New in SpyWeek: What Killed Ebrahim Raisi?
Theories on the Iran crash, Russian satellites, Bibi blocking intel officials from U.S. officials, Bannon's pal Guo in hot water, & Chinese espionage—again
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What Killed Ebrahim Raisi? Who benefits? That’s the question intelligence analysts ask in response to surprises like Sunday’s helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president and foreign minister.
A U.S.-made Bell 212 helicopter transporting Iranian President Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others crashed in heavy fog over mountains in Iran's East Azerbaijan province. Iran’s preliminary investigation reported no signs of foul play. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t.
Former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and others inside Iran blamed U.S. sanctions, which made it difficult to source parts for a 30-year-old helicopter flying in bad weather. Blogger Richard Silverstein quoted an Israeli security source who said the crash was no accident: “Any head of state ordering an attack on Israel signs his own death sentence.”
Raisi’s death scrambled back-channel talks between Tehran and Washington. Axios reported on May 17 that Brett McGurk, President Biden's senior Middle East adviser, held indirect negotiations in Oman earlier this month with Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s point man for negotiations with the West. Middle East Eye, a London-based website reportedly financed by Qatar, reported that Raisi’s death “jeopardized” the talks. McGurk’s counterpart, Bagheri Kani, is now acting foreign minister.
The Atlantic reported that the biggest beneficiary of Raisi's death may be one of the rival factions seeking to gain power in Iran. The crash altered the balance of power and eliminated Raisi from contention to succeed Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Raisi’s death may present a rare opportunity for Western intelligence agencies to tap into growing unrest in Iran. While crowds mourned Raisi in the streets, behind closed doors, and on social media, many Iranians celebrated the passing of a man who played a key role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
The U.S. intelligence community will be closely watching to see who replaces Raisi and, equally important, who is allowed to run in the June 28 election. In 2021, the regime blocked moderates and reformists from running against Raisi. Whoever takes over as Iran’s next president is likely to signal whether Iran intends to continue its current policy of pursuing a nuclear program while supporting armed proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
There was rampant speculation that the helicopter had been deliberately brought down. The reflex to blame Israel, which has carried out lethal operations inside Iran with impunity, was so strong that many got carried away by a joke.
In the hours after the crash, wags on Twitter sarcastically blamed Mossad superagent “Eli Kopter.”
The Al Qassem Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, fell for it. Hamas told its 136,000 followers on Telegram that Agent Kopter was the culprit. Then, a political analyst for i24 Francais announced on a live TV segment that Agent Kopter was the pilot of the downed helicopter. Russian propagandist and state TV host Vladimir Solovyov rebroadcast the i24 segment on Agent Kopter.
Nukes & Spies in Space: Remember the frenzy that gripped Washington when the head of the House intelligence committee made a cryptic reference to “a serious national security threat” in February? Now we know what it was all about.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia launched a satellite into space in February 2022 that was designed to test components for a potential antisatellite weapon that would carry a nuclear device. Russia claimed the satellite, Cosmos-2553, was intended for scientific research.
Cosmos-2553 didn’t contain a nuclear weapon. It’s been secretly operating as a research and development platform for non-nuclear components of the new weapon system, which Russia has yet to deploy. If Russia deploys a nuke in space, it would give Moscow the ability to destroy hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit with a nuclear blast.
The United States has nearly 6,700 commercial satellites operating in low-Earth orbit, more than any country on Earth. This constellation underpins global communications, financial transactions, the global positioning system, international shipping, trucking, agriculture, remote sensing, weather forecasting, and much more.
Some sort of intelligence breakthrough allowed the United States to determine Russia’s intentions with Cosmos-2553. It was this new assessment that apparently led House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, to issue his warning in February.
The United States has been aware of Russia’s pursuit of a nuclear capability in space for years, “but only recently have we been able to make a more precise assessment of their progress,” Mallory Stewart, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, said this month.
John Plumb, an aerospace engineer who served as DoD’s first assistant secretary for space policy during 2022-2024, testified earlier this month that “Russia has demonstrated through both public statements and actions that it views commercial satellites providing space-based services to Russia’s adversaries as potential targets.” This appears to be a reference to Elon Musk’s Starlink network, which has been providing such services to Ukraine.
We wrote last week about how Russia’s failure to maintain its own satellite capabilities has pushed it to try and level the playing field by destroying it.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said this week that Russia launched a “counterspace weapon” into orbit on May 17 that could be used to attack satellites. But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told The Washington Post that the satellite “appears to be one of a series of Russian inspector satellites that ‘shadow’ U.S. spy sats at a generous distance of 50 km or more.”
Bibi Blocks US from Intel Meets: Intelligence leaders speak truth to power. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t letting them speak to Americans.
Axios’ Barak Ravid reported that Netanyahu has banned his intelligence and security chiefs from meeting with U.S. officials and lawmakers multiple times since the war in Gaza began. Bibi apparently doesn’t want his spies telling Americans that the prime minister has no post-war strategy for the strip.
In April, Netanyahu banned the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, from meeting with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rubio, who visited Israel during Passover to meet with senior Israeli officials and conduct U.S. intelligence community oversight, met with Netanyahu instead. Only one delegation of American senators has met with the heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet since October 7.
Netanyahu’s office has also blocked several meetings between the leaders of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and U.S. State Department officials. According to Axios, Netanyahu tried to prevent a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi. As a compromise, Halevi joined a meeting of the war cabinet at which Blinken was present.
“It was clear to us that Bibi was just trying to keep the U.S. government from getting information that is contrary to his line,” one official told Axios.
The U.S. may well know what they’re saying in secret anyway, according to SpyTalk Contributing Editor Jonathan Broder. “The National Security Agency, in particular, has long trained its electronic ears and cyber apps on the Israeli leadership, a practice that has probably intensified, a source told SpyTalk, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden have clashed over the war in Gaza,” Broder reported May 20.
On Bannon’s Chinese Friend: A $1 billion fraud trial began this week in Manhattan for Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman with murky ties to top Beijing intelligence officials and who became Steve Bannon's patron and friend.
Guo has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering, securities fraud, and wire fraud for unlawfully selling shares in his media company, a membership club, and a cryptocurrency.
Most news reports focused on Guo’s vast wealth, including a $68 million New York penthouse apartment, and his ties to Bannon, who was arrested in 2020 on Guo’s yacht in an unrelated border wall fundraising scheme. But the trial is likely to explore the world of Chinese espionage.
The jury being seated this week must decide whether Guo is “a true political dissident or a fraudster,” as the trial judge put it. Another question is whether Guo’s allegations about corruption by Chinese government officials sent people to prison.
In China, Guo built his fortune with the help of Ma Jian, a powerful senior intelligence official. The New Yorker reported that when a powerful vice-mayor of Beijing blocked Guo’s property development plans in 2006, Guo obtained a tape of the vice-mayor having sex with his mistress and delivered it to the government. The tape reportedly came from Ma, a vice minister for state security. Guo fled China in 2014 after Ma was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for taking bribes.
Guo is also connected to three other senior Chinese intelligence and law enforcement officials who later received suspended death sentences for taking millions of dollars in bribes—an unusually stern punishment for such high-ranking officials.
Sun Lijun, then a deputy Public Security minister, enlisted the help of a GOP fundraiser and a casino magnate to try to arrange meetings with U.S. officials to discuss Guo’s extradition to China. Liu Yanping, a top anti-graft watchdog at the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s version of the CIA. met with Guo in his New York penthouse in May 2017. The third senior Chinese official connected to Guo and who also received a suspended death sentence is former Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua, whom Guo accused on Twitter and in YouTube videos of corruption, abusing power, and “doing as he pleases.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this item incorrectly described a connection between Sun Lijun, former chief of the 1st Bureau, and Elliott Broidy,a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Broidy testified in 2023 that he met with Sun, who elicited his help in arranging meetings for Sun with U.S. officials to discuss the extradition of Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman and self-described anti-China activist living in New York. We regret the error. In October 2020, Broidy pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws as part of a covert campaign to influence the administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests. He was pardoned by President Trump on Jan. 20, 2021.
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Elsewhere in China Treachery: A former CIA officer accused of divulging secrets to Chinese intelligence officers pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to a foreign government, according to an AP report.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who worked for the CIA in the 1980s, was described in court documents as a “compromised asset” of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
According to court documents, Ma’s brother, also a former CIA officer, was a co-conspirator in the case. Ma’s brother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was not charged due to cognitive issues. Prosecutors said Friday that Ma's brother has died. Ma was declared competent to stand trial.
According to an FBI affidavit, Ma, 71, and his brother gave up the secrets of their work for the CIA in 2001 over three days of questioning in Hong Kong by officials employed by the Shanghai State Security Bureau, which reports directly to the MSS. The FBI said it had obtained audio and video recordings of the meetings. In exchange for $50,000, the two former spies’ treachery included divulging “information concerning human assets”—the family jewels that CIA officers are sworn to protect for life.
Ma, 71, a native of Hong Kong who became a U.S. citizen, joined the CIA in 1982 and worked overseas until he resigned in 1989. His older brother, who was born in Shanghai, joined the CIA in 1967 and worked as an officer from 1971 to 1982. The brother resigned from the agency in 1983 after he was caught using his position to help Chinese nationals enter the United States.
The FBI hired Ma in 2004 to work as a contract linguist for its office in Honolulu, a job he sought “to once again give himself access to U.S. government information,” according to the FBI affidavit. Between 2004 and 2010, Ma regularly removed classified information from the FBI office with the intent of providing it to his handlers.
Ma was caught in an undercover FBI sting accepting thousands of dollars in cash as an appreciation for his past efforts on behalf of China. According to a court document, he told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer, “I just want to help the motherland.”
According to court documents, Ma’s brother, also a former CIA officer, was a co-conspirator in the case. Ma’s brother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was not charged due to cognitive issues. Prosecutors said Friday that Ma's brother has died. Ma was declared competent to stand trial.
FBI and the Bidens (cont’d): The FBI cut ties to a handful of informants after it suspected that they may be linked to Russian disinformation, but the bureau maintained ties to a source who was later charged with lying about bribes paid to President Biden and his son.
The New York Times reported that the review was conducted by a small group in the counterintelligence division during and after the 2020 election when concerns about Russian meddling were running high.
The Times reported that longtime FBI informant Alexander Smirnov was “flagged” as part of the review but was not shut down. Smirnov was the Republicans’ star witness in the impeachment inquiry of President Biden and his son Hunter until he was indicted and accused of lying about the Bidens. As we wrote back in February, Smirnov was also accused of being an agent of Russian intelligence.
It remains a mystery why the FBI didn’t cut ties to Smirnov. Former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, whom Attorney General William Barr asked to vet material regarding Biden and Ukraine, testified last year that Smirnov was “an important confidential human source who had provided information to them [the FBI] in the past that had been used in other investigations.” The same could be said of many informants, however.
Four informants who were dropped reported to FBI Special Agent agent-turned whistleblower Johnathan Buma. Buma told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the bureau had punished him for continuing to investigate associates of Donald Trump, in particular, Rudy Giuliani, whom he suspected had been compromised by a Russian intelligence asset. The Times reported that the FBI is investigating Buma’s dealings with one of his informants after he was ordered to sever ties. The FBI also searched Buma’s home for classified information. He has not been charged with a crime.
Buma’s lawyer called the investigation “revenge” against his client and hinted at the political bias in the FBI. Buma’s sources were cut off, but Smirnov, who targeted the Bidens, was kept in the fold.
Kerry and Iran Talks: Emails released by U.S. senators Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis) show that the Barack Obama State Department blocked the FBI from arresting supporters of Iran’s nuclear program in the United States while the administration was negotiating the weapons deal with Tehran.
Fox News reported that the senators based their allegation on whistleblower disclosures which they said show that "while the Obama-Biden administration publicly committed to ‘preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by raising the cost of Iran’s defiance of the international community,’ then-Secretary of State John Kerry actively interfered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation executing arrest warrants on individuals in the U.S. illegally supporting Iranian efforts, including financial efforts, to develop weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program." Seems that Obama didn’t want to give Iranian hardliners an excuse to stop the negotiations.
Pocket Litter:
A purge is underway in the Russian military. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, journalists who cover Russia’s security services, say at least four senior military officers have been taken into custody on charges of taking bribes. “With the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine looking more favorable for the Kremlin than for some time, Putin appears to think this an appropriate moment to punish the army for the failures of 2022,” Soldatov and Borogan write. Some observers have noted that the dismissals were exactly what mercenary commander and oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin was agitating for when he led his Wagner Group troops on a mutinous march on Moscow in June 2023. Two months later Prigozhin died in a plane crash that many think was an assassination (CEPA)
A federal judge dismissed the felony convictions of five retired military officers who had admitted to accepting bribes from a Malaysian contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard” in one of the Navy’s biggest corruption cases. (CBS) Speaking of the hustler, don’t miss this excerpt from Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock’s new book on the scandalous affair, Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy.
A London court ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the United States. Assange faces charges in the United States under the Espionage Act related to WikiLeaks’ publication of tens of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents leaked to the site in 2010 by Chelsea Manning, an Army intelligence analyst. (NYTimes)
Russia compromised Austria’s domestic intelligence agency, the BVT, by inveigling the head of the country’s police into raiding it in 2018, according to a report in Politico. “Last month, Austrian prosecutors revealed that the men believed to have laid the groundwork for the action were Russian agents directed by Jan Marsalek, the fugitive former chief operating officer of the collapsed payment processing firm Wirecard, who authorities say works for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency,” reported Politico's Matthew Karnitschnig.
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