New in SpyWeek: Secret Israel-Arab Channel, Big Cut to DC Homeland Security, Leftwingers Targeted by Counterterrorism Agencies
Welcome to Spy Week, a curated compilation of important events at the intersection of intelligence, foreign relations and military operations.
Enemy of My Enemy: “Even as key Arab states condemned the war in the Gaza Strip, they quietly expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military,” The Washington Post reported Saturday, based on “leaked U.S. documents.” What brought them together?
“The documents show that the threat posed by Iran was the driving force behind the closer ties, which have been fostered by the U.S. military’s Central Command, known as Centcom. One document describes Iran and its allied militias as the ‘Axis of Evil,’ and another includes a map with missiles superimposed over Gaza and Yemen, where Iranian allies hold power.” It’s very likely Mossad boss David Barnea played a key role, based on reporting of his intense involvement in last spring’s iteration of a peace deal.
Spec Ops Rescue in Gaza: A Palestinian woman whose son serves in the U.S. Navy was secretly evacuated from Gaza in recent weeks by a secret team assembled by Alex Plitsas, a member of the Special Operations Association of America, “a veterans organization that has supported the legal evacuation of roughly 1,100 people from Gaza since the war began,” The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Plitsas is a former DoD chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism.
Israeli Spyware to US: The infamous Israel-based surveillance toolmaker NSO Group has been acquired by American investors led by a Hollywood producer. “Confirmation of the deal came soon after Israeli tech news website Calcalist reported Friday that a group led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds agreed to purchase the surveillance tech maker in a deal valued in the tens of millions of dollars,” Techcrunch relayed. Israel will maintain control, an NSO spokesman said.
Michael Ellis, Esq: Deputy CIA director Michael Ellis, a trusted Trump partisan (and Yale Law grad), has appointed himself the spy agency’s general counsel. As we recounted earlier this week, Ellis abruptly demoted a career lawyer who had been serving as the agency’s acting general counsel since January and installed himself in that role, according to The New York Times. Brian O’Neil, a retired senior U.S. intelligence official and professor of strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech, opined that Ellis’s move made the agency a “spy service without a brake” on legally questionable operations. “The agency’s public statement frames this as a temporary measure pending Senate confirmation of Joshua Simmons, Trump’s nominee for the general counsel slot; his confirmation was scheduled for Wednesday,” he wrote. “But the timing of Ellis’s move is unclear, and so is what legal judgments he might have made while wearing both hats.” Following the 9/11 attacks, longtime CIA lawyer John Rizzo worked with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to legalize agency black sites and so-called “enhanced interrogation” torture techniques, which came back to haunt the agency.
Intel Target: Dissenters: “The Trump administration plans to deploy America’s counter-terrorism apparatus—including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department—as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department against certain left-wing groups it accuses of funding and organizing political violence,” officials told Reuters in a major scoop. A key driver of the initiative is senior Trump aide Stephen Miller, who “is deeply involved in reviewing government agencies’ investigations into the financial networks behind what the administration labels ‘domestic terror networks,’ which include nonprofits and even educational institutions,” a White House official told Reuters reporters Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Jeff Mason, Tim Reid and Ted Hesson. Added former Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein on his Substack blog: “The directive…lays out Donald Trump’s policies with regard to equating ‘anti-Christian’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ sentiment with domestic terrorism. As a result of the directive, the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is expected to double in the coming months…” To long-in-the-tooth readers, the news may prompt memories of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s illegal campaign of breakins, bugging, reputational smears and even murder against liberals, leftists and civil rights and antiwar activists ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Panthers down to the tiny Socialist Workers Party.
Antifa Expert Flees: Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor who wrote a book about antifa and says he received death threats after he commented negatively on Trump’s designating the antifascist movement as a “domestic terrorist organization,” told his students last Sunday that he was immediately moving to Europe, from where he would continue to teach via a video link. (Washington Post)
Big Cuts to DC Homeland Security Agencies: “The nation’s capital stands to lose more than $40 million in homeland security funding, starving programs aimed at responding to terrorist attacks and other emergencies, after the Trump administration moved to slash federal grant funding by 90 percent for the D.C. region,” reports The Washington Post. “These funds are vital to the overall emergency preparedness and response capabilities where our threat level remains high, and where events designated as National Special Security Events occur frequently,” Clint Osborn, director of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement. “The District will be requesting to the Trump Administration a full restoration of these potential devastating cuts.”
Brick Agents: “Nearly a quarter of FBI agents across the country are currently assigned to immigration enforcement, with the number climbing to upward of 40 percent in the nation’s largest field offices, according to data from the FBI obtained by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) and shared with The Washington Post,” the news org reported Wednesday. “Agents have been pulled from duties related to cybercrimes, drug trafficking, terrorism, counterintelligence and more, the statistics show. Agents assigned to immigration enforcement are working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to locate and arrest people in the country illegally.”
Murky Venezuela Intel: “As the U.S. masses thousands of Marines and sailors and a Navy flotilla in the Caribbean, launching airstrikes on Venezuelan speedboats that have killed 21 people, it’s worth asking a question few others are: Are we drifting toward war because the president believes Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election?” It’s a good question raised this week by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Seth Hettena at his own Substack, The After Action Report. Astute readers will recall the bizarre campaign by Trump campaign aides Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to promote the idea that Venezuelan-linked technology was used to manipulate the 2020 U.S. election results. Turns out that former CIA officer Gary Berntsen, who’s been feeding Trump officials the baseless conspiracy theory that the Nicholas Maduro regime has dispatched the Tren de Aragua drug gang to “invade” America, has heavily promoted the 2020 election conspiracy idea as well. Berntsen, who left his post as Bolivia station chief in 2001 to lead a team into Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, “went public” last October in a soliloquy on the alleged connections between U.S. election software and machine makers with the late former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Topsy Tulsi: National Intelligence boss Tulsi Gabbard has only asked U.S. intelligence agencies “to review the feasibility of conducting random polygraphs in conjunction with counterintelligence investigations,” not to start implementing them, CBS News investigative journalist James LaPorta reports. An official told him “the review is based on internal U.S. intelligence community findings that indicated a lack of polygraph examinations has emboldened former U.S. intelligence community members to spy on behalf of U.S. adversaries,” but offered no specifics.
China in America: China espionage expert Nicholas Eftimiades has produced a somewhat startling graphic map of known Chinese spying activities in the U.S.
Swedish spy church? Local politicians in Västerås, Sweden, have voted to ask the national government to close down a Russian Orthodox church that they believe is being used by the Kremlin as a spy hub. Supporters of the church say the parish and its followers are being treated unfairly due to Russia-phobia. (France24)
Pakistan’s Man in Washington: After last year’s military dustup between Pakistan and India, it turns out the regime in Islamabad hired former Trump tough-guy confidant, bodyguard and director of Oval Office Operations Keith Schiller to represent its interests in D.C. So said the Hindustan Times months ago in an item that flew under our radar. Partners of the former NYPD cop at Javelin Advisers LLC are George A. Sorial, a former executive VP and counsel to The Trump Organization, and Robert W. Seiden “a former prosecutor and leading authority on asset recovery and anti-corruption” in Manhattan. Schiller has no known lobbying experience, but the man who was once dubbed “Trump’s shadow” has other assets Pakistan would covet—like a direct line to Trump.
Best Spy Movies? Google sure knows us. Up popped the clickbait site WatchMojo, which listed what it calls the “20 All Time Greatest Spy Movies.” We couldn’t resist. Have a nice week.
Bernsten — his theory is based entirely on profiting from Venezuelan forfeitures. This is such a money grab
Somebody tell Putin's girlfriend that polygraphs aren't reliable. Many states don't even allow them as evidence anymore. 🙄