Let’s say you’re Russian counterintelligence, and you’ve got a problem. Your leader is waging an unpopular war, and even the security services are nervous. Attempted defections are increasing. Do you ramp up your doubles program? Do you even have that capacity? What about increasing scrutiny of your own ranks? But that can breed paranoia and resentment, and lead to self-annihilating mole hunts. Meanwhile, your leadership is incessantly demanding more source reporting about your NATO adversaries and within the country you’ve invaded.

Stunning BBC interview with a Ukrainian journalist who, stuck in Russian-occupied Kherson, organized a clandestine insurgent network that provided target packages to the Ukrainian security services and planted car bombs.

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0c… The journalist says the network employed strict compartmentation to ensure that compromise of one operative would not endanger others. He says they verified the bona fides of new operatives by requiring them to perform a violent act, e.g. plant a car bomb.

NEW: How a now-shuttered CIA paramilitary training program on Ukraine's eastern frontlines helped prepare Kyiv for the current Russian onslaught.

The effect of the agency training programs “cannot be overestimated,” said a former senior CIA official.

news.yahoo.com/exclusive-secr… “We tried to really focus on operational planning, then really hard military skills like long-range marksmanship—not just the capacity to do it, but to know how to do it on a battlefield, to really deplete the leadership on the other side,” said a former senior intel official.

"The pace [of COVID-19 cases] is slowing down even more in SF, where the doubling time is every 10 days, and in the original epicenter of California’s outbreak, Santa Clara County, where the doubling time is now every 11 days. In mid-March, this was happening every four days." "Part of the reason for the faster pace of coronavirus cases in Southern California could stem from the Bay Area acting earlier to implement a stay-at-home order, said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco."

This is gutting.

This too.

Levinson family by US officials told that former FBI agent Bob Levinson died in Iranian custody.

https://twitter.com/HelpBobLevinson/status/1242921296696160256

I did a lot of reporting around what happened to Levinson, who disappeared in Kish Island in 2007 while on a still-undisclosed mission for the CIA.

An important trend in espionage within the last decade has been the rise of "travelers"--spies or assets flying to a location (often a 3rd country) for a discrete, time-bound intelligence task--current and former US intel officials have told me. This is being seriously disrupted. As with other types of espionage, with human source intelligence, you want to blend in with the noise--not be a signal. The reemergence of hard (or harder) borders with COVID-19 threatens this anonymity.

The mistrial in the Schulte case exemplifies a long-running debate, going back decades, within DOJ and the IC about the benefits and pitfalls of prosecuting alleged U.S. spies. Juries are unpredictable. Proving espionage cases in open court can require the disclosure of classified information. Intelligence agencies--particularly, historically CIA--are wary of having their employees or assets called to the witness stand.

There's a deep, deep irony to this whole "Abolish the CIA" fuss. This sentiment first took root in the 1960s counterculture: a counterculture that owes its very existence to CIA's MKULTRA (mind control) program. As Steven Kinzer documents exhaustively in "Poisoner in Chief," MKULTRA led to massive testing of LSD at universities (and elsewhere) in the US in the 1950s and 60s. LSD became popular in the intelligentsia because of CIA. (Some CIA officials also experimented with the drug.)

Finally got through this absolute tour de force by @adamentous and @eosnos. It's something for which to aspire as a journalist.

newyorker.com/magazine/2020/… @adamentous @eosnos You read something like this story and it renews your sense of what national security journalism can be.

The growing consensus in the US national security community that some form of industrial policy will be necessary to counter China's rise has the capacity to reorder bedrock, widely-held, 20th century US ideological principles about the proper role of the state in the economy. I don't think this has been fully absorbed.

If this is true, it makes Israel, and the US, less safe. PA security forces are key partners in preventing terrorism emanating from the West Bank.

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1223678675255775235

I visited the PA security forces HQ in Jenin a few years ago. They emphasized the depth of this cooperation, and noted that they did so even though it created a lot of friction and resentment in their own communities--many Pals believe it makes them co-optees of their occupiers.

Ok, I guess I'm going to be revisiting this piece from March 2019 again now. Here's a thread.

news.yahoo.com/amphtml/as-tru… "Iranian operatives are compiling what are known as “target packages” to undertake prospective future assassinations and terrorist attacks, according to more than half a dozen former U.S. intelligence officials."

news.yahoo.com/amphtml/as-tru…

. @JennaMC_Laugh and I spent many months reporting this story, and there are a lot of new revelations contained within it. So I'll be sharing individual snippets over the day:

news.yahoo.com/shattered-insi… US officials realized that the Kremlin was able to identify new CIA officers in the US Embassy in Moscow — likely based on the differences in pay between diplomats, details on past service in “hardship” posts, speedy promotions & other digital clues:

news.yahoo.com/shattered-insi…

"I may have pardoned a war criminal, but look, here's a puppy"

https://twitter.com/DavidNakamura/status/1199017185697574914

"How could I have done such a bad thing when you're looking at this Very Good Boy?"

A thought: given current dynamics—the centrality of Syria & return of Afghanistan to periphery; its balancing of US interests and courting of US foes; its antagonism to US intel—Turkey will eclipse Pakistan as the most vexing bilateral relationship for the US in the next decade. Not to mention, of course, Erdogan’s megalomaniac tendencies and paranoia. Fundamentally, it is a relationship that will have to be managed through gritted teeth.

Whether explicit or not, all reporting contains a host of predicates: What, and who, is this reporting for? What is the public good being provided? What are the ethical issues attendent on publishing, or not publishing, certain facts? How should a fact pattern be represented? These are constant concerns for journalists, who can (and do, I promise) expend a lot of psychological energy thinking about these issues. And it is something that, speaking from experience, national security journalists take *extremely seriously*.

Read @WylieNewmark:

"In that context of hard counterintelligence competition, it becomes eminently reasonable to suggest that the timing of this [GCHQ/NSA] news is more important than the message. And what interesting timing it is." "Two months since OilRig’s more recent tactics, techniques, and procedures were publicly outed. Three months since knowledge of Turla’s ability to at least partially compromise OilRig was made public."

This is a pretty incredible disclosure from GCHQ--and a window into both Russian prowess and a future where assigning attribution is going to become more fraught.

ft.com/content/b947b4… "Mr Chichester described how Turla began 'piggybacking' on Oilrig’s attacks by monitoring an Iranian hack closely enough to use the same backdoor route into an organisation or to gain access to the resulting intelligence. Turla is also known as Waterbug or Venomous Bear."