5333 private links
The agency opposes an amendment that prevents it from using data brokers.
Using film from U.S. spy balloons to take pictures of the Moon
"THERE WILL BE LAUGHTER IF THIS PIECE WORKS ...".
Article from the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" of April 10, 1993. by Igor Borisovich Lisochkin.
Russian text reference provided by Alexander Dzhuly. Subsection headers inserted by Sven Grahn //
And the fact that we "photographed" the opposite side of the Moon with an American film that was sent to our country with purely spying goals, I told my closest associates only many years later, long after the untimely death of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. In fifteen years. The abbreviation “AB”, I think, is not necessary to decipher. Of course, this is the "American Balloons". Odessites never lose their sense of humor. Starting with "Vostok" I acted as the chief designer of space television systems. Of course, I perfectly remember the immortal flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, and everything that followed. But this is another story and completely different adventures.”
Clive Robinson • September 3, 2021 6:14 PM
@ ALL,
“In fact, it was arguably the most secure rotor machine ever built.”Probably not the most secure rotor machine ever built, but probably the most secure rotor machine ever put into production even if for a very very small number (The British / Canadian Rockex was after TEMPEST issues were sorted out more secure than any rotor cipher machine ever envisaged and would still be secure today).
Some have heard of the US SIGABA / ECM II Cipher Machine[1] it had some interesting features including the way stepping was done. Because of this it was considered unbreakable at the time (but is breakable today).
One feature that the US thought was unknown to others was the ability to make wheels step not just forwards but backwards as well as not rotate at all etc.
The British had a problem the stalwart Typex was long over due for a full replacment. Unfortunately the British did not have the mechanical manufacturing capability at the time[2]. It was hoped that under the BRUSA arangment, the British could use either the US SIGABA or get parts manufactured secretly in the US.
As normal the “Special Relationship” rapidly hit the rocks. The US did not want the secret of the rotor wheel steping to be known to the British so the use of SIGABA was vetoed. The resulting cludge to enable a Typex and SIGABA to inter opperate evolved and became the CCM.
So one of the greatest brains at Bletchly Gordon Welchman was called upon to design an unbreakable and future proof rotor system which he went ahead and did.
The US did not want it built, they would not be able to eves drop on it and much backwards and forwards happened. As part of it the Brirish revealed their secret of independent rotor steping that would not just do all the US had tried to keep hidden but a few tricks more (lets be honest folks such rotor behaviour is kind of obvious and it turned up in other places).
What killed Welchman’s machine in the end was the US Navy that adamantly refused under any circumstances to have it aboard their ships… Thus as a more secure replacment for the CCM it was not to be, thus it was as far as British Civil Servants were concerned pointless continuing with it’s development.
It was without doubt a beast and yes it is doubtful that it’s reliability would have been good enough.
[2] Lack of mechanical manufacturing was one of the reasons the British designed the Rockex system that used Post Office relays valve/tube electronics using standard parts and standard teleprinter readers and punches. Another issue was that the US were pushing a voice scrambler X-Ray at the British on the notion it was easy to use. However those “in the know” were not just deeply suspicious they were fairly certain that the US would be able to evesdrop on the system. So bad was the situation that Churchill who was Prime Minister had to personally authorise which system should be used abd Rockex got the nod of approval because Churchill did not trust the US in the slightest at that time.
Arthur Schwartz
@ArthurSchwartz
Remember when @brianstelter dismissed Tucker’s claims as conspiracy theory nonsense? Does Stelter ever get anything right?
Tucker Carlson’s Spying Allegations Being Investigated by National Security Agency Watchdog
wsj.com //
WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency’s internal watchdog is conducting a review of recent allegations made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the spy agency had improperly targeted his communications for surveillance, the agency and an official said.
The announcement of the review by the NSA’s inspector general doesn’t mention Mr. Carlson by name, but instead refers to a member of the U.S. news media. A person familiar with the matter said the review concerns Mr. Carlson.
But the final clue was the clotheslines on the compound, which flapped each day with women’s garments, shalwar kameez worn by Pakistani men, children’s outfits and diapers — far more than the 11 members of the bodyguards’ families could ever wear.
The invisible inhabitants, according to the agents’ laundry calculations, had to include an adult man, several adult women, and at least nine children, a perfect fit for the polygamous patriarch they were seeking.
After more than nine years in hiding, Osama bin Laden was betrayed by his family’s laundry.
That was enough for Panetta. On Dec. 14, 2010, he presented the CIA’s evidence to then-President Barack Obama.
Agents never managed to capture a clearly identifiable image of bin Laden to prove they had finally uncovered his hiding place. But "they also never found evidence that undercut the notion that he was living there," Bergen writes.
Obama was convinced. He ordered the Navy to begin planning the operation that would ultimately, on May 1, 2011, snuff out the terror master at age 54 — a decision that might never have been made if bin Laden had thought to give his wives a clothes dryer.
What is obvious from this is that no one, even the imbeciles on MSNBC, is denying that Carlson’s communications were intercepted. What they can’t explain is how those communications were made available to people outside the IC with Carlson’s name attached to them. The reason they can’t explain that is that this sequence of events is only possible if someone decided to unmask Carlson after he was swept up in legal surveillance and illegally distribute his communications…or if Carlson is under surveillance by the US government. Serious journalists, if we had any in this nation, would be trying to find out.
When host Maria Bartiromo asked if there was no way anyone else could have seen the emails, Carlson said the only other person was his executive producer.
He added that just before his show aired on Tuesday, he got a call from a reporter who read the email back to him.
“There is no possibility that anyone else could have known. And then again yesterday I get a call right before air, like 7:15, from a journalist I know and like, not many left, but I do like this person. He repeated back to me what’s in my email, he got it because the NSA leaked it, so, yes, entirely real,” Carlson said.
The NSA declined to comment. //
Jonathan Swan
@jonathanvswan
New: Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Putin shortly before he accused the NSA of spying on him. U.S. gov't officials learned of this outreach ... but that's where details get cloudy.
Tucker Carlson sought interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim
axios.com //
None of these scenarios mesh with what Carlson has alleged. A legit unmasking would not result in his emails being offered to another reporter.
As RedState reported earlier, Tucker Carlson’s previous claims of being spied on and having his communications leaked by the NSA were true. Axios reported on the leaked emails today, which contained nothing but Carlson attempting to set up an interview with Russia’s Vladamir Putin. Of note is that NBC News interviewed Putin just a few weeks ago and there is nothing untoward about a news host seeking an interview with an adversarial figure. //
That means a lot of people who originally doubted the story look like clowns tonight (and I’ll have a separate piece on that later), and Carlson continued his victory lap by pointing out the obvious motivation of the leak — to try to paint him as a Russia agent.
It’s a go-to accusation that the left, facilitated by the left-wing hacks in our intelligence community, just can’t let go of. Of course, Carlson was simply trying to do what NBC News had done prior — land a major interview and make news. But by leaking his emails, the intel community wanted to make it seem as if Carlson had done something wrong and sinister. It’s an insidious, completely unAmerican game.
Carlson then got to the real heart of the issue — that laws were broken here. The NSA is required to keep the identity of Americans caught up in surveillance of foreign figures secret. Only via an unmasking request could his name have been revealed. After that request was clearly made, likely by someone in the Biden administration and having to have been signed off by the NSA head, they then took that information and leaked it to try to harm Carlson and Fox News.
Reactions to RedState's Exclusive Reporting on Chinese Defector Dong Jingwei Show Disturbing Pattern
Granted, it hasn’t been the standard operating procedure for defectors to be handled by DIA or for the information to be kept from other agencies or the White House for a time. But, as I said in an editor’s note at the end of my first post, I stand by my sources.
RedState’s website felt the reaction about 12 hours later, though, experiencing a DDOS attack.
As the story has progressed, though, the reactions are an interesting and disturbing insight into how those with their own agendas attempt to shape the narrative and marginalize those who won’t go along with that narrative.
In reporting on apparent CIA involvement in spying on an American citizen, RedState’s Bonchie observed:
If this were a Republican implicated, it’d be treated as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.
And so it would. Therefore: Let’s treat it as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.
Beginning in July 2018, the Intelligence Community will begin its release of declassified documents related to the Tet offensive. These documents will be released in three installments over a period of 15 months. Below is a list of each document added. As documents are released we will include additional features and information to improve functionality and discovery. Please check back regularly for ongoing updates.
The oligarchy that sucks its money, power, and prestige from America will never forgive the America First president for exposing its corruption. And since they are outnumbered and unloved, the US-based elite comprising big tech, corporate media, the intelligence bureaucracy, and senior Democratic Party officials must stay on offense as long as possible—which is why they continue to hunt Donald Trump and his allies.
On Friday, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported that former Trump administration official Kash Patel is “facing Justice Department investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information.” The 40-year-old lawyer from Queens, New York served in several senior posts under Trump, including National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, senior advisor to the Director of National Intelligence, and Pentagon chief of staff.
Patel was first forced into the spotlight in 2017 after he joined Congressman Devin Nunes’ investigation of crimes and abuses committed during the FBI’s operation targeting the Trump campaign. An aggressive former federal prosecutor, Patel knew where to look for evidence of FBI and Department of Justice wrongdoing at the top levels. As he began to document their illegal activities, Democratic Party operatives leaked his name to the press in an effort to intimidate him. Friday’s story is a continuation of a four-year offensive against a patriot who helped uncover the scandal underlying Russiagate, the Third-World-style combined media and intelligence operation smearing Trump and his aides as Russian agents in order to spy on them. //
U.S. officials are zeroing in on Patel because he exposed their rot. Now they’re employing the same tactics with which they prosecuted the Crossfire Hurricane operation—leak to the press to kick off a politicized investigation during which they will manufacture evidence to vilify, or even prosecute, an adversary. And so American intelligence and federal law enforcement continue their tragic spiral downwards, through corruption and toward irrelevance.
Remember that Russian bounties story with which the media absolutely flayed President Donald Trump?
The fake story claimed that, per U.S. intelligence agencies, supposedly, Russia had offered bounties for killing American forces in Afghanistan. Democrats went crazy, using the story to suggest that somehow Trump, who they painted as a Putin puppet, was not doing anything about this and endangering American troops.
Now that just got officially walked back by U.S. intel.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.
The grim failure of Operation Hat resurfaced this month after violent floods killed over 50 people in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The floods most likely began when a chunk of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off and trapped flowing water, forming a lake that eventually burst through and swept through nearby valleys. The undeniable oddness of a glacial breaking apart during the winter has led some locals to speculate that perhaps the plutonium generator, which is still likely producing heat, led to the deadly floods.
There’s no evidence for the hypothesis, though even after years of reconnaissance missions and rigorous chemical assays of the surrounding area, nobody knows where the CIA’s lost nuclear powered spy oven is.
In going down this path Brennan has offered up the argument that it was, IN FACT, true that the Clinton campaign was behind the leaks and whisper campaign that DROVE the Crossfire Hurricane investigation begun on the thinnest of thin reeds of the pub talk between Amb. Downer and Papadopolous.
Brennan’s “even if it was true” rationalization pins the blame for everything known as “Crossfire Hurricane” — fertilized with the bullsh*t lies purchased from Christopher Steele — on Hillary Clinton, the Democrat party establishment in Congress, and the willing and complicit mainstream press.
Mark Jaycox has written a long article on the US Executive Order 12333: “No Oversight, No Limits, No Worries: A Primer on Presidential Spying and Executive Order 12,333“:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3486701
Abstract: Executive Order 12,333 (“EO 12333”) is a 1980s Executive Order signed by President Ronald Reagan that, among other things, establishes an overarching policy framework for the Executive Branch’s spying powers. Although electronic surveillance programs authorized by EO 12333 generally target foreign intelligence from foreign targets, its permissive targeting standards allow for the substantial collection of Americans’ communications containing little to no foreign intelligence value. This fact alone necessitates closer inspection.
This working draft conducts such an inspection by collecting and coalescing the various declassifications, disclosures, legislative investigations, and news reports concerning EO 12333 electronic surveillance programs in order to provide a better understanding of how the Executive Branch implements the order and the surveillance programs it authorizes. The Article pays particular attention to EO 12333’s designation of the National Security Agency as primarily responsible for conducting signals intelligence, which includes the installation of malware, the analysis of internet traffic traversing the telecommunications backbone, the hacking of U.S.-based companies like Yahoo and Google, and the analysis of Americans’ communications, contact lists, text messages, geolocation data, and other information.
After exploring the electronic surveillance programs authorized by EO 12333, this Article proposes reforms to the existing policy framework, including narrowing the aperture of authorized surveillance, increasing privacy standards for the retention of data, and requiring greater transparency and accountability.
Jones • September 28, 2020 8:04 AM
There’s a great New York Times article on the NSA from 1983 that details how the agency was created by executive order and how Congress has never passed any law limiting its power or clarifying its scope:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html
There’s another report by the Brennan Center called “What Went Wrong With the FISA Court?” that details the creation of FISA after the Church Committee hearings, and how post-911, FISA has been amended to require the types of activities that FISA was created to prevent:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-went-wrong-fisa-court
Both documents are important for understanding what EO 12333 means in practice today.
Cody • September 28, 2020 10:00 AM
Reagan’s EO 12333 replaced Gerald Ford’s EO 11905.
Ford’s 1976 EO was a reluctant response to the shocking revelations of the 1975 Senate ‘Church Committee’, which uncovered widespread illegal domestic spying activity (& illicit forein interventions) by Federal agencies including USArmy, IRS, CIA, NSA. Most of the Church findings were kept classified from the American public.
Church did make public the discovery of “Operation SHAMROCK”, in which the major US telecommunications companies shared all their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s.
As Tropical Storm Higos blew in from the Pacific, Stephen Stanek, a covert CIA operative, faced a decision. It was time to either cancel the operation he was running or go forward with it. The storm was barreling through the Philippines but was then projected to veer north and miss their area of operation.
Stanek’s partner for the operation, a younger man named Michael Perich, had recently graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy. A football player at the academy, Perich was now at the beginning of his career in paramilitary operations and had just recently been trained as a scuba diver.
Two other men were aboard their 40-foot vessel, Jamie McCormick and Daniel Meeks, both in supporting roles. Stanek, a retired Navy ordnance disposal diver, was highly experienced but had only recently attained his license to be a ship captain, according to those who knew him.
The crew had spent the last several days sailing up the coast of the Philippines after departing Malaysia in what was to be the maiden voyage of their ship, which was secretly owned by the CIA’s Maritime Branch.
Their cover story for the 2008 mission was that a client in Japan had bought the vessel, and the crew had been hired to transport it there from Malaysia. They had paperwork and documentation to back up the story if questioned.
Their actual target was a small piece of land to the north of Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island. The CIA believed the Chinese military was occupying this small island in an area that has been hotly disputed. The U.S. in recent years has closely watched China’s military moves in the South China Sea, particularly as Beijing has built up artificial islands on reefs and atolls that were once barely visible at low tide in order to extend its territorial claims.
Crisis communications.
conducting the interview at the CIA facility is an interesting decision. Why not question him at DOJ or FBI HQ? //
DOJ and the FBI HQ are in Washington DC. CIA Headquarters is in Langley, Virginia.
If you are geographically challenged, you can read the distinction as “United States District Court for the District of Columbia” v. “United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.” If John Brennan offered any false answers to the investigators during the interview, the venue for that “false statement” crime is in the EDVA, not in DC federal court. //
let’s take a moment to address the whole “Target” v. “Subject” v. “Witness” construct the press is so happy to report about.
Labeling an individual a “target” has a clear meaning in federal criminal prosecutions. It refers to someone about whom the prosecutor believes there is already sufficient admissible evidence to seek an indictment from a grand jury, and obtain a conviction at trial. The investigation is ongoing, but the grand jury already has identified a “target” for eventual prosecution.
When you receive a “Target” letter it advises you that a federal grand jury has already received evidence upon which criminal charges may be issued in the future. It advises the “Target” that they should seek counsel, and if they cannot afford counsel they should contact the Federal Defender’s Office in their district for legal representation. Once they have secured counsel, their lawyer should contact the prosecutor to discuss the matter.
The purpose behind a “subject” letter is merely to instill fear in the recipient and to “encourage” them to talk about others before others talk about them — as information from others might push them closer to the “target” category. Unwitting lawyers think there is meaning behind the “subject” designation but there is not. Fear is a great motivator. “Doing unto others before they do unto you” is sort of a universal maxim among the idiot criminal class.
So if you are not a “target” — meaning there isn’t sufficient evidence at this time to charge you with a crime — then by default you are a “witness.”
But “witnesses” can, and often do talk themselves into being “targets” during such interviews. That was the purpose of the interview, Mr. Brennan, not because you have some wonderful insights to provide Mr. Durham and his investigators to make their job easier.
One important distinction between “target” and “witness” that is not well understood, but might be in play here, is that it is against DOJ policy to issue a grand jury subpoena to someone who is already a “target”.
A grand jury subpoena is a court order, under threat of contempt, to appear and answer questions under oath without the presence of counsel. If a person is already a “Target”, the subpoena intrudes upon their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and to be represented by counsel while undergoing “custodial” interrogation — they are under subpoena after all. Witnesses before the grand jury are allowed to assert their Fifth Amendment right, but it forces them to assert that right before the grand jurors considering charges against them. The government is not allowed to call a criminal defendant to take the stand in his trial and force him to assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in front of the jury. It is deemed prejudicial, and suggest to the jury that the defendant has something to hide. The same principle applies to calling a “Target” in front of a grand jury and forcing them to assert their right to remain silent in front of the grand jurors without counsel present.
So, if John Brennan isn’t at least a potential “target,” why was he not called to explain historical events to the grand jury? //
John Durham and his team did not come to the decision to interview Brennan over the course of eight hours for the purpose of “filling in the blanks” on “events that are under review.”
The purpose of the interview was to get Brennan to confirm or deny information that others have provided up to this point about Brennan, and what he instructed others to do.
John Brennan was placed into a perjury trap yesterday because he’s shown himself willing to perjure himself in the past in order to evade scrutiny.
Yesterday, the ability to avoid the trap was completely within his control — all he had to do was tell the truth. For the most part, Durham’s investigators knew the truth.
John Brennan doesn’t come from a world of objective “truths” and “lies”. For Brennan, the “truth” is always malleable to fit his needs at any given moment.
That’s CIA tradecraft. He sees himself as a master of such “dark arts” based on his decades in DC. Others have long viewed him as a clown.
That’s why, as a prosecutor, you save a liar like John Brennan for last. He can’t help you because you can’t rely on what he tells you.
So your interview is not done for the purpose of helping your case.
And you do it in Virginia and not DC because of what you plan to do next.
We do not have to sit here and grouse that "the media" won't cover this. Sure it will. And that's because we're the media too. //
If this were a Republican implicated, it’d be treated as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.
And so it would. Therefore: Let’s treat it as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years. //
Abusing a term in office to employ the vast intelligence-gathering capabilities of the United States to conduct political surveillance on the opposition party, and then to use the Department of Justice to obstruct and sabotage the opposition party’s incoming elected President is — hello? — not a small thing. This isn’t like sending a team of clumsy goons to break into the other party’s campaign headquarters to plant a few bugs. This is using entire government agencies, and all the awesome tools at their disposal, to collect opposition research and to feed it into their party’s own campaign. And when they lost anyway, to throw sand in the gears of the next Administration. You know, the one The American People had just elected.
They did this. The Democrats did this. The Obama Administration did this. Career Civil Servants did this. This is Watergate on steroids. If we don’t stop it right here, right now, our elections will become mere formalities, as The Other Guys win one term after the other by seemingly miraculous means. //
The danger from what The Democrats — including their fans in the Civil Service — have done here is so obvious, so stark, and so threatening, that not even cats should need to be told which way to run. If we don’t all see the common interest in keeping the government itself from becoming an arm of the opposition political party, we are sure to lose this nation to a group of vicious and corrupt totalitarians who will do anything to gain and to hold power. //
The threat here isn’t from Obama. He’s gone. The threat is from all the nascent Brennans and Comeys who are brewing right now in our Civil Service, and who will do this again if we don’t nail the people who did it this time. //
For instance: how many people know that as early as 2015, before Trump was even nominated, the FBI Counterintelligence Division (that’s Strzok & Co.) were totally abusing the NSA’s database of texts and emails to repeatedly snoop on a group of “U.S. persons,” something that the NSA database is not even supposed to be used for? The FBI people even deputized contractors to conduct queries on their own, with almost no controls on what was done with the information so collected. That is so against the law. What the FBI was doing got so bad that the Director of the NSA ran an audit on them and decided to lock them out of the database. Very few Americans know this was going on. But we do. We know it for a fact.
There are a lot of these facts. It isn’t just Flynn. It isn’t just Carter Page. It isn’t just FISA. It isn’t just an FBI Director who lied under oath to the Court; or a Director of National Intelligence who lied under oath to Congress; or even a CIA Director who persuaded foreign allies to run sting operations on U.S. citizens for political purposes. It’s all of that, and a lot more. Only a tiny percentage of the public has the vaguest idea how much of it there really is. Things we know for a fact.