New in SpyWeek: CIA Reveals Covert Role in Iran Rescue Amid Deepening Hormuz Crisis

DNI Gabbard teetering after exits of Bondi, Noem, Kent, Army Chief as Trump rages at Iran resilience, threatens massive attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Diagram by Alexandra Fojtíková/Prezi

Who’s Got a Secret? Evidently eager to claim credit for the rescue of that downed Air Force F-15 weapons officer from Iran, the CIA unveiled a covert action op and let it be known it “initiated a deception campaign to try to confuse Iranian forces and convince them the airman had already been rescued and was moving out of the country in a ground convoy,” an administration official told the New York Times and many others. The official also said, “Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos extracted the officer in a massive operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel.” An Air Force Warthog also took crippling fire during the search for the downed F-15 crew, with its pilot bailing out over Kuwait. All this followed Trump’s claim Tuesday in his national address that Iran has “no anti-aircraft equipment” and that their radar capabilities were “100% annihilated.”

Needs Improvement: U.S. intelligence has been superb at picking targets in Iran but not so good—awful, actually—in predicting the Islamic Republic’s response to the attacks, former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos and journalist-turned corporate risk analyzer Jeremy Hurewitz wrote Saturday at Just Security, pointing out what’s become obvious with every passing day. “First, the Islamic Regime has not fallen, which means the long-term threats it poses to its population and the world remain. More specifically, hardline elements appear to remain in control according to well-sourced Iranian diaspora reporting, and they are still fighting with daily ballistic missile and drone attacks against U.S. interests in [the] region, Israel, and the Gulf states. The Iranian leadership almost certainly feels that it is in a relatively solid position strategically as the energy crisis they have created through attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz is causing global economic disruptions.” On Sunday, Trump used “an expletive-laden social media post to taunt Iranian leaders,” as the New York Times put it, saying that the U.S. would destroy their civilian infrastructure if it didn’t release their stranglehold on Hormuz. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Trump roared on Truth Social early Easter morning. “JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Tulsi Tumult: For a spy agency boss, Tulsi Gabbard sure gets an unusual amount of attention—mostly of the unwelcome sort. Now, with Trump reportedly polling aides about a replacement for the DNI and ultra-MAGA agitator Laura Loomer on her case, her days would seem to be numbered.

“There is a joke in the Trump administration that DNI stands for ‘Do Not Invite,’” Loomer posted after noting Gabbard’s absence from the latest Kim Jong-un-style Trump cabinet gathering. “As I have reported, she is on THIN ICE.” Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii, may well run for president, Loomer suggested, pointing to an answer the DNI gave to a fawning question from Megyn Kelly about it last year: “I will never rule out any opportunity to serve my country.” Loomer and other MAGA world disciples have also been recycling Gabbard’s 2020 denunciation of Trump’s assassination-by-drone of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. “President Trump has committed an illegal and unconstitutional act of war, pushing our nation headlong into a war with Iran without any authorization from Congress,” Gabbard said at the time. “A war that would be so costly and devastating it would make our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic.” But Gabbard refused to call Trump’s current Iran attacks unconstitutional in a humiliating congressional appearance last month. Her close former aide, Joe Kent, has not been shy about his opposition to the Iran war since his March 17 resignation as head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Gabbard: Heard, not seen

CIA Bank Shots: Former CIA ops officer Kevin Chalker made an extraordinary string of allegations in the March 30 edition of The New Yorker magazine. Assigned to the agency’s nuclear counterproliferation wing, Chalker told David D. Kirkpatrick that he’d reach out to Iranian nuclear scientists and make them a “defect, or die” offer. A number of them opted for the good life in America, Chalker said, but for those who refused, he’d give their names to the Israelis for elimination. He also says U.S. special forces and CIA ground branch elements may have also carried out assassinations. (See my highlights here.)

Kink in Noem’s Armor: “If a media organization can find this out, you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well,” retired senior CIA ops officer Marc Polymeropoulos told the Daily Mail), commenting on the blackmail liability of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem while her husband pursued a secret double life as an online sexual fetishist. Ousted by Trump on March 5, Noem and her paramour-special assistant Corey Lewandowski are reportedly under investigation by the DHS inspector general for suspicious contracting awards. (CNN)

Espionage Risk at CISA?: The DHS shutdown, entering its 13th week, has security mavens worried about the vulnerability of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency employees to hostile spy services. Some “800 people have been working unpaid while 60% remain furloughed,” according to the Federal News Network. “DHS staff working without pay accumulate debt that triggers the exact financial stress indicators used to flag clearance risk,” one analyst observed on Reddit. “This creates a cycle where the government’s own failure to fund its workforce degrades the trustworthiness metrics it uses to vet that workforce.” In mid-March, Rep. James R. Walkinshaw (D-Va.) and fellow members of the Oversight and Government Reform and Homeland Security committees called for the DHS and I.C. inspectors general to investigate former Acting CISA Director Dr. Madhu Gottumukkala for firing several career CISA employees after he reportedly flunked a polygraph exam they’d insisted on. On Mar. 18, they were “cleared of all wrongdoing” and returned to work. In late February, Gottumukkala, a Kristi Noem appointee, was relieved and appointed as DHS’s director of strategic implementation. No word on his future under Markwayne Mullin.

Don’t miss this week’s SpyTalk podcast, featuring veteran Israeli national security journalist Yossi Melman on Netanyahu’s scapegoating of Mossad for the Iran war’s shortcomings.

China’s “Major” Hack of FBI: The FBI is calling a recent China-linked cyber intrusion into a sensitive Bureau surveillance system a “major incident,” Politico reported April 1, “meaning it poses significant risks to U.S. national security, according to one congressional aide and two U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.” In a notice last month to Congress, the FBI said the “affected” system contained “returns from legal process, such as pen register and trap and trace surveillance returns, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of FBI investigations.” Cybersecurity researchers, meanwhile, are warning that, “The White House App Is Riddled With Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities.” (Notus)

Antifa Terror: President Trump’s obsession with falsely framing anti-MAGA activists as members of a structured terrorist organization has been quietly escalated with its inclusion on a classified list of intelligence priorities. “Since 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community has relied on the National Intelligence Priorities Framework to determine where its constituent agencies focus their attention and resources,” Julia Ioffe reported in Puck. “The classified document tells the CIA which organizations to infiltrate, the NSA which signals intelligence to intercept, and the National Reconnaissance Office where to point its spy satellites. It’s historically included targets like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. But in recent months, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, the Trump administration has been working to add a new top counterterrorism priority to the NIPF: antifa.”

Alien Intelligence: Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett says the world would go crazy if it heard what he’s heard from I.C. briefers on “extraterrestrial life.” The Republican told Newsmax that he’s “been briefed by about every alphabet agency there is. And, I’ll just say this, if they were to release the things that I’ve seen, you’d be up at night, worrying about, thinking about this stuff.” Burchett also claimed that he saw information just two weeks ago that “would have set the Earth” on fire and would have caused the country to come “unglued.”

In other E.T. news, a top FEMA official is doubling down on his claims he was “teleported” 50 miles by a UFO to a Waffle House in Rome, Ga. Responding to the ridicule he’s received, Gregg Phillips, appointed last December as director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, said “haters gonna hate.” (CNN)