New in SpyWeek: Kash Out? FBI Turmoil as Russian, Chinese Ops and Domestic Threats Escalate
FBI Director's Utah pratfalls, Epstein flip-flops, wrongful dismissal law suits and unrest in ranks now rile MAGAworld, not just Democrats
Et Tu, Rufo? Amid plunging FBI morale, disdain by MAGA world over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and facing mounting suits by popular former top officials over his loyalty tests and political retribution firings, FBI Director Kash Patel’s pratfalls in the Charlie Kirk murder investigation has now ignited the simmering dismay of leading right wingers. “We would be wise to take a moment and ask whether Kash Patel has what it takes to get this done,” Chris Rufo, an influential conservative activist (835,500 followers on X), posted to social media on Friday.
“I’ve been on the phone the last few days with many conservative leaders, all of whom wholeheartedly support the Trump Administration and none of whom are confident that the current structure of the FBI is up to this task,” Rufo wrote. “He performed terribly in the last few days, and it's not clear whether he has the operational expertise to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements—of whatever ideology—that threaten the peace in the United States.” (Washington Post). Rufo might’ve added foreign threats to his worries. The ranks of counterintelligence, counterespionage and counter-domestic extremism agents and experts have also been thinned by Patel’s Jan 6-related purges, former officials have told SpyTalk, and new questions arose just this week over its handling of a key 9/11 suspect. Patel will face a tough audience this week on Capitol Hill, and not just from Democrats.
A notable casualty of Patel’s anti-DEI crusade that got renewed attention Thursday: the forced retirement over the summer of Mehtab Syed, “a highly regarded former counterterrorism agent appointed in February to run the Salt Lake City field office.” The reasons for her departure “remain unclear, according to former officials.” Faced with a demotion and transfer, she retired. Tyler Robinson, meanwhile, the 22-year-old who turned himself in and allegedly confessed to the assassination, turns out not to be trans, or a leftist, or even a Democrat, as MAGA world screamed within hours of the assassination. “Robinson was an alt-right sympathizer who idolized far-right figures like Nick Fuentes and Laura Loomer,” according to Grok’s AI summary on X. “He viewed Kirk as insufficiently conservative and a ‘sellout’ or traitor to Trump and MAGA ideals—echoing criticisms Loomer had publicly leveled against Kirk just days before the shooting…” [Update: On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox averred that Robinson had been “radicalized” after he dropped out of college and said he had a romantic partner who is transitioning from male to female who is cooperating fully with investigators.]
CIA in Mexico. It’s never been much of a secret, but Reuters reports this week that “the CIA has been running covert operations in Mexico for years to track down the country’s most-wanted drug traffickers”—and with some success, thanks to its relations with “special narco-hunting units inside the Mexican military,” according to reporters Drazen Jorgic and Laura Gottesdiener. “With the permission of the Mexican government, the CIA gives training and equipment to these outfits, as well as financial backing for activities like travel. The U.S. spy agency also screens their members with U.S.-administered polygraph tests, which is why the groups are often called ‘CIA vetted units,’” they write (in an optimistic, if not entirely naive take on the reliability of lie detectors, we think). “Today, there are at least two such CIA vetted military units operating in Mexico. In addition to the Mexican Army group that nabbed Ovidio [Guzmán López, son of the imprisoned cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán], there’s a special Mexican Navy intelligence outfit, according to eight current and former Mexican and U.S. officials.”
Kremlin Sky Spies Over Poland: “Very few believe Russia was attempting to inflict serious damage, something that would almost certainly trigger a strong military response from NATO. Instead, Russia wanted to send a message, analysts said, aimed at intimidating and testing European NATO countries that support Ukraine,” ABC News reported, following Moscow’s deep drone penetration of Poland last week. "We have to interpret this as a probe and a warning," Mark Galeotti, a veteran Russia analyst…said on his YouTube channel.” Back in August, however, the German magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported that Russian drones had an espionage role. “Suspected Russian drones are surveilling US and NATO military transport routes, gathering intelligence on upcoming weapons deliveries and ammunition shipments to the front,” it said.
Kremlin Spy Proxies Boinked: “Romania, Czechia, and Hungary have jointly dismantled a Belarusian espionage network operating across Europe, the Czech Security and Information Service (BIS) announced on Sept. 8, the Kyiv Independent reported Tuesday (via Yahoo). “According to BIS, the network was organized by Belarus’s State Security Committee (KGB) to recruit agents and collect sensitive intelligence. Among those exposed was a former deputy of Moldova’s intelligence service (SIS), who allegedly passed secret information to the KGB.”
Beijing Punks Michigan Rep: In July, “US trade groups, law firms and government agencies received an email purporting to come from Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich), chairman of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The messages, coming from a non-government email address, urged recipients to provide feedback on proposed sanctions against China, telling them that their “insights are essential.” The emails contained an attachment that appeared to be a draft of the legislation. Surprise! It was a malware assault by APT41, the Ministry of State Security’s devilish hacking unit. (To misuse a famous Pete Seeger line, “When will they ever learn?”)
From Silicon to Xinjiang with Love: “Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known,” an in-depth Associated Press investigation has found. “They sold billions of dollars of technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Congress and in the media that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities” reporters Dake Kang and Yael Grauer found. “Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a brutal mass detention campaign in the far west region of Xinjiang — targeting, tracking and grading virtually the entire native Uyghur population to forcibly assimilate and subdue them.”
Mossad Memoir: Former Mossad boss Yossi Cohen has nothing but praise for Gina Haspel, whose term as CIA director coincided with his, he reveals in a new memoir out this coming week (reviewed by SpyTalk’s Yossi Melman). Cohen recalls his frustration over Israeli leaders’ reluctance to authorize an assassination of Iranian Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani, fearing it would spark a wider war. During a visit to Washington he says Haspel told him, “Your generals, like ours, don’t like to fight.” In early 2020, Trump decided to do it himself, ordering a Jan. 3 U.S. drone strike that killed the legendary Iranian at the Baghdad airport.
Oh, Crap: North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is just the latest world leader reported to be paranoid about his poop. During the recent dictators’ summit in Beijing, “Kim…brought his own toilet aboard his armoured train to prevent his bodily waste from falling into foreign hands - a precaution he has previously deployed at summits with US and South Korean leaders,” the South China Morning Post relayed from Japan's Nikkei newspaper. “Experts say these efforts reveal how deeply Pyongyang fears the weaponisation of biometric and genetic material.” Translation: He fears enemy spies might steal his shit and find out if—or how much—he’s sick.
But it’s not just Kim. Back in 1987 the late legendary muckraker Jack Anderson uncovered “a series of failed efforts by the CIA and Britain’s MI6 to collect a stool sample from Mikhail Gorbachev in advance of the Soviet leader’s visit to Washington,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, recalled in Foreign Policy back in 2016. Nor did old Joe Stalin think it a waste of time, Lewis added. “Former Soviet intelligence officer Igor Atamanenko told Komsomolskaya Pravda that during Stalin’s reign, Soviet analysts substituted for their lack of spy gadgets by collecting and evaluating stool samples from world leaders, including Mao Zedong.” There’s been no reporting on Donald Trump’s hygiene security, but I’d bet the Secret Service is keeping close watch.
Pocket Litter:
Martyrs: Iran has arrested 53 Christians on espionage charges that rights groups call persecution. (Anglican Mainstream)
UFOs: Fresh from her hearing on JFK assassination conspiracy theories, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s House Oversight and Accountability Committee invited former military personnel and one currently serving officer to recount their experiences with what the Pentagon calls UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) played a video which showed an object being struck by a U.S. MQ-9 Hellfire missile off Yemen on Oct. 30, 2024—and continuing to fly, gathering its shattered parts as it departed.
Can you imagine being the agent tasked with collecting Trump’s stool all in the name of national security?
Damn fine reporting, but really you had to toss in a UAP?