New in SpyWeek: The Speaker and the CIA
How CIA boss Burns turned Johnson around on Ukraine, plus Tik-Tok drama, sexual abuse at Langley, countering ISIS & that hidden intel battle lab in Europe
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Inside Job: Since White House decisions turn on “the perception of the consequences of actions,” Henry Kissinger once observed, “the CIA assessment can almost amount to a policy recommendation.”
So it was in the CIA briefings Speaker Mike Johnson received about the course of the war in Ukraine and its implications for Europe and the global order, which may go down as among the most consequential ever given to a congressional leader. Except in Johnson’s case, the intelligence was about the devastating implications of his failure to act.
Intelligence briefings played a significant role in getting Johnson to say “yes” to a long-delayed $61 billion aid package for war-battered Ukraine. The measure passed the House in a rare bipartisan vote on April 20. The Senate approved the bill on Tuesday, and President Biden swiftly signed it into law on Wednesday.
“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we've gotten,” Johnson said in a subtle rebuke to Donald Trump, who heaped scorn on U.S. intelligence professionals during his administration. The speaker found the intelligence so compelling that he repeatedly urged the Republican holdouts, the same members who regularly rail against the “deep state,” to go to the secure room at the Capitol and see it for themselves, The New York Times reported.
CIA Director Bill Burns put on a full-court press to sway the inexperienced House speaker. Burns gave Johnson a private, classified briefing that left a “lasting impression,” CNN reported. The CIA even hosted Johnson’s staff at Langley on March 29. The speaker said he came to feel that “the fate of Western democracy was on his shoulders.”
Johnson ran through what he took from his briefings. “I believe [Chinese President] Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil,” he said. “I think they're in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Baltics next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.”
Johnson sounded like he was channeling Burns, who also says Putin is already eyeing his next conquest. In a recent public talk at the George W. Bush Center in Texas, Burns said the Baltics may be Putin’s next stop. “I think if I were in leadership in the Baltic states right now, history tells me I should be very concerned,” Burns said. “Whether that takes the form of an overt conventional attack or other ways of trying to undermine those countries and NATO’s integrity as well.” Burns also pointed to Moldova, where he said the CIA has seen evidence of Russian security services meddling in a recent election.
Johnson’s Damascene conversion from a backbencher who, in September, opposed $300 million aid for Ukraine, to a House leader who risked his speakership over it stunned Washington.
According to news reports, a critical turning point in Johnson’s transformation came on February 27 at a White House meeting with congressional leaders. President Biden organized an Oval Office intervention of sorts for Johnson, who heard from Burns and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it “one of the most intense” scenes he’s ever witnessed in the Oval Office.
Burns may have told Johnson the story of the fall of the Ukrainian fortress city of Avdiivka, as he did recently in Texas. As Ukraine struggled to hold onto the city, one of its brigades—more than 2,000 men and women—could fire only 15 artillery rounds per day, while another brigade had a total of 42 rounds. Against an overwhelming Russian barrage, Avdiivka fell just days before the White House meeting. “The Ukrainians are not running out of courage and tenacity,” Burns said in Texas. “They’re running out of ammunition.”
One savvy GOP aide told Politico, “Amazing what some intel briefs will do.”
Then again, the coming enrollment of Johnson’s son at Annapolis may have also tipped the scales toward helping Ukraine fend off the Russians. “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson told reporters. “My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is for so many American families. This is not a game, this is not a joke.”
Alarm Clock: The Ukraine aid bill also included a much-debated law that will force the sale of TikTok to a non-Chinese owner due to national security concerns about the time-wasting social media app. On Wednesday President Biden signed the bill, accepting its language that the world’s most popular video app “present(s) a significant threat to the national security of the United States,” which he must lay out in a classified report to Congress.
The U.S. intelligence community is concerned that China could use TikTok to influence its more than 150 million American users and meddle in elections. The app can also harvest private data on U.S. citizens.
The DNI’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment reported that TikTok accounts run by a Chinese government propaganda arm targeted candidates from both political parties during the 2022 U.S. midterm election cycle. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told Congress last month that the U.S. intelligence community could not rule out that China might use TikTok to influence the 2024 U.S. elections.
Reuters reported that ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, said it would prefer to shut down if its efforts to fight the ban in the U.S. courts fail. ByteDance is concerned about giving up the secrets of its algorithm, which seems shockingly good at reading your mind and inveigling you into wasting the day on clicks.
Worth Watching: Nearly $400 million to counter ISIS was tucked inside a Defense appropriations bill signed by the president last month. According to a Defense budget justification, the “Counter-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Train and Equip Fund” will go to train and equip forces in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, the program funds the Iraqi Security Forces, Kurdistan Security Forces and Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service. The program, now in its second year, also sends money to groups in Syria, including the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a multi-ethnic army that is accused of recruiting children. (President Trump abandoned the group in 2019.) The legislation requires the Defense Department to ensure that the groups or individuals receiving the money are “appropriately vetted” and assessed for possible ties to terrorist groups or Iran. Congress also wants “commitments from such elements to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
Israeli Purge: Don’t miss Jonathan Broder’s scoop in SpyTalk about a major purge of senior Israeli military and intelligence officials over their failure to prevent the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack. More national security officials are expected to resign or be forced out in the coming weeks, he reported.
Algorithmic Warfare: It’s known as “the Pit”—a U.S. intelligence-gathering center “more than a thousand miles west of Ukraine, deep inside an American base in the heart of Europe,” where analysts are studying the future of warfare that’s taking shape in Ukraine.
The New York Times reports that American military and intelligence officials see the war in Ukraine as a “bonanza,” a golden opportunity to test rapidly evolving technologies on the battlefield.
One example is Project Maven, a military artificial intelligence tool that can detect potential targets using drone footage. The United States has provided Ukraine with a version of Project Maven that does not rely on the input of the most sensitive American intelligence or advanced systems.
So far the results are mixed. Russia quickly adapted, and American-made drones that were shipped to Ukraine last year were blown out of the sky with ease. The Russians have also learned to interfere with the guidance systems of HIMARS rocket launchers and ATACMS missiles that the U.S. provided to Ukraine.
Open Source: Spy tradecraft usually refers to the sneaky work of espionage: dead drops, surveillance detection routes, and jobs used for cover. But there’s a different sort of tradecraft in the digital realm that involves just hanging around and being nice.
“Jia Tan” (the name of a group of people, a real name of a single person or a pseudonym of a single person—it’s unknown) spent two years politely and enthusiastically volunteering online to help software engineers build XZ Utils, an open-source compression utility integrated in many distributions of Linux operating system.
According to Wired, Tan likely worked for a foreign intelligence agency willing to invest years in a potentially big payoff.
Tan inserted a backdoor into XZ Utils that was discovered by chance by a Microsoft engineer. The backdoor would have allowed someone with the right private key to hijack the executable file responsible for making secure connections, and from there to execute malicious commands.
Tan is not alone. The OpenJS Foundation, home to JavaScript projects used by billions of websites worldwide, warned software engineers of another effort involving similar tradecraft and urged to be on the lookout.
Still Silent: The CIA, like most American institutions, supposedly had its “Me-Too” moment when a pattern of unsavory behavior was unearthed, but men who sexually harass and abuse women at the spy agency have continued to get away with it.
Politico reported that an investigation by the House intelligence committee found the CIA failed to deal with sexual abuse in its ranks, and there was “little to no accountability or punishment for confirmed perpetrators.”
As we reported in February, the CIA fired the initial whistleblower whose decision to press charges of sexual assault against one of her colleagues prompted at least two dozen women with related complaints to come forward. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence interviewed 26 whistleblowers and reviewed more than 4,000 pages of records.
HPSCI found that victims at the CIA were deterred from coming forward because the agency did not grant them anonymity. By contrast, a federal judge allowed the CIA whistleblower to sue the agency anonymously.
The CIA established an office in 2021 that advocates for employees dealing with sexual assault and harassment and hired an experienced outside expert to lead that office.
Sailor Spy: A U.S. Navy sailor was convicted of espionage for handing over classified information to a woman he met on the Internet.
As we reported last week, Navy Chief Petty Officer Bryce Pedicini served aboard the USS Higgins, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, stationed in Yokosuka, Japan.
Navy prosecutors said a woman posing as a Japanese researcher reached out to Pedicini in 2022 on Facebook, inviting him to write research papers. The woman was a spy working for a foreign government the prosecution didn’t name in open court. Pedicini sent her a classified document relating to a ballistic missile system and documents outlining Chinese and Russian threats in exchange for $1,000, according to the government.
Pedicini's sentencing is scheduled for May 7.
Not What He Expected: CIA Director Bill Burns revealed a few interesting facts about the spy agency in his talk at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Texas
Burns said he is about to leave on his 66th overseas trip in his three years as director. The CIA says it doesn’t keep count of directors’ travels, but that’s surely some kind of record.
On the plane home from his overseas trips, Burns writes a straightforward, conversational note to the president about his impressions of the visit.
Burns said he’s learned to keep his thoughts to himself at the CIA. “I had a bad habit the first few months I was there about thinking out loud. And then I would discover, at the end of that working day, that a 14-page action plan had been drawn up, and for all I knew, aircraft were taking off.”
Burns took part in an overnight exercise for CIA operations officers in Virginia last year. Part of the exercise involved a hostage rescue mission of a captured senior CIA officer. Burns said he enjoyed the look of surprise on the face of the major leading the rescue when he saw a real live CIA director tied to a chair.
Pocket Litter:
In a British crackdown on foreign espionage, two men charged with spying for China appeared in court in central London Friday, while a 20-year-old British man was charged with masterminding an arson plot against a Ukrainian-linked target in London for the benefit of the Russian state.
Leaked files show the Turkish foreign ministry’s intelligence arm targeted a nonpartisan American policy organization that has John Bolton and other former high-ranking US government officials on its board. (Nordic Monitor)
Microsoft says Russian online campaigns to influence the upcoming U.S. presidential election have begun but at a slower pace than in past elections. (Reuters)
The “Five Eyes” intelligence agencies have released guidelines for implementing Artificial Intelligence in national security. (Clearance Jobs)
Poland’s prosecutor general told parliament that Pegasus phone spyware was used against hundreds of people during the former government in Warsaw, among them elected officials. (AP)
A Chinese commercial satellite captured images of the U.S. aircraft carriers docked at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. (ZonaMilitar)
A side-effect of attempts to deal with the climate crisis: increased risk of nuclear proliferation (GWU)
Is there something we missed? Or something you would like to see more of? Send your tips, corrections, and thoughts to SpyTalk@protonmail.com.
I might like to see more about new advanced weapons used for defense in Ukraine and even Taiwan. The focus would be on stopping massed infantry attacks and conserving Ukraine lives.
Excellent summary and interesting didbits.