Russian Ambo Kislyak also Met with WH’s John Holdren

Posted on March 3, 2017March 3, 2017 by Denise Simon

Who is this Russian ambassador anyway? It is likely no coincidence that the Russian spy ship is presently off the coast of Florida as this post is about to be published either. We are watching this vessel as they are watching us. Moving on…

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak is a long time English speaking operative from the Kremlin who is called back to Moscow at any moment’s notice to confer with the Russian intelligentsia. Meanwhile, Ambassador Kislyak has been cultivating a network in Washington DC for many years and he makes the social government scene with regularity. In fact, Kislyak often made visits to the Obama White House where most recently he met with the former czar and still Obama advisor, John Holdren.

Image result for sergey kislyak on the sofa bu.edu

The logs include which White House official hosted Kislyak each time he was cleared to visit. The hosts included are: Gary Samore, who was the senior National Security Council official on weapons of mass destruction during Obama’s first term (four visits); Robert Malley, who was Obama’s senior adviser on defeating the Islamic State (three visits); Lawrence Summers, who was Obama’s economic adviser (one visit); Michael Froman, Obama’s trade representative; Holdren (two visits); and the visitor’s office (four visits).

Kislyak was also listed in the logs an additional 12 times, but that was when there were between 180 and 3,000 other visitors also listed, such as for an event like a “holiday open house” or the “diplomatic corps reception.” More here.

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Kislyak is an expert on arms control negotiations with a degree from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Mr. Kislyak first served in the Washington embassy from 1985 to 1989 during the late Soviet period. He became the first Russian representative to NATO and was ambassador to Belgium from 1998 to 2003. He returned to Moscow, where he spent five years as a deputy foreign minister. He has told associates that he will leave Washington soon, likely to be replaced by a hard-line general. His name recently surfaced at the United Nations as a candidate for a new post responsible for counterterrorism, diplomats there said. Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, died last month and that post remains vacant. More here.

While we are in somewhat of a scandal due to several within the Trump team and later his administration as having meetings with Russian officials, there is quite a lot of hypocrisy in the matter as noted by the countless democrats who too have been in the frequent company of the ambassador. But to several wrongs go right when the republicans do the same? Actually, there should be more vetting and control along with messaging for the republicans as they are in full power of government. Why you ask?

Image result for sergey kislyak trump speech democrats

It is said that Sergey Kislyak is not just the ambassador of record, but he is also the top boss and manager of the Russian diplomatic architecture in the United States as well as the marshal of the intelligence wing and espionage operations across our homeland as well. It is questionable as to why he too was not expelled last December by Obama or perhaps that would have caused even more relational strain between the two countries. Kislyak was born in Ukraine and he declares he is not Ukrainian but rather a Russian. Could he have been quite busy with passing intelligence during the time Russia annexed Crimea and is presently continuing military aggressions against Ukraine? Yes. There is a war in Ukraine.

Most places in eastern Ukraine are still overwhelmed with Russian propaganda, which is as much of a threat to Ukraine’s overall war effort as the tanks and artillery. In some places, there is still not a single Ukrainian broadcast TV channel available—they’re all beamed in from Russia and the two separatist territories.

The diffuse Russian propaganda taps into attitudes leftover from the Soviet era, including deeply held, latent fears about fascism, and distrust for the central government in Kyiv. Conspiracy theories about the intentions of the U.S., NATO, and western Ukrainians are also pervasive. More here.

Some within the CIA say that Kislyak is both a diplomat and a spy. It is important to add the fact that diplomats have immunity and it is great cover when the FBI is tasked with tracking communications and movement. This is for sure the reason that Barack Obama did not expel him last December. Russia has issued a complete denial he is a spy. Uh huh…

He is in fact a hardliner but has any government official outside of CIA paid attention?

Kislyak: Why do we need to provide assurances to the U.S. Congress? We provide assurances to the Russian parliament. So if the United States is interested in working with us in nuclear energy cooperation, that is fine. It is for the United States to decide what it is that it wants. If it wants to cooperate with us, the doors [for cooperation] are open. If we are asked to make our actions, our policies, reportable to the [U.S.] Congress in order for the U.S. to make decisions on cooperating with us, we are not interested in that kind of scheme. We are fully in compliance with our obligations, with our commitments. We have not violated any agreement with the United States or anybody else. Our cooperation with Iran is limited in the nuclear field to Bushehr. By the way, your president has welcomed the way we cooperate on Bushehr because a scheme for the project that was developed with the Iranians that is very reliable and provides an alternative, a visible alternative, to the need to develop an indigenous enrichment capability. Because we build the reactor, we provide the fuel, and we take it back.[18] This is the best way to provide access to nuclear energy and electricity derived from nuclear energy. It was also supported by Europe.

When it comes to the defense supplies you seem to be referring to, there are no inconsistencies with our obligations or the resolutions of the Security Council, because we do show restraint, and whatever we do is purely defensive and for deterrence. It is our policy, and it is reportable the Russian parliament and Russian people and not anybody else. If the United States is interested in working with us [in the field of nuclear energy], we will be more than ready to work together, but it needs to be based on mutual respect and the mutual respect of interests. I think there are all sorts of reasons why we could and should cooperate in this field because both of us can do a lot in order to promote nuclear energy. That is something that most probably for the coming 20-30 years will be the alternative of choice to fossil fuel, and I do not know of any other [alternative] source of energy that can be employable in the foreseeable future but nuclear energy. All other renewable energies are either in scarce supply or the technology has yet to be developed to the point where it becomes competitive.

So we will see, all of us, significant development of nuclear energy in a lot of countries, in yours as well. We also embarked on an ambitious program to expand nuclear energy production. Currently we have, I think, 16 or 17 percent of electricity produced in my country from nuclear energy sources, and we will expand it to 25 [percent] within maybe 15 or more years. It is an ambitious program. We are going to make it. At the same time, we have a lot of things that are of interest to your industries.

You might be interested in [our]technologies, so we are very much mutually complementary. But unless we have a bigger [legal] framework for that, there can be no reliable interaction between our respective businesses. If the United States wants to work with us, we would be more than willing to do so.

There is another initiative by the two presidents, and that is to develop alternative sources of nuclear energy for the rest of the world that are less prone to proliferation. We are offering the multilateral enrichment center and your president has launched the idea of the GNEP [Global Nuclear Energy Partnership].[19]

The full interview is here.

California Secede from United States, Courtesy of Russia

Posted on February 21, 2017February 21, 2017 by Denise Simon

The movement:

In our view, the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children.

Although charity is part of our culture, when you consider that California’s infrastructure is falling apart, our public schools are ranked among the worst in the entire country, we have the highest number of homeless persons living without shelter and other basic necessities, poverty rates remain high, income inequality continues to expand, and we must often borrow money from the future to provide services for today, now is not the time for charity.

However, this independence referendum is about more than California subsidizing other states of this country. It is about the right to self-determination and the concept of voluntary association, both of which are supported by constitutional and international law.

It is about California taking its place in the world, standing as an equal among nations. We believe in two fundamental truths: (1) California exerts a positive influence on the rest of the world, and (2) California could do more good as an independent country than it is able to do as just a U.S. state.

In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the international community with their “Brexit” vote. Our “Calexit” referendum is about California joining the international community. You have a big decision to make.

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He’s the founder of a Californian independence movement. Just don’t ask him why he lives in Russia.

WaPo: Louis J. Marinelli is a man on a quixotic mission: to help California secede from the United States and become an independent country.

Surprisingly, this quest has been going relatively well of late. Marinelli’s group, Yes California, is attempting to collect 585,000 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Buoyed by California’s already tense relationship with President Trump, the campaign has received a large amount of press coverage and support over the past few months.

But for the 30-year-old Yes California president, there remains one annoying problem: People keep asking him why he lives in Russia.

In the wake of Yes California’s recently acquired momentum, a lot of people have taken note of Marinelli’s unusual home base. Numerous articles have appeared in the Californian media noting Marinelli’s choice of residence. On social media, discussions about Marinelli often take on a deeply conspiratorial tone.

“Hands off California, Putin,” a rival secessionist movement, the California National Party, tweeted in January. “We won’t take orders from your puppet Moscow Marinelli.”

Marinelli has perhaps compounded the issue by making numerous appearances on Russian state media (approximately once a week, by his own estimation), at times offering a political viewpoint that seems to line up neatly with the Kremlin’s. In late December, the Russian media gave widespread coverage to Marinelli as his group opened a “Californian Embassy” in Moscow.

Speaking via video chat from his home in Yekaterinburg earlier this month, Marinelli seemed exasperated when quizzed about his decision to live in Russia.

“And Barack Obama was born in Kenya, right?” he said incredulously.

“The fact that I’m an English teacher in Yekaterinburg doesn’t mean there’s some Russian government conspiracy or support for our campaign,” Marinelli said. “The fact that I studied Russian language courses at Saint Petersburg State University in 2007 or ’08 doesn’t mean that I know Vladimir Putin, who graduated from there in 1975.”

He offered an explanation for his circumstances that went into more detail than one posted in a FAQ section on the Yes California website. It presented a reasonable — though unusual — set of events that had resulted in him leading a Californian independence movement from half a world away.

It goes like this: Buffalo-born Marinelli moved to California in 2006. A year later, he upped sticks and went to Saint Petersburg State University to study Russian. He lived “on and off” in Russia between 2007 and 2011, during which time he met his wife, a Russian citizen. The pair moved back to San Diego, but Marinelli’s partner ran into problems with the U.S. immigration system.

“Her visa had expired and there was really no way for us to easily adjust her status,” Marinelli said. “If she had left the country, she’d be banned for 10 years, and so that wasn’t an option.”

Marinelli said they received a “glimmer of hope” last August that would allow his wife, who has been unable to leave the country until her legal status in the United States was secured, a chance to return home. She was desperate to visit her family, he said, so Marinelli found an apartment in Yekaterinburg and a job teaching English for a semester that provided him a visa. But then, according to his telling, “the immigration thing kind of fell through,” and his wife was unable to travel.

The end result was that Marinelli was obliged to go to Russia, he said, while his Russian wife was stuck in San Diego. “We’re still working on resolving the problem,” Marinelli said, adding that his wife was in the process of getting a green card. “Hopefully that goes well and we can end this chapter of our lives.”

It’s a strange situation — and not exactly how some of Marinelli’s partners in Yes California describe it (Marcus Ruiz Evans, the group’s vice president, told The Washington Post that Marinelli’s wife also lived in Russia).

But it is a plausible scenario.

Marinelli’s ties to Alexander Ionov are perhaps bigger conspiracy fodder. Ionov is the founder of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, a group that supports various secessionist movements around the world. Last September, he put on a Kremlin-sponsored event in Moscow for Western secessionists that Marinelli and other representatives of Yes California attended.

Reached via email, Ionov said that about 30 percent of the funding for the event came from the Russian government. But he said none of that money was given to any U.S. groups, including Yes California. Marinelli also pushed back on the idea that this represents a link with the Russian government.

“We don’t have any communication with or contact with or receive any support of any kind from the Russian government or any Russian government officials,” Marinelli said.

“We’re not actively pursuing a dialogue with Vladimir Putin here in Russia even though I’m in Russia,” he added.

Would Putin want a dialogue? Some experts said that while Ionov and his group may have some limited ties to the Kremlin, they are ultimately small fry in Moscow.

Simon Saradzhyan, the founding director of the Russia Matters Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said that the Russian government probably wasn’t taking the Yes California project very seriously, “if only because that chances that this movement can eventually win independence for that state are close to zero.” But Saradzhyan also noted that Russia could well be interested in getting revenge on Washington for what it saw as U.S. support for Chechen separatism in the 1990s.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert with Brookings Institution, said in an email that historical Russian links to California added further intrigue to the situation.

“Russia had a major early-19th century colony in California and there has been quite a lot of interest in promoting this from circle’s close to the Kremlin,” Hill said, pointing to Kremlin-connected oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his interest in Fort Ross, the former colony in what is now Sonoma County.

It sounds outlandish, but after an election in which Russian interference supposedly helped a former reality television star with no political experience gain entry to the White House — well, perhaps it doesn’t seem that outlandish. Marinelli didn’t sound like a fan of the way that election turned out. He repeatedly criticized Trump during his interview with WorldViews, noting how the U.S. president had threatened to defund California.

Marinelli also admitted that he voted for Trump — a tactical decision, he explained. “We need things that we can use to promote the cause, and I think Donald Trump is a daily advertisement for that cause,” he said, noting that his vote didn’t matter much in California, anyway.

When it comes to Marinelli’s thoughts on the other president in his life, Putin, he keeps his cards closer to his chest. He said he doesn’t have an emotional connection to Russia in the same way he does the United States, which is actually “a great thing” about living in Yekaterinburg.

Back home, he said, he was often frustrated by what he saw as America’s failings.

“I think every country has progress to make on some fronts. People say, for example, that Russia has progress to make when it comes to civil rights and human rights,” he said. “And the United States doesn’t? In Russia, police aren’t shooting people because of their skin color. There’s pros and cons.”

Read more:

‘California is a nation, not a state’: This movement wants a break from the U.S.

What did Google Know, When did The Know it?

Posted on February 21, 2017February 21, 2017 by Denise Simon

Image result for google russian hacking Techviral

A Glimpse Into How Much Google Knows About Russian Government Hackers

A 2014 leaked private report from Google shows how much the internet giant knows about government hacking groups.

Motherboard: In October of 2014 an American security company revealed that a group of hackers affiliated with the Russian government, dubbed APT28, had targeted Georgia and other Eastern European countries in a wide-ranging espionage campaign. Two and a half years later, APT28—also known as “Fancy Bear” or “Sofacy”—is a household name not just in the cybersecurity industry, but in the mainstream too, thanks to its attack on the US Democratic party and the ensuing leaks of documents and emails.

Before that report by FireEye, APT28 was a well-kept secret within the cybersecurity industry. At the time, several companies were willing to share information about the hacking group. Even Google investigated the group, and penned a 40-page technical report on the hacking group that has never been published before.

This sort of document, which Motherboard obtained from two independent sources, may be a common sight in the threat intelligence industry, but the public rarely gets to see what such a report from Google looks like. The report draws from one of Google’s most interesting sources of data when it comes to malware and cybersecurity threats: VirusTotal, a public malware repository that the internet giant acquired in 2012.

Sofacy and X-Agent, the report read, referring to the malware used by APT28, “are used by a sophisticated state-sponsored group targeting primarily former Soviet republics, NATO members, and other Western European countries.”

“It looks like Google researchers were well aware of Sofacy before it was publicly disclosed.”

While Google security researchers don’t dwell into who’s really behind these operations, they do hint that they agree with the now widespread belief that APT28 works for the Russian government in a clever, indirect, way—in the very title of the report: “Peering into the Aquarium.”

While that might seem like an obscure title, for those who follow Russian espionage activities, it’s a clear reference to the headquarters of the military intelligence agency known as GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, which are popularly known as “The Aquarium.”

“It looks like Google researchers were well aware of Sofacy before it was publicly disclosed,” Matt Suiche, a security researcher and the founder of Comae Technologies and the OPCDE conference, told Motherboard in an online chat after reviewing the report. “And also attributed Sofacy and X-Agent to Russia before it was publicly done by FireEye, ESET or CrowdStrike.”

In its report Google security researcher note that APT28 attacks a large number of targets with its first-stage malware Sofacy, but only uses the more tailored and sophisticated X-Agent, which was recently used against Ukraine’s military units, for “high-priority targets.”

“Sofacy was three times more common than X-Agent in the wild, with over 600 distinct samples,” Google’s report stated.

Asked for comment, a Google spokesperson said via email that the company’s “security teams are constantly monitoring potential threats to internet users, and regularly publish information to better protect them.”

The report noted that Georgia had the highest ratio of submissions of Sofacy malware, followed by Romania, Russia and Denmark.

While this report is now a bit dated, it shows that for all its sophistication, APT28 has been often caught in the act of hacking politically interesting targets, betraying the origin of the hackers behind the dry nickname. It also reveals how much a company like Google, which doesn’t have software installed on thousands of customers computers like other antivirus and security vendors that is designed to specifically detect malware, can still learn a lot about government hacking groups thanks to the other data it has access to.

*** Related reading:

State-sponsored hackers targeting prominent journalists, Google warns

Politico: Google has warned a number of prominent journalists that state-sponsored hackers are attempting to steal their passwords and break into their inboxes, the journalists tell POLITICO.

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine said he received several messages from Google warning him about an attack from a government-backed hacker starting shortly after the election. He said the most recent warning came two to three weeks ago.

Julia Ioffe, who recently started at The Atlantic and has covered Russia for years, said she got warnings as recently as two weeks ago. (See one of the warnings: http://bit.ly/2kMUyRb)

Some journalists getting the warnings say they suspect the hackers could be Russians looking to find incriminating emails they could leak to embarrass journalists, either by revealing alleged liberal bias or to expose the sausage-making of D.C. journalism.

“The fact that all this started right after the election suggests to me that journalists are the next wave to be targeted by state-sponsored hackers in the way that Democrats were during it,” said one journalist who got the warning. “I worry that the outcome is going to be the same: Someone, somewhere, is going to get hacked, and then the contents of their gmail will be weaponized against them — and by extension all media.”

The Russian embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Russian embassy Washington DC

Google cautioned that the warnings did not mean the accounts had been compromised already and were sent due to “an abundance of caution.”

“Since 2012, we’ve notified users when we believe their Google accounts are being targeted by government-backed attackers,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement. “We send these warnings out of an abundance of caution — they do not indicate that a user’s account has already been compromised or that a more widespread attack is occurring when they receive the notice.”

Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox, said he had received the warning as recently as a few days back. CNN senior media reporter Brian Stelter said he has been getting the alerts for the past few months.

Other journalists who confirmed they’ve recently gotten the warnings include New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger, Times columnist Paul Krugman and Yahoo Washington bureau chief Garance Franke-Ruta.

GQ special contributor Keith Olbermann said the warnings started a few weeks after the election, and he received the most recent alert earlier this week, a “big bright red bar” across the top of his Gmail. Some of the reporters say they are tightening up their email security to try to prevent the hackers from getting in.

Chait also said he was “contacted over email by a stranger who offered to help me by giving me an encryption key to protect me from hackers. He would not give me his name, meet me or talk on the phone, despite repeated requests.”

The stranger also emailed The Atlantic’s David Frum, James Fallows and Adam Serwer, Andrew Sullivan and Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin.

Stanford professor Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he also received hacking warnings from Google. He added: “Given my background, one would have to guess that it’s the Russians.”

Russian Spy Operations History in the U.S.

Posted on February 20, 2017February 20, 2017 by Denise Simon

In 2015:

The FBI announced on Monday that it had busted a Russian spy ring that was allegedly focused on obtaining economic information including details about US markets and sanctions on Russian banks.

According to a federal complaint filed by FBI special agent Gregory Monaghan in a Manhattan federal court on Friday, an alleged spy, Evgeny Buryakov, posed as a banker in the New York office of an unnamed Russian bank.

Buryakov is reportedly being arraigned in the Southern District of New York.

Monaghan said Buryakov (aka”Zhenya”) was on “deep cover” and working for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) to gather intelligence and transmit it back to Moscow. The SVR used multiple forms of cover.

The complaint includes several stunning revelations, including claims that staffers at an unidentified Russian news organization in the US are engaged in spying; and indications that American law enforcement bugged the New York office of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

According to the complaint, Buryakov worked with two other men who were involved in intelligence-gathering activities for the SVR: Victor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev. The complaint said Sporyshev served as a trade representative to the Russian Federation in New York. Podobnyy was allegedly an attaché to the permanent mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. More here from BusinessInsider.

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SPIES, SPIES EVERYWHERE
A journey through D.C. espionage

WaPo: Mystery and intrigue are running wild in the capital these days. Secret conversations with dangerous diplomats, explosive foreign dossiers on American leaders, handwringing over national security and leaky intelligence. If you dip into our new book “Spy Sites of Washington, D.C.,” you will find that sneaking, lying and skullduggery are as old as the republic itself. And our region is full of the traces: hotels and parks and saloons and embassies and government offices where the deceitful and disloyal got up to their antics. Here is a sampling of sites where our nation’s espionage history has played out.

Graphic by Chiqui Esteban; Text by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton

Founding through Civil war (1790-1865)

1 Dolley Madison, first-lady spy

First lady Dolley Madison established an observation post on the White House roof in 1814 to watch for the approaching British army. While fleeing to avoid capture, she saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington before the White House was set ablaze.

White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

2 Winder Building Signal Corps cupola

Winder Building | PHOTO: Library of Congress

One of the highest points in Washington at the time of the Civil War, the cupola of the Winder Building was chosen by the Union Signal Corps for point-to-point visual communications with nearby camps and forts.

600 17th St. NW

3 Lowe balloon launch site

Launching of Lowe’s balloon. | PHOTO: Library of Congress

Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe conducted the first aerial combat reconnaissance in our nation’s history from a tethered balloon west of Washington. On June 24, 1861, he observed and reported Confederate Cavalry activity.

Fort Taylor Park, North Roosevelt Street and Ridge Place, Falls Church, Virginia

4 Mansion House Hotel

Sarah Emma Edmonds. | PHOTO: University of Michigan

Sarah Emma Edmonds claimed to have donned multiple disguises and personas as a Union spy, including a young man, Irish peddler, Southern gentleman and African American laundress. Later, she worked as a nurse at the Mansion Hotel, which had been converted to a Union hospital.The hotel, once located in front of the Carlyle House, has since been demolished.

121 N. Fairfax St., Alexandria, Virginia

5 Kirkwood House Hotel

Sketch of the Kirkwood House.

The Kirkwood House Hotel was at times home to Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow, a spy of many disguises, who has been called the “Confederate James Bond.” George Atzerodt, a conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, also stayed at the hotel; he was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, who lived at Kirkwood House, but he lost his nerve, drank heavily and fled.

12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW

6 Gardner’s Gallery

Gardner Gallery | PHOTO: INSCOM

Alexander Gardner’s photographs provide an invaluable historical record of the Civil War, but at the time they were also used to identify spies and for cartography. His photographs of Ford’s Theatre following Lincoln’s assassination are among the first crime scene photographs.

511 7th St. NW

7 Old Capitol Prison

Old Capitol Prison | PHOTO: National Archives

Sprawling across the site of what is now the Supreme Court building, the Old Capitol Prison held two of the most infamous and flamboyant Confederate spies, Belle Boyd, who was arrested many times and released, increasing her fame, and Rose O’Neal Greenhow, whose information aided the Confederacy in its victory at the First Battle of Bull Run.

1st and East Capitol St. NE

8 Surratt boarding house

Mary Surratt’s boarding house. | PHOTO: Library of Congress

Southern sympathizer Mary Surratt ran a boarding house that served as a safe house and base of operations for conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination.

604 H St. NW

Post-Civil War to World War II (1866-1945)

1 Van Deman offices

Maj. Gen. Ralph Van Deman | PHOTO: INSCOM

Maj. Gen. Ralph Van Deman deserves the title “father of modern military intelligence”. As America entered World War I, he built the country’s first professional military intelligence organization in the Old Executive Office Building.

639 17th St. NW

2 A. Mitchell Palmer residence

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s residence after the explosion. | PHOTO: Library of Congress

In an act of World War I era terrorism, an anarchist blew himself up while bombing the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in June 1919, causing extensive damage.

2132 R Street NW

3 Bellevue Hotel

Drawing of The Bellevue Hotel. | PHOTO: ‘A Death in Washington’, Gary Kern and the New York Journal-American

In 1941, Soviet intelligence defector Walter Krivitsky was found dead in his room at the Bellevue Hotel, now known as the Hotel George, from a single gunshot to the head. Although ruled a suicide, suspicions still linger that Soviet intelligence directed the killing.

15 E St. NW

4 East Building, Office of Strategic Services headquarters

East Building, Office of Strategic Services headquarters. | PHOTO: Central Intelligence Agency

The East Building on Medicine Hill was headquarters to the OSS and later the first home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Today the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its clandestine history.

23rd and E streets NW

5 Vint Hill

Several original buildings remain at the former Vint Hill top secret cryptographic school and signals-intercept site, although in recent years the area has been redeveloped into a residential and business community.

4263 Aiken Drive, Warrenton, Virginia

6 Vichy French Embassy

Former Vichy French Embassy.

At the Vichy French Embassy, World War II spy Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, wearing only a necklace and high heels to throw off a guard, aided a safe-cracking operation to steal diplomatic codes.

2129 Wyoming Ave, NW

7 Arlington Hall

Arlington Hall during World War II. | PHOTO: INSCOM

Arlington Hall Junior College for Women became the location of America’s World War II code-breaking programs. The majority of the 10,000 workers were young women with an aptitude for math.

4000 Arlington Blvd., Arlington, Virginia

8 Mayflower Hotel

Mayflower Hotel.

Over the decades, the prestigious and popular Mayflower Hotel has offered quiet venues for clandestine meetings involving Nazi saboteurs, Soviet agents and American spies such as CIA agent Aldrich Ames, who spied for Russia, and government scientist Stewart Nozette, who attempted to sell classified information to the Mossad.

1127 Connecticut Ave. NW

Cold war espionage (1946-1991)

1 British Embassy diplomats and Soviet spies

Harold “Kim” Philby’s home on 4100 Nebraska Ave. NW.

Harold “Kim” Philby, the senior MI6 British liaison officer to the FBI and the CIA, was secretly a Soviet spy and leader of Britain’s Cambridge Spy Ring. Another member of the ring, diplomat Guy Burgess, was a frequent guest in Philby’s home. Both men worked at the British Embassy.

3100 Massachusetts Ave. NW (embassy), 4100 Nebraska Ave. NW (Philby house)

2 Air America

Air America, a CIA proprietary company, operated one of the world’s largest airlines during the 1950s and 1960s, with 20,000 employees and 200 aircraft. Its pilots flew hazardous missions, landing at remote jungle airfields and dropping supplies under enemy fire.

918 16th St. NW

3 Pullman House

The mansion was acquired by Russia in 1913 and served as the Russian and Soviet Embassy until becoming the Russian ambassador’s residence in 1994. Soviet and Russian espionage operations were planned and run from here.

1125 16th St. NW

4 Steuart Motor Company

Steuart Motor Company. | PHOTO: Jacqueline Dupree, JDLand.com

One of the most unlikely clandestine sites in Washington, the Steuart Motor Company building also housed the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center. Not so subtly, perhaps, guards armed with machine guns surrounded the building when unprocessed top-secret film from U-2 photos of Cuban missile sites was delivered.

5th and K streets NW

5 Exchange Saloon

During the 1970s, the Exchange Saloon was a capital hot spot for swingers. The husband-and-wife spy team of Karl and Hana Koecher of the Czech intelligence service Statni Bezpecnost spent time at the saloon looking for potential agents.

1719 G St. NW

6 Hanssen signal site

Mugshot of Robert Hanssen.

Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent turned Russian spy, used the Foxstone Park entrance sign as a signal site to communicate with his Soviet handlers. When a horizontal piece of adhesive white tape appeared on the sign, they knew that their spy had loaded the dead drop, code-named ELLIS, at the first footbridge inside the park.

1910 Creek Crossing Rd. NE, Vienna, Virginia

7 Aldrich Ames site

Aldrich Ames being arrested. | PHOTO: Central Intelligence Agency

Ames, a career CIA officer, spied for nearly 10 years while living in an upper-middle-class house that had been purchased with money received from the KGB. When driving to his CIA office in 1994, he was boxed in after stopping at an intersection a few blocks from his home. Pulled from behind the wheel, he was thrown over the hood of his beloved maroon Jaguar, handcuffed and arrested.

North Quebec Street and Nelly Custis Drive, Arlington, Virginia

8 Jonathan Pollard meeting site

Meeting site in Dumbarton Oaks.

In a scene worthy of a John le Carré novel, Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and spy for Israel, conducted a clandestine meeting with his Israeli handler on a bench in the gardens of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. In the idyllic setting, the two negotiated the pay Pollard would receive for classified documents.

1703 32nd St. NW

Today’s spies (1992-2016)

1 CIA memorial

Memorial outside CIA’s campus. | PHOTO: Central Intelligence Agency

A simple public memorial outside the CIA’s campus pays tribute to the two CIA officers murdered by Pakistani terrorist Mir Aimal Kansi on Jan. 25, 1993.

CIA headquarters, McLean, Virginia

2 Cuban Embassy

Cuban Embassy on 16th St. | PHOTO: Slowking4/Wikimedia

After the United States and Cuba broke diplomatic relations, Cuba maintained limited official status in its former embassy as an “interest section” operated through the Swiss government. Cuban intelligence officers met with reporters and others in the second-floor Hemingway Lounge and Bar.

2630 16th St. NW

3 Ana Montes residence

Mugshot of Ana Montes.

Nicknamed the “Queen of Cuba” for her research as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Montes showed uncommon discipline in her 17-year career as a Cuban spy. But an error in tradecraft — failure to wipe incriminating evidence from her computer — exposed covert communications with Cuban intelligence and led to her arrest in 2001.

3039 Macomb St. NW

4 Stanislav Gusev operation

Surveillance image of Stanislav Gusev by the State Department building. | PHOTO: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Exactly how Russian intelligence implanted a microphone and transmitter in a chair rail in the State Department remains a mystery. The operation was exposed in 1999 after FBI agents observed Gusev, a Russian technical officer, repeatedly repositioning his vehicle in different parking places nearby to remotely control the bug.

2201 C St. NW

5 Tysons-Pimmit Library

Tysons-Pimmit Library.

By using computers at public libraries, Brian Patrick Regan sought anonymity while planning espionage activities. Showing care for security, he devised a sophisticated private cipher that baffled investigators seeking evidence against him. But he was eventually tripped up in 2001 by his spelling errors.

7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia

6 Final resting place

Arlington National Cemetery.

Many American intelligence officers are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, among them: OSS chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan; code-breakers William and Elizebeth Friedman; CIA director Richard Helms; and U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

Arlington Veteran Cemetery, Memorial Drive, Arlington, Virginia

Presidential Daily Briefing for Trump on Russia

Posted on February 16, 2017February 16, 2017 by Denise Simon

There are rumors flying that the intelligence agencies are holding back on key items that would otherwise be included in the PDB’s, especially items regarding Russia. Okay, we cannot know for sure that is true or not. In fact there are denials this is accurate. While countless media outlets are reporting that some ‘higher-ups’ in some intel agencies are in a war with President Trump, it is all because he is in a war with them. Sheesh….while all this is going on, other allied world leaders are watching all this and are feeling quite uneasy over intelligence collaboration and most especially where all this leads.

Image result for russian spy ship norfolk, virginia

Some one needs to restore order and confidence here and do it fast. At issue is Russia and Iran.

The Russian spy ship doing an ‘in-your-face’ Atlantic coast water adventure and is presently just outside of Norfolk, Virginia and headed back to the Cuba region.
Meanwhile, the new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson is in Germany meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Another item is General Dunford is in Azerbaijan, meeting with Russian Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces, Gerasimov.
Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Qods Force is in Moscow. Soleimani has a U.S. and U.N. travel ban and sanctions on him such that he is not allowed to travel. Hah…
Ciaran Martin, head of GCHQ’s new National Cyber Security Centre states that Russia is escalating the rate of hacks against the UK. The United States, Canada, Australia and the UK are the four countries of record that make up GCHQ.
Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work met with Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin at the Pentagon regarding discussion over the recent escalation of violence by combined Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
Because of Russian aggression and the lasting threat to the Baltic States, General Mattis has ordered U.S. troops deploy in Bulgaria.
Russian troops attacked Ukrainian positions 139 times using heavy armor in all sectors in Donbas in the past 48 hours.

9. Russia tells White House it will not return Crimea to Ukraine.

10. Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile that American officials say violates a landmark arms control treaty, posing a major test for President Trump as his administration is facing a crisis over its ties to Moscow. The missile (Kalibr) is a SSC-8. It is a nuclear capable missile first tested in 2008. While this launch was ground based, it can also be launched from a submarine and is capable of holding 1000 lbs of conventional explosives or a nuclear warhead. There are variants to this weapon, there is also the Iskander and the 9M728. Nonetheless, it is a violation of the INF Treaty.

Lastly and a very good thing, while Vladimir Putin is calling for full intelligence cooperation with the United States, General Mattis has not, no….not ready. Further, Mattis said that Russia needs to prove itself….tic tic tic…

11. Soldiers, tanks and M88 recovery vehicles from the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment’s “Fighting Eagles” recently arrived at the airbase in Romania in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve. So far, more than 350 U.S. soldiers have arrived this month with another 150 set to arrive before the end of February.

So, should there be some normalizing of relations between the White House and the Kremlin? Nah….has not worked out so well when it comes to Iran or Cuba…