I'm going to watch this tomorrow, but I still can't figure why they had to invent a CIA case officer for Rachel Brosnahan to play. She'd have been perfect as Janet Chisholm, who (to my mind) played a more daring role than Wynne in this op. spytalk.co/p/spytalk-at-t…
You've essentially got MI6's answer to the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in this character.
There was initially almost no suspicion about Penkovsky, whose cover gig was to meet trade delegations, gallivanting around Moscow with Wynne. Janet, meanwhile, had to do brush-passes in broad daylight, in a Moscow park, with -- checks notes -- three small children and a pram.
And the kids and pram were props in the handoff!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This piece by @TomRtweets is the best anatomy I've seen as to the ongoing dispute between CIA and NSA on the now much scrutinized GRU "bounties" story. And it's conveniently short: washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/inside…
Note that there was no climb-down from the original leaked allegations, as reported correctly in the NYT that NSA had a lower level of confidence in this intelligence than did CIA. ("Moderate" confidence means pretty good, in laymen's terms.)
The fact that this intelligence made it into the President's Daily Brief (Trump's) also suggested it wasn't quite the nothing-burger it's since been portrayed as in the press. Ditto making it into the WH statement on sanctions:
So in 2014 the GRU blew up Czech military ammunition destined, via a Bulgarian arms dealer, for Ukraine. Then it twice tried to murder the Bulgarian with a nerve agent, first in Sofia, then on the Bulgarian coast. The puzzle pieces finally fall into place.
Emilian Gebrev had all sorts of other theories as to why the Russians wanted him dead—his arms dealing to Georgia and Ukraine, he believed, was too small-stakes to qualify.
So here now, from the White House itself, is the mention of the GRU/Taliban 'bounties' claim. No sanctions levied, but the matter is "being handled through diplomatic, military and intelligence channels": whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Note that it isn't much of a revelation that the IC assessed the 'bounties' story with "low-moderate confidence." NSA and CIA always disagreed about this allegation. From NYT, July 2020:
And the intelligence wasn't just based on Taliban detainee interrogations. It's next to impossible, for instance, that detainees would have known which specific unit of the GRU was responsible for these payments. Intercepts played a part, as per NYT: nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/…
The U.S. government affirms for the first time that a Russian spy close to Trump's campaign chair in 2016 not only received privileged Trump campaign information but did indeed pass it along to the Russian Intelligence Services. In case you thought Mueller was the last word...
As to which agency Kilimnik worked for, it's almost certainly the GRU. Why? Let's look at his background.
In the mid-90s he taught Swedish at the Military University for Foreign Languages of the Russian Ministry of Defense -- a customary educational pathway for GRU officers.
It was sabotage, no cyberattack. And note American and Israeli intel confirming it to NYT. Mossad’s penetration of Iran is extensive. nytimes.com/2021/04/11/wor…
Leave aside the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program in this operation; the messaging here isn’t hard to parse.
So the goal here is twofold, as I see it: Hinder the program for its own sake and signal to Washington (assuming this wasn’t a joint operation—and it may have been) that time is on its side, not Tehran’s.