud
December 18, 2013
Recently what Ive termed the Snowden Operation has taken aim at Sweden as part of its
rolling barrage of leaks of classified information that Ed stole from NSA. In recent
months, harming the foreign relations of the U.S. Intelligence Community, and the U.S.
Government generally, seems to have become the main point of the Operation, which is
fronted abroad by Glenn Greenwald and a motley crew of self-styled journalists who are
really activists of a determined kind.
Although the allegations of illegalities and nefarious activities by Swedens SIGINT
agency, Frsvarets radioanstalt or FRA, are the customary mix of Greenwaldian
overstatement mixed with uninformed pontification, the revelation that FRA has a
longstanding close relationship with NSA and other Western intelligence agencies has
raised a few eyebrows in Sweden, since the country has long been a neutral power,
through two World Wars and the Cold War. Although Swedish defense and security
agencies have cooperated with Western partners for decades, that amounted to an
open secret (and a true secret in its details), one that the Snowden Operation has now
exposed.
While Stockholm failed to get ahead of the leaks by preemptively talking about its
intelligence activities before Greenwald and others did, as I recently praised Danish
intelligence for doing effectively, the reaction of the Swedish government to the leaks
has been commendable and deserves commentary. The message has been consistent:
FRA activities are fully legal under Swedish law and they are something Stockholm
necessarily does to protect the country from foreign threats, no matter what Glenn
Greenwald says.
We need this, explained Defense Minister Karin Enstrm, adding, We need a wellfunctioning military intelligence organization in order to protect Sweden against
external threats. She explained further: We have clear legislation concerning the
purposes for which FRA gathers signals intelligence for military intelligence, and it is
well known that FRA cooperates with corresponding organizations in other countries.
On the other hand, we do not say which countries are involved, or in what way, or
what content is involved.
Moreover, Swedish intelligence cooperation with NSA and other Western security
agencies is hardly news, as it goes back to the Second World War, explained the
Stockholm daily Svenska Dagbladet, which noted that Sweden has been well
compensated for its espionage acumen, particularly regarding Russia. Stockholm is
anything but the pawn and victim of U.S. intelligence that the Snowden Operation has
made it out to be. Good intelligence is a hard currency for which we are enormously
well paid, explained a Swedish intelligence officer, who added that the lives of Swedish
soldiers in Afghanistan had been saved on several occasions by information supplied to
FRA by NSA. We dont give away anything, commented an officer with

long experience with Swedish security agencies who emphasized the quid pro quo
aspect to international intelligence cooperation.
The effectiveness of FRA can be judged by the fact that its headquarters on Lovn island
near Stockholm was one of the two Swedish facilities targeted by Russian TU22M3 longrange and nuclear-capable bombers in a simulated night strike in late March an
incident that caused public outcry as the Swedish Air Force reacted slowly and had to
call NATO for fighter help against the Russian threat. Moreover, the humbug at the
heart of the Snowden Operation can be deduced from the telling fact that, although
Moscow has certainly been aware of the extent of FRA activities against Russia since at
least June, when Ed showed up at Sheremetyevo Airport, Russian telecommunications
companies have done nothing to reroute their traffic away from Sweden, which remains
the main data hub for Russian Internet traffic going abroad.
The most revealing riposte to the Snowden Operationss propaganda attack on
Sweden comes in the form of an open letter and invitation by Runar Viksten, the
head of the countrys Defense Intelligence Court (Frsvarsunderrttelsedomstolen)
that performs oversight of FRA activities. Tellingly titled Inaccuracy damages Swedish
signals intelligence work, this remarkable document is the most comprehensive
rebuttal to the Snowden-Greenwald agitprop model Ive yet seen in a single letter,
and Ill give you its highlights; I encourage any of you who know Swedish to read the
whole thing.
Beginning with the statement, In step with the so-called revelations made by
Snowden, several fallacies about Swedish signals intelligence and its uses have been
spread by media representatives and representatives of political parties, the letter
makes a point-by-point refutation of the lies that have been propagated about FRA
recently.
It has been claimed that Swedish legislation on signals intelligence was commissioned
by foreign authorities. That is not true ... The allegation of foreign control is a
conspiracy theory of a highly fanciful nature.
It has been claimed that foreign powers can order signals intelligence from FRA. That is
not true. Everything FRA does, in an operational respect or in terms of development,
must be sanctioned by the Defense Intelligence Court.
It has been claimed that surveillance belonging to the areas of follow-up on the signals
sector and signals technology, as well as the development of this countrys own
technology, has been insufficiently regulated as far the protection of personal privacy is
concerned. That is not true. This signals intelligence work also has to be sanctioned by
the court.
It has been implied or insinuated that Swedish signals intelligence is directed at our
Nordic neighbors and other Western democracies. That is not true ... Swedish signals
intelligence work, in contrast to legislation in other countries, is not directed at
protecting economic interests. The list of surveillance targets also shows that foreign
powers might be the targets of this work, mostly with regard to external military
threats, and in cases where the actions of foreign powers have a substantial impact on

Swedish foreign, security, or defense policy ... These insinuations are therefore
groundless.
It has been claimed that signals intelligence cooperation with other countries means
that Sweden passes on information on persons in this country and receives information
which, for reasons of personal privacy, it should not have been possible to obtain
pursuant to signals intelligence legislation. That is not true ... FRA does not accept
information which lies outside the areas authorized by Swedish law and those
sanctioned by the Defense Intelligence Court.
As far as the latest claims regarding so-called active signals intelligence work and
suspected computer hacking are concerned, the following can be stated without going
into the methods which may be used to gather information. Everything that FRA does
regarding signals intelligence requires the courts authorization. The activities that
FRA engages in after receiving such authority are not illegal and therefore cannot
involve the crime of hacking.
To top it off, Viksten concludes his letter with an invitation to Planet Greenwald to
provide their evidence in open court:
The ignorance I have referred to, which has been expressed in various contexts,
damages confidence in Swedish law and Swedish signals intelligence work. It would
therefore be good if those persons who express opinions on the regulations governing
Swedish signals intelligence would take pains to provide a firm foundation for their
claims. That could, for example, be done by making an appointment for a visit to the
court, which in contrast to the claims that have been made, is not a secret tribunal.
Thats how you do it, folks. Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald often have said
they just want a chance to make their case to the public, preferably in court. There it
is. It shouldnt be too hard to get in touch with Mr. Viksten or his office.
Well be waiting ...

Denmark gets ahead of the

Snowden Operation
November 27, 2013
Having watched several NATO partners get skewered by selectively sourced press stories
alleging nefarious espionage activities, all care of the defector Edward Snowden,
Denmark has done a smart thing and let its foreign intelligence service get ahead of the
Snowden Operation, before they, too, become a target. Copenhagens move is likely
driven by the recent move by their neighbor Norway, which corrected significant
inaccuracies in Snowden-based reporting about Norwegian intelligence.
In an interview with the Copenhagen daily Politiken, the head of the Danish Defense
Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, FE for short), Thomas Ahrenkiel
provides never-before-heard details about what his agency does in the realm of signals
intelligence (SIGINT). Ahrenkiel admits that his service on a monthly basis registers
millions of pieces of information a reference to what NSA terms metadata in
support of Danish national interests and Danish troops abroad, and some of that is
shared with allies. Discussion of FE SIGINT activities supporting Danish forces abroad is
an apparent reference to the 300 Danish troops currently serving with ISAF in
Afghanistan, but Ahrenkiel did not confirm that.
Since FE expects Denmark to soon be targeted by the Snowden Operation as Norway
recently was, including allegations about SIGINT metadata, Ahrenkiels interview is an
effort to correct what he terms misunderstandings that the leaks have created about
what NATO intelligence services actually do. As the FE director explains, this is not a
matter of large-scale American surveillance of Danish mobile telephones.
While I suspect that the sensation-driven Snowden media spectacle thats being
sustained by activists masquerading as journalists will still target Denmark despite this
lucid explanation, its an encouraging sign that Copenhagen understands the stakes in
this game and wants to cut short the worst lies about what FE does. Ive encouraged
NSA leadership to do the same and, since Glenn Greenwald and others in the Wikileaks
circle have assured us that more, and worse, is coming about NSA and Allied
operations, its time to get ahead of this now in the public eye. The Danes have broken
the proverbial code here, NSA and its partners need to do likewise.

Reforming NSA from the top

November 26, 2013
That the National Security Agency needs reform in the aftermath of the politically
disastrous Snowden Operation seems unquestionable. As Ive laid out in my open letter
to my former employer, NSA needs to build trust with the American public, and fast, as
well as prevent another Snowden-like catastrophe from ever happening again.
Its known that NSA Director (DIRNSA) General Keith Alexander, USA the
longest-serving Director in the Agencys history will be out in the spring, along
with his deputy, Chris Inglis. Which is good and, in my opinion, long overdue. Its
been suggested that its time to civilianize the DIRNSA position, perhaps making
new directors subject to Senate approval. If we go that route, Congress may want
to consider fixed, ten-year terms, non-renewable, as with the FBIs directorship.
However, any discussion of reforming the DIRNSA job and who holds it ought to
be accompanied by a reality-based discussion of how NSA works at high levels. So
here it is, you wont be getting it anywhere else.
Since its establishment in 1952 as Americas unified signals intelligence (SIGINT) and
information security (INFOSEC) organization as an independent agency under the
Pentagon, NSA has been headed by a top general or admiral. This was partly tradition,
and partly a realization that NSA is, after all, a combat support agency of DoD. The first
DIRNSA was Major General Ralph Canine, USA, who put quite an imprint on the place,
serving four years; after Canine, directors have held three stars, until GEN Alexander,
who added a fourth star as he is dual-hatted as Commander, U.S. Cyber Command
(whether that should continue with the next DIRNSA is also something rightly up for
discussion, but Ill save that for another day).
There have been good DIRNSAs and bad DIRNSAs: my choice for the best was Admiral
Bobby Ray Inman, who headed the place during the difficult years in the aftermath of
the 1970s Congressional bloodbath over intelligence reform. The directors job has
rotated among the Army, Navy, and Air Force, though Alexander is the first Army DIRNSA
since the 1980s before him, the job was held by two Navy admirals and two Air Force
generals, back-to-back since the last green-suited director, LTG William Odom (198588), was almost universally considered to have been a disaster in the job.
Most DIRNSAs served three to four years. General Mike Hayden, USAF, oversaw
fundamental reforms of the Agency during his unprecedentedly long six-year tenure
(1999-2005), moving on to take over CIA after, while his successor has held the
directors post for an astonishing eight years and counting. This is undeniably part of
the problem.
Whats important to understand here is that, until relatively recently, the director was, if
not a figurehead, then not entirely the real boss of NSA. By tradition, much power was
invested in the Deputy Director (DDIR), who is always a civilian. Many deputies have had
a military background, such as the current DDIR, who is a graduate of the Air Force
Academy as well as a retired one-star general in the Air National Guard, but the

basic idea was the DDIR serves as the institutional memory, who can hold the job for
years, while directors come and go.
The man who basically created the DDIR position was Louis Tordella, who held the
job from 1958 to 1974, an astonishing sixteen years. It was no secret that Tordella, a
strong personality, had the ability to stonewall bad ideas from the director, and he
could always just wait out any DIRNSA he didnt like. It needs to be noted that
DIRNSAs have not always been intelligence officers and their level of knowledge of
what NSA actually does could not necessarily be assumed. As the wise old hand, the
DDIR was able to offer wisdom accrued during decades in the cryptologic business, as
well as serve as an advocate for NSAs civilian workforce.
Nobody would serve as DDIR anywhere near as long as Tordella, but the basic concept
of the DIRNSA-DDIR relationship remained the same until General Hayden showed up in
1999. Before long, his deputy, Barbara McNamara known as BAM at the Agency, a
respected career analyst who had served as the Deputy Director for Operations, i.e. the
SIGINT boss was shunted off to London as the Agency representative to GCHQ, as she
was perceived as standing in the way of Haydens desired reforms.
Hayden, a career Air Force intelligence officer, came to Fort Meade on a mission to
shake up the Agency and modernize it, which was unquestionably necessary. However,
some of his bull-in-china-shop methods alienated much of NSAs civilian old guard, not
least because he installed as DDIR Bill Black, a career NSA civilian who had already
retired from the Agency and gone to cash in with defense contractors; during his sixyear stint as deputy, Black was considered by many to be too pliant to Haydens wishes.
The tradition that a civilian DDIR could block bad and possibly unethical or illegal
ideas suggested by the director had been lost, with fateful consequences.
Its fashionable to condemn old guards but the reality is that the generation of senior
NSA civilians shunted aside since 1999, of which BAM can serve as a stand-in here,
had made their careers after the post-1970s reforms and jealously guarded the
notion that NSA was a law-abiding organization above all else.
Its clear that GEN Alexander has kept his superiors at the Pentagon and the White
House happy with his expansion of the Agencys intelligence empire into many spheres,
overseeing its growth in what some have termed the golden age of SIGINT. Yet this
has also come with unprecedented controversy, with NSA facing scandal and uproar of
the likes its never seen. Alexanders near-decade tenure as DIRNSA will be
remembered more for the Snowden scandal than anything else.
There are many lessons to be learned from how NSA has been run for the last fifteen
years, some of which can already be discerned with clarity. Civilianization of the
directors job may help, but its no panacea either; this, too, will create challenges.
That said, its abundantly clear that empire-building generals can create havoc in
bureaucracies to ill effect. Old-think bureaucrats are a figure of derision to some,
but they can also serve as a needed obstacle to daring new ideas that are actually
stupid if not flat-out illegal.
Like Cher, we cannot turn back time, no matter how much we may want to, and NSA
isnt returning to the old system that worked for decades. The Agency needs a new

model of leadership for the 21st century, learning the painful lessons of the Snowden
debacle. Its impossible to say as yet what the new DIRNSA-DDIR system will look like,
but Im glad its being publicly discussed, as it ought to be. Who runs Americas vast
SIGINT empire, and how, is a matter the public has a right to be informed about.
PS: If you want to sound like part of the Fort Meade in-crowd, note that DIRNSA is
pronounced Durn-sah while DDIR rolls off the SIGINTers tongue as Dee-Dur:
emphasis for both is on the first syllable.

On Snowden and Coincidences

November 23, 2013
I regularly get asked, often by soi disant journalists online, if I have evidence that
Edward Snowden is under Kremlin control. To me or to anyone familiar with
counterintelligence or Russia, or both that question is a sign of something resembling
stupidity. Lets be honest: if you dont think that Eds under the control of Russian
security services after hes spent five months in Putins republic, youre pretty clueless
about how that place works, perhaps willfully. Thats five months during which media
have never not once been allowed near Ed without a significant junket of bulkylooking guys around him. Ive been saying from the moment Snowden landed at
Moscow that Russian intelligence is part of the picture, and that clearly bothers some
people a great deal.
Theres a good piece by Al Jazeera out now that looks this issue squarely in the eye. It
kicks off by stating what all intelligence agencies know, as Ive previously reported,
that Snowden remains under Russian security services protection. The piece has
lots of good insights, and I want to applaud AJ for looking into this issue in a way that
most Western media outlets seem reluctant to do. It quotes Yuri Felshtinsky, a
Russian journalist whos been a thorn in the FSBs side for years: The irony is that
Snowden, who was fighting for freedom of information, actually became a major tool
in hiding this information. He is going to keep quiet now about what he knows and
about what he told to the FSB.
Of course, Westerners some of them Useful Idiots will pretend that Putins security
services have nothing to do with Snowden, because thats what Planet Greenwald and
Wikileaks have told them. With straight faces. The truth is another matter. If you wish
to persist in believing that Snowden has nothing to do with Russian intelligence, you will
need to accept an extraordinary number of, shall we say, coincidences.
Counterintelligence officers are famous for saying there are no coincidences. Thats
not true, they sometimes happen. But the Official Narrative of Edward Snowden
that he is a pure-hearted whistleblower who just wanted to help the cause of
freedom yet somehow wound up in Moscow through no agency of his own, where he
now lives freely without any Kremlin interference requires you to swallow a whole
list of coincidences that, to anyone remotely familiar with intelligence (or even the
world as it actually exists), is daunting. Ill mention a few, I wont pretend this is a
comprehensive list; add more in the comments if you have them:
Its a coincidence ... that Snowden got in contact with Wikileaks.
Its a coincidence ... that Wikileaks claimed to have stolen information from Russian
intelligence that it never exposed.
Its a coincidence ... that Wikileaks point man on Russian affairs, who is one of Julian
Assanges best friends, is a Kremlin mouthpiece (as well as a nut-fringe anti-Semite).
Its a coincidence ... that Julian Assange has a TV show on Russian state media.

Its a coincidence ... that Ed and the whole Greenwald/Wikileaks circle has acted in a
manner completely consistent with longstanding Kremlin espionage tradecraft (e.g.
Active Measures).
Its a coincidence ... that of the thousands of pages of U.S. and Allied intelligence
information stolen by Snowden and published around the world, none of it reveals
Russian security matters.
Its a coincidence ... that Edward celebrated his 30th birthday with Russian
diplomats in their consulate in Hong Kong.
Its a coincidence ... that Snowdens lawyer, who controls his access to the outside
world, is a public advocate for the FSB and Russian intelligence.
Its a coincidence ... that if youre one of the lucky few who actually gets to meet with
Snowden at his undisclosed Russian location, youre taken there in black-windowed
vehicles in a convoy.
Its a coincidence ... that, even if you get to meet Ed, youll never be allowed a second
alone with him, as his bulky minders (whos paying for them, anyway? I thought
Wikileaks was broke) never leave his side.
Above all, the Official Narrative requires you to believe that although literally every
single Western defector to the Soviet Union and Russia for a full century now was
extensively interrogated by Kremlin spies and placed under their protection as long
as they were in the country, its completely different with Edward Snowden. If you
actually believe that, I hope you also put your fallen-out teeth under your pillow at
night, in the expectation the Tooth Fairy will reimburse you.

Snowdens Thunder Down Under

November 21, 2013
In recent days, the international propaganda operation fueled by classified documents
stolen by Edward Snowden has taken aim at Australia, which is a longstanding member
of the Anglospheres Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Allegations that the Australian
Signals Directorate (ASD), the local SIGINT agency that partners with NSA, has spied on
Indonesia, including its political leadership, have caused heartburn in Jakarta.
Indonesia has recalled its ambassador from Canberra and cancelled joint military
exercises. Of perhaps greater significance, the Snowden revelations have placed antiterrorism cooperation between the two countries in jeopardy, a major problem given
how much Australia worries about any rise in violent extremism in its huge neighbor
to the North. There is more than a little hokum and faux outrage in Jakartas reaction,
not least because Indonesia spies on Australia too, including in SIGINT, but the
political damage inflicted to date seems real, if not likely permanent.
Yet even short-term damage can cause serious pain to both sides. Not least because
Indonesia is highly dependent on Australian intelligence, especially ASD SIGINT, to
keep its domestic extremists and terrorists in check. This is causing serious worry in
the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the countrys domestic
security service, charged with counterterrorism and counterintelligence. The real
world of espionage is far more complicated than the cheap moralizing of Planet
Greenwald would have you believe. Just how messy this all is, and why the Snowden
damage matters, is conveyed nicely in a detailed report in The Australian, a Sydney
daily, which I reproduce here:
More than 300 convicted terrorists will be released from Indonesian prisons in the next 12
months, posing a renewed terror threat to both Australians and Indonesians at a time
when the spy scandal threatens to derail intelligence co-operation between the two
countries.
However, as the fallout from the Snowden leaks intensified, with Indonesias President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announcing the suspension of some intelligence sharing
arrangements, there was no immediate indication which areas of counter-terror cooperation would be effected. Dr Yudhoyono announced yesterday co-operation with
Australia would be downgraded across a range of areas mainly people-smuggling but
also military co-operation and intelligence sharing.
I will instruct (officials) to halt some co-operation that is called exchange of
information and exchange of intelligence among our two countries, the Indonesian
President said.
The announcement represented a major escalation in the spy scandal and came at a time
when ASIO is deeply concerned by the looming release of the terrorists whose sentences
are up. ASIO fears the release of the militants including some involved in the bomb
attacks on Australians in Jakarta and Bali between 2002 and 2009 will re-

energise terror networks that had been largely defeated thanks to joint intelligence and
police co-operation between Australia and Indonesia.
Australia has 30 Australian Federal Police officers based in Indonesia working with local
authorities, mainly on anti-people-smuggling and counter terrorism operations. It is
understood about a dozen of those officers work on people-smuggling, a relatively loworder issue for Jakarta and one where co-operation may be downgraded with little cost
to Indonesia but considerable pain to Australia, which in the past two months has
ramped up its efforts to disrupt smuggling ventures.
But insiders say there could not be a worse time to suspend intelligence co-operation
between the two countries because it would limit the ability of Australian and Indonesian
agencies to monitor those released prisoners, some of whom are likely to resume jihadist
activities against their own citizens and Western tourists.
The joint counter-terror co-operation between the two countries, which has been the key
to capturing the Bali bombers and dismantling the deadly Jeemah Islamiah terror
network, appeared to be under threat last night after the chief of Indonesias national
intelligence agency BIN, Marciano Norman, was called to the Presidential Palace to
discuss the security co-operation ramifications of the Australian crisis.
Australian intelligence, including information gleaned by the Australian Signals
Directorate, remains a key part of Indonesias war against Islamic extremism. One insider
said yesterday Indonesias fight against Islamic extremism had always relied
enormously on intelligence supplied by Australian agencies including the ASD, the
successor of the Defence Signals Directorate, which allegedly intercepted Dr Yudhoyonos
mobile phone.
The arrest and prosecution of the original Bali bombers couldnt have happened without
Australian intelligence support, The Australian was told. When (then prime minister
John) Howard went up three or four days after the bombing he took with them the heads
of the intelligence agencies and said, Youve got carte blanche.
Others say that if this sort of co-operation was suspended as a result of the spy scandal, it
would create a law enforcement vacuum and an opportunity for Islamic extremists to
regroup and once again target Indonesians and Australians in Bali and Jakarta.
ASIO fears Indonesian terror groups, including JI, could become more active when about
300 out of 830 convicted and imprisoned terrorists are released over the next year
having served their sentences for crimes carried out over the past decade. It is feared
that many of terrorists are likely to resume extremist activities, especially because
Indonesian prisons are considered to be hothouses for extremist teachings.
The impending release of terrorist detainees from Indonesian prisons, a spike of which is
expected to occur in 2014 is likely to increase this (terror) threat, ASIO warned in its
recently released annual report. Many of the individuals scheduled to be released in this
period have undertaken terrorist training or have been linked to, or involved in, bombings
against either Western of local targets.

Their release is likely to inject significant capability into extremist networks. The
expertise and anti-Western credentials of some individuals have the potential to
refocus and reinvigorate currently diffuse and relatively unsophisticated extremist
networks.
Greg Barton, an Indonesia expert at Melbournes Monash University, said the release of
so many prisoners in one year was a big concern. While we dont have a clear picture
of recidivism rates, it is safe to assume that some will still be quite sympathetic to
(extremism) and that some will go back to operations, Professor Barton told The
Australian.
In recent years Jakartas counter-terrorism capacity had become more sophisticated
and other countries, including the US, were beginning to play a greater role in assisting
the Indonesians, reducing Jakartas dependence on Australian intelligence and
expertise.
But Australia was still Indonesias main partner in the fight against local extremism. In
addition to intelligence about extremists, Australia is understood to have gifted the
Indonesians a raft of equipment, such as long-range surveillance microphones, cameras
and night vision equipment. Australia also supplies technical expertise in areas such as
computer exploitation, for example extracting information from laptops seized from
extremists.
One wonders how well Indonesian intelligence will fare against extremists and terrorists
without the reporting and technical assistance of the ASD. Im afraid were going to find
out the hard way. Lets hope those 300 soon-to-be released Indonesian terrorists have
spent their time in prison learning and embracing that jihad is love (as non-violent
Salafis like to put it), because otherwise bad things seem sure to follow.

The Guardian really needs to stop lying ...

November 17, 2013
As The Guardian has taken center stage in the Snowden drama, serving as the Englishlanguage conduit of choice for publishing classified information about the National
Security Agency and its partners that was stolen by Edward Snowden, its taken heat
from the British government about its possibly illegal activities.
As a dodge, Guardian editors have taken to throwing around the no big deal excuse
because, they claim, 850,000 people in the US, UK, and partner governments had access
to this stuff. It was simply Ed, one in an (almost) million, who did the dirty deed. For one
of the many iterations of this nonsense see here.
Yet nonsense it is. It plays on the fact the US and Allied governments have given out a lot
of high-level clearances in recent years. But it requires a bit of explanation to understand
the details and why The Guardian is lying.
Everybody at NSA whether military, civilian, or contractor holds an active TOP SECRET
(TS) security clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) access. Thats
what it takes to get in the door at NSA. This is granted after a Single Scope Background
Investigation (SSBI) including a full scope polygraph (i.e. youre asked lifestyle as well
as counterintelligence questions while youre strapped to the box). To maintain TS/SCI
access, youre reinvestigated, including polygraph, every five years. A basic run-down of
the DoD/IC security clearance system can be found here. If you want to know how the
many and varied levels of classification are used in day to day DoD/IC work, this is
numbingly detailed and best taken with a stiff drink.
But TS/SCI is just the basic level of clearance at NSA and its partner and Allied agencies.
Above that there exist many kinds of caveats and special programs that go (or have
gone) by weird names such as GAMMA, VRK (Very Restricted Knowledge), and ECI
(Exceptionally Controlled Information). Across DoD they have similar SAPs (Special
Access Programs). The bottom line is that nobody at NSA sees everything. The entire
system is in fact designed to prevent any one person from seeing everything.
Called need to know or more formally compartmentization this means that every
person only gets access to what s/he needs to be read on for to do the job at hand.
Strange as it sounds outside cryptologic channels, its perfectly normal not to exactly
know what the guy down the hall, or even sitting in the next cubicle over, does all day;
you may not have a confirmed need to know, so you dont. Even spouses and partners
who both work at NSA are expected to maintain to need to know in their pillow talk.
To get access to really juicy SAPs you may need to undergo special investigation,
including additional polygraphs, and in every case you sign paperwork thats basically
another non-disclosure agreement on top of all the ones youve already signed to be in
access at NSA. Security is taken pretty seriously, particularly when very sensitive
cryptologic programs are involved.

The bottom line is that The Guardian and its defenders are simply lying when they
assert that 850,000 people saw the stuff that Ed stole. No, they didnt. Not once, ever.
Even as an NSA counterintelligence officer with ridiculously high level clearances and
accesses to do my job, I never saw everything because thats literally impossible in
the system. Every persons access is specifically tailored to what he or she needs to
know to do the job, and nothing more.
Which is why Ed had to hack NSA systems for months and years, including stealing the
log-ins and passwords of others, who presumably had better accesses than a mere
system administrator would, to get a look at the TS/SCI+ information he wanted to steal
and expose to the world, while making off to Moscow as a finishing touch.
Whether The Guardian broke British law is a matter I will defer to legal experts, but
on the matter of who had access to the stolen information they are publishing for the
world to see, they are simply telling one lie after another. It should stop at once.
UPDATE: Ive been attacked by anti-NSA activist Marcy Wheeler for allegedly not
providing evidence that The Guardian actually said what ... they said. The Guardian
has cited the 850,000 had access to this stuff lie in many forms since the summer;
mere Googling will reveal many of them, heres another current example if you like
that sort of thing. Marcy is probably the most informed literature Ph.D. without any
intelligence experience regarding SIGINT within at ten or twelve miles from wherever
youre sitting at this moment. This ones for you, Marcy!

Russian Intelligence is Behind the

Snowden Show: German Intelligence
November 5, 2013

As Ive noted at length already, the drama surrounding the continuing leaks of classified
information from the U.S. National Security Agency, care of the defector Edward
Snowden, has now taken center stage in Germany. Which is not altogether surprising
because Germany is such a close partner with the United States in security and other
matters, and also because a significant component of the Wikileaks apparat lives in
Berlin.
To anyone versed in counterintelligence, specifically the modus operandi of Russian
security services, the Snowden Operation* is a classic case of Active Measures, in other
words a secret propaganda job. That its ultimate objective is fracturing the Western
security and intelligence alliance is made increasing clear in the tone of the reporting
coming from the Operation, especially its German mouthpiece, the newsmagazine Der
Spiegel. Relying on fronts, cut-outs, independent journalists, plus platoons of what
Lenin memorably termed Useful Idiots, is just what the Kremlins intelligence services do
when they want to engage in Active Measures. Weve been down this road before in
many ways whats going on now is merely a replay of the operational game from the
1970s based on the CIA defector Phil Agee (KGB covername: PONT), but with broadband
access yet the Snowden Operation is unusually successful and brazen, even by
Moscows high standards in this regard.
This is also the conclusion of the German security services, based on a new report in
the Berlin daily Die Welt. The recent Moscow visit of the leftist Green Party
parliamentarian Hans-Christian Strbele with Snowden caused a global sensation. It was
also transparently the work of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Noting the
stage-managed aspect of the photo op, There is no doubt that this was a room that was
prepared by the intelligence service, concluded a German senior intelligence official,
adding that this was a typical FSB room meaning fully wired. To expand on Die
Welts reportage:
The three-hour conversation had been recorded in this room with microphones and video
cameras. After analyzing the course of the visit, German security experts came to the
conclusion that the FSB completely organized and monitored Strbeles visit to Moscow,
and effectively used it for its purposes. The goal of the visit had been to rekindle the
debate about the NSA spying affair, thus burdening relations between Germany and the
United States even more. This is playing into the hands of Russia, said the intelligence
official, criticizing Strbeles action. That the Green Party official allowed himself to be
used by Russia for that countrys interests was to be regarded as borderline, he
explained.
The Snowden Operation is far from over, and more German-related Active Measures are
to be expected. That said, its somewhat reassuring that, no matter what

politicians may say, German intelligence is at least aware of the real game thats
afoot here.
*Until some future Vasili Mitrokhin tells us what Edward Snowdens actual FSB
covername is, Ill be terming whats going on the Snowden Operation (
).

Google and NSA

November 4, 2013
The latest revelations from Snowdens stolen documents, as conveyed by journalists
not familiar with SIGINT, have it that NSA is doing nefarious things with Google
databases. I was on CNBC today and I expressed my skepticism about both the story and
about Googles faux indignation:
Yeah, look first of all, what weve heard so far, most recently, are allegations from
Edward Snowdens stolen documents. They are just allegations at this point, and a lot of
his allegations turn out to be not exactly true.
Second of all, NSA does not spy on Americans without a warrant, and the only grounds
for spying on Americans are a warrant granted from the FISA court on grounds that
youre working for foreign intelligence or foreign terrorism. There are no other grounds.
Period. End of story.
Google collects information on all of us. I dont know how one could use the Internet
without using Google. I spent almost a decade with NSA in counterintelligence, working
some of the most sensitive projects in the US government, and Ill bet you today Google
knows more about me than NSA does.

The Realities of Intelligence: The

French View
November 2, 2013
Over the last week the German hysteria over allegations regarding the U.S. National
Security Agency has reached genuine fever pitch. While the tabloid press rallies against
the NSA Monster, even respectable outlets have joined the campaign, which leaves
average Germans with the wholly false impression that NSA cares one whit about them.
Although the German intelligence services know the real story is quite different, as Ive
previously reported, the public debate in Germany has taken on a life of its own, one
which has little to do with the real world of intelligence.
Its different in France, where allegations of NSA espionage also have been a media
fixture. Like Berlin, Paris has a decades-old relationship with American intelligence that
includes much exchange of information and best practices, though not quite at the Five
Eyes level that exists among the Anglosphere. Recent days have seen several important
revelations in the French media about the complexities of the actual relationship
between close allies and intelligence partners.
In an interview with the Parisian daily Le Monde, Phillippe Hayez, a former assistant
director of DGSE, Frances foreign intelligence agency (equivalent to NSA and CIA
combined), explained just how unshocking these vaunted revelations are to anyone
who knows how espionage actually works. Allowing that the present public uproar
represents more like climate change than a mere passing cloud, Hayez added that,
diplomatically speaking, this is but a mere episode in the cascade of revelations
about intelligence unleashed by Edward Snowden.
Hayez similarly expressed concern that the international media campaign against NSA
was fundamentally distorting the necessary public debate about intelligence, which
must not lead anyone to conclude that the primary purpose of [intelligence] services
in a democracy is targeting your allies. The primary target is the enemies of
democracy.
Considerable more detail was added in a report in the Parisian daily LOpinion, which
was based on interviews with numerous French officials. Here the complexities of the
relationship, in which DGSE collaborates daily with American partners yet spies on them,
and is spied on by them in return, are elaborated, while being met with an impressive
Gallic shrug.
One former DGSE officer boasted that, while his service was not quite as capable as
NSA, technically speaking, it is still one of the five best SIGINT agencies in the world,
adding that it listens in on many world leaders: I had telephone tap transcripts in my
hands of President George W. Bush that we carried out, he admitted. Is the current
public fuss caused by Snowdens relevations populism or crass ignorance? he
wondered, because we obviously send our reports to [our] political authorities.

The report adds that during the recent French campaign in Mali, Jean-Yves Le Drian,
Frances defense minister, used [SIGINT reports from] NSA which were passed on to the
French, which made it possible to locate and then destroy the armed jihadist groups.
And no one in the armed forces or the intelligence services wants this flow of
information to stop; much to the contrary.
While France, like Germany, is not part of the Five Eyes SIGINT alliance, it shares a
great deal of information with NSA regularly and in 2010, according to the report, Paris
came close to joining the alliance but the Obama White House scuttled the deal in the
end. There is also a tight intelligence sharing relationship between DGSE and the BND,
its German equivalent, and its evident that French spies are more than a tad
displeased with all the public fuss in Germany about matters that are best left out of
the publics eye, in Frances view. That Chancellor Merkel is exploiting the Snowden
crisis to get her country fully into the Five Eyes system is the common perception
among French officials.
Furthermore, while French diplomats believe that the NSA scandal has complicated
relationships, this, too, shall pass and there will be no fundamental changes to
intelligence partnerships except on a bilateral basis, i.e. between Washington, DC, and
Paris. The notion of a European Union united front against NSA is dismissed out of
hand by French diplomats as a pipe dream. Furthermore, it is significant that, even
while expressing his displeasure about the NSA allegations, President Hollande never
alleged violations of sovereignty, unlike some leaders. France is eager to get past
this crisis.
Moreover, French diplomats seem dismissive of German complaints. As one top
diplomat stated, You cannot say just anything on just any network! For this reason the
Foreign Ministry has nearly 200 encrypted cell phones. Paris has invested heavily in
secure telephone and computer communications for its ministries in recent years, and
French intelligence believes that Frances sensitive diplomatic communications remain
safe from foreign decryption or intrusion.
In all, this is exactly the mature, nuanced view of intelligence that one would expect
from France, a country with excellent espionage services that form a key part of the
Western intelligence alliance against common enemies and threats. I wish America had
more such friends.

Whats Wrong with NSA

October 30, 2013
Dear NSA,
Hi, its me again. Although I left the Agency a few years ago, I still think about you a
lot and, in recent months thanks to that awful Ed guy Ive been writing and talking
publicly a good deal about you too. Plus, because I agreed to that whole lifetime
secrecy oath thing on my very first day on the job, were separated but were never
gonna really get divorced, are we?
Nevertheless there are some things Id like to get off my chest. My comments in the
media in defense of intelligence, generally if not always specifically, have led to me
getting a lot of flak from haters about being a shill for NSA and whatnot. Of course
thats not true. There are things that need change with the Agency and the
unprecedented catastrophe surrounding the Snowden case offers an overdue shot at
making smart changes to how NSA does business. Id like to suggest a few.
Im dispensing these in a spirit of affection, tough love if you will. I grew up in an Agency
family, part of me will always be connected to you guys and girls. I still have good friends
with the Agency, and I happen to think that, pound for pound, NSA is the best value for
the dollar that American taxpayers spend on anything. Thousands of dedicated, hardworking people military, civilian and contractor who strive every day to provide
Americas best source of intelligence. There are a few rotten apples, as in every human
endeavor, but the Agency truly is a special place for patriots who work stressful jobs,
some of them putting their lives on the line every day.
That said, NSA really needs a rebrand. After decades of hiding in the shadows, the
Agency is now exposed to a level of public scrutiny that previously was only the stuff
of Fort Meade nightmares. When I joined in the mid-1990s the No Such Agency era
had ended. No longer did anybody pretend that the enormous espionage complex up
Route 295 the one with all those funny looking golf balls stretching on for miles
didnt exist. But there was still a pervasive, fundamental secrecy about what the
Agency said it did.
And, hey, Im fine with secrecy in principle intelligence is conducted in secret by its
very nature. But the current crisis has exposed the Agency to scrutiny based on
falsehoods proffered by Kremlin-backed scoundrels and their useful idiots among
activists masquerading as journalists. Time to beat that back with some honesty,
what might seem scarily radical honesty to old SIGINT hands.
NSA does foreign intelligence. Tell the American people a bit more about that. Its
overdue. Better to tell the story yourselves than to let your enemies tell it. Im not
saying you need to let MTV film a reality show in OPS 2B though Ive heard worse
ideas but you need to level with the American people about what it is NSA actually
does and a bit about how it does it.

Its 2013, when virtually all Americans depend on IT, via the Internet and the
smartphones practically everyones got, to function on a daily basis, so you cant blame
people who until recently had never heard of SIGINT when they get a tad freaked out by
the leaks theyve heard all so much about in recent months. Time to find a way to
explain, generally, what NSA does and how it does it. The truth is far less scary than the
lies being told about the Agency.
If the current leadership cant find a way to convincingly tell the American people what
the Agency does including the indelible and truthful message that, unless youre in
bed with foreign spies or terrorists, NSA has less than zero interest in you then its
time for new leadership. Thats coming soon anyway, based on media reports, but
theres not much time to waste. NSA leadership and public affairs by their nature have
been reactive and not accustomed to the public eye. Thats totally over, and its not
coming back. Deal with it. Rebrand now while you still can and regain the publics trust.
Im confident that, once they understand what NSA really does, the vast majority of
Americans will be glad the Agency is on watch.
But thats not all youve got to do. Theres no point in having an NSA if you cant prevent
further Snowden-like debacles. Which is another way of saying if you dont have
effective counterintelligence, why bother to have intelligence? Sadly, I predicted a
Snowden-like disaster over a decade ago, when I was working counterintelligence for the
Agency, and I was not the only one who had that sense of impending dread.
The Snowden story reveals a basic lack of seriousness about counterintelligence and
security that has undermined everything the Agency does. There are plenty of things to
blame here too much outsourcing, a lack of bureaucratic follow-through, an
unwillingness to go all Angleton on people but the unavoidable bottom line is that
counterintelligence failed here, epically. This must never be allowed to happen again.
Sure, more resources are needed for CI who ever turns more money and billets down?
but above all there needs to be a culture shift at the Agency. Nobody actually likes
counterintelligence, the hardass people who bring bad news and possibly want to
investigate your office, but they have to be allowed to do what they do in a spirit of
cooperation. After the Snowden disaster it shouldnt take much effort to convince
Agency personnel that the threat from defectors and traitors is all too real. Sometimes
the odd, Aspergery IT guy in the next cubicle with bad social skills plus anger at the
government actually is out to destroy you.
And I would caution the CI folks not to go overboard now. Dont repeat the letspolygraph-everybody-silly errors that came after the Martin and Mitchell defections to
Moscow, or what happened at CIA when Rick Ames was unmasked as a traitor and
Russian spy. The vast majority of Agency personnel are good people gain their trust
and they will practically do your job for you.
Hows that for a start? I think thats enough taskers for today. But do get on them. A
lot is riding on fixing these problems. NSA really is the best and brightest of Americas
secret government. Earn the trust of the American people and never let an Ed
Snowden in any Agency building again. That would be a great start and, in the end,
everybody wins. The American people deserve no less, so give it to them.

SIncerely,
John Dash Schindler

Update: Merkels real cellphone

is secure
October 28, 2013
As Germanys Handygate has become a mass phenomenon bordering on hysteria, one
of the strangest aspects has been the fact, which Ive noted previously, that Chancellor
Angela Merkel was using a quite insecure cellphone to conduct government business.
According to numerous media reports, the cellphone in question, said to have been
intercepted by NSA for years, was used by Merkel for political party affairs, and was
supposed to be used only to the classification level of VS-NfD, which is roughly
equivalent to the U.S. category of For Official Use Only (FOUO), in other words, not
actually classified at all.
Except the actual story is coming into focus now and its a rather different one than what
Berlins been complaining so loudly about. While Merkel has indeed had a quite
vulnerable cellphone, her real Chancellor-Phone, as the Germans call it, is quite secure
from interception.

As reported in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the manufacturer of Merkels real

phone, a Dsseldorf firm called Secusmart, is the provider of choice to the German
government as well as some private firms who worry about data security (at a cost of
2,500 Euros per handset, there arent many private buyers). Secusmart supplied Merkel
with a voice encryption solution four years ago, based on software and a cryptographic
chip, which was updated this year and works on all new BlackBerry handsets.
Secusmarts CEO, Hans-Christoph Quelle, maintains that Merkels calls using his firms
phone are quite secure, even against NSA.
As explained by Secusmart, their phones AES encryption with 128 bits makes it
possible to generate 340 sextillion different keys, that is to say 340 followed by 36
zeros. Even with supercomputers, according to todays technical standards it would
theoretically take 149 billion years to crack this code in other words, 10,000 times
longer than the age of the universe. As CEO Quelle put it, that should keep even the
United States going for a while.
And indeed it would. So what, again, is all this fuss about...?

NSA, Germany and Handygate: A

Reality Check
October 27, 2013
Right now Germany is in the midst of a full-fledged political storm, dubbed Handygate
in the media, over alleged espionage by the National Security Agency against the
German government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose cellphone is said to
have been intercepted by NSA for years. Given German sensitivities about privacy that
linger from both the Nazi and Communist periods, as well as the well known national
proclivity towards introspection Nabelschau (navel-gazing) being a core German
competency the resulting scandal is verging on the obsessional among some
Germans.
All this is of course being fanned by the media, especially the newsmagazine Der
Spiegel, which has a long-standing reputation for sensationalism about espionage,
particularly American; it has also been a regular conduit for stolen NSA materials
from the defector Edward Snowden. What makes this interesting is that one need
not be a seasoned counterintelligence hand to note that some of the newest materials
could not have come from Snowden; a bigger game is now afoot, and its centered on
Germany (where, let it be noted, key members of the Wikileaks apparat Jacob
Appelbaum and Laura Poitras reside).
There are oddities abounding in this case. In the first place, due to the laws drawn up by
the Federal Republic of Germany at its late 1940s founding, the alleged NSA activities
that have caused this firestorm may actually be legal. Moreover, a great deal of whats
going on now is political theater which Chancellor Merkel has to be witting of at some
level. If shes not, one must question her basic fitness for dealing with any international
affairs, though her longtime use of a fundamentally insecure cellphone to conduct
government business boggles the mind of any intelligence veteran.
The heads of Germanys intelligence services are now headed to Washington, DC, for
meetings with the White House and NSA to smooth over the scandal. At bottom,
Germany (like France), seeks not to shut down NSA espionage, rather to get closer to
it. Berlin has long been jealous of London and the other Anglosphere members of the
so-called Five Eyes community, the SIGINT alliance born in the Second World War
which, to this day, constitutes the most successful international intelligence
partnership in world history. Perhaps because they were on the wrong side when that
alliance was created in the days of the ULTRA secret, German intelligence agencies
have always wanted into the club and its privileged inner circle. Although Germany
enjoys a tight spy relationship with the United States (and Britain too), Berlin knows its
place, and it would like an upgrade.
Abandoning the US-German intelligence partnership is simply not an option, no matter
what politicians may say, and regardless of how much hysteria is created by the media.
The reasons for this are well known to intelligence insiders, and are elaborated in a new
report in the Berlin daily Die Welt. Its title, Technically Backward and Helpless, is

painfully accurate. There can be no doubt that Germanys intelligence and security
services, preeminently the Federal Intelligence Service (BND, Germanys CIA plus NSA
equivalent) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, equivalent
to Britains Security Service), are indeed deeply dependent on American partners, and
have been since the day of their creation.
The depths of that dependency are laid bare in Die Welts account. Germanys helpless
dependence on the U.S. Intelligence Community is not new but it entered a complicated
phase after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States which, lest we
forget, were staged mostly out of Hamburg, a fact which the Die Welt piece notes: The
Americans did not want to rely exclusively on us after September 11th. That is
understandable, explained a German intelligence official. Thus was born increased
attention to Germany among U.S. spy agencies.
Additionally, Germanys intelligence agencies are underfunded and lack the technical
capabilities of other leading Western countries; in espionage, Germany has chosen to
punch below its economic and political weight, and now bears the consequences,
namely deep dependency on foreign partners such as NSA and CIA. As I recently
reported, the BND head Gerhard Schindler recently called for more reliance on foreign
partners, not less, and here he was simply reflecting budgetary and political realities in
Germany, where there is scant appetite for more investment in security.
Even in domestic intelligence matters Germany is heavily dependent on American
help, especially from NSA, whose SIGINT has been provided to the Germans in many
cases, leading to the disruption of a number of planned terrorist attacks in Germany
since 2001. Without information from the Americans, there would have been
successful terrorist attacks in Germany in the past years, explained a BfV official,
truthfully.
For these reasons its unlikely that any big changes to German intelligence or its
relationship to NSA and CIA will happen soon. Although the current political brouhaha is
serious, even though some of the hand-wringing is obviously staged by politicos who
know better, this, too, shall pass, unless Germany wants to spend significantly more
money on its own security and intelligence. And, as yet, there is no sign of that.
Germanys condition reflects the reality that too many European countries have
underinvested in their own defense and security since the end of the Cold War, and
are therefore deeply dependent on the United States for assistance. I would like the
Germans and other European countries to take more responsibility for their own
security and fund their militaries and intelligence agencies at higher levels. They
would be better partners then too. But Im not optimistic on that front. Protesting,
after all, is easier than reforming bureaucracies or finding more money in lean
budgetary times.

So you want to know about NSA ...

September 6, 2013
Thanks to Ed Snowden and the Summer of SIGINT there are several billion people on
earth who have now heard of the National Security Agency. Going back to the
vaunted days of No Such Agency is impossible for NSA, and now that the genie is
out of the bottle about the size and scope of its activities, the Agency will have to live
with greater public awareness of what it does.
Of course, a lot of what people think they know about NSA, thanks to Snowden and
his media pals, above all Glenn Greenwald, is simply false. Correcting misperceptions
and outright lies about the Agency and its mission is a big task, and one I suggest NSA
get working on quickly. There is much damage to be repaired; more transparency is
long overdue.
My role in the Summer of SIGINT has been interesting. As an NSA veteran, Ive been
castigated as a shill of the Secret State, or worse, by the legions of critics of U.S.
intelligence who compensate for not having an informed opinion by broadcasting it
as loudly as possible. Readers of my work know that I am anything but an uncritical
observer of NSA and the Intelligence Community (IC), but that gets lost when youre
motivated by anger at DC, at Obama, at your parents, at everyone rather than
facts.
I get asked a lot for pointers by people who want to know more about NSA and what
it does. People who want more factual and less biased accounts than much of the
media coverage thats out there now. So heres my very informal guide for those who
want to know more about what NSA really does.
Let me throw some caveats out there. Im a former NSA guy who grew up in an Agency
family (both my parents were career NSA), so I dont think the Agency is controlled by
Satan and I dont have time for people who are polemical rather than analytical in their
approach to intelligence studies. Which filters out ninety percent of whats out there
right now, especially online.
I also took a lifetime secrecy oath, so if youre looking for all the real TOPSECRET/SCI
information, youve found the wrong blog. Im not about leaks, but I do want as much
transparency as we can get without violating the law or harming the sources and
methods that protect our country and our allies.
Im a fan of history Ive got a Ph.D. in the subject, so Im a pretty big fan and theres
no way to get a better grounding in SIGINT than by reading up on the history of
codebreaking, particularly in the modern era. Technology changes but the essence of
the job cracking codes and ciphers to gain intelligence while preventing others from
doing the same to you doesnt change. Also, if you dont grasp how NSA and its
predecessors did their job in the past, when SIGINT was a bit simpler than it is in the
21st century, you have no hope of comprehending whats going on now in cryptology.

Fortunately theres a lot out there you can read. The best place to start is NSAs in-house
shop, the Center for Cryptologic History (CCH), which is staffed by people who
understand the business and publish lots of stuff some classified, some unclassified
on the history of the Agency. The quality of their work is generally quite high and
customarily scrupulously honest about past mistakes. Every two years CCH hosts the
Cryptologic History Symposium, unclassified and open to the public, which draws top
experts on intelligence, codes and ciphers; its like the Gathering of the Juggalos for ICP
fans you kinda gotta be there if youre part of the SIGINT in crowd. Ive spoken at the
Symposium several times, and its next on in a few weeks.
I was fortunate to spend my last year with the Agency at CCH, where I worked on
classified projects such as editing and co-authoring NSAs official history of Operation
IRAQI FREEDOM (Phases I-III), as well as several unclassified projects. It was a lot of
fun. CCH also supports the Cryptologic History Museum, located next to Agency
headquarters, which was the first IC museum to be open to the public, and which
remains a fun family destination where people of all ages can learn about codes and
ciphers and how NSA has developed over the decades. The museum has a superb
library, the best open collection on cryptology in the world, which is a goldmine for
researchers.
There are plenty of people writing on NSA, intelligence, and cryptology, and Ill give you
my views of a few of the leading people in the field since some of them are less than
forthright about their background Ill add some clarity plus what I think of their work.
Since I believe in full disclosure, Ill add an FD line as needed.
The doyen of the field is David Kahn, who practically established it with the
publication of his seminal work The Codebreakers in 1967. Kahn is a fine writer and
professionally trained historian who brings a lifelong interest in codes and ciphers to
the table. He has published many fine books on intelligence NSA buffs will want to
read his biography of Herbert Yardley, a card-playing, womanizing, hard-living
codebreaker and easily the most interesting figure in the annals of U.S. espionage
but The Codebreakers is the place to start. Its purely historical, you wont learn
anything about PRISM in its pages, but its a foundational work you must read and
comprehend if you wish to understand cryptology. When Kahn went to press in 1967,
NSA went into panic mode, fearing any public discussion of SIGINT; three decades
later he was a guest of honor at the Agency. Times change. To top it off, hes a very
nice guy and a gentleman of the old school. (FD: Ive known David for years, and was
he kind enough to donate many of his papers and much of his huge collection of
books on cryptology to NSA, which resides in the National Cryptologic Museum
library, for the benefit of researchers.)
If you want a more academic flavor, I recommend anything written by John Ferris,
who has a deep understanding of SIGINT thats almost impossible to find among those
whove never worked in the spy business. Ferriss work is historical and heavily about
the British, but is superb, indeed indispensable, if you want to understand how
modern cryptology was born in the World Wars. (FD: Ive been acquainted with John
for over twenty years.)

Among more popular writers we have James Bamford, who has been a thorn in NSAs
side since he published The Puzzle Palace in 1982, a gossipy tome that was culled largely
from unclassified Agency newsletters. Bamford claims to be a scrappy outsider, but in
fact he served for three years in the Naval Security Group, the Navys portion of NSA, so
he was a cryptologic insider, something he customarily omits from his bio. Bamfords
writings on NSA, which are considerable, are noted for their quantity, not quality. He
tends to sensationalism and sometimes outright fabrication. Bamford cannot be
considered a reliable source on SIGINT and his methods tend towards the sleazy; before
9/11, when the Cryptologic History Symposium was held inside NSA headquarters,
Bamford used to try to chat up random NSAers, hoping they would tell him secrets.
Smooth. (FD: I dont know Bamford, having only met him once; I was one of the NSAers
he idiotically thought would tell him a whole bunch of TS/SCI.)

Matthew Aid also writes about NSA and related intelligence matters from the lessthan-accurate posture of an outsider. Unlike Bamford, he is a solid researcher who
knows a great deal about SIGINT and speaks with some authority. (Ive endorsed his
book on NSA, though not without reservations, in this review.) Aid should know about
cryptology because he, too, served the Agency in uniform. Back in the 1980s he was an
Air Force enlisted SIGINTer (Russian language analyst) at an Agency field site in the UK.
Unfortunately, his intelligence career ended badly, as he was found to be
impersonating an officer and, worse, was taking classified information home with him;
this resulted in over a year in prison. Understandably, Aid doesnt talk about this much.
Although Aid isnt a hack like Bamford, he tends to criticism of NSA, for reasons that
are not difficult to imagine. (FD: Ive met Aid a couple times, and found him pleasant
and knowledgeable, but I cant say I know him.)
Among insiders who have written things that are accessible to the public, I would
highlight Robert Hanyok, a former CCH colleague whos now retired. He authored
several important works of SIGINT history, particularly on NSA and Vietnam, much of
which has been declassified and merits close attention. Michael Warner, formerly with
CIA and now the Cyber Command historian, is a fine writer and researcher on all
intelligence matters, and has published stuff that you need to read to understand how
the IC works and where NSA fits in. With now-retired NSA counterintelligence guru
Robert Lou Benson, he wrote the seminal work on VENONA which is another mustread. (FD: I know all these guys and was privileged to have Lou Benson as a mentor
during my Agency service.)
Journalists writing about NSA generally dont know what theyre talking about, though
notable exceptions are Scott Shane and Siobhan Gorman, who work hard at
understanding the Agency and what it does. Theyve been writing about NSA since Ed
Snowden was just a kid. The best is Marc Ambinder, who brings serious analysis and a
lot of legwork on SIGINT to the table; he is always worth a read and serves as a sane
antidote to Greenwaldism and related forms of naive nihilism masquerading as
intelligence reportage.
There are plenty of nutty people writing and talking about NSA out there and I
recommend you avoid them all. Above all, disregard Wayne Madsen, who did serve as a
Navy cryptology officer some years ago, but who has left earth orbit altogether and
espouses a conspiratorial worldview that would make Julius Streicher blush, along with

the vicious anti-Semitism to match (this week he wrote about Obamas Rosh
Hashanah war on Syria made out of a tallit prayer shawl). Suffice to say that you will
learn more about what NSA actually does by asking a houseplant or your cat. (FD: Ive
never met the guy but he and his minions have conducted a vicious smear campaign
against me online, including fake sites, and have written to the Naval War College trying
to get me fired: Stay classy, Wayne!)
Thats enough reading to start; as more stuff on NSA gets published and there will be a
torrent of insta-books soon, thanks to Snowden Ill share my two cents on them.

Snowden, NSA, and Counterintelligence

September 4, 2013
Ever since the remarkable case of Edward Snowden broke into the limelight at the
beginning of the summer thats now winding down, Ive had a great deal to say about
it here, on Twitter, and on radio and television. As one of the very few former NSA
officers whos in the public eye and willing to talk about Snowden, Ive had an
audience. As a former NSA counterintelligence officer with experience dealing with
the Russians, Ive been pretty much a solo act.
From nearly the outset Ive stated that Snowden is very likely an agent of Russian
intelligence; this was met with howls of indignation which have died down in recent
weeks as its become apparent that Eds staying in Russia for some time, along with
whatever classified materials he had on his person. (Since Glenn Greenwalds partner
when stopped by British authorities at Heathrow had 58,000 highly classified
documents on him, thanks to Ed, one can only wonder how big the initial haul
actually was.) That Snowden was in contact with the Russian consulate in Hong Kong
during his pre-Moscow visit there, including spending his 30th birthday with his new
friends, is now admitted. Even President Vladimir Putin has conceded that Eds
contacts with Russian officials did not commence when he landed at Sheremtyevo
airport, rather before.
But when? That of course is the key question that NSA counterintelligence surely
wants needs to know. All roads here lead to Wikileaks. We know that Snowden in
late 2012 reached out to Glenn Greenwald and other members of the spy-ring all of
whom can be considered cut-outs for Wikileaks when not paid-up members that
stands behind the massive leaks. After making this contact, Ed took a contractor job
with Booz Allen Hamilton to increase his access to NSA secrets. Ive been stating for a
while now that Wikileaks is functionally an extension of Russian intelligence; its
become a minor meme as a few journalists have decided that such a scandalous
viewpoint is worth considering.
Of course, for anyone versed in the ways of Russian intelligence, the notion that
Wikileaks is a Moscow front thats involved in anti-US espionage is about as
controversial as, say, the notion that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Running
false flags, creating fake activist groups, using Western journalists and activists for
deception purposes this sort of thing is in the DNA of Russian intelligence going
back to the 19th century and is second nature to them. They call espionage
tradecraft konspiratsiya (conspiracy) for a reason.
While there can be little doubt that the damage Snowden has wrought to the US and
Allied SIGINT system is nothing less than immense, it will be some time before NSA and
the US Government make any public pronouncements on such a touchy matter not to
mention that it will likely be several months yet before the Intelligence Community
completes what will surely rank as the Mother of All Damage Assessments.
Without in any way diminishing the espionage losses that young Mr Snowden has
caused, I want to suggest that the political damage in this case may loom larger,

particularly as Putin savors his big win in this round, having humiliated American
intelligence as its never quite been publicly humiliated before. The onetime Chekist in
Putin surely is going to bed at night with a smile these days. There are no former
intelligence officers, Russias president once famously said, and he was also talking
about himself.
But what of the actual espionage losses caused by Ed Snowden? Context matters here,
and although the U.S. media hardly covered it, readers of this blog are aware that last
year saw the unfolding of a spy scandal in Canada that was simply vast in its
implications. Canadian naval officer Jeffrey Delisle for nearly five years before his
detection was regularly passing huge amounts of classified information to Russian
military intelligence (GRU). Every month or so, Delisle would leave his desk in the
intelligence fusion center in Halifax with a memory stick filled with top secret
information to sell to the Russians.
Moreover, Delisle is a trained intelligence officer unlike Snowden, who is no more
than an IT guy with little if any operational intelligence experience and its apparent
that much of what he gave away to GRU was SIGINT from NSA and its Five Eyes
partners (British GCHQ, Canadian CSEC, Australian DSD, New Zealand GCSB). The
Russians seemed to have really cleaned up with this one, and despite efforts from
ministers in Ottawa to downplay what Delisle did, Canadian senior intelligence officials
have made clear that the case is without precedent in its damage and implications, far
beyond Canada.
Simply put, one must wonder, after nearly five years of Delisle selling the Russians all
the Five Eyes TOP SECRET/ SCI data he could get his hands on, how much there really
was about NSA, GCHQ, et al, that Moscow didnt already know. Perhaps Snowden is, if
not exactly a patsy, a none-too-clever fellow Putin today called Ed a strange guy
whose main purpose is causing pain and suffering to Washington, DC. Which, let it be
said, he has done rather well, thanks to the propaganda offensive waged by
Greenwald, Poitras, and their helpers in several countries, with Eds purloined
information, and who have masked their radical activism under the (thin) guise of
post-modern journalism.
Part of a counterintelligence officers job is detecting patterns, linkages between cases,
that normal people dont see. When the large Illegals network run by the Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service (SVR) in the United States was rolled up by the FBI in mid-2010, with
the arrest and expulsion of ten deep-cover SVR agents, Moscow was humiliated, a pain
that Putin seems to have absorbed personally. Illegals, after all, are the jewel in the
crown of Russian HUMINT, an elite cadre of spies. Although the U.S. media mainly
focused on the redheaded vixen Anna Chapman, ignoring what she and her spy-partners
were actually doing in their secret lives, counterintelligence professionals were left with
awkward questions, not least because, in Russian practice, Illegals are useful for
undertaking highly sensitive tasks, including handling truly deep-cover agents working
for Moscow.
To the surprise of absolutely zero veteran counterspies, it soon emerged that the
roll-up of the SVR Illegals network in 2010 set off a molehunt inside U.S intelligence,
including at NSA. There were actually several Russian moles said to be embedded

inside the Intelligence Community, including at least one at NSA. Since there have no
public announcements of the detection or arrest of any Russian moles in the IC, it
appears that those individuals have not been caught.
Thus we are left with the discomforting realization that, between undetected moles,
Delisle, and Snowden, NSA and its sister agencies have been deeply penetrated by
Russian intelligence in recent years. What, then, is the exact role being played by Ed
and his motley crew of anti-secrecy activists who seem hellbent on exposing as
many NSA (and GCHQ) programs as they can?
It is possible that Snowdens appearance on the radar of Russian intelligence
presumably late in 2012, almost certainly through Wikileaks actually represents a
cover mechanism of sorts for Moscow. Tasked now with an enormous damage
assessment and trying to uncover if Snowden had any helpers inside NSA, it seems
unlikely that IC counterintelligence experts will have the resources or manpower
anytime soon to find the Russian moles who may be deeply embedded inside NSA
and related U.S. intelligence agencies.
If that sounds far-fetched, it shouldnt, because Moscow has done exactly this sort of
thing before, with considerable success. Very little can be said with certainty at this
point, though a clearer picture will emerge with time. Suffice to say that experienced
counterintelligence hands, accustomed to living with the vaunted wilderness of
mirrors that comes with playing spygames with Moscow, are asking the right
questions.
In the meantime it would be a step in the right direction for the U.S. and Allied
governments to start treating Wikileaks like the front for hostile intelligence that it
actually is. Right now, President Obama is contemplating bombing Syria and possibly
starting a new war in the Middle East. Surely he can find the strength to call
Wikileaks what it actually is, a far easier thing to achieve.

Wikileaks,
Snowden,
Belarus Connection

and

the

July 6, 2013
After having his first round of asylum applications turned down across the board,
NSA leaker/defector Edward Snowden may at last have found a home. Its been
reported that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said his country will offer
asylum to Americas most wanted IT guy, whom no one else seems to want. This may
settle the matter, and Snowden will be able to leave Moscows Sheremetyevo Airport
at last, but the more than minor issue of how Ed will actually get to Venezuela
remains unresolved.
Its worth noting that Maduro, who earlier this week was in Moscow, went home via
Belarus, where he celebrated independence festivities in Minsk with President or as
Maduro called him, Comrade President Aleksandr Lukashenka. Maduros
predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, visited Belarus five times, which really stood out
because virtually no heads of state visit Minsk these days, thanks to Belaruss awful
record as Europes only repressive dictatorship. There the secret police, still termed
the KGB (it would have cost a fortune to change the letterhead), keeps a lid on
dissent in a way that dismays virtually everyone in Europe. In recent years, Vladimir
Putin, once a strong supporter of the weird Lukashenka neo-Soviet cult, has put some
distance between Moscow and Minsk because nobody outside quasi-Stalinist circles
wants to be publicly associated with Belarus.
Wikileaks, however, is one of the few organizations with kind words about Lukashenka
which, given the awful record of the Belarusian KGB against the press and dissidents is
an odd position for an anti-secrecy group to take and heres where things get
interesting. The key figure in all this is Israel Shamir, who is one of the oddest and
shadiest characters youd ever want to meet. Importantly, hes been telling everyone
for years that hes the Wikileaks representative for Russia and Belarus. He has gone to
bat for the latter country and has been involved in discrediting Belarusian dissidents
which, given how badly Minsk treats such people, is no trivial matter.
So who is Israel Shamir? Thats not an easy question to answer with much certainty. His
official biography states that he was born in the Soviet Union in 1947 and emigrated to
Israel in 1969, but little of his curriculum vitae stands up to detailed scrutiny. He admits
to having something like a half-dozen different identities, complete with aliases. Of
greatest interest here is that, before he became famous for his Wikileaks links, he was
best known as a neo-Nazi holocaust denier in European circles. Which is a pretty rare
thing for a Jew and Israeli citizen to get mixed up in. Shamir, operating under several
names, is noted for his anti-Semitic vitriol and is fond of extolling the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion and hanging out with Nordic neo-Nazis. His views are so strange and
vehement that many have wondered if Shamirs is actually an agent provocateur on
behalf of some intelligence service. Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein, known for his
own pro-Palestinian views, who crossed paths with Shamir more than once, called him
a maniac, adding, He has invented his entire personal

history. Nothing he says about himself is true. In all, Shamirs a pretty odd choice as
Wikileaks go-to guy for Russia.
The role of Shamir in Wikileaks, as well as his bizarre views, began to get noticed in
late 2010, with an expose in Reason that asked just what was going on here, quoting
Shamir as calling Jews a virus in human form and boasting of his Holocaust denial.
Importantly, that piece had an admission by Kristinn Hrafnsson, Wikileaks
spokesman, when asked directly about the groups links with Shamir: Yes. Yes, he is
associated with us.
Not surprisingly, awkward questions followed including in The Guardian, not exactly a
right-wing rag. Reports followed all links here are to The Guardian, which given that
newspapers current involvement with the Snowden case should indicate something
that Shamir, is indeed deeply involved in the Wikileaks operation: As Adam,
Shamir (along with his Swedish son, a well-known anti-Semitic activist), has a key role
in Wikileaks decisions, he was the editor of the groups Russian-related US
diplomatic cables that were leaked by PFC Bradley Manning, and perhaps most
distastefully, he was involved in a smear campaign against the Swedish women who
accused Julian Assange of rape (the reason he remains holed up in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London).
Sensing it had a PR problem on its hands, Wikileaks made a few public statements on
its employee-friend-whatever Shamir. A Wikileaks press release on 3 February 2011
fudged the issue, observing that it was almost certainly false that Shamir is actually
an employee of the group, while noting that he was being paid by several (unnamed)
Russian press outfits; in all, this raised more questions than answers about who Shamir
is really working for. Wikileaks followed up with another press release on 1 March
2011, stating, Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any
manner, whatsoever. This statement seems patently untrue, given what is known
about Shamirs activities, but this remains the official Wikileaks line on this very
strange man.
I discovered this again last night, when I was pinged by Jacob Applebaum, the
American hacktivist and Wikileaks inner circle member. A Twitter spat followed, in
which I repeatedly asked Applebaum to clarify the groups relationship with Shamir,
and he refused to do so beyond citing the 1 March 2011 press release.
Unfortunately, Shamir never seems to have gotten the memo that he and Wikileaks
have nothing to do with each other. He divides his time between Israel, Sweden, and
Russia whos paying for all this, by the way? Wikileaks seems to have limited funds
and pops up in the media in those countries (in the first two countries not normally in a
flattering manner). He is prominent in the country of his birth, and he is easy to find in
the Russian media, denouncing US neo-imperialism and praising Wikileaks and, most
recently, extolling the virtues of Edward Snowden. Of critical importance is the fact that
Shamir regularly is identified in the Russian media as a Wikileaks representative and
speaks as if he has the groups imprimatur.
Most recently, on 4 July 2013 exactly two days ago Shamir was interviewed in the
Russian newspaper Zavrta (which has a left-wing nationalist orientation; its not a

supermarket gossip sheet), in an article titled The Edward Snowden Phenomenon,

where he was identified as a Wikileaks representative. Let me be perfectly clear
here. Shamirs interview portion of the article is sub-headed Israel Shamir, Wikileaks
Representative ( , WikiLeaks) the Russian meaning is

unambiguous. The content of the interview is classic Shamir, including fawning praise
of Snowden, whom he compares favorably with Kim Philby. I dont think he was
being ironic there.
The bottom line is Israel Shamir continues to represent himself as a member of
Wikileaks, indeed he usually implies hes in the groups inner circle. More than a few
people have questioned Shamirs mental stability, so it is possible that Wikileaks has
indeed cut ties with him and Shamir is simply lying. But given Wikileaks less than
transparent track record on this matter, more than Applebaums obfuscations is
required. Someone is clearly lying here, its important to know who.
Its especially important given the fact that Wikileaks is playing a leading role in the
Snowden case, to the dismay of some of Eds admirers and even members of his
family. Not to mention that Snowden, as of this writing, is still in Moscow. One need
not be a counterintelligence guru to have serious questions about Shamir and
Wikileaks here. It may be a much bigger part of the story than it appears to the naked
eye.
[N.B. The opinions expressed here are the authors alone.]

Snowden in the US-Russian SpyWar

June 27, 2013
The last two weeks have witnessed the unfolding of the strangest spy saga in the
history of American intelligence. Edward Snowden, a young contractor with the
National Security Agency, burst the bubble of secrecy surrounding that most secretive
of American spy services with shocking accusations of civil-liberties violations by NSA.
But soon thereafter Snowden changed the narrative, going beyond alleged domestic
abuses by exposing highly sensitive NSA foreign-intelligence programs from Chinese
territory. And then he fled to Moscow.
There has never been anything quite like this in the annals of American espionage.
While there have been plenty of traitors, more than a few defectors, plus some
whistleblowers (some of whom turned out later to have been under the control of
foreign intelligence services), Snowden seems increasingly to be a postmodern
combination of all three, perfectly tuned to the age of the Internet, 24/7 news
coverage and Twitter. Certainly the global media storm he has unleashed surpasses
any previous cases.
Read the rest in The National Interest ...

Will the real Edward Snowden please

stand up?
June 25, 2013
Is Edward Snowden really what he claims to be a whistleblower out to expose
government overreach? Or is he a pawn, witting or unwitting, of Americas
adversaries?
Its been the longest couple weeks in the history of the National Security Agency,
thanks to Snowdens astonishing leaks of sensitive information among the most
damaging in U.S. history. The former IT contractor for the NSA, and previously for the
CIA, has already divulged vast amounts of data about highly classified signals
intelligence (SIGINT) programs. Its by far the worst series of leaks ever for NSA,
Americas biggest, best-funded, and most secretive spy agency. And Snowden
promises more to come.
But the case hasnt taken the path many expected. When Snowden first appeared in
his Hong Kong hotel, dramatically outing himself as the source of stories in the
Guardian and the Washington Post about a top-secret program called PRISM,
attention immediately focused on whether the NSA was violating U.S. laws and the
4th Amendment by collecting information about Americans, as Snowden asserted
forcefully
Read the rest at POLITICO ...

Snowden, Intelligence, and History

June 17, 2013
As the remarkable case of Edward Snowden has unfolded over the last week, since
the former NSA contractor went public by naming himself as the source of The
Guardians scoops about US intelligence, Ive had plenty to say. In addition to my
recent op-ed in The Financial Times, Ive tweeted quite a bit. Since Ive been on the
road the whole time and trying to finish a book, Ive not blogged about this
sensational story until now.
Ill have more to say about Snowden and this front-page saga lots more in due
time, but for the moment I want to highlight a few issues that merit attention. In the
first place, Snowdens claim to whistleblower status as the defender of US civil
liberties has been severely compromised by his mounting efforts to discredit US and
UK intelligence with leaks regarding their exploitation of foreign diplomatic
communications; so far, in addition to Snowdens exposure of NSA activities against
China, weve heard about GCHQ operations against Russia, Turkey, and South Africa,
and one must be naive not to think more is coming.
There is no point to this exercise save humiliating London and Washington. These are
headlines only because the public seldom hears details of such things until decades
later. Historians, however, are well aware that the interception and decryption of
diplomatic messages goes back as long as there have been diplomatic messages. Such
operations by US intelligence were blown back in 1931, with the publication of Herbert
Yardleys best-seller The American Black Chamber. The public was shocked by his
revelations the scandalous Yardley, easily the most entertaining rogue in the history
of American espionage, had headed the Black Chamber from World War I until its
sudden closure in 1929, and the book was payback for that and a few countries
changed their codes and ciphers (importantly one of them was Japan), but soon the
public moved on. And the US government kept intercepting and decrypting foreign
traffic, indeed more and better than ever.
Much the same will happen now, no matter what transpires with young Mr Snowden.
From the sanctuary of Hong Kong he will, no doubt, continue to howl gigantic curses at
NSA, its partners, and the US government, with the help of his press handlers and
perhaps others uncredited. One need not be a counterintelligence veteran, like this
author, to expect that his ties to Beijing will grow more obvious as well. His activities will
be scandalous, highly illegal, and will cost US and UK taxpayers countless sums to
compensate for the expensive SIGINT programs he has compromised to say nothing of
the lost intelligence value.
It is significant that Snowdens leaks have demolished the mounting US-led campaign to
hold Beijing accountable for its vast global cyberespionage and hacking efforts against
governments and private firms in dozens of countries (the conspiratorial among us may
wonder if this was Eds utility to Beijing from the start). Yet the protests from Beijing,
Moscow, and Ankara today feigning outrage that NSA and GCHQ dare to spy on them
need not be taken too seriously, since they do the same, every day.

What NSA and its partners do is done by the intelligence services of all reasonably
advanced countries. One of the strange and discomforting things about the current
Snowden sensation, at least to this historically-minded ex-spook, is the specter of a
younger generation that finds any espionage intrinsically illegitimate and immoral.
Here we have the fusing of techno-utopianism and an Assange-like belief that any
state secrecy is unacceptable: in all, a strange brew of naivete and nihilism.
The historical truth, of course, is that states have been performing espionage as long as
there have been anything like states; its not called the Second Oldest Profession for
nothing. States have regarded espionage running and catching spies, intercepting
other states messages while protecting your own as core state business for
millennia, long before anybody thought states should provide education, pensions,
health care, or even police. Espionage is not going away anytime soon.
Ed Snowden has brought attention to issues of domestic surveillance that, as readers of
this blog will know, Ive advocated for some time. Having witnessed DNI Clapper and
DIRNSA Alexander at best flub answers to critical questions before Congress, its clear
that major scrutiny is coming, and ought to. Regrettably Snowdens activities, which
every day make him less a whistleblower and more a traitor and possible defector, not
least because from his Chinese perch he seems to object to US surveillance not
surveillance per se, may actually detract from that important and necessary debate.
Citizens in all countries ought to hold their governments accountable regarding
domestic intelligence activities, which should be regulated by laws and monitored
through oversight. But campaigning to abolish espionage altogether indicates a lack
of seriousness about weighty matters of statecraft and secrecy that demand rigor
and the utmost seriousness.
Watch this space, much more is coming ....