It was barely two years ago when the International Criminal Court in The Hague took a step that many in the West thought they would never see: It issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a top official  in his government. The charge: war crimes, specifically for the mass abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children. 

The move was unquestionably audacious: the stigma aside, it severely restricted the Russian president’s ability to travel to countries that might honor the warrant. Now, even as U.S. officials intensify their efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in the three year old conflict, there are signs that prosecutors at the court may be seeking to expand their case: they have begun preparing potential new charges against Putin and possibly other top Russian officials for “crimes against humanity,” a separate offense under international law,  a reliable source tells SpyTalk. The new charges would be based in part on recent U.S. intelligence, including in a U.S. State Department-funded report documenting how hundreds of the missing  Ukrainian children were flown to Russia, in some cases aboard government aircraft, placed in “re-education” camps and then forcibly adopted with the intent to “Russify” them and break their allegiance to their homeland.  

The prosecutors in The Hague have begun drafting the warrants and hope to get a final approval from the court’s judges to issue them in the coming weeks, said the source, who has been briefed on aspects of the case. “The planes are on the tarmac,” said the source, referring to the proposed indictments. “They’re waiting for clearance from  the tower.”

A spokesperson for the ICC confirmed in an email to SpyTalk that the court continues to “to receive information and evidence in relation to these crimes” but declined to comment on any further charges, citing the “confidentiality” of its work. (Ukrainian war crimes  remains  listed as an open case  “under investigation” on the court’s website.)  

Beth Van Schaack, who served as ambassador-at-large in charge of the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice under President Biden, said that, while she had no independent knowledge, it is  “no surprise” that the ICC may seek to bring additional charges against Putin and his co-defendant, Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, in light of new evidence of widespread “forced abductions” contained in the State Department-funded  Conflict Observatory Report by the Yale University School of Public Health, she said. The report was publicly released and provided to the ICC last December. (The ICC spokesperson said in the email to SpyTalk the Yale study was “useful in our continued activities in this case.”) 

“This was a whole system to take children from their parents,” said Van Schaack . “This was at an enormous scale and potentially thousands of children were affected. It’s a unique scenario to see children abducted on this scale and it’s absolutely the basis for charges of crimes against humanity.”

The Yale report used unclassified satellite imagery from the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, provided through a license from the State Department’s intelligence bureau,  as well as flight data, the Russian government’s own databases,  and open source media to document how Russian aircraft “under the direct control of President Putin’s office” flew more than 300 of the children from the Doneksk and Luhansk regions, some as young as eight months, to 21 sites throughout the Russian Federations after the Feb. 2022 invasion.

Many of the abducted children were sent to “pro-Russian re-education” camps before being put up for adoption or placed in foster homes, during which they were listed as Russian in government databases, their Ukrainian identity wiped out, the  report said. The report’s conclusion: Putin’s government “had engaged in the systematic, intentional and widespread coerced adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine.”  (A United Nations human rights report last month also condemned the Russian abductions as a violation of international law, noting that some Ukrainian children were forced to take part in military-patriotic training, including singing the Russian national anthem. When the ICC war crimes charges were first brought against Putin, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin “firmly rejects” them, adding: “Our military repeatedly risks their own lives, took measures to save children, to take them out from under shelling, which, by the way, was carried out by the armed forces of Ukraine against civilian infrastructure.”) 

The prospect of new war crimes charges against Putin could, to say the least, complicate the peace talks that President Trump, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, are seeking to bring to fruition. But that may be the idea. The  source briefed on the ICC case said European officials have been pushing the court to bring the new charges soon in part because of the concerns that Trump and Witkoff were putting too much pressure on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and giving away too much to Putin in the peace negotiations.

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There is even fear among the Europeans, the source said, that some Trump officials may seek to capstone a pro-Russia peace deal by showing up in Moscow’s Red Square  on May 9th, Victory Day in Russia, when the country celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II with a grand military parade in front of  world leaders that this year is expected to include Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. 

Given that the European Union has barred its country’s officials from visiting Russia ever since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, any appearance by Witkoff or any other U.S. official at a Victory Day parade in Moscow would likely be seen as one more nail in the coffin of a once solid U.S.-European alliance. 

(The White House has disclosed no plans for any U.S. official to attend the Victory Day event. Putin on Monday announced a three day ceasefire between May 8 to May 10,, to coincide with Victory Day celebrations.) 

Appeasement

To be sure, Trump in recent comments and social media posts, has expressed impatience with Putin. “Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote in a Truth Social post last week after a Russian missile strike that killed 12 civilians in Kyiv. But at the same time, Trump’s administration has been methodically shutting down offices and reassigning analysts whose job it was to document Russian war crimes— moves that have been internally justified on the grounds that such U.S. government efforts  antagonize the Kremlin and will potentially disrupt the peace talks. 

Among the moves revealed in recent weeks: Under a State Department reorganization plan, the State Department Office of Global Criminal Justice— which spearheaded  efforts to hold war criminals across the globe accountable — would be eliminated. A “coordinator” position within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created by Congress to document Russian atrocities from throughout the U.S. intelligence community, has gone vacant. A Justice Department prosecutor who had been assigned to The Hague to help develop, along with European prosecutors , cases against Russians involved in war crimes was called home.  

All this sends exactly the wrong message on the world stage, and ultimately undercuts U.S. efforts to achieve a durable peace in Ukraine, said Steven Rapp, a veteran war crimes prosecutor who served as  ambassador-at-large of the global crimes office under President Obama.  

“You can’t really have peace without justice,” he told me on the SpyTalk podcast. And if the Russians aren’t held to account, “if you create a kind of Sudetenland kind of situation where they’re allowed to continue to occupy various parts of the country, even despite having committed mass murder, kidnapped children, and everything else, you’re going to expect them to— as soon as our guard is down — to come back and do more of it and maybe do worse. 

“We don’t deal with organized crime this way,” Rapp continued. “We take them out. And so, you’ve got to deal with this the same way. You know, this is tough business. These are mass killers.” 

The U.S. is not a member of the ICC—over publicly expressed concerns within the military that it could be used to prosecute U.S. soldiers overseas—and, for the most part, has not cooperated in its investigations. But after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Congress—in an effort led by Sen. Lindsey Graham—changed the law to allow for the U.S. to share intelligence about Russian war crimes. He and others then urged the Biden administration to quickly do so. (More recently, Graham has turned on the ICC, calling it a “dangerous joke” after it issued an arrest warrant last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza.) 

Rapp, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa under President Clinton, wants accountability to come in the form of international justice based on evidence of Russian misdeeds, either from the ICC or with prosecutions by individual countries in Europe or in the United States. (Ukraine has launched its own investigations.)  But compiling the evidence will be all the more difficult due to the recent U.S. cutbacks. The Yale team that has been investigating the fate of abducted Ukrainian children, including compiling their names in a master database and producing the report that could provide the basis for the new war crimes charges, had its funding frozen shortly after Trump took office. After congressional pressure, driven in  part by evangelical Christian groups, the Yale team got an extremely short temporary reprieve. 

“Our funding now ends on May 16,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale project, in an email to SpyTalk. “Our ongoing investigations will stop without further funding in three weeks and our efforts to locate abducted children from Ukraine inside Russia for return will end as well.”

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Editor’s Note: In 1982, a feature film based on events following a military coup in Chile debuted to critical acclaim and went on to dominate the Academy Awards. Missing, directed by Kostantinos Costa-Gavras, implicated the U.S. government in the disappearance and death of Horman, portrayed as a somewhat apolitical young American living in Chile during the government of Salvador Allende, the Chilean president overthrown in the U.S.-backed 1973 coup.  

The suspicion of U.S. involvement became a kind of official story of Horman’s death, as well as that of the other American who was executed, Frank Teruggi. Missing portrayed Horman as the man “who knew too much” who was killed because of something he learned in encounters with U.S. military officers in the port city of  Valparaiso.

But John Dinges, himself a young journalist in Chile during the coup and its violent aftermath, uncovered circumstances and facts of their cases that contradict the widely accepted version. In this excerpt from his new book,  Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup, Dinges  recasts Horman’s encounter with U.S. officers on September 11, 1973, the day of the coup…. 

AT THEIR BEACHSIDE HOTEL in Viña del Mar, Charlie Horman and his friend Terry Simon woke up to a Chilean world turned upside down. There was less violence in nearby Valparaiso than in Santiago, and in Viña’s tranquil streets even fewer signs of the military takeover. Stuck in a hotel with people they assessed as upper class and —worse—affiliated with the U.S. military, their guard went up. During the five days before they were able to return to Santiago, they met five American officers,  including Captain Ray Davis, the chief of the U.S. Navy mission in charge of liaison with the Chilean Navy, and his deputy Marine Corps Lt. Col. Patrick J. Ryan. Davis was also chief of the U.S. Military Group [MilGroup] in Chile, which was the U.S. embassy’s office in charge of military sales, aid and training for the host country. Charlie and Terry presented themselves as a couple of stranded tourists and were careful not to betray any hint of their pro-Allende sentiments or the devastation Charlie was experiencing about the demise of the Chilean experiment he had invested so much in.

According to a later report by Captain Davis, Charlie said he was living in Santiago and working in a Chilean film company PROA on an animated film for children—a reference to the Sunshine Grabber project, based on a children’s book he wrote. Terry said she was on vacation from her job in New York as a writer for a teenage magazine. Horman’s self-description to Davis  was understandably somewhat adapted to his audience. Horman worked in film but his main project was an intensely political documentary on Chile’s fight against imperialism. Horman was guarded,  presuming with good reason that the U.S. military personnel he met supported the coup, and he suspected they might even have been directly involved with the actions of the Chile Navy. U.S. hostility toward Salvador Allende’s socialist project was well known, and the United States had a notorious history of military intervention in Latin America. Horman was well read in past U.S. actions such as the instigation of military coups in Guatemala in 1954 and Brazil in 1964. 

Horman and Simon suspected they may have happened upon a nest of U.S. co-conspirators in Chile’s coup.  The first American Horman and Simon met  was Arthur Creter. Horman approached him on the hotel veranda and asked to borrow his newspaper. Creter began to talk freely.  He introduced himself as a retired Marine lieutenant currently working as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Naval Base in the Panama Canal Zone. Simon thought she was hearing something important. She reproduced the conversations with Creter and other officers in detailed contemporaneous notes. 

[Simon] Been here long?

[Creter] No, just down here to do a job.

[Simon] What kind of job?

[Creter] With the Navy.

Terry Simon added to this  exchange in an article she wrote for her magazine, Senior Scholastic, shortly after returning to the United States. “I was invited here by the military. You see, I work for the U.S. Navy. Now my job is done here and I’m just waiting to get out.”

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Simon noted that  Creter “claims that the coup had been a very smooth operation [and that he] had already talked to Panama by radio.” He claimed to know that “around 4:30 in the morning of the 11th the military began mobilizing, and soldiers placed on street corners throughout the country and [quoting him] ‘about a half hour later all Chile was under military control.’”

In a conversation with an attractive young woman, Creter seemed to be bragging about inside knowledge of how the coup had happened. Creter’s account may have been impressive in the moment, but it was far from accurate, let alone based on exclusive information from Panama. Later documented accounts of the coup events demonstrate that Santiago, for example, was not under military control until well into the afternoon of September 11, and the military was still attacking worker controlled factories on September 12 and 13. In Valparaiso, the Navy did not declare martial law until 7 am. 

In a later New York Times article—and in the movie— Creter’s statement about his work in Chile was cast in  a more sinister light: “We came down to do a job and it's done.”  In the environment of suspicion of the moment, it was widely—but misleadingly—quoted as proof of U.S. involvement in the military coup.  

U.S. Navy officials later specified that Creter was hired by the U.S. Navy to come to Chile to work as a “MAP maintenance adviser,” and that he was a “shipboard technician,” and had nothing to do with the coup. Creter did not deny making the statement, but said its context was his job with the U.S. Navy and that he was not talking about the political situation. 

Lt. Col. Pat Ryan met and talked briefly with Horman and Simon on September 11 when he came to the hotel to check on Creter. He saw them every day during their stay and drove them into Valparaiso to check at the Braniff Airways office for possible flights. There were none. 

They went with him to the U.S. naval mission office and met Lt. Commander Roger Frauenfelder, who talked to them at length. He described the U.S. part of the scrubbed UNITAS joint maneuvers, saying the fleet had arrived with two destroyers, two escort ships and a submarine. 

“Says UNITAS was cancelled, that, ha ha, that was one of the tricky things the Chileans did so that no one would know this was happening,” Simon wrote. Frauenfelder said he had been stationed in Chile for two years and in that time “I’ve become a real supporter of the [anti-Allende] cause.” Frauenfelder pointed out his office window to an elegant four masted ship in the harbor. He said the deposed mayor of Valparaiso was being held prisoner aboard the vessel.  The ship was the Esmeralda, a tall ship used for training which became infamous when it emerged later that more than 100 political prisoners had been held on board and many reported they were submitted to torture, including electric shock.  

Ryan then took them to Chief Paul Epley’s house, where the Naval Mission’s only radio was located. Simon dictated an airgram message to her parents in Waterloo, Iowa, saying she was all right. They had lunch at Ryan’s house and met his wife Audrey. He advised them it might still be risky to return to Santiago, but Simon wanted to make sure she was able to get a flight home as soon as the Santiago airport was opened. In that case, Ryan said, he could arrange transportation in a military vehicle back to Santiago. Ryan said his  boss, Captain Ray Davis, had arrived that day to check on the Navy Mission and planned to return to Santiago the next day.

Ryan also made comments about the situation in Chile that displayed his fervent anticommunism. He said he had served several tours in Vietnam and blamed Cuba for what was happening in Chile. He also said that, according to his information, between 1,500 and 3,000 people had already been killed in Santiago. Such numbers were indeed circulating in U.S. intelligence reports at the time, but they were not correct. The real number was 275  people killed or disappeared as of September 14, when Ryan was speaking. He joked about the pilots’ aim in the Hawker Hunter attack on La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago.  “You’d have to be a real hamburger to miss with a rocket,” he said. 

Terry Simon’s notes reflect her strong suspicions, but she acknowledged the military men were friendly to her and helpful. On Saturday Ryan picked Horman and Simon up at the hotel and said their ride to Santiago with Captain Davis was all set. He invited them for a farewell lunch at a local restaurant, The Yugoslav Mansion, where  they joined an informal gathering of Frauenfelder and his wife and children and Commander Edward Johnson and his wife Corki, whom they were meeting for the first time. Ryan continued to insist it would be safer for them to stay in Viña. Johnson even offered to let them stay in the spare room in his house. But they said they would take the ride with Captain Davis.

The 90-mile drive to Santiago on Saturday September 15 was tense but uneventful, according to Simon. It was Charles Horman’s only meeting with the man later accused of setting up his  murder.  Davis chatted mostly with Terry, since Charlie chose to ride in the back seat. Davis deflected her questions about the coup. In Davis’s account of the ride later to his superiors, he noted that Horman mentioned his work on a children’s film. Both his passengers were “well cultured,” but he was most impressed by Simon, who he said “asked numerous and good questions.” Horman had long hair and a beard but was “neatly groomed.” There were few cars in sight as Davis  drove them up the steep winding road from the coastal city, past the groves of majestic Chilean palms, and navigated the hills and curves leading to Santiago.  Davis dropped them off outside the U.S. Embassy on Agustinas Street about 5 pm.  

Downtown Santiago, in contrast to the placid environment they had left behind on the coast, had the fearsome aspect of an occupied city. The bombed out La Moneda Palace was just around the corner from the embassy, at the far end of the large Constitution Plaza. Soldiers manning gun emplacements guarded the intersections. The smell of explosives still hung in the air. 

Horman took a taxi to his home in the outlying Vicuña MacKenna district, near a belt of worker-controlled factories known as the “Cordón.” A lot had happened in the neighborhood since September 11, almost all of it disastrous for the workers movement Horman had taken risks to support.  The area surrounding Horman’s house was still the scene of ongoing military operations, with squads raiding factories and detaining hundreds of workers.

On Monday September 17, three days after his arrival, Horman was detained in a targeted raid of his house. His unidentified, bullet riddled body arrived at the morgue the next day, around the same time as a group of six union leaders from a nearby factory. Horman would remain “disappeared” for a month.

Decades would pass before the facts emerged: Far from apolitical, both Horman and Teruggi had intense political commitments, and Horman was raising money in the United States to buy weapons to defend the worker-controlled factories that were at the heart of the Allende revolution. #####

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Get the whole story here, in Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup

John Dinges, a SpyTalk contributing editor, lived in and reported from Chile during its most violent period (1972–78). A special correspondent for the Washington Post, and later managing editor at NPR, he is Professor Emeritus of Journalism at Columbia University. He is also the author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet And His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents and other books on Latin American dictatorships. 

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THIS WEEK 50 YEARS AGO, Frank Snepp was in Saigon desperately trying to convince his bosses and Washington that U.S. officials were falling into a communist trap. As the CIA’s chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy in Saigon, Snepp had secret agents inside the enemy camp who were telling him in no uncertain terms that, contrary to communist disinformation that U.S. diplomats and his own CIA boss had swallowed—that there could be a truce and peaceful end to the long war—North Vietnamese troops were preparing to overrun the capital in a final, brutal assault.

The full story of Snepp and his spies, one inside the communists’ military headquarters in the south, the other in Hanoi, has long been buried in layers of classification and ass-covering censorship. Snepp himself was careful not to reveal details of the espionage breakthroughs in his 1977 memoir, Decent Interval:  An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam. 

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“I was very careful not to go into details that might expose people who had been left behind or agents who had been left behind,” he told me on the SpyTalk podcast. “I wrote about these spies in my book, but I was very careful to do so circumspectly. Now I can tell you a lot more.”

Snepp’s spy story begins with his secret agent inside COSVN—the communists’ Central Office for South Vietnam—Hanoi’s military headquarters in the jungle on the Cambodia border.

“His name is Vo Van Ba,” Snepp reveals. “Vo Van Ba was the best spy of the war.” Had U.S. officials believed him, the calamity of the war’s last days, with thousands of South Vietnamese desperately trying to escape the invading communists and helicopters lifting U.S. officials off rooftops, might have been avoided.

You can listen to the whole story here, or on whatever your preferred podcast platform.

Only paid subscriptions allows us to bring you important podcasts and stories like this one. So if you haven’t already, how about signing up for a free trial here?

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SIGNALGATE PART DEUX: This week has been a near-daily series of revelations about Signalgate and how cavalier Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been with the nation’s secrets.

On Friday, The Times reported that Hegseth’s personal phone number—the one linked to his Signal account—was easily found on the Internet and in public apps, leaving a trail that a foreign intelligence service could easily exploit. 

“There’s zero percent chance that someone hasn’t tried to install Pegasus or some other spyware on his phone,” Mike Casey, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the Times. “He is one of the top five, probably, most targeted people in the world for espionage.”

If anyone has managed to crack Hegseth’s phone, they struck gold. We learned this week that the Defense Secretary has used Signal to share details about an impending attack on Yemen with his wife, brother, and lawyer. 

If you’re wondering how you get a commercially available messaging app into a classified workspace, The Washington Post has got you covered.

  Hegseth had the secure messaging app installed on a desktop computer in his office. By so doing, he “cloned” the Signal app on his personal cell phone, which fixed the issue of poor cellphone reception in the Pentagon, but created a much bigger problem.

The Pentagon found itself in a pretzel-like position of saying that the secretary of defense’s use of communications systems and channels was classified, while arguing, that the information he shared on Signal—the types of aircraft and weapons used in an airstrike on Houthi rebels in Yemen and when the strike would occur—wasn’t.  In a manic appearance on Fox & Friends, the show he once hosted, Hegseth described the information he shared as “informal, unclassified information for media coordination and other things.” 

Does anyone still buy this? NBC News reported that the information Hegseth shared on Signal with a journalist (inadvertently) and with his relatives (intentionally) had been relayed to him via a secure U.S. government system designed for sending classified information. Hegseth shared the information 10 minutes after receiving it from Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command. 

The network Kurilla used here matters. NBC News didn’t say which one it was, but there are two main possibilities. One is SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, used for sharing sensitive information between the State and Defense Departments.

The other possibility, which would make Hegseth’s bad week even worse, is the Pentagon's Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which handles even more sensitive information than SIPRNet. 

A 2019 Defense Department article about JWICS described it as “a Top Secret, sensitive, compartmented information network designed initially to serve the intelligence community.” The article noted that the system had grown so rapidly that it had now become known as the “daily system” and was undergoing an overhaul to “potentially extend its capabilities to other parts of the defense community and to more parts of government.”

The shoe that’s left to drop? There’s a pretty good chance that Kurilla’s message was marked as TOP SECRET-NOFORN (No Foreign Distribution).

NSC CHAOS: The National Security Council, which is meant to offer steady, expert guidance on global crises, is now a revolving door of purges, loyalty tests, and social media influencers masquerading as policymakers. The Atlantic reports that Trump’s impatience with process, his obsession with loyalty, and his distrust of his own National Security Advisor Mike Waltz have gutted experienced staff, replaced legal review with vibes, and handed hiring power to fringe figures like Laura Loomer (who thinks 9/11 was staged, among many other absurdities).

Waltz’s office is a few steps from the Oval Office. Still, he wasn’t initially in the room when Loomer paid Trump a visit and told him to fire several NSC staffers, including Alex Wong, the deputy national security adviser. So Waltz entered the room, The Atlantic reports, just as she was preparing to show the president a 2016 conservative anti-Trump ad that featured Waltz accusing Trump of dodging the draft. Wong survived, but former Rubio aide Brian Walsh, who had stood up for a transgender staffer, and David Feith, senior director for technology and national security, were canned.

Trump has apparently soured on Waltz. His TV appearances get bad reviews in the Oval Office, and his accidentally texting war plans to Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg didn’t help. The upshot: Waltz has “lost control of his own NSC,” The Atlantic said.  Key decisions—like pausing intel sharing with Ukraine—were made without NSC input, which staffers with relevant portfolios learned about from news reports. NSC lawyers also didn’t review any of the 26 executive orders that Trump signed on his first day back in office. Legal protocols? Ignored. Homeland Security czar Stephen Miller is calling more shots than Waltz. Trump’s grip on the NSC is less strategy, more spectacle, and the fallout has left seasoned officials stunned, Congress concerned, and national security hanging by a thread.

LEAK INVESTIGATION: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says she referred two suspected intel leakers to the Department of Justice, with a third—featuring what she called an illegal leak to The Washington Post—on the way. “Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Gabbard pontificated on X. (Hello? Signalgate, anyone?) According to Gabbard, these leaks were “deep state” efforts to sabotage the president’s agenda for political gain. The DOJ and FBI are being called in to investigate. 

SPY FOR HIRE: A 68-year-old former top CIA officer from Miami pleaded guilty to acting as a foreign agent while working for the agency. After a 30-year career culminating in the Senior Intelligence Service, Dale Bendler continued as a contractor starting in 2014. He admitted to secretly working for a U.S. lobbying firm on behalf of unidentified foreign clients, using his CIA access to influence investigations, seek visas, and obtain classified information for unauthorized individuals. He also lied to the CIA and FBI about his activities. The CIA terminated his contract in 2020, and he now faces up to seven years in prison when sentenced in July. (SpyTalk Editor-in-Chief Jeff Stein talked to some of Bendler’s colleagues who say he was suspended with pay years earlier for security violations but the DoJ declined to prosecute. Read Jeff’s writeup.)

NOT JASON BOURNE: A 25-year-old Army sergeant who “wished he could be Jason Bourne” was sentenced to seven years in prison for selling secrets online to a Chinese government agent. Korbein Schultz pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information, unlawfully exporting controlled information to China, and accepting bribes in exchange for sensitive, non-public U.S. government information. Schultz used his Top-Secret clearance to download and transmit at least 92 sensitive U.S. military documents, including lessons learned by the U.S. Army from the Ukraine/Russia conflict that were applicable to Taiwan’s defense, technical aircraft and ICBM system manuals, and information on Chinese military tactics. Schultz was allegedly paid $42,000 for the document, and he also tried to recruit a friend and fellow Army Intelligence analyst into the conspiracy. "I need to get my other BMW back,” he told his handler, who claimed to be a Hong Kong-based geopolitical consultant.

CELL PHONE SPYING: There’s been an explosion in cell phone spying. Verizon, the cell phone giant, said in its annual data breach investigations report that “espionage-motivated” breaches by state-sponsored actors have tripled since its last survey, accounting for 17 percent of all breaches. In seven out of 10 cases, hackers gained access by exploiting known security flaws, highlighting the danger of not keeping systems up to date. “However, we also found that espionage was not the only thing state-sponsored actors were interested in—approximately 28% of incidents involving those actors had a financial motive,” Verizon reported. “There has been media speculation that this may be a case of the threat actors double-dipping to pad their compensation.”

SUPERINTELLIGENCE RACE: A new report circulating in the White House delivers a clear warning: the U.S. isn’t prepared for what’s coming in AI. “America’s Superintelligence Project” is the result of a year-long investigation by Gladstone AI, a firm that advises the U.S. government on AI security. The authors believe we may be on the brink of developing artificial superintelligence (ASI)—a breakthrough that could give whichever country builds it first a huge strategic advantage. American companies are pouring billions into this technology, but much of the work is happening in private labs that lack adequate security. According to the report, it’s likely that China has already infiltrated some of these labs and is stealing sensitive information. Even cutting-edge facilities, like OpenAI’s upcoming Stargate project, are at risk. As TIME recently noted, many of these advanced data centers remain vulnerable to serious cyber and physical attacks.

DISTRUSTED ENVOY: Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s first term, was investigated for leaking a “sensitive but unclassified” State Department cable.  Bloomberg’s FOIA sleuth, Jason Leopold, obtained a previously undisclosed report by the State Department’s Inspector General that was opened on March 10, 2020. Grenell had pasted a cable from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordering diplomats to cease meeting with Iranian opposition groups to a person who worked at a Washington think tank and was also a “media contributor.” Above the classification line, Grenell wrote, “Thoughts?” 

HAVANA SYNDROME: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford has called on the Department of Labor to address alleged delinquent payments for a former NSA officer suffering from the effects of Havana Syndrome.  Former NSA counterintelligence officer Mike Beck is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which he believes was caused by a 1996 attack on him in Russia. Beck told journalist Catherine Herridge that he was attacked by “a hostile intelligence service” after he  “walked in on an operation that the hostile country was doing.” In a letter to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Crawford expressed concern over the department's reported three-month delay in covering the cost of Beck’s care in an assisted living facility.  (SpyTalk Contributing Editor Michael Isikoff interviewed Beck back in 2022 and reported on his case in his Conspiracyland podcast.)

AI & BIOWEAPONS: China is “probably capable” of using artificial intelligence to advance applications of biological weapons, according to the State Department’s annual arms compliance report. The report also warns that Russia, North Korea, and Iran are conducting research that raises concerns about their adherence to the Biological Weapons Convention, a 1972 arms treaty that bans developing and stockpiling deadly bioweapons. The Washington Times reports that the State Department repeated concerns from last year regarding Beijing’s failure to disclose details about offensive biological arms that include weaponized ricin and botulinum toxins, as well as military agents for spreading anthrax, cholera, plague, and tularemia.

POCKET LITTER: 

• Russia is increasing its hybrid attacks aimed at undermining society in the Netherlands and its European allies, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD says. The MIVD says Russia was behind a sabotage attack on an unspecified Dutch public service. (Reuters) 

• Two Chinese nationals were apprehended by police in South Korea for filming fighter jets near a U.S. airbase in South Korea. Amazingly, the pair had been picked up doing the same thing — in the same area — just two days earlier. They were released after authorities determined that no espionage was involved. (The Korea Times)

• Chinese spies are eavesdropping on British political figures by bugging park benches and buildings in Whitehall, security sources believe. (The Daily Mail)

• FBI Director Kash Patel toured the bureau’s facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, fulfilling a promise he made during his confirmation hearing. “I just want to let America know, part of the move to get FBI agents and intel analysts and support staff out in the field is going to come right through Redstone Arsenal,” Patel said. “We’re going to put more and more and more people here on a permanent basis from the FBI.” (Al.com)

Jeff Stein contributed to this story.

Is there something we missed? Or something you would like to see more of? Send your tips, corrections, and thoughts to [email protected].

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Jeff Stein and Michael Isikoff are back discussing the ongoing chaos within the Trump administration's national security apparatus, highlighting the recent firings at the NSC and Pentagon, the implications of using unsecured communication methods, and the bold actions taken by Ukraine against Russia. They explore the disarray in U.S. intelligence agencies and the potential consequences of this instability on national security.

A former senior CIA officer who pleaded guilty Wednesday to working illegally as an agent for unidentified foreign clients came under suspicion years earlier as a security risk, reliable sources tell SpyTalk.

Dale Britt Bendler, 68, of Miami, Fla., was suspended with pay during a European assignment between 2016 and 2019, a one time senior CIA colleague said on condition of anonymity to discuss such a sensitive issue. 

“We were concerned about him years ago……he did not have the greatest reputation, ever,” this person said. “At one point he was put on leave with pay, because we didn't want him to have accesses (to classified files). And now they're just finally getting around to putting him in jail, which is good.”

The former official hinted that the CIA got onto Bendler after classified material he had access to started showing up in the hands of an allied foreign government the agency was monitoring.

This former official and others speculated that the involvement of an ally in the case—and not Russia or China—was the reason the Justice Department did not identify the government in its Wednesday plea deal announcement. One of the former officials said the FBI was brought into the case, which was eventually turned over to the DoJ for prosecution on far more serious espionage charges, but the department declined.

“What happens often is we give it to Justice Department, they're like, we don't have enough evidence. We're like, are you kidding me? We've given you all of this,” the former official said. “So my bet is they did some kind of sting against him, and they finally got the evidence and now they're doing something about it.”

Neither the announcement nor news reports listed an attorney for Bendler, nor could one be immediately found for comment. As a matter of practice, the CIA does not comment on personnel matters, especially those involving former undercover officers.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Bendler worked for the CIA from 1983 to 2020. Intelligence sources said he started out in Latin America and then shifted to counterterrorism after the 9/11 attacks, which took him to Africa and Europe. He was introduced on a 2024 podcast as a CIA paramilitary officer in El Salvador and Angola who “did foreign intel assignments in Europe casing hard targets” and “worked the EIT [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] program at black sites, and more.” Sometime along the way he also took up the cause of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, particularly veterans of the the disastrous 1961 CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

In recent years he’s been an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, according to his LinkedIn posts.  One former top CIA officer said he broke contact with Bendler on LinkedIn because of that. Another former colleague called him “a big talker” who is now “on YouTube pontificating on macho topics.” Yet another called him “not the smartest guy. I dealt with him a couple of times but never served with him. Very Trumpy.” 

 In 2005-2006, however, Bendler was liked  or trusted enough to be appointed CIA chief of station in Brussels, a former colleague recalls.  

Following his retirement, according to the DoJ, he worked as a full-time CIA contractor at the CIA with a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance.  According to his LinkedIn page, he also worked as a contracted instructor with U.S. Army Special Forces between 2014 2020. 

“Beginning in July 2017 and continuing through at least July 2020, while a full-time CIA contractor and TS/SCI clearance holder, Bendler worked with a U.S. lobbying firm and engaged in unauthorized and hidden lobbying and public relations activities on behalf of foreign national clients,” the DoJ said.

And worse, according to the DoJ announcement.

“During the course of Bendler’s unauthorized lobbying and public relations activities, Bendler also abused his access to CIA resources and personnel by, among other things, searching classified CIA systems for any information related to his private lobbying clients, improperly storing and disclosing non-public, sensitive, and classified U.S. government information to people not authorized to receive such information, and lying to the CIA and the FBI about his status as a foreign agent and his unauthorized lobbying and public relations activities.”

Bendler faces up to seven years in prison when he’s sentenced July 16.

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A draft plan to close several American embassies and consulates across a wide swath of sub-Saharan Africa has alarmed U.S. intelligence veterans with deep experience on the continent, one of whom called it “the greatest single threat to the United States and its closest allies in my lifetime.”

“By ceding this continent to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and global terrorist organizations, the Trump Administration risks losing inroads that have kept the U.S. intelligence community abreast and ahead of threats from these nation-states and terrorists since the National Security Act of 1947,” said Darrell Blocker, a retired former senior CIA operations official who once headed the agency’s Africa Division. “The national security implications of closing U.S. embassies and consulates on the African continent represents the greatest single threat to the United States and its closest allies in my lifetime.“ 

We’re back with another edition of The SpyTalk Week in Review podcast.

Jeff Stein and Michael Isikoff discuss the current state of national security, focusing on the Trump administration's impact on the intelligence community, Russia's ongoing influence in American politics, and recent developments regarding Venezuela and Iran. They also delve into personnel changes within the intelligence community and reflect on the historical legacy of Frank Wisner and CIA operations during the Cold War.

Takeaways

• The Trump administration has fundamentally altered the intelligence community's dynamics.

• Russia's interference in U.S. elections remains a significant concern.

• The appointment of individuals with ties to Russian propaganda raises questions about the DOJ's integrity.

• Venezuela's alleged threats to the U.S. are not supported by intelligence reports.

• Changes in intelligence personnel can shape U.S. foreign policy significantly.

• Frank Wisner played a crucial role in covert CIA operations during the Cold War.

• The CIA's historical actions have often been shrouded in secrecy and misinformation.

• Oversight of intelligence operations has become increasingly important in light of past abuses.

• The influence of foreign powers on U.S. politics is a persistent issue.

• The conversation highlights the need for transparency in intelligence operations.

INTEL LEAK ON IRAN ATTACK PLAN: The New York Times reported that Israel planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month, but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program. Israel, in coordination with American officials, considered several strike options against Iran in May, including an ambitious plan combining airstrikes and commando raids, but then shifted focus to a large-scale bombing campaign before calling the whole thing off. Israel was furious. Channel 12 quoted a senior Israeli security official as saying, “The heart of the secret with respect to Iran was leaked — the methods of operation, the timing, the coordination mechanisms, and the element of surprise. This does real harm to Israeli interests regarding Iran.”  The Kan public broadcaster reported that Israel believes the U.S. leaked the information in order to pressure Iran in the negotiations.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, are set to hold a second round of talks in Rome on Saturday.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is emerging as one of the voices counseling against an attack. In a meeting this month about Israel’s plan, the Times reported that Gabbard presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry in the Middle East could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want. The U.S. military has sent two U.S. carriers—the USS Carl Vinson and Harry Truman—to the Middle East and deployed at least six B-2 bombers with 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs to Diego Garcia as a not-so-subtle warning to Iran if it doesn’t make a deal. Trump has sided, for now, with the doves and opted for direct talks, which, as SpyTalk editor-in-chief Jeff Stein reported, is a magnet for spies. 

Axios reported that Gabbard installed William Ruger, a former vice president of the Charles Koch Institute and a skeptic of military action against Iran, as Deputy DNI for Mission Integration, a key position in the intelligence community that puts him in charge of the President’s Daily Brief. or PDB. Oddly, last month Gabbard decided not to give the same job to Daniel Davis, a similar skeptic of foreign interventions—and critic of Israel.

Earlier this month, Trump sent CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Jerusalem for discussions about what to do about Iran. The New York Times reported that Ratcliffe met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the head of the Mossad. “In addition to talks and strikes, other options were discussed, including covert Israeli operations conducted with U.S. support and more aggressive sanctions enforcement,” the Times reported.

As diplomacy hangs by a thread, the shadow war over Iran’s nuclear ambitions edges closer to daylight—with Washington and Jerusalem at odds over how, and when, to strike.  (It’s amazing to us how much of this highly sensitive debate is being played out in the media.) 

Meanwhile, someone leaked an internal Ratcliffe memo to the New York Post in which he maintains that "no adversary in the history of our Nation has presented a more formidable challenge or a more capable strategic competitor than the Chinese Communist Party." 

TRUMP’S RED LINES: In the wake of SignalGate and Laura Loomer’s bizarre Oval Office appearance, we were relieved to hear that there is at least one national security red line that President Trump will not cross. Axios reported that Trump personally killed a Top Secret briefing that Elon Musk was set to receive on the Pentagon’s war plans for China.. "What the fuck is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn't go," Trump said, according to Axios.  Initially, Trump  called it “Fake News” when The New York Times reported on the Pentagon’s plans to brief Musk (who has significant business in China, including factories producing Teslas and batteries, and other investments). Of course, the Times report was accurate, and Trump made sure to post his message after the plans for the classified briefing were scrubbed. Musk still attended a briefing at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 21. But China wasn't discussed, reportedly.  A White House official told Axios that the president “still very much loves Elon, but there are some red lines."  Good.

MISSING SIGNALS: Turns out those Signal chats, which should be properly classified as government records, have gone missing. American Oversight, the nonpartisan watchdog that sued the Trump administration for using the private messaging service to share military strike plans against Houthi rebels in Yemen, has gathered new evidence of “the administration’s disdain for federal record-keeping rules and basic accountability.” It found that “the CIA revealed that not only did the agency fail to preserve any messages, but that someone had proactively deleted messages—potentially even after a court order.” It’s looking for whodunnit.

PENTAGON LEAKS: In related news, the Pentagon placed three top political appointees on leave this week as part of an investigation into press leaks, including that planned briefing for Elon Musk on China war plans.  Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Hegseth; Darin Selnick, the secretary’s deputy chief of staff; and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, were removed from the Pentagon this week, The Washington Post reported.  According to Politico, the leaks under investigation also include “military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier heading to the Red Sea, Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon and a pause in intelligence sharing with Ukraine.”  The leak inquiry had authorized the use of polygraphs, but it was unclear whether a lie detector had been used in the investigation.

CRUSHING CARTELS: The CIA is ramping up its focus on international drug cartels, preparing to apply its counterterrorism expertise to dismantle trafficking networks. Deputy Director Michael Ellis told Breitbart that the spy agency is set to launch the Americas Counternarcotics Mission Center, merging Western Hemisphere and counternarcotics teams for faster, tighter coordination against cartels, which the Trump administration has labeled as foreign terrorist organizations. Ellis says he is building a “finely tuned machine” to destroy the cartels by shifting resources traditionally aimed at hunting down jihadist threats in the Middle East toward drug traffickers in Latin America. Ellis’ first trip as deputy director took him to the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. Relatedly, the House Intelligence Committee has created a Cartel Task Force led by Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tex., who says he will “identify the tools and authorities needed to empower U.S. agencies and allies to defeat” transnational drug cartels.

This is just the latest iteration of CIA anti-drug efforts. In 1989, the agency created a Counternarcotics Center to support other U.S. government efforts in this realm. In 1994, its name was changed to the Crime and Narcotics Center to reflect its expanded mandate to include all international crime issues. No word on whether the Trump initiatives will subsume or replace it. 

SPYING WITH AI: In other Langley news, the CIA is arming its intel-gathering systems with artificial intelligence. At a Vanderbilt University summit, the agency’s AI chief, Lakshmi Raman, said the CIA has “deployed generative AI tools on its Top-Secret systems” that help U.S. intelligence officers process vast amounts of data, spot patterns, and refine their analysis. According to The Washington Times, Raman described a future where AI “assistants” supercharge spycraft, slashing the time it takes to sift intelligence and exposing blind spots in analysts’ thinking.  But Raman made clear: machines won’t replace human instincts anytime soon. “We understand when it’s important to have a human in the loop,” she said. The CIA is also watching the horizon for artificial general intelligence systems that could surpass human capability. For now, it’s a “known unknown.” 

UNCLOAKED CIA VETERAN TO ODNI: President Trump’s nominee for principal deputy director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is a veteran CIA operations officer. Aaron Lukas, 53, has been with the spy agency since 2004. He remained with the agency while holding senior positions in the first Trump administration, including chief of staff at the DNI and deputy senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council. (Previous reports, and Lukas’s own LinkedIn bio, describe him as a foreign service officer, so his appointment was a coming-out of sorts. “For the past 20-plus years, I’ve worked in the shadows as a CIA operations officer, most often overseas on the front lines of intelligence work,” Lukas said in his statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Most recently, he was “a CIA Station Chief/DNI Representative in a former Soviet country.” If confirmed, Lukas says DNI Tulsi Gabbard has asked him to review intelligence community programs to ensure they stay focused on core missions — collection, analysis, and covert action — and reconsider those that don’t.

CHINA FINGERS U.S. TAPPERS: China flipped the script on the United States, accusing three officials with the National Security Agency of hacking into systems tied to the 2025 Asian Winter Games in Harbin. China’s official Xinhua News Agency, citing Chinese investigators, said the three members of the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations targeted sensitive personal data just before the event’s opening ceremony in February, which was attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The NSA agents were identified by Xinhua as Katheryn A. Wilson, Robert J. Snelling, and Stephen W. Johnson. Chinese investigators said the operatives are "suspected of activating specific pre-installed backdoors" in Microsoft Windows operating systems. The American trio is accused of using front organizations and anonymously rented servers to cover their track. Chinese police linked the University of California and Virginia Tech to the operation (Cal didn’t comment; Virginia Tech denied the charges). The U.S. dismissed the claims as fabricated.

DOGE-RUSSIA INTRIGUE: A team of advisors from Elon Musk’s DOGE set off alarms at the National Labor Relations Board when a sharp spike in data was spotted flowing out of the small federal agency that deals with complaints about unfair labor practices. NPR spoke to the whistleblower, later identified as IT staffer Daniel Berulis,  who said that minutes after the DOGE team accessed the system, a Russian IP tried logging in, armed with the correct username and password. DOGE team members acted like spies, disabling monitoring tools and deleting access logs to cover their tracks—a behavior that cybersecurity experts say mirrors tactics used by criminal or state-sponsored hackers. On Thursday’s PBS Newshour, Berulis and his lawyer, former CIA officer Andrew Bakaj, said the whistleblower received a chilling warning following his disclosures. “Somebody went to Dan's home and taped a threatening note, a menacing note on his door with personal information,” said Bakaj, which Berulis confirmed.  Berulis told PBS that all he wanted was “just a full investigation. That's all I have wanted, is just somebody to come in and validate, tell me why I'm wrong. Just come in and say this is because of this.”

GABBARD THREATS: A 24-year-old Georgia man was arrested and charged with transmitting interstate threats against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her family. According to federal prosecutors, Aliakbar Amin sent a series of violent threats via text and social media, including images of a firearm pointed at photos of Gabbard and her husband. Court records revealed that Amin had sent cellular text messages to Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams. Meanwhile, CNN reported that Gabbard declared under oath last year that she and her husband were residents of Texas. Then she voted in Hawaii. (CNN)

ISIS ELECTION PLOT FOILED: An 18-year-old Afghan citizen and U.S. Green Card holder pleaded guilty to charges of receiving and conspiring to receive firearms and ammunition intended for use in an Election Day terrorist attack. According to the Department of Justice, Abdullah Zada and co-conspirator Nasir Tawhedi, 27, obtained two AK-47-style rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition for a November 2024 attack on behalf of ISIS. The two men were arrested in October 2024. Zada, arrested at 17, pleaded guilty as an adult and faces up to 15 years in federal prison. Tawhedi, also an Afghan citizen, awaits trial on charges including conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS and receiving firearms for a terrorist act. Their intended target was not identified, but local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities in Oklahoma directed the case.

“Somebody went to Dan's home and taped a threatening note, a menacing note on his door with personal information,” the whistleblower’s lawyer said.

BEWARE DEEPSEEK: A new report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party exposes AI chatbot DeepSeek as “a profound threat to our nation’s security.” The committee’s report, "DeepSeek Unmasked," reveals that the AI app covertly transmits American user data to China via infrastructure linked to China Mobile, a company designated by the U.S. as a Chinese military entity. DeepSeek collects extensive personal data on Americans who use the chatbot, including chat history, device details, and even typing patterns. The report also found that the AI model covertly manipulates outputs to align with Chinese Communist Party propaganda, suppressing topics like democracy and human rights. 

NO DONNY, THESE MEN ARE NIHLISTS: Pardon the reference to The Big Lebowski, but we think it’s appropriate given what journalist Ken Klippenstein unearthed in some court documents. The Trump Justice Department has coined a new term for domestic terrorists: Nihilistic Violent Extremists. The FBI defines NVEs as “individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.” The new term was created to replace the Biden administration's post-January 6 focus on anti-government extremism, offering a more neutral-sounding label that shifts attention away from MAGA and white supremacists while avoiding the appearance of targeting anti-Trump groups.

IRAN SPY BUSTED: A former contractor with the Federal Aviation Administration pleaded guilty to secretly acting as an agent for Iran. Abouzar Rahmati of Virginia funneled aviation and solar energy data to Iranian intelligence, including “sensitive access-controlled” FAA files. He met with Iranian operatives, used a cover story to mask his activities, and even hand-delivered stolen data during trips to Iran, the DOJ said. Sentencing is set for August.

TARGETING DISSENT: Former Trump cybersecurity official Chris Krebs is pushing back against what he calls a “novel and expansive” effort by Donald Trump to punish critics, according to The Wall Street Journal. Krebs, who was fired in 2020 from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency after publicly declaring the election secure (i.e., not “stolen”), was recently targeted in a Trump executive order that suspended any of Krebs’ active security clearances and directed the Justice Department to investigate him. Krebs resigned from SentinelOne, a cybersecurity firm, after Trump suspended clearances of all its employees. On the same day, Trump signed a similar executive order targeting Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security and prominent Trump critic. 

THIN BLUE SPY: A retired NYPD sergeant was sentenced to 18 months in prison for acting as an illegal Chinese agent. Michael McMahon, along with co-defendants Zhu Yong and Congying Zheng, was convicted in June 2023 for harassing and stalking a U.S. resident and his family to coerce their return to China to face corruption charges. Between 2016 and 2019, McMahon was hired as a private investigator and provided sensitive information about the victim’s whereabouts to Chinese officials. His co-defendants pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. (For more on this subject, see Jeff Stein’s 2022 piece, “How Foreign Spies Infiltrate US Police.”)

DISINFO OFFICE DISMANTLED:  Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the State Department’s office dedicated to countering foreign disinformation, claiming it had been used to “silence and censor” Americans. The  Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, known as R/FIMI, was a successor to the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was established under President Obama to combat online extremism and later expanded to address foreign election interference. Rubio told MAGA influencer (and former State Department employee)  Mike Benz that he had authorized an investigation into how the program had been used to “deplatform” people from social networks.  “We had government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department,” Rubio said. Benz revealed that the closure would eliminate 50 positions and cut $65 million, as the Trump administration moves to scale back efforts to thwart clandestine foreign influence ops across multiple agencies. 

DOMESTIC TERRORISM PLAN: The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has released the Biden administration’s plan for countering domestic terrorism as part of what she calls an effort to “restore trust” in the U.S. intelligence community. The 15-page plan emphasized the intelligence community’s central role in several priorities, including a push to “illuminate the transnational aspects of domestic terrorism” by analyzing foreign intelligence for links between U.S.-based extremists and overseas actors. The plan also calls for examining how foreign governments and non-state groups use disinformation campaigns to fuel domestic extremism. Another key focus is preventing violent extremists from infiltrating the ranks of the U.S. military and government contractors through better screening and monitoring efforts. While critics on the right are likely to seize on the intelligence focus as government overreach, the reality is hard to ignore: the threat from homegrown extremism remains very real.

NO HAY CARACAS-TREN DE ARAGUA LINK: The National Intelligence Council concluded in a secret assessment this month that Venezuela's government is not directing the Tren de Aragua gang to invade the U.S., contradicting a Trump claim that has been the linchpin of his extreme deportation operations. (The Washington Post) 

POCKET LITTER: 

• Shaun Walker, the British journalist who has extensively covered Russia and Ukraine, has a new book out on Moscow’s agents living in the West, the kind dramatized in The Americans, the riveting espionage TV series featuring a KGB couple living undercover in the Washington suburbs.  Writing in the New York Times, Joseph Finder called THE ILLEGALS: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West “fascinating and meticulously researched.” 

• The Sunday Times of London reported that there was "credible intelligence" that superyachts owned by Russian oligarchs had been used before Russia invaded Ukraine to carry out underwater reconnaissance close to the United Kingdom. A number of the superyachts were fitted with "moon pools," or protected openings in the hull of a ship used to access water under the ship. Moon pools can be used to deploy equipment for deep-sea reconnaissance. (via Newsweek)

• Richard Armitage, the barrel-chested No. 2 official at the State Department from 2001 to 2005, has died at 79. Armitage later admitted that he was the main source of a 2003 news account that revealed the secret identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, shortly after the invasion of Iraq. (NYTimes)

• A spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed that it does provide “burner phones” to top officials traveling to the United States, but denied a report that the practice was new and connected to a recent security appraisal of the risks posed by the Trump administration. The Financial Times reported that the EU was issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to “avoid the risk of espionage,” a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China. (The Record)

• FBI Director Kash Patel has been quietly removed as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms after he stopped showing up for work. He was replaced by Daniel Driscoll, who also holds a second job—Army Secretary. (The Daily Beast)

• More than 250 former Mossad officers have signed a statement calling on the Israeli government to ensure the return of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, even at the cost of ending the ongoing war against the terror group. The signatories to the letter, which was organized by former top hostage negotiator David Meidan, include ex-Mossad chiefs Danny Yatom, Efraim Halevy, and Tamir Pardo. (Times of Israel)

Jeff Stein contributed to this story.

Is there something we missed? Or something you would like to see more of? Send your tips, corrections, and thoughts to [email protected].

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As a national security reporter for Newsweek in the 1990’s, Doug Waller figured he was perfectly positioned to cultivate a top CIA official who had just left the agency. His quarry was John Waller, who had spent years in the agency’s clandestine service specializing in Middle East affairs and later served as the CIA’s inspector general. Doug Waller was convinced the two were distantly related and that the presumed family connection just might help him unlock a goldmine of intelligence secrets. 

“Hey cousin,” he told John Waller after tracking him down in retirement. “Can we talk?” The CIA man was polite but wise to Doug’s gambit. “That’s not going to work,” he told him in so many words. True to his agency heritage, he gave up nothing.

The reporter, though, was undeterred and continued to pore through agency archives and memoirs to learn more about the covert machinations of his namesake. This month, it paid off—big time —with the release of his new book, The Determined Spy, a massive 645-page biography of Frank Wisner, the legendary CIA pioneer who oversaw secret operations in the heady days of the Cold War.

It’s an illuminating, action-packed account that chronicles multiple CIA adventures—and misadventures—around the globe, most notably the agency-instigated 1953 coup in Iran that toppled the democratically elected government of the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and solidified the shah’s autocratic hold on power, an act that continues to reverberate throughout the region to this day. 

And it turns out that, while Wisner was the executive producer of TPAJAX, the codename for this brazen intervention in the domestic affairs of another country, it was John Waller—chief of the covert ops Iran desk—who literally wrote the script,  micromanaging events on the ground and firing off memos to agency operatives led by Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore, about who to bribe, who to intimidate, who to manipulate and who to smear.  

Doug Waller never did find out if he was actually related to John Waller. But his exhaustive research established this much: While Wisner, CIA director Allen Dulles  and Roosevelt got the internal praise (and later public blame) for the overthrow of Mossadegh, John Waller “was the intellectual brainchild behind the operation, putting together the scope, the strategic effort and everything,” Doug Waller tells me on the SpyTalk podcast, available Friday. 

Deep Dive

There is today much debate among historians about what happened in Iran, with some arguing that the CIA’s role was relatively secondary given that Mossadegh (who had nationalized the oil industry and was proclaimed “Man of the Year” by Time magazine in 1951) had by the time of the coup alienated the army and was rapidly losing support. If events had been allowed to take their course, it has been argued, it is possible that Mossadegh—who, although a proud nationalist, was hardly a Soviet agent—might have been pushed from  power anyway. But as Waller’s account shows, that’s not how the CIA or its overseers at the White House saw it at the time or how leftist critics see it now. Mossadegh needed a push.

John Waller’s game plan, under Frank Wisner’s direction, called for staging street demonstrations where rented rioters shouted “Death to Mossadegh.” Street thugs were hired to attack religious clerics—a ploy aimed at making it look like they were Mossadegh supporters as opposed to paid operatives of American intelligence. Bribes “were being passed out like candy,” writes Waller, including to local journalists who penned CIA-planted stories portraying Mossadegh as a closeted Jewish communist. When Mossadegh finally stepped down and fled—escaping over a back garden wall while his house was ransacked and set on fire—CIA officers back in Washington rejoiced, rushing through the hallways clutching updates from news agencies in the Mideast. 

“Never had a day carried so much excitement, satisfaction and jubilation for Wisner and his men,” Waller writes. “They did not want it to end.”

From today’s perspective, of course, the Iran coup looks very different— a case of retrograde Western imperialism: Urged on by the U.K.’s Anglo-Iranian oil company, Britain’s MI6 partnered with the CIA in the operation, which was seen as a success—up to a point. The shah was pro-western, instituted some liberal reforms, especially for women, and opened the door to foreign  business, including large purchases from U.S. arms makers. But as  Waller notes, over time, the coup had “disastrous”  consequences for millions of Iranians: decades of corrupt, autocratic rule by the shah—enforced by his SAVAK secret police—followed by a 1979 revolution by Islamic fundamentalists that has turned the country into a “base camp for terrorism abroad.” 

Lips Sealed

Just as stunning, at least to this journalist, was the extraordinary secrecy that surrounded the whole thing. No congressional committees were briefed on what the CIA had done. Not a word about the agency’s role appeared in the press,  even though some journalists, like the prominent Washington columnist Joseph Alsop, knew about it. President Eisenhower, in his 1963 memoir, Mandate for Change, 10 years after he left office, briefly writes about the overthrow of Iran’s government but never even mentions the CIA’s role (which, in broad strokes, he had authorized). 

As for John Waller, the “brains” of the operation, he went on to write a number of history books, including about Britain’s war in Afghanistan in the 19th century, before his death in 2004. His obituary in the Washington Post said not a word about the overthrow of Mossadegh. “It doesn’t even qualify for a conspiracy of silence because there were so many people that basically kept quiet about it,” said Doug Waller. 

(The first public accounts of the Iran coup didn’t appear until October 1979, when Kim Roosevelt authored Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran—which was quickly withdrawn the following month after the U.S. Embassy takeover. John Waller himself gave a classified internal interview to a CIA historian where he did talk about his role,  arguing that what happened wasn’t a “coup” per se; it was, as Roosevelt argued, a “countercoup” against Mossadegh for taking over Anglo-Iranian Oil and trying to muscle out the shah. But the interview in redacted form wasn’t released until 2014, one year after the CIA finally formally acknowledged its role in what happened in Iran.)

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Hand in Gloves 

Doug Waller tells the story of the Iran coup in the context of the colorful career of Wisner, a brilliant, if troubled man, who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, organizing resistance to the Nazis in Romania (where he also had an affair with a gorgeous princess who, unbeknownst to him, turned out to be a Communist spy). A protege of sorts of fellow OSS veteran and future CIA Director Allen Dulles, Wisner was  later tapped to run  something with the bland name of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) which, during the Truman administration, ginned up covert operations across the globe to counter what was widely perceived to be an ever more menacing Soviet threat. By virtue of the job, his connections, and his bureaucratic clout, Waller writes,  Wisner was becoming “one of the most powerful men in Washington,” even though members of the public had no idea who he was. (He and his wife Polly, a charming socialite, were charter members of “the Georgetown set,” a group of high level diplomats, spies and plugged-in journalists who would regularly gather for alcohol-infused dinners and debates about world affairs.)

In 1950, the OPC was folded into the CIA and Wisner took over the secret ops brief. Overseeing an army of covert warriors, informally known as “Wisner’s weirdos,” he launched  failed raids of exiles into Albania, created  CIA-funded front groups to promulgate agency propaganda (the “Mighty Wurlitzer,” he joyously called it) and started  HTLingual, a controversial and illegal program to open the mail of Americans writing and receiving letters to individuals in Soviet Russia. (Another Wisner project: MKUltra, codename for the CIA’s efforts to develop mind-altering drugs like LSD that could be used to disorient targets, induce trances or drive them crazy. ) And after the Iran coup, there was yet another overthrow engineered by Wisner, this one in Guatemala, whose consequences were just as disastrous, resulting in years of harsh military rule and civil war. 

This was not exactly a record to be proud of, and by the mid-1950’s Wisner was in the midst of a mental crackup, growing increasingly paranoid and short-tempered, given to bizarre and irrational outbursts. He was committed to a mental institution in Maryland where he received electric shock therapy. 

In the wake of that a board of consultants tapped by Eisenhower to review intelligence activities “told Ike bluntly that it was dangerous entrusting so much power over American foreign policy to a man now found to be insane,” writes Waller. After his treatment, the CIA eased him out of his high pressure job and gave him another, cushier one as London chief of station. In 1965, while at a farm he owned in Maryland, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the head with a shotgun.  

Tapestry

Parts of Wisner’s story have been told before, most notably by Hugh Wilford in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, and Evan Thomas in The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA. But Waller has done impressive research to fill out a fuller, richer portrait, including spending up to 50 hours with Wisner’s family, one of whom, Frank Wisner II, was a veteran State Department diplomat who served as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to India (and who died just a few weeks before the book came out.)  And while some of the pedestrian details about Wisner’s early career could have been cut, making the book less of a doorstop, Waller has masterly invoked the sense of the apocalyptic doom and gloom that drove the Cold War in both Moscow and Washington and was the menacing backdrop to all of Wisner’s operations. 

“Never had a day carried so much excitement, satisfaction and jubilation for Wisner and his men,” Waller writes. “They did not want it to end.”

Pentagon planners were so convinced the Soviets would attack western Europe, for example, they even put a precise date on when it would take place: July 1, 1952. Wisner drew up his own war plan with a “secret army to retard the Soviet advance.” It was in this context that he also set up Program Branch 7 to explore “assassination capability.” Among the ideas it examined: poisoning Chinese leader Zhou Enlai, Mao’s number two, when he attended a conference in Indonesia, and planting a bomb under Stalin’s limousine if he showed up for a planned meeting in Paris. The CIA’s plans to terminate foreign leaders “with extreme prejudice” were nixed at the time  by then-director Walter “Beetle” Smith, only to be revived some years later by Dulles when, with Eisenhower’s tacit green light, it launched new efforts to assassinate several foreign leaders, in one instance recruiting Mafia figures to try to bump off the pesky new dictator of Cuba, Fidel Castro.  

For years, the popular account of Wisner’s psychological breakdown is that he was driven mad by the covert ops he led. Waller challenges that widely held view, writing that Wisner clinically suffered from a bipolar disorder, a disease for which, at the time, there was little effective treatment. 

Maybe so. But as the newspaper editor told the Jimmy Stewart character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” On this one, I prefer the legend. If  Wisner wasn’t pushed over the edge into madness from his many years overthrowing governments and  directing sabotage, subterfuge, and propaganda operations against a resourceful and relentless Soviet enemy, maybe he should have been. 

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