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Russia had operatives in New York for years, from Wall Street to the UN. Now one is headed to prison.
Bloomberg: Evgeny Buryakov woke up to a snowstorm. On the morning of Jan. 26, 2015, his modest brick home in the Bronx was getting the first inches of what would be almost a foot of powder, and Buryakov, the No. 2 executive at the New York branch of a Russian bank, decided to skip work and head around the corner to a grocery store to buy supplies for his family of four. As the 39-year-old Russian bundled into his winter gear and closed the front door of his house behind him, he didn’t realize he would never set foot in it again.
Since the Buryakovs’ arrival in New York in August 2010, they had seemed like any other immigrant family in the melting-pot Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. Of average height and build, Evgeny’s only curious feature might have been his near-obsessive taste for McDonald’s. The kids in nice weather played in the sandbox out back, next to the clothesline where their mother, Marina, liked to hang their laundry. While Evgeny commuted to the 29th floor of a Manhattan high rise, she shuttled the children to a nearby parochial school and to afternoon activities like karate. The two nuns who lived next door watched the family parrot while the Buryakovs went on ski vacations.
But Evgeny was leading a double life. His real employer wasn’t a bank, but Russia’s SVR intelligence agency. For a decade, Buryakov had been working under “nonofficial cover”—a NOC, in spy talk—and, now on Wall Street, his task was to extract corporate and financial secrets and report them back to Moscow. His two handlers, also undercover, were attempting to recruit unwitting sources at consulting firms and other businesses into long-term relationships.
Berlin was once the espionage capital of the world—the place where East met West, and where undercover operatives from the KGB, CIA, MI6, and untold other agencies practiced spycraft in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Since the end of the Cold War, however, New York has probably hosted more intelligence activity than any other city. The various permanent missions and visiting delegations at the United Nations, where even countries that are otherwise banned from the U.S. are allowed staff, have provided cover for dozens of agencies to operate. Wall Street has offered further pretexts for mining information, with its swirl of cocktail parties, networking events, and investor conferences.
The espionage story of the year, and perhaps one of the greatest foreign operations in decades, has undoubtedly been Russia’s successful effort to influence this fall’s presidential election through hacking—penetrating Democratic National Committee servers and the e-mail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The strategy marks an evolution for Russia, which historically has valued so-called HUMINT, or human intelligence, over SIGINT, or signals intelligence. It’s an evolution borne of some necessity, as Russia has in recent years struggled to install spies on American soil. The Buryakov affair illustrates the point. As the U.S. election was reeling this spring toward its astonishing conclusion, Russia’s Wall Street spy was being sentenced, haplessly, to prison.
Maria Ricci has spent her FBI career chasing Russian spies up and down the East Coast. After majoring in English at Columbia and working as a lawyer in private practice, she joined the bureau 15 years ago, assigned to the counterintelligence squad. Her first job was known internally as Operation Ghost Stories—Ricci and other agents worked for almost a decade to track a ring of Russian illegals hidden across the country in what became the FBI’s largest espionage case ever. Their investigation ended in 2010 with the arrest of 10 individuals working for the SVR, Moscow’s version of the CIA, including a sultry redhead named Anna Chapman, who became an instant tabloid star. The case inspired the hit FX series The Americans, which follows two Russian “sleeper” spies living deep undercover in 1980s Washington.
When foreign diplomats come to the U.S. for the first time, the FBI routinely scouts their profiles to identify potential intelligence plants. If agents spot something suspicious, they’ll concoct a plan to smoke the person out. The FBI’s alarms were tripped in November 2010 by the arrival in New York of Igor Sporyshev, supposedly a trade representative of the Russian Federation. One red flag was that his father, Mikhail, had been a KGB officer and a major general in its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB).
In 2011, Sporyshev attended a run-of-the-mill energy conference in New York—as did an FBI agent, posing as a Wall Street analyst. The Russian introduced himself, chatted amicably, exchanged business cards, and later followed up. “The Russians are incredibly good at what they do,” Ricci says. “They’re wary of all English speakers. What’s much easier, to get them to trust you, is if they approach you.”
In subsequent conversations, Sporyshev pushed the supposed analyst for information about the energy industry, such as company financial projections and strategy documents. The information wasn’t secret or even especially sensitive. It didn’t give Sporyshev an edge he could use to commit insider trading. Rather, asking for information like this reflected a Russian approach to intelligence that’s endured long after the Cold War.
Coming from a traditionally closed society where the media operates as an extension of the state, Russian agents tend to prioritize human recruitment and generally discount the huge amount of “open source” news and information that flows routinely out of the U.S. in government reports, independent news articles, and think tank analyses. “Whispered conversations always feel sexier,” Ricci says. And relationships that start out innocuously, with junior or midlevel workers, can be cultivated over years, until the target is senior and desensitized to sharing information with someone they think of as a longtime friend.
The FBI’s undercover agent played along with Sporyshev, handing over supposedly confidential corporate reports inside binders that had been rigged with voice-activated recording devices. From the outside, the binders appeared to be part of a numbered set. The agent told Sporyshev that the documents would be missed if they were absent too long and so they had to be returned promptly.
When the first of the binders began to flow back to the FBI, technicians downloaded the audio. “We got ‘take,’ ” they reported to Ricci, using the term for worthwhile intel. As linguists began to translate from Russian, it became clear the ruse had worked even better than the FBI had imagined. In a grave violation of security procedure, Sporyshev had carried the bugs into the secure SVR office, the rezidentura, inside Russia’s UN office on East 67th Street—its equivalent of what U.S. officials call a “SCIF,” or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, an area that’s supposed to be free of any electronic listening devices. “Nothing given to him by someone in the United States should have ever been brought inside the SCIF,” Ricci says.
Over several months, as one binder after another circulated through Sporyshev’s hands, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of recorded conversation, much of it comically mundane. Sporyshev spent hours chatting with one colleague, Victor Podobnyy, a twentysomething who was also working under diplomatic cover as an attaché to the Russian UN mission. Both belonged to the SVR’s Directorate ER, a branch dealing with economic issues, such as trade and manufacturing. Often, they complained about the lack of drama in their lives.
“The fact that I’m sitting with a cookie right now at the … chief enemy spot—f—!” Podobnyy said in April 2013. Sure, he knew he couldn’t expect action like in the “movies about James Bond,” he said. But the job was supposed to be more invigorating than pushing paper at a desk. “Of course, I wouldn’t fly helicopters,” Podobnyy said, “but pretend to be someone else, at a minimum.”
Sporyshev was sympathetic. “I also thought that at least I would go abroad with a different passport,” he said, and then he complained about the parsimony of the agency’s expense reimbursement.
Amid the hours of bellyaching, one thing stood out: an oblique reference to a NOC hidden inside Wall Street. FBI agents pieced together that Sporyshev and Podobnyy had been discussing Buryakov. The putative banking analyst had previously appeared on the FBI’s radar, but the agency hadn’t yet pinned him as a spy.
Buryakov in court.
Photographer: Elizabeth Williams/AP Photo
The son of a government construction engineer, Buryakov grew up in the remote southern Russian village of Kushchyovskaya, where he met Marina in 1994, when she was still in high school; they married in 1999. Smart and inquisitive, Buryakov was gifted at learning foreign languages. He worked in Moscow first as a tax inspector, then joined the Vnesheconombank, or VEB—the Russian government’s development bank, which backed economic projects that would boost growth and employment.
At some point, Buryakov signed on with the SVR intelligence agency. Following a five-year stint with VEB in South Africa, he arrived in the U.S. just weeks after the FBI had rolled up Operation Ghost Stories. He was the first of the next wave of Russian intelligence officers.
Buryakov, his wife, and their two children, Pavel and Polina, rented a $3,000-a-month, two-story house on Leibig Avenue in Riverdale. The Bronx neighborhood was well-known to U.S. counterintelligence. A few blocks away, clearly visible from the Buryakovs’ driveway, looms a 20-story, cream-colored high-rise built for Russia’s UN staff. The six-acre compound, known as the White House, had long made the area a favorite for other Eastern European diplomats and immigrants. Sporyshev lived right around the corner. The Buryakovs mostly kept to themselves, but the nuns next door often saw Evgeny smoking cigarettes at the end of his driveway late at night, and Marina would host other mothers from school.
By day, Buryakov lived the ordinary life of a Wall Street analyst: reading and writing reports; attending meetings, conferences, and parties; building connections on LinkedIn. His employer, VEB, occupied a useful niche in the global banking network. The public-private nature of the bank allowed Buryakov to move freely in government, corporate, and nongovernmental organization circles, without anyone suspecting they were talking to an intelligence officer. (Alexander Slepnev, the head of VEB’s New York office, didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
As one of Buryakov’s handlers, Sporyshev gave him a series of often menial side projects. In May 2013, Sporyshev asked him to outline some questions that the Russian news outlet ITAR-TASS could use when interviewing an official from the New York Stock Exchange. Buryakov did about 20 minutes of research, then recommended asking about exchange-traded funds.
Buryakov also became involved in a multibillion-dollar aerospace deal when Canada’s Bombardier attempted to team up with Rostek, Russia’s state-owned defense manufacturer. Using his bank job as cover, Buryakov traveled to Canada twice, in 2012 and 2013, to participate in meetings and conferences about the proposed agreement. Then, after researching the Canadian labor unions’ resistance to overseas production, he wrote a proposal for the SVR’s “active measures directorate” that Sporyshev described as “geared towards pressuring the unions and securing from the company a solution that is beneficial to us.” It wasn’t 007-worthy. But it helped Russian industry pursue a lucrative contract. (The arrangement was paused after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, alarming Western governments.)
As Buryakov performed more such tasks, the FBI built a surveillance dragnet around him. Agents conducted multiple covert searches of his office at VEB. In December 2013, Gregory Monaghan—the lead agent on the case—showed up at Buryakov’s landlord’s office to ask about gaining entrance to the house. The landlord consented, and while the Buryakovs were away on a ski trip that winter, the FBI sneaked in and wired the house for audio and video. Over the next several months, the bureau surveilled more than four dozen meetings between Buryakov and his handlers.
Inside Russia’s UN mission, in New York’s Lenox Hill neighborhood, Sporyshev and Podobnyy were also recorded trying to recruit sources across Wall Street: consultants, analysts, and other financial professionals who had access to proprietary data or documents—or might win access later in their careers. Russian intelligence agencies have demonstrated extreme patience for schemes that play out over many years—time horizons far beyond those that will hold the interest of U.S. agencies, presidential administrations, and congressional leaders. The agents of Directorate ER sought to build relationships by asking for innocuous information that nobody would suspect might one day lead to the sharing of more valuable intelligence.
As the FBI’s bugs listened, Podobnyy informed Sporyshev that he’d told one woman, a recent college graduate, that he “needed answers to some questions, answers to which I could not find in open sources. Due to that, I am interested to find information from paid publications and opinions of independent people who discuss these topics amongst themselves behind closed doors.” The woman, Podobnyy said, responded favorably.
Podobnyy also approached a male financial consultant he’d met at an energy symposium. The consultant often traveled to Moscow and was keenly interested in Gazprom, Russia’s massive energy conglomerate. “It’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money,” Podobnyy told Sporyshev. “For now, his enthusiasm works for me. I also promised him a lot: that I have connections in the trade representation, meaning that you can push contracts.” He laughed. “I will feed him empty promises.”
The FBI’s Ricci says such attempts at cultivating connected New Yorkers are far more common, and successful, than many people in the financial world think. Americans regularly become unwitting agents, passing along useful tips to Russian officers without realizing who they’re dealing with. “When the Russians come to you, they don’t say, ‘Hey, I’m an intelligence officer,’ ” Ricci says. “They say, ‘Hey, friend, it’d be useful to have this information.’ ”
Buryakov devoted his time to finding and making contacts across New York—referring potential sources and future contacts for his handlers and other intelligence officers to pursue. “This isn’t about just stealing classified information. This is about stealing you,” Ricci says. “It’s about having you in a Rolodex down the road when they need it.”
Or, as Sporyshev put it in a recorded conversation: “This is intelligence method to cheat. How else to work with foreigners? You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f— himself. ‘But not to upset you, I will take you to a restaurant and give you an expensive gift. You just need to sign for it.’ This is ideal working method.”
By the middle of 2014, FBI agents thought they had enough evidence to arrest Buryakov but decided to go for more—preparing a final dramatic episode that would document the full cycle of a foreign spy recruiting a Wall Street source, from first contact to document handoff. The bureau asked an Atlantic City businessman (his name hasn’t been disclosed) to approach Buryakov, pretending to represent a wealthy investor who wanted to open casinos in Russia. In a bugged call with Buryakov, Sporyshev was dubious, saying the encounter seemed like “some sort of setup. Some sort of trap.”
Buryakov proceeded anyway. On Aug. 8, 2014, he spent seven hours touring Atlantic City with the FBI source, visiting casinos and looking over a PowerPoint presentation about the project. The FBI source provided Buryakov with government documents, marked “Internal Treasury Use Only,” about individuals who had been sanctioned by the U.S. over the Crimean invasion. Buryakov said he’d like more documents like that, and later in the month, the source handed over another report, this one on the Russian banking sector, labeled “Unclassified/FOUO, or “For Official Use Only.” That same day, Buryakov called Sporyshev to discuss “the schoolbooks,” and that night, briefcase in hand, he went directly from his VEB office to Sporyshev’s home in the Bronx. An FBI surveillance team monitored from outside.
SVR agents work on five-year contracts, and toward the end of 2014, Sporyshev and Podobnyy returned to Russia, their tours over. Now that Buryakov’s handlers were gone, the FBI grew concerned about identifying their replacements. “They could’ve completely changed the meetups and contact procedures, so we didn’t think it was worth letting [Buryakov] continue to operate,” Ricci says. One of the oddities of counterintelligence is that countries regularly tolerate both known and suspected spies, allowing them to operate under what they hope is a watchful eye. “The original goal for a counterintelligence case isn’t an arrest—it’s to recruit or deflect them,” Ricci says. “My No. 1 priority is to make sure no one steals our secrets.” That mission appears to have succeeded. Aside from documents the FBI allowed him to see, Buryakov rarely seemed to get his hands on material more valuable than what any average Wall Streeter might possess.
The FBI scheduled his arrest for Jan. 26, 2015. As the snow fell on VEB’s headquarters and Buryakov’s Riverdale home, search teams and dozens of agents waited anxiously outside both locations. Buryakov headed out to get groceries. After he paid, he found Ricci’s agents, clad in blue FBI windbreakers, waiting in the parking lot. “Sir, you have to come with us,” they said, then hurried him into an SUV. Buryakov, the agents later reported, was calm and hardly seemed surprised. Other agents then took his purchases the two blocks back along Leibig Avenue, where they knocked on his door, delivered the groceries, and told Marina that they had a warrant to enter. As they searched the house, technicians covertly removed the FBI’s audio and video surveillance tools.
By day’s end, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest and unsealed the criminal complaint against Buryakov, as well as naming Sporyshev and Podobnyy, who were both protected by diplomatic immunity. The arrest and announcement touched off a flurry of international activity. In Moscow, the Russian government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest. In New York, Marina and the children fled into the nearby Russian mission residence, their family car abandoned on Mosholu Street outside, until they were able to leave the country. Russian colleagues hurriedly moved the family’s belongings out of the Riverdale home, tearing the house apart in the vain hope of uncovering the FBI’s recording devices.
VEB paid $45,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Buryakov’s landlord and also paid for his legal counsel. Initially, Buryakov’s defense was that he’d done nothing more than many professionally ambitious expatriates in New York do: He’d simply agreed to help his countrymen, Sporyshev and Podobnyy, with their work and lives in America. But eventually he pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent—the technical federal charge for espionage.
Buryakov’s arrest did little to slow the flow of intelligence operatives into America. Even as his case played out in the New York courts in the summer of 2015, Border Patrol agents apprehended a man from Ukraine crossing the Texas border, according to previously unreported internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection documents. “It is my opinion that this subject is a Russian asset and was sent by the Russians to infiltrate the U.S.,” the agent wrote. “[The individual] is a perfect asset since he already knows some English, is militarily trained, and is fluent in Russian and his native tongue of Arabic.” Following standard procedure, though, the man was released into the U.S. with a notice to appear at a deportation hearing. The FBI refuses to confirm if it’s aware of the incident or if it’s monitoring the man.
On May 24, 2016, Buryakov was sentenced to 30 months in prison, and he now resides in the federal low-security prison in rural Lisbon, Ohio. He’s still listed on VEB’s website as its deputy representative in New York.
Donald Trump’s transition team is getting a helping hand from the Obama administration on national security matters.
The administration is giving the president-elect and a select few of his top advisers sensitive intelligence briefings.
And, in addition, Trump and his team will take part in two so-called ‘black swan’ exercises that simulate a domestic or national security emergency.
The exercises are intended to help an incoming administration learn how to manage a crisis in real time in case there is some kind of global or domestic emergency in the first days of a Trump presidency.
A black swan exercise would, for example, ensure that a fledgling Trump administration knows how to activate the proper federal agencies to maintain stability.
According to a briefing book from the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, in 2008 the Bush administration hosted two black swan exercises for then president-elect Obama’s national security team. More here from ABC.
Islamic State is urging its followers to carry out acts of terrorism in New York City during the upcoming, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Jamie Schram writes in this morning’s (Nov. 14, 2016) New York Post, that “ISIS is offering a detailed how-to on using trucks as weapons of mass destruction — noting that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade would be an ‘excellent target.”
MEMRI: On November 11, 2016, Al-Hayat, one of the media centers of the Islamic State (ISIS), released the third issue of its monthly magazine Rumiyah featuring an article calling on lone wolves in the U.S. and Europe to use trucks to target large outdoor conventions, crowded streets, outdoor markets, festivals, parades, and political rallies. The article also emphasized the importance of using trucks in terrorist attacks, and provided suggestions on “ideal vehicles” to use and tactical tips for the preparation and planning of attacks.
The article, titled “Just Terror Tactics,” features images of rental trucks from companies such as Hertz and U-Haul, as well as a picture showing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. It begins by highlighting the “destructive capability” of motor vehicles and referring to the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France on July 14, 2016. While praising the Nice attacker, the article states: “This was superbly demonstrated in the attack launched by the brother Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel who, while traveling at the speed of approximately 90 kilometers per hour, plowed his 19-ton load-bearing truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, harvesting through his attack the slaughter of 86 Crusader citizens and injuring 434 more.”
The article stresses the importance of using a vehicle that can inflict maximum damage, and describes the “ideal” vehicles for lone wolf attacks as “load-bearing trucks, large in size, reasonably fast in speed or rate of acceleration, heavy in weight, double-wheeled, possessing a slightly raised chassis.” The article continued: “If accessible, [vehicles] with a metal outer frame which are usually found in older cars [should be used], as the stronger outer frame allows for more damage to be caused when the vehicle is slammed into crowds, contrary to newer cars that are usually made of plastics and other weaker materials.”
Providing suggestions on how to acquire the vehicle, the article noted that buying it is the “easiest” option; however, it also mentioned renting, borrowing from relatives and acquaintances, hotwiring, and carjacking as additional options. Under “applicable targets” the article listed: “Large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, parades and political rallies.”
The article further emphasized that in order to inflict maximum damage, attackers should consider targeting “any outdoor attraction that draws large crowds,” stating that “it is not conditional to target gatherings restricted to government or military personnel only. All so-called ‘civilian’ (and low-security) parades and gatherings are fair game and more devastating to Crusader nations.”
As for “preparation and planning,” the article recommended “assessing vehicle for roadworthiness, filling vehicle with a sufficient amount of fuel, mapping out the route of the attack, surveying the route for obstacles, such as posts, signs, barriers, humps, bus stops, dumpsters, and if accessible, a secondary weapon should be attained.”
The article also provided ideas for attackers to use in order to declare their affiliation to ISIS to “have their motives acknowledged” such as writing “ISIS will remain” or “I am a soldier of the Islamic State” on pieces of papers and throwing them out of the vehicle’s window during the attack.
The article concludes by instructing attackers to stay inside their vehicles until they are no longer movable and then to start shooting pedestrians, first responders and security forces until they are killed.
****
Black Swan exercises are those that prepare for the unexpected and several events worldwide have been part of these operations.
1. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) or Solar Burst
As The Heritage Foundation highlighted in the documentary 33 Minutes,[3] an EMP attack could throw America back to the pre-Industrial Revolution era. A powerful solar burst would have the same impact. Should either event occur, people would have little time to react, and the damage would be incalculable.
If the U.S. were to lose power for any prolonged period of time, given the sheer number of people located in the interior of the country, mass starvation and death would become a reality. Most experts consider these events as highly unlikely ones, so little investment or planning is done related to them.
2. Pandemic Virus
Although the U.S. has prepared for a pandemic influenza outbreak, little preparation has gone into other potential viruses. More importantly, it is the unknown virus or “super virus” that represents a Black Swan for America. Recall that it was less than 30 years ago that AIDS first began embedding itself in North America. If a far more deadly and communicable virus hits America, the U.S. would quickly expend its existing resources.
3. Nuclear or Radiological Event
The U.S. has extensive knowledge of what would happen if a nuclear or radiological explosion occurred in a major American city. Theory, however, is a poor replacement for the reality of large numbers of deaths, burn victims, and physical debris. As former Vice President Dick Cheney wisely concluded, because of the sheer consequences, even a 1 percent chance of such an event occurring requires the nation to expend the necessary resources to prevent it.
4. Super-Volcanic Eruption
Seismic activity around the Yellowstone caldera is monitored, but tectonic shifts miles below the surface could result in the buildup of pressure and a super-volcanic eruption. The volcano beneath Yellowstone previously erupted, causing destruction as far away as California, Iowa, and Louisiana. An eruption, though unlikely given current readings, could have truly catastrophic consequences.
5. Nor’Easter/Hurricane
Hurricanes strike America with a fair degree of frequency. A Black Swan event would be a Nor’easter combined with a powerful hurricane that strikes New York City in the same manner as Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Between the massive flooding and wind damage, New York City could sustain casualties and physical destruction well in excess of Katrina.
How Prepared Is the U.S.?
The honest and unfortunate answer to that question is unknown and, despite attempts to ascertain that answer, will not be known if existing policy remains in place. A Black Swan by definition becomes a Black Swan because it results in catastrophic outcomes. This “delicate” balance between preparing for events and not being able to prepare adequately for all events represents the ultimate risk-based decision making.
From 2003 to 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) distributed roughly $40 billion in funding to states and localities across America. Despite years of reporting requirements, DHS is fundamentally unable to state with any degree of certainty which capabilities exist, where those capabilities exist, the level of those capabilities, and the remaining capability needs. DHS knows it has funded the acquisition of many things, but specifics beyond that are unquantifiable.
Specifically, to gain a full accounting, Congress should:
Be fiscally responsible. Rather than continue to spread federal funds using an “inch thick and a mile wide” mentality, Congress should target federal funds at the highest-risk states, cities, and counties where the funds could meaningfully increase the security of Americans, including reducing the number of high-risk cities that are eligible for special funding.
Examine cooperative agreements. The need for equality downplays the need for the grant structure and invites another approach—such as the use of cooperative agreements, where the federal government and the states can sit down as true and equal partners and negotiate outcomes at the beginning and then direct funds to achieve those desired outcomes without the need for yearly applications.
Appoint a Black Swan commission. Rather than wait until after a catastrophic event has occurred, Congress should appoint an independent commission for the express purpose of analyzing the threats of a potential Black Swan, identifying existing capabilities, and making recommendations on how best to correct errors made thus far and accelerate closing the gap between where the nation stands today and where it needs to be tomorrow. The commission must have the independence and resources to quickly do its job after a full review of the status quo.
Expect the Unexpected
If the catastrophe in Japan has taught any lessons, it is that America must prepare for the unexpected with as much vigor as it prepares for the expected. Because a Black Swan can be so catastrophic, in many ways the ideal role for the federal government is to lead an effort surrounding those events. With the nation’s current fiscal challenges, conserving resources for catastrophic events is more vital than ever. More here from Heritage.
Daily, I am asked if this is true or that is true….admittedly it is getting harder each day to vet stories for accuracy and to dissect them for what is accurate and other parts being flatly false. That is what trolls do, mix accuracy with falsehoods so the reader assumes it is all factual….ah not so much.
So, what sites to do visit often and have come to rely on them? InfoWars or Zerohedge? Well what about people that are curiously appearing to be friends with you on Facebook or new followers on Twitter? Take caution and read carefully below, you reliance on truth and accuracy just got harder. Even some in the media are being punked.
Trump isn’t the end of Russia’s information war against America. They are just getting started.
WotR: In spring 2014, a funny story crossed our social media feeds. A petition on whitehouse.gov called for“sending Alaska back to Russia,” and it quickly amassed tens of thousands of signatures. The media ran a number of amused stories on the event, and it was quickly forgotten.
The petition seemed odd to us, and so we looked at which accounts were promoting it on social media. We discovered that thousands of Russian-language bots had been repetitively tweeting links to the petition for weeks before it caught journalists’ attention.
Those were the days. Now, instead of pranking petitions, Russian influence networks online are interfering with the 2016 U.S. election. Many people, especially Hillary Clinton supporters, believe that Russia is actively trying to put Donald Trump in the White House.
But most observers are missing the point. Russia is helping Trump’s campaign, yes, but it is not doing so solely or even necessarily with the goal of placing him in the Oval Office. Rather, these efforts seek to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy. Unfortunately, that effort is going very well indeed.
Russia’s desire to sow distrust in the American system of government is not new. It’s a goal Moscow has pursued since the beginning of the Cold War. Its strategy is not new, either. Soviet-era “active measures” called for using the “force of politics” rather than the “politics of force”to erode American democracy from within. What is new is the methods Russia uses to achieve these objectives.
We have been tracking Russian online information operations since 2014, when our interest was piqued by strange activity we observed studying online dimensions of jihadism and the Syrian civil war. When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook. Examining the troll social networks revealed dozens of accounts presenting themselves as attractive young women eager to talk politics with Americans, including some working in the national security sector. These “honeypot” social media accounts were linked to other accounts used by the Syrian Electronic Army hacker operation. All three elements were working together: the trolls to sow doubt, the honeypots to win trust, and the hackers (we believe) to exploit clicks on dubious links sent out by the first two.
The Syrian network did not stand alone. Beyond it lurked closely interconnected networks tied to Syria’s allies, Iran and Russia. Many of these networks were aimed at U.S. political dissenters and domestic extremist movements, including militia groups, white nationalists, and anarchists.
Today, that network is still hard at work, running at peak capacity to destroy Americans’ confidence in their system of government. We’ve monitored more than 7,000 social media accounts over the last 30 months and at times engaged directly with them. Trump isn’t the end of Russia’s social media and hacking campaign against America, but merely the beginning. Here is what we’ve learned.
The Russian Social Media Approach: Soviet Union’s “Active Measures” On Steroids
The United States and its European allies have always placed state-to-state relations at the forefront of their international strategies. The Soviet system’s effort to undermine those relations during the Cold War, updated now by modern Russia, were known as “active measures.”
It was often very difficult for Westerners to comprehend this fundamentally different Soviet approach to international relations and, as a result, the centrality to the Soviets (now Russians) of active measures operations was gravely underappreciated.
Active measures employ a three-pronged approach that attempts to shape foreign policy by directing influence in the following ways: state-to-people, people-to-people, and state-to-state. More often than not, active measures sidestep traditional diplomacy and normal state-to-state relationships. The Russian government today employs the state-to-people and people-to-people approaches on social media and the internet, directly engaging U.S. and European audiences ripe for an anti-American message, including the alt-right and more traditional right-wing and fascist parties. It also targets left-wing audiences, but currently at a lower tempo.
Until recently, Western governments focused on state-to-state negotiations with Putin’s regime largely missed Russian state-to-people social media approaches. Russia’s social media campaigns seek five complementary objectives to strengthen Russia’s position over Western democracies:
Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance;
Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures;
Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions;
Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations;
Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction
In sum, these influence efforts weaken Russia’s enemies without the use of force. Russian social media propaganda pushes four general themes to advance Moscow’s influence objectives and connect with foreign populations they target.
Political messages are designed to tarnish democratic leaders or undermine institutions. Examples include allegations of voter fraud, election rigging, and political corruption. Leaders can be specifically targeted, for instance by promoting unsubstantiated claims about Hillary Clinton’s health, or more obviously by leaking hacked emails.
Financial propaganda weakens citizen and investor confidence in foreign markets and posits the failure of capitalist economies. Stoking fears over the national debt, attacking institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and attempts to discredit Western financial experts and business leaders are all part of this arsenal.
In one example from August, Disneyland Paris was the site of a reported bomb scare. Social media accounts on Twitter reported that the park had been evacuated, and several news outlets — including Russian propaganda stations RT and Sputnik — published alarming stories based on the tweets, which escalated in hysteria as the afternoon stretched on. In fact, the park had not been evacuated. But that didn’t stop Disney’s stock from taking a temporary hit. This fluctuation could be exploited by someone who knew the fake scare was coming, but we do not have access to the data that would allow us to know whether this happened.
Finally, wide-ranging conspiracy theories promote fear of global calamity while questioning the expertise of anyone who might calm those fears. Russian propaganda operations since 2014 have stoked fears of martial law in the United States, for instance, by promoting chemtrails and Jade Helm conspiracy theories. More recently, Moscow turned to stoking fears of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.
For the Kremlin, this is not just focused on the outside world. Russian news organizations bombard Russian citizens with the same combination of content. Steve Rosenberg, a BBC News correspondent in Moscow, filmed the Russian domestic equivalent of this approach on November 1, showing Russian language news headlines inciting fears such as impending nuclear war, a U.S.-Russia confrontation in Syria, and the potential for an assassination of Donald Trump.
The Confluence of Information and Cyberspace
Russian active measures use a blend of overt and covert channels to distribute political, financial, social, and calamitous messages (see above). During the Soviet era, “white” active measures were overt information outlets directly attributable to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Today, RT and Sputnik push Kremlin-approved English-language news on television and the Internet. These outlets broadcast a mix of true information (the vast majority of content), manipulated or skewed stories, and strategically chosen falsehoods. RT’s slogan, “Question More,” aptly fits their reporting style — seeding ideas of conspiracy or wrongdoing without actually proving anything.
This “white” content provides ammunition for “gray” measures, which employ less overt outlets controlled by Russia, as well as so-called useful idiots that regurgitate Russian themes and “facts” without necessarily taking direction from Russia or collaborating in a fully informed manner.
During the Cold War, gray measures used semi-covert Communist parties, friendship societies, and non-governmental organizations to engage in party-to-party and people-to-people campaigns. Today, gray measures on social media include conspiracy websites, data dump websites, and seemingly credible news aggregators that amplify disinformation and misinformation.
Conspiracy sites include outlets such as InfoWars and Zero Hedge, along with a host of lesser-known sites that repeat and repackage the same basic content for both right- and left-wing consumers. Sometimes, these intermediaries will post the same stories on sites with opposite political orientations.
Data dump websites, such as Wikileaks and DC Leaks, overtly claim to be exposing corruption and promoting transparency by uploading private information stolen during hacks. But the timing and targets of their efforts help guide pro-Russian themes and shape messages by publishing compromising information on selected adversaries.
The people who run these sites do not necessarily know they are participants in Russian agitprop, or at least it is very difficult to prove conclusively that they do. Some sites likely receive direct financial or operational backing, while others may be paid only with juicy information.
Sincere conspiracy theorists can get vacuumed up into the social networks that promote this material. In at least one case, a site described by its creator as parody was thoroughly adopted by Russian influence operators online and turned into an unironic component of their promoted content stream, at least as far as the network’s targeted “news” consumers are concerned.
A small army of social media operatives — a mix of Russian-controlled accounts, useful idiots, and innocent bystanders— are deployed to promote all of this material to unknowing audiences. Some of these are real people, others are bots, and some present themselves as innocent news aggregators, providing “breaking news alerts” to happenings worldwide or in specific cities. The latter group is a key tool for moving misinformation and disinformation from primarily Russian-influenced circles into the general social media population. We saw this phenomenon at play in recent reports of a second military coup in Turkey and unsubstantiated reports of an active shooter that led to the shutdown of JFK Airport. Some news aggregators may be directly controlled by Russia, while other aggregators that use algorithmic collection may be the victims of manipulation.
“Black” active measures are now easier to execute than they were for the Soviets. During the Cold War, according to the 1992 USIA report, these included:
… the use of agents of influence, forgeries, covert media placements and controlled media to covertly introduce carefully crafted arguments, information, disinformation, and slogans into the discourse in government, media, religious, business, economic, and public arenas in targeted countries.
Black active measures create both risks and costs. Agents deployed into the West must avoid detection or risk state-to-state consequences. The KGB’s Cold War efforts to keep these operations secret bore significant financial costs while producing little quantifiable benefit. Stories were difficult to place in mainstream media outlets, and the slow process made it challenging to create momentum behind any one theme.
On social media, this process is far easier, more effective, and relatively difficult to attribute. Without stepping foot in America, Russia’s coordinated hackers, honeypots, and hecklers influence Americans through people-to-people engagement.
The most notorious Russian-linked hacker, using the handle Guccifer2.0, targets current and former U.S. government officials, American security experts, and media personalities by seeking access to their private communications and records. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta provide two current examples, but there will be many more to come. Today, Guccifer2.0 posts threats of election meddling this coming Tuesday.
Guccifer 2.0 Warning on Election Posted to Social Media
In addition to phishing and cracking attacks, these hackers are aided by honeypots, a Cold War term of art referring to an espionage operative who sexually seduced or compromised targets. Today’s honeypots may include a component of sexual appeal or attraction, but they just as often appear to be people who share a target’s political views, obscure personal hobbies, or issues related to family history. Through direct messaging or email conversations, honeypots seek to engage the target in conversations seemingly unrelated to national security or political influence.
These honeypots often appear as friends on social media sites, sending direct messages to their targets to lower their defenses through social engineering. After winning trust, honeypots have been observed taking part in a range of behaviors, including sharing content from white and gray active measures websites, attempting to compromise the target with sexual exchanges, and most perilously, inducing targets to click on malicious links or download attachments infected with malware.
One of us directly experienced how social media direct messages from hackers or influencers seek to compromise or sway a target by using social engineering to build a rapport. Operators may engage the target’s friends or acquaintances, drawing them into conversations to encourage trust. Once conversations are started, an agent of influence will be introduced into the group and will subsequently post on Russian themes from grey outlets or introduce malicious links.
When targets click on malicious links, Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear extract personal information from public officials, media personalities, and American experts and selectively dump the content obtained at opportune times. The goal is to increase popular mistrust of political leaders and people with expertise or influence in specific circles of interest to Russia, such as national security. In some cases, experts criticizing Russia have had their computers mysteriously compromised by destructive malware and their research destroyed.
Online hecklers, commonly referred to as trolls, energize Russia’s active measures. Ringleader accounts designed to look like real people push organized harassment — including threats of violence — designed to discredit or silence people who wield influence in targeted realms, such as foreign policy or the Syrian civil war. Once the organized hecklers select a target, a variety of volunteers will join in, often out of simple antisocial tendencies. Sometimes, they join in as a result of the target’s gender, religion, or ethnic background, with anti-Semitic and misogynistic trolling particularly prevalent at the moment. Our family members and colleagues have been targeted and trolled in this manner via Facebook and other social media.
Hecklers and honeypots can also overlap. For instance, we identified hundreds of accounts of ostensibly American anti-government extremists that are actually linked to Russian influence operations. These accounts create noise and fear, but may also draw actual anti-government extremists into compromising situations. Based on our observations, the latter effort has not been widely successful so far among anti-government extremists, who tend to stay in their own social networks and are less likely to interact with Russian influence accounts, but our analysis points to greater overlap with networks involving American white nationalists.
Russia’s honeypots, hecklers, and hackers have run amok for at least two years, achieving unprecedented success in poisoning America’s body politic and creating deep dissent, including a rise in violent extremist activity and visibility. Posting hundreds of times a day on social media, thousands of Russian bots and human influence operators pump massive amounts of disinformation and harassment into public discourse.
This “computational propaganda,” a term coined by Philip Howard, has the cumulative effect of creating Clayton A. Davis at Indiana University calls a“majority illusion, where many people appear to believe something ….which makes that thing more credible.” The net result is an American information environment where citizens and even subject-matter experts are hard-pressed to distinguish fact from fiction. They are unsure who to trust and thus more willing to believe anything that supports their personal biases and preferences.
The United States disbanded the U.S. Information Agency after the Cold War and currently fields no apparatus to detect and mitigate Russia’s social media influence campaign. As seen in America’s disjointed counter narratives against the Islamic State, efforts to create any kind of U.S. information strategy are plagued by disparate and uncoordinated efforts strewn among many military, diplomatic, and intelligence commands. American cyber operations and hacking reside separately with the National Security Agency. Russia, on the other hand, seamlessly integrates the two efforts to devastating effect.
After Election Day: What to do about Russia’s Active Measures?
The most overwhelming element of Russia’s online active measures over the last year relate to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Russian promotion of Trump not only plagues Clinton, but likely helped sideline other GOP candidates in early 2016 with a more traditional anti-Russia view of foreign policy. It is impossible to assess whether Donald Trump is even fully aware of these efforts, let alone complicit. Setting aside that question for a moment, some readers will immediately ask how we are so sure all this activity goes back to Russia?
There are a number of technical indicators, most tellingly the synchronization of messaging and disinformation with “white” outlets such as RT and Sputnik, as well as the shocking consistency of messaging through specific social networks we have identified.
Dmitri Alperovich of the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike first attributed the DNC hacks to Russia. He explained in a recent War on the Rocks podcast:
The important thing about attribution…is that it’s not that much different from the physical world. Just like someone can plan a perfect bank heist and get away with it, you can do that in the cyber-domain, but you can almost never actually execute a series of bank heists over the course of many years and get away with it. In fact, the probability of you not getting caught is miniscule. And the same thing is true in cyber-space because eventually you make mistakes. Eventually you repeat tradecraft. It’s hard to sort of hide the targets you’re going after…
There are other, less subtle indications as well, for instance, a notification from Google: “We believe we detected government backed attackers trying to steal your password. This happens to less than 0.1% of all Gmail users.” When one of us receives these messages, we feel confident we’re on the right trail.
The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, is a Top Secret/SCI network run by the United States’ Defense Intelligence Agency and used across the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to transmit especially sensitive classified information.
FNC/EXCLUSIVE: Two State Department contractors, with decades of experience protecting the United States’ most sensitive secrets, are speaking out for the first time about Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and how the rules for government security clearance holders did not seem to apply to Clinton and her team.
“The State Department was her oyster and it was great for the [Clinton] foundation and great for the Clintons to be able to have such a great position,” Dave Whitnah told Fox News.
Whitnah said he worked within the State Department’s Office of Security Technology which is responsible for cameras and alarms and sweeping for bugs. Whitnah said everyone understood the secretary of state is the primary target of foreign intelligence services.
“The number one person would be the secretary of state and their communications,” Whitnah explained. “You can think of the Iran negotiations, nuclear negotiation, negotiations with Russia, talks with Russia. You know, anything to do with foreign policy.”
Whitnah emphasized that tens of millions of dollars were spent on technical security for Clinton that apparently was disregarded as her team traveled around the world on official U.S. government business.
“It was unfathomable that [her BlackBerry] would be used for anything other than just unclassified communication,” Whitnah said. Clinton’s devices were not certified as secure by the State Department. As for her use of a non-secure BlackBerry, Whitnah stressed that email can be intercepted and, “Even if turned off, it’s still a listening device so that’s why you take out the batteries.”
As Clinton was sworn in as secretary in January 2009, government contractor Amel Smith said he was also working at the department and: “State Department rules are clear. I helped write those rules.”
Smith says his 30 years of experience includes serving in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, before becoming a counter-intelligence and counter-espionage investigator at State tracking down breaches of classified materials. He reviewed some of the FBI witness interviews from the Clinton email investigation with Fox News, and questioned those who claimed not to have the proper training in handling sensitive information.
“I hear things like, well, I forgot, um, I don’t know that I was trained, I don’t know this. You know — every single person that had access to that information when it was sent is in violation,” Smith emphasized.
The FBI witness interviews also show secure facilities for classified information — known as SCIFs — were specially built for Clinton in her in Washington, D.C., and Chappaqua, N.Y., homes. Doors that were supposed to be locked were left open.
“If you’ve got an uncleared person in there, it’s automatically a compromise,” Smith said.
Another FBI interview summary said there were personally owned desktop computers in the secure facilities at Clinton’s homes, yet she told the FBI that she did not have a computer of any kind in these facilities.
“If somebody said they’re there, then they probably were there, and you know, the reason you would deny it was because you probably didn’t have approval,” Smith said.
Having unapproved computers in a SCIF would automatically call for a security investigation.
Asked for his reaction to Clinton’s claim that nothing she sent or received was marked classified, Whitnah called that assertion a “misrepresentation.” Fox News was first to report in June that at least one of the emails contained a classified information portion marking for “c” which is confidential. FBI Director James Comey later said in July when he recommended against criminal charges that a handful of Clinton emails contained classified markings.
But more than 2,100 emails with classified information, and at least 22 at the “top secret” level, passed through Clinton’s unsecured private server. Asked how it happened, Smith said, “Personally, there had to have been somebody moving classified information from C-LAN, C-LAN again is Secret, Confidential only, and JWICS. JWICS is where all top secret information is.”
After new emails were found in the Anthony Weiner sexting case belonging to his estranged wife Clinton aide Huma Abedin, the FBI reopened the Clinton email investigation. On Sunday, Comey said the emails did not change his recommendation against criminal charges because his investigators did not find intent to move classified materials outside secure government channels
“Whether it’s the private email server, whether it’s this private laptop. If there’s classified — one document on there — that’s classified, it’s a violation. Somebody violated [the] law,” Smith said. “Throw all the politics out the window, what we’re talking about is the defense of this nation.”
Asked about Smith and Whitnah, who filed a complaint against the State Department, a department spokesman said they were not direct hires — adding that the head of diplomatic security told the FBI that Clinton was “very responsive to security issues.”
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And her State Department approved that security team in Benghazi
Benghazi guards turned on US diplomats in 2012 attack, sources say
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Stevens, shown in rear wearing black, with several of the guards sources say turned on him. (Special to Fox News)
FNC: An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just months before the American ambassador and three others were killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror ties who helped carry out the attack, multiple sources told Fox News.
The explosive charge against Wales-based Blue Mountain Group comes from several sources, including an independent security specialist who has implemented training programs at U.S. Consulates around the world, including in Benghazi, where he trained a local militia that preceded Blue Mountain. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Blue Mountain used local newspaper ads to assemble a team of 20 guards, many of whom had terror ties, after securing a $9.2 million annual contract.
“The guards who were hired were locals who were part of the Ansar al-Sharia and Al Qaeda groups operating in Benghazi,” said the source, whose assignment in Benghazi had ended in November 2011. “Whoever approved contracts at the State Department hired Blue Mountain Group and then allowed Blue Mountain Group to hire local Libyans who were not vetted.”
Many were members of the Libyan government-financed February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia that had previously guarded Americans before being replaced by Blue Mountain.
John “Tig” Tiegen, one of the CIA contractors that responded to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack and co-author of “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” confirmed to Fox News that the local Libyans who attacked the consulate that night included guards working for Blue Mountain.
“Many of the local Libyans who attacked the consulate on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, were the actual guards that the State Department under Hillary Clinton hired to protect the Consulate in Benghazi,” Tiegen told Fox News. “The guards were unvetted and were locals with basically no background at all in providing security. Most of them never had held a job in security in the past.
“Blue Mountain Libya, at the time of being awarded the contract by our State Department, had no employees so they quickly had to find people to work, regardless of their backgrounds,” he said.
One former guard who witnessed the attack, Weeam Mohamed, confirmed in an email sent to the Citizens Commission on Benghazi and obtained by Fox News, that at least four of the guards hired by Blue Mountain took part in the attack after opening doors to allow their confederates in.
“In the U.S. Mission, there were four people [who] belonged to the battalion February 17,” Mohamed wrote to the Commission, an independent body formed with Accuracy in Media to investigate the attack and the administration’s handling of it.
“Always armed. And they are free to move anywhere inside a building mission.
“And therefore, they had a chance to do an attack on the mission’s headquarters. They have all the details about the place. At the same time they have given the United States a painful blow,” Mohamed wrote.
Blue Mountain officials did not return multiple requests for comment. The State Department acknowledged in internal emails obtained by FoxNews.com the local recruits fell short of their duty, but discounted the claim any took an active role in the attack that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
“While the Accountability Review Board report and other reports were critical of our local guards’ performance, we are not aware of any evidence that they participated in the attacks themselves,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.
Blue Mountain was hired in February 2012, following an uprising that ended Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule and plunged Libya into violent chaos. Congressional testimony in the wake of the attack on a consular office in Benghazi revealed that Stevens and his staff had made hundreds of requests for security upgrades but had been ignored by officials in Washington.
“We kept asking for additional support, including a 50-caliber mounted machine gun, but the State Department would not give it to us, because they said it would upset the locals,” the source told Fox News. “Instead, the State Department hired a company that doesn’t have employees, which then hired terrorists.”
Clare Lopez, a member of Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, said the Clinton State Department bears blame for the security situation.
“Think about it: Hillary Clinton’s State Department actually hired the very people who, along with their jihadist allies in Benghazi, attacked us and killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith as well as CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Ty Woods,” Lopez said.
According to government records obtained by the Washington-based Judicial Watch, the State Department was in a “rush” to hire Blue Mountain UK, and its affiliate, Blue Mountain Libya, which together formed The Blue Mountain Group to secure the Benghazi contract.
“I understand there was a tremendous rush to get the original contract awarded, and the Service level agreement was most likely overlooked in the rush,” wrote State Department contracting officer Jan Visintainer, in a June 6, 2012, email. Emails obtained from [missing word] after the attack showed Visintainer urged Blue Mountain officials not to talk to the media.
Blue Mountain UK was formed in 2008 by David Nigel Thomas, a former Special Air Service official. Charles Tiefer, a commissioner at the Commission on Wartime Contracting, told Reuters the company was not well known.
“Blue Mountain was virtually unknown to the circles that studied private security contractors working for the United States, before the events in Benghazi,” Tiefer said.
Despite the size of the operation, and having no staff or track record with the State Department, Blue Mountain Group landed the $767,767-per-month contract to protect the Benghazi consular office, beginning on Feb. 17, 2012.
The company solicited applications in local newspapers and on websites, and very little, if any, screening of guards was done, the security specialist told Fox News. The lack of vetting led to several potentially dangerous hires beginning in March of 2012, he said.
“One of those guards hired by Blue Mountain was the younger brother of the leader of Al Qaeda of Benghazi,” he said.
In an email obtained by Judicial Watch, Jairo Saravia of the Regional Security office for the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, told his superiors in Washington that Blue Mountain had held and lost security contracts in Tripoli, with the Corinthian Hotel and Palm City complex.
“The latest information is Blue Mountain is not licensed by the GOL (Government of Libya) to provide security services in Libya,” Saravia wrote. “I would advise not to use their services to provide security for any of our annexes and/or offices due to the sensitivity this issue has with the current GOL.”
Prior to Blue Mountain, security for Americans in Benghazi had been provided by the February 17th Martyrs Brigade under a direct agreement with the State Department. Despite its Islamist orientation, the militia included dozens of locals who had been carefully cultivated and trained by the U.S., according to the source. The majority of the February 17 Militia guards were fired without warning when Blue Mountain was hired, leading some members to turn against the Americans, he said. The State Department kept on at least three February 17 employees for patrol.
Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer in Libya who has vast, first-hand knowledge of some 600 security requests denied to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, testified on May 8, 2013, before the Congressional Committee On Oversight & Government Reform that he was aware that employees with both February 17 Martyrs Brigade and Blue Mountain had ties to Islamist terrorists.
“I had met with some of my agents and then also with some annex personnel. We discussed that,” Nordstrom told lawmakers.
Nordstrom testified that the “ferocity and intensity” of the 13-hour, four-phase attack, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, was nothing that they had seen in Libya, or that he had seen in his time in the Diplomatic Security Service, with as many as 60 attackers in the consulate.
“I am stunned that the State Department was relying on [locals] with extremist ties to protect American diplomats,” U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told Fox News. “That doesn’t make any sense. How does that happen?”
Fox News was able to verify through a former Libyan guard the identities of several February 17 employees hired despite terrorist ties, who he said participated in the attack. While their identities have been provided to federal authorizes, none have been prosecuted.
NATO puts 300,000 troops on ‘high alert’ in readiness for a confrontation with Russia as fears grow Putin is preparing to attack the West
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg putting 300,000 troops on ‘high alert’
Military intelligence are worried about Putin’s new Armata battle tank
UK stalled new tank design as heavy armour is not useful against jihadis
Nato chiefs, thrown into a panic by fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attack the West, are scrambling to put together a force of 300,000 troops which they can put on ‘high alert’.
Relations between Russia and the West have plunged in the last year, with Moscow’s insistence on backing its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs leading to serious tension with the US, Britain and France.
Most Nato members cut their defence spending dramatically since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but Russia has been bolstering its military capabilities, holding parades involving more than 100,000 troops each year.
Nato soldiers stand on a pontoon bridge constructed across the Vistula river in Poland during the NATO Anaconda-16 exercise earlier this year
DailyMail: Moscow has been throwing its weight around in recent years – in 2008 Russian troops humiliated the Georgians and in turn the White House by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia in support of pro-Moscow rebels.
Nato members like Estonia, Poland and Romania, who are feeling increasingly threatened by Moscow, are now being promised a rapid deployment force.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Times this week: ‘We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among Nato allies and that is exactly the reason why Nato is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.
‘We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways.
‘We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up over many years; tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours,’ added Mr Stoltenberg. More here.
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Russia’s hybrid war actions:
Montenegro says “nationalists from Russia” planned to kill prime minister
IanAllen: Authorities in the former Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro say that “nationalists from Russia” and Serbia were behind a failed plot to kill the country’s prime minister and spark a pro-Russian coup in the country. As intelNews reported last week, the coup allegations surfaced on October 16, after 20 Serbians and Montenegrins were arrested by authorities for allegedly planning a military coup against the government of Montenegro. The arrests took place on election day, as Montenegrins were voting across the Balkan country of 650,000 people.
On Sunday, at a press conference in Montenegro’s capital and largest city, Podgorica, the country’s Chief Special Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnić, reiterated claims that the failed coup aimed to prevent the reelection of Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, whose push for Montenegro to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has prompted strong objections from Moscow. Katnić told journalists that the plotters had hired a “long-distance sharpshooter” who was “a professional killer”, for the task of killing Đukanović. After killing the Prime Minister, the plotters had planned to storm the parliament and prompt a pro-Russian coup in the former Yugoslav Republic, said the special prosecutor. He added that authorities had confiscated weapons, military uniforms and nearly $140,000 in cash that were found in the possession of the alleged coup plotters.
Asked about the fate of the 20 alleged coup plotters, Katnić said that 14 of them remained in custody in Podgorica, while six others had been extradited to Serbia. The Serbian government of Prime Minister Vučić has accepted Montenegro’s allegations that the coup was hatched in Serbia and has offered to help investigate alleged links between the plotters and the Russian state. However, said Katnić, his team of investigators had no evidence of direct involvement by Russia in the alleged coup plot. But, he said, “two nationalists from Russia”, whom he did not name, were among the leaders of the plot. In a press statement, Katnić’s office said that other coup plotters in addition to the 20 men arrested, remained at large, having escaped from Serbia. They could now be in Russia, he said. Moscow has not responded to the claims by the Montenegrin authorities.
*** Denise has interview Nolan Peterson on Ukraine
The young man, whose name was Sviatoslav Horbenko, was a star pupil at the university’s Institute of Philology, where he studied Japanese. When he transferred from a university in Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine, during his third year, he had to retake 17 exams.
He aced them all.
“There was no bellicose air about him,” said Serhiy Yanchuk, an associate professor at Taras Shevchenko University and coordinator of the university’s Students Guard, a volunteer militia comprising students and faculty.
“He never acted or behaved aggressively for his personal cause,” Yanchuk said. “He was friendly, warm hearted, and an easy-going person. One would surely want to be a friend of such a guy.”
At his father’s behest, the younger Horbenko moved to Kiev and settled into life and his studies at Taras Shevchenko National University.
And then, a few months after the war began in the summer of 2014, Sviatoslav Horbenko disappeared. Without telling his friends, family, or teachers, he joined Right Sector, a civilian volunteer battalion, to fight at the battle for the Donetsk airport.
Olexander Horbenko ultimately was able to track Sviatoslav down at boot camp. The father tried to dissuade his son from going to war. But Sviatoslav was determined.
“That was my last meeting with him alive, our unforgettable conversation,” Olexander Horbenko later said. “Sviatoslav considered defending his fatherland as his duty, and he developed the strong bonds of military comradeship.” Read the full story here.
