Thread by @mattblaze

Another cleared (former) USG employee who thought he was selling classified docs to a foreign embassy (unspecified which one), but was actually dealing with the FBI. Echos of the recent Brazil nuclear sub case.

https://twitter.com/FBIWFO/status/1575564846644568065

A remarkable thing in the affidavit (linked in the press release) is how quickly he was caught. Only a couple month from initial contact to arrest.

Spying is not, evidently, for amateurs.

Remember, if you ask a foreign diplomat if they're actually an FBI agent, they have to tell you.

#ThingsThatAreWrong

Some important details omitted from the affidavit.

How did Dalke initially contact the FBI? The narrative starts with the FBI UC emailing him at Dalke's burner (I presume Proton) email address. But how did the FBI get that address in the first place and know he'd be interested?

Presumably Dalke contacted someone he thought represented the SVR or GRU and gave them Email-Address-1. So either that was actually the FBI,, or the FBI intercepted that initial contact and replied before the real SVR or GRU did.

In any case, the FBI played him like a fiddle.

If there's a trial, some of this will likely come out, but these cases only rarely go to trial.

They also omitted the details of the arrest (presumably because the affidavit was written before that). I'd imagine they arrested him at (Denver) Union Station, and seized whatever device he used to transmit the docs.

And in another dumb espionage case from today, an Army doctor and spouse allegedly tried to sell medical records of US military personnel to the Russians, but, of course, it was actually the FBI.

Not classified, but the mother of all HIPAA violations.

justice.gov/usao-md/press-…

Yes, they were charged with an actual, honest-to-goodness HIPAA violation.