SpyTalk

Waltz is out, Wong is out, Tulsi potificates on intel agency “rot.” MAGA Influencers claim scalps. Lie detectors mobilzed in hunt for leakers. Big personnel cuts across the ODNI, CIA, NSA and other intel agencies. Deep State be gone! What more do you need for fiendish entertainment in Week 18 of Trump 2.0?

Mike Isilkoff and I break it all down in the l…

Sure, we could start by rehashing the bust of  Michael Waltz from National Security Adviser down to U.N. ambassador (a lowly post to conservatives), but there’s so much more to address in our world beyond the usual deck chair shuffles that have long been a hallmark of a Donald Trump’s administration. As in Trump 1.0, he’ll likely go through a couple more NSAs before this term is over. But it is worth noting that, according to reports, Signalgate wasn’t his only problem: Waltz was out of step with Trump’s general allergy to U.S. military adventures abroad, in particular a joint U.S.-Israeli air strike on Iran pressed by Benjamin Netanyahu, which Waltz reportedly embraced to his peril. Far right hallucinator and unofficial Trump national security adviser Laura Loomer, meanwhile, celebrated the expulsion of Waltz—and his deputy Alex Wong—with one word: “scalp.” 

Blood on the Tracks: The bigger news to us, courtesy of The Washington Post’s  Warren P. Strobel,  was Trump’s plan for a “major downsizing at U.S. spy agencies,” which would include a cut of 1,200 positions at the CIA, “along with thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community…including at the National Security Agency, a highly secretive service that specializes in cryptology and global electronic espionage, a person familiar with the matter said.” 

UPDATED

Decades ago, a wise and long serving Justice Department inspector general remarked to me that leak investigations were “a  fool’s errand.” By that he meant that they rarely ended in  criminal investigations and often led back to the offices of political appointees who had expressed the loudest outrage, where they were quietly buried.  They also, of course, exacted a cost in department morale, as leak sleuths roamed the corridors and called employees to basement interrogation cells like so many wired-up Inspector Javerts.

That’s what the Trump machine has unleashed upon Washington, according to a generally overlooked story reported by The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Hannah Natanson on Monday. The hypocrisy of the Signalgate crew here is palpable.

Of course, FBI Director Kash Patel, whose campaign to root out the “deep state” animated his campaign for a top national security job in the Trump regime, has embraced the so-called “lie detector” initiative, which seems prompted by the embarrassing revelations of—wait for it—leaky security behavior by top national security officials.

“The seriousness of the specific leaks in question precipitated the polygraphs, as they involved potential damage to security protocols at the bureau,” said an unidentified spokesperson, apparently blithely insensitive to the probe’s rationale.

Putting aside the absurdity of the campaign, though, I wonder if Patel & co. are aware of long standing questions about how effective polygraphs are.

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 mo…

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…. 

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 t…

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.

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.

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.“