New in SpyWeek: Overt-Covert Venezuela Op, KGB Files on JFK, Bolton Busted, Nobel Spy?

Also: More Chinese Subversion, Russians rolled up, Giuliani in the Balkans, Orban intrigue

Overt-Covert: President Trump confirmed this week that he had “authorized” covert actions to destabilize Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s socialist dictatorship because “they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America…And..we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela…”—claims experts call baseless, as well as phony foundations for illegal military attacks in the Caribbean. (Colombia and Mexico are the major culprits.) Then, in a kind of off-hand remark to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looking on, Trump said Maduro had offered concessions to avoid an armed conflict “because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States,” which has assembled an armada nearby.

The CIA has previously conducted “covert” wars whose broad outlines were well known, such as in Laos (in the 1960s) and Afghanistan (1980s), but no one can remember a U.S. president openly confirming one. Meanwhile, the intel remains murky: “A classified briefing for senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month did not include representatives from intelligence agencies or the military command structure for South and Central America,” The A.P. reported.

Covert Sideshow: Convicted MAGA supplicants Rudy Giuliani and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich are picking up some serious coin running an “influence campaign” on behalf of Milorad Dodia, a pro-Russia Bosnian Serb nationalist who’s contesting his removal as president of the tiny Republika Srpska. Dubbed “a sort of Trump of the Balkans,” Dodia was sentenced to a year in prison in February on charges of ”authoritarianism” and “undermining of federal Bosnian institutions.” The unofficial Trump envoys “are being paid about $300,000 per month or more, according to filings with the Justice Department.” (NYT)

Bolton Busted: The indictment Thursday of former Trump National Security Assistant-turned fierce Trump critic John Bolton is packed with juicy and even “surreal” details, according to accounts. Some critics were quick to portray the prosecution as part of Trump’s revenge campaign carried out by partisan hacks at the Justice Department and FBI, but the record shows that the investigation was pursued by DoJ professionals during the Biden administration. The indictment accuses him of “using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of ‘diary’ notes about his day-to-day activities as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and 2019,” said The New York Times. “The notes, which were sent to two family members who did not have security clearances, included national defense information, such as details classified as top secret, according to the indictment.” Worse, “Bolton’s emails”—over AOL—”were later hacked by someone associated with the government of Iran,” according to the indictment.

Dim Sum: A former NSC India expert and ambassadorial adviser in the George W. Bush administration, Ashley J. Tellis, was arrested by the FBI last Saturday at his home in Vienna, VA and hit with Espionage Act charges. Investigators found “hundreds of pages with classification markings in the basement, according to court records.” The FBI, which seems to have been watching Tellis closely, spotted him “having dinner with Chinese officials in Northern Virginia at least four times”—which, by itself, is no crime. Still…. His lawyers said they would be “vigorously contesting the allegations, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary.” (Washington Post)

Luna Tic: Moscow has a friend of sorts in Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, whom it just gifted Russia’s file on “who assassinated J.F.K.,” as she put it. The Florida woman “asked the National Archives to upload the whole 350-page dossier to their site, but the archives declined, citing the government shutdown,” reported Russian-born, Putin-despising journalist Julia Ioffe. “Instead, she announced she would take the file to the Substack of J.F.K. assassination investigator Jefferson Morley,” who’s long been devoted to unearthing alleged CIA ties to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. “Given that the dossier was presented by the Russian government and is said to be authored by the K.G.B., every word should be read with a massive dose of skepticism,” she noted sensibly at Puck, where she is a well regarded Russia expert and Washington correspondent.

“Back in the day,” she added, “the intelligence services of a foreign adversary would’ve had to work a lot harder to get their narrative…into the American discourse. These days, the Russians can just hand a congresswoman an exclusive gift …and she’ll make plans to post the entire thing, unredacted. So not only is she injecting the stuff directly into the conversational bloodstream and the official American historical record, she’s also lending it her legitimacy as a congresswoman.” Luna did not immediately respond.

Jefferson Morley and Rep. Anna Luna (JFKFacts.org)

Bad Russia: A former security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Norway was convicted Wednesday in Oslo of spying for both Russia and Iran. “Prosecutors said he handed over details about the embassy’s diplomats, its floor plans and security routines, among other things, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK reported. The broadcaster reported that American ties to Israel and the war in Gaza prompted the man to contact Russia and Iran.” (Washington Post)

More Bad Russia: Polish prosecutors on Monday charged two Russian citizens with spying for Russian intelligence and, in one of the cases, plotting to send an explosive device via courier, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. They said “the package “contained explosive devices and materials in the form of nitroglycerine, as well as hidden military-grade electric detonators and initiating devices…” It added: “The case comes amid a series of explosions at courier depots in the UK, Germany, and on the outskirts of Warsaw in July 2024, which Western officials attribute to Russia.

Badder Russia: French authorities have detained four men suspected of plotting to kill a Russian dissident in the country. The alleged plot targeted Vladimir Osechkin, a human-rights activist in exile and a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who provides regular livestream commentary on YouTube. "This was supposed to happen live on air, as theatrically as possible," he told his 1 million followers on the channel Thursday. (WSJ)

Hungary Games: Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s spies targeted EU officials in Brussels, say reports. “A joint investigation by Germany’s Der Spiegel, Belgian daily De Tijd, Hungarian outlet Direkt36 and others reported that Hungarian intelligence officials disguised as diplomats tried to infiltrate EU institutions while Olivér Várhelyi (now a European commissioner) was Hungary’s ambassador to the bloc.” (Politico)

Death to France: An Iranian court sentenced two French citizens to a combined 63 years in prison on espionage and national security charges, the country’s judiciary said Tuesday, likely further straining relations between Tehran and Paris, according to The Associated Press, The semi official Fars news agency named the pair as Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, it said. Meanwhile, “A deep sense of unease has gripped Iran since American and Israeli airstrikes in June, but on a recent visit to the capital, we found that many Iranians seemed to be just trying to get by,” according to a deep dive by The New York Times’ Declan Walsh. “During our trip, the city had a wounded air, its sang-froid shaken by a war that few had anticipated, or wanted. Residents said they felt rattled, and worried about what might come next.”

China Link: United Imaging, a Shanghai-based multinational medical technology company “with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party and a history of industrial espionage, produces hardware used for sensitive medical research funded by the National Institutes of Health,” according to a records review by Washington Examiner reporter Robert Schmad. The NIH has come under sharp criticism and RIFs by Trump/DOGE/RFK, Jr.

Bayou Jihadi: The FBI has accused a Louisiana resident of participating in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, then lying about his past and fraudulently obtaining a visa to live in the U.S. “Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi armed himself and gathered a group to cross from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel during the attack that left more than 1,200 people dead,” (A.P.)

Inside the Surveillance Empire: Every year Prague’s Clarion Congress Hotel “hosts an exclusive gathering: the premier get-together of the surveillance industry, called ISS World Training, where law enforcement and intelligence officials from across the globe mingle with representatives of leading spy companies,” Mother Jones reports. “People outside the business—including journalists—are barred from entry.” Yeah, but MJ’s reporters got inside for a nice close, very revealing look.

Code Cracked: There’s a sad ending to the wonderful decades-long story of sculptor Jim Sanborn and Kryptos, the code-studded piece he made for the CIA’s Langley, Va. campus. Two fans of the work discovered the key on the eve of his auction.

Nobel Twist: What looked like a leak that preceded the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was “highly likely” the result of espionage, the Nobel Institute told Norwegian media last Saturday. “Highly likely it’s espionage,” the director of the Nobel Institute and secretary of the Nobel committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told Norway’s TV2 television. (CBS/AFP)