FBI: 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA in 2015

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

In a wide-ranging request for documents and analysis, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to assess all assets available for border wall and barrier construction.

Reuters: The team also asked about the department’s capacity for expanding immigrant detention and about an aerial surveillance program that was scaled back by the Obama administration but remains popular with immigration hardliners. And it asked whether federal workers have altered biographic information kept by the department about immigrants out of concern for their civil liberties.

The requests were made in a Dec. 5 meeting between Trump’s transition team and Department of Homeland Security officials, according to an internal agency memo reviewed by Reuters. The document offers a glimpse into the president-elect’s strategy for securing the U.S. borders and reversing polices

Trump’s transition team did not comment in response to Reuters inquiries. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.

In response to the transition team request, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staffers identified more than 400 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, and about the same distance along the U.S.-Canada border, where new fencing could be erected, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Reuters could not determine whether the Trump team is considering a northern border barrier. During the campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall and expand fencing on parts of the U.S.-Mexico border but said he sees no need to build a wall on the border with Canada.

One program the transition team asked about, according to the email summary, was Operation Phalanx, an aerial surveillance program that authorizes 1,200 Army National Guard airmen to monitor the southern border for drug trafficking and illegal migration. Much more here from Reuters.

For perspective:

FBI: 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA Last Year

The jihad is crossing the southern border: a majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamist groups.

From 9/2016: Breitbart news has received a collection of leaked documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that show a massive number of terrorist encounters, especially in border states. The documents are not classified, though they are marked sensitive. 7,712 terrorist encounters occurred from July 20, 2015 and the same date a year later — last year, in short.

Some of the documents pertain to the entire U.S., while others focus specifically on the state of Arizona. The states with the highest encounters are all border states. Texas, California, and Arizona–all states with a shared border with Mexico–rank high in encounters…. Most significantly, the map shows that many of the encounters occurred near the border outside of ports-of-entry, indicating that persons were attempting to sneak into the U.S.

Page Six shows a pie chart indicating that the majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamic known or suspected terrorists, both Sunni and Shi’a.

That last is surprising, as one would expect drug cartels to make up the majority of such encounters. The leak comes at a time when the FBI’s crime reporting shows an increase in violent crime across the country.

The Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah has developed connections with the Latin American drug cartels because of its prominent role in heroin. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) controls the opium trade from the poppy fields in Afghanistan to the Levant, and they provide a great deal of opium to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has a refining capacity in Lebanon that allows them to provide a substantial part of the world’s heroin. They trade heroin to the Latin American drug cartels for other illegal money-making opportunities, forged documents, and access to the Americas. Hezbollah’s operations produce between ten and twenty million dollars in revenue for its American operations, which are based out of a large Lebanese immigrant community in what is called the “Tri-border region,” an area between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.

In addition to its money-making ventures, Hezbollah provides the cartels with military training. As one of the world’s foremost guerrilla organizations, Hezbollah finds that its military trainers are sought after commodities. They are able to parley those connections in order to perform operations in Mexico. Their ability to infiltrate the United States, in order to conduct terrorist violence in service to Iran, is highlighted by these leaked FBI documents.

The role of Sunni groups is less fully understood, but it was a concern for the intelligence section of the United States military’s Southern Command according to another set of leaks earlier this year.

Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report. The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States…. Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.

“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told theWashington Free Beacon…. “In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said….

[T]he Southcom intelligence report revealed that the threat of Islamist terror infiltration is no longer theoretical. “This makes the case for Trump’s wall,” said one American security official of the Southcom report. “These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

Here at CounterJihad, we reported on Southern Command’s commander, Admiral Kurt Tidd, and his testimony before Congress on the threat. Tidd reported that a number of terrorists were transiting the region who had gone to Syria and fought for the Islamic State (ISIS) and other radical groups. Their ability to return to Latin America was smooth, given that they actually had legal travel documents.

Whether they can then pass into the United States is an open question. The leaked FBI documents only talk about actual law enforcement encounters with people on terrorist lists. How many are infiltrating without encountering law enforcement?

DHS Officials Took Bribes, and Billions $ Left the U.S. for Mexico

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

Valerie Jarrett during a recent interview said that the Obama administration was scandal free.

Okay, stop laughing, hold on…there are countless scandals and this whole administration is delusional. There are two items below is a huge sidebar scandal when it comes to DHS and illegals. Breathe deeply….you can do it and read on.

Report: Homeland Security Officials Took Millions in Bribes to ‘Look the Other Way’ on Drug Cartels

TownHall: A stunning case of corruption inside the Department of Homeland Security was overshadowed by headlines about Russia and Israel this past week. Yet, federal employees accepting millions of dollars in bribes to avoid doing their job, is certainly worth a look.

Hundreds of DHS employees have “looked the other way” as drugs crossed the border because cartels have made them offers they can’t refuse. Other employees have sold green cards and other documents illegally. More from The New York Times:

It was not an isolated case. A review by The New York Times of thousands of court records and internal agency documents showed that over the last 10 years almost 200 employees and contract workers of the Department of Homeland Security have taken nearly $15 million in bribes while being paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws.

No wonder our immigration system is so broken.

In order to address the internal issues, the department has hired more investigators, offered ethics training and is administering polygraph tests to new applicants, The Times reports.

The Times report does not include the gifts, trips or money that DHS employees have stolen, the editors note.

Once the inside corruption is taken care of, Donald Trump’s administration can get to work on building a wall along the southern border, install better aerial surveillance and send more agents down there to be on the patrol.

****

Wait, wait, wait….there are more implications. Every action has a reaction:

Reuters: Remittances to Mexico posted their biggest jump in over ten years in November in a possible reaction to the U.S. election victory of Donald Trump, who threatened to block the transfers and eroded confidence in the peso currency during the campaign.

Mexicans abroad sent home nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, 24.7 percent higher than a year earlier, marking their fastest pace of expansion since March 2006, according to Mexican central bank data on Monday.

President-elect Trump ran a campaign steeped in anti-Mexican rhetoric and threatened to halt transfers from Mexican nationals unless Mexico agreed to pay for the massive wall he has vowed to build on the U.S. southern border to keep out illegal immigrants.

Trump’s surprise Nov. 8 election triumph also sent the Mexican currency to record lows in a sell-off fueled by his threats to scrap a trade deal between Mexico and the United States, and to levy punitive tariffs on Mexican-made goods.

Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos said in a client note the weak peso fanned the remittance surge, noting workers could be “strategically front-loading” transfers to avoid potential taxes or restrictions from the incoming U.S. administration.

The value of the remittances considerably exceeds that of Mexico’s oil exports, Ramos noted.

The payments from Mexicans living in the United States are a key source of income for many families in Mexico, where around half the population lives in poverty.

Bank BBVA Bancomer has forecast that those Mexicans will have sent a record $27 billion in remittances into Mexico in 2016, an increase of more than $2 billion over 2015.

Mexico’s central bank governor Agustin Carstens said last month that a rise in remittances was due to a weak exchange rate, more U.S. jobs and fears over Trump’s policies.

Mexico’s government said in November that it is ready to lobby the U.S. Congress and use all legal means possible to stop Trump blocking remittances.

RCA Building FBI Operatives were Civilians, Latin America

Posted on December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

They operated under a cover business name and they investigated activities that could possibly be a threat to the United States. It was a big mission and much was discovered.

RCA Building Lobby - Rockefeller Center Archives

Employees and visitors board an elevator inside the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center (circa 1940), site of the FBI’s first cover office for its covert program known as the Special Intelligence Service. (© 2015 Rockefeller Group Inc/Rockefeller Center Archives)

Everyone knows that the holiday season is well under way when the giant Christmas tree is lit at Rockefeller Center in New York City. What is less well known, however, is the connection between Rockefeller Center and the birth of America’s civilian foreign intelligence efforts.

It was 1940 and the world had plunged into war the previous summer. Although America remained neutral at that time, it did not ignore the massive international threat, and an FBI operation—small but critical to America’s response to that threat—was centered in the heart of New York City in Rockefeller Center. It was called the Importers and Exporters Service Company and operated out of room 4332 at 30 Rockefeller Center—the RCA Building—beginning in August 1940.

Importers and Exporters was the Bureau’s first attempt to set up a long-term cover company for our covert program, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). The SIS was the United States’ first civilian foreign intelligence service and was less than a year old. Under a 1940 agreement signed by the Army, Navy, and FBI and approved by President Roosevelt, the FBI was given responsibility for “foreign intelligence work in the Western Hemisphere.” This saw us gathering intelligence about espionage, counterespionage, subversion, and sabotage concerns—especially about Nazi activities—pertaining to civilians in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. We were to create an undercover force that would proactively protect America’s security from threats in our international neighborhood. Given that our past success was mostly in criminal matters, taking on this task would be a steep learning experience.

To begin, we wanted to center the operation away from traditional FBI facilities and wanted to anchor it in commercial efforts, because they would provide the freedom of movement and access our agents would need. Although it is not clear why the Bureau chose to establish a presence at 30 Rock, it likely had something to do with the support that Nelson Rockefeller had provided to President Roosevelt’s intelligence work. Furthermore, on multiple occasions after the SIS’s creation, our personnel were afforded cover by Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

The RCA Building placed the FBI within a hotbed of foreign activity, both allied and enemy. The Rockefellers provided space in the same building at little or no cost to British Security Coordination, an intelligence agency/liaison service. It also hosted Italian, German, and Japanese tenants until the U.S. government detained them as enemy aliens when America entered World War II. And the Soviet Union had office space in the building as well.

Of course, the sign on the door did not read “FBI/SIS—Spies Welcome.” Instead, the Importers and Exporters Service Company—which never imported or exported anything—was supposed to be completely unidentifiable with the Bureau and would provide “backstopping” or cover identities, employment, and other necessary tools for our agents to operate undercover. With these new identities, representatives of the company were to travel throughout the hemisphere to collect intelligence and help to disrupt the Axis threat.

It looked good on paper; however, the plan took an unexpected turn because Bureau personnel had to fend off daily advances from unsuspecting salesmen and other parties knocking on the door wanting to do business with the new company. The FBI ended up shutting down the Importers and Exporters business in June 1941, but we kept the office itself open until November 1945, using it to quietly handle logistics for deploying SIS personnel.

Exterior of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center during the 1940s. (© 2015 Rockefeller Group Inc/Rockefeller Center Archives)

Although the Importers and Exporters Service Company was a short-lived enterprise, its method of operation, providing what is known as “non-official cover” in the spy business, became crucial to the SIS’s intelligence activities and its subsequent successes. Learning from its Importers and Exporters experience, the Bureau—instead of maintaining one single cover company—enlisted the assistance of accommodating U.S. companies that agreed to provide cover jobs for Bureau personnel. (And in a boon for some of those companies, many of the individuals who filled these positions worked so enthusiastically that they became nearly indispensable to their cover employers.)

Room 4332 at 30 Rock and what went on there more than 70 years ago is little remembered now—the room itself doesn’t even exist anymore because the floor it was located on has an open plan today. However, those who enjoy the Christmas tree and skating rink at Rockefeller Center during the holiday season might take a minute to reflect on the building’s role in America’s first civilian foreign intelligence service.

*** The History Channel is running a series titled ‘Hunting Hitler’, where a large team is tracing high ranking Nazi regime officers through a ratline around the globe ending in Latin America. This is due to documents being declassified.

So, in case you are wondering if Hitler really did take his own life in a bunker in Berlin, that is no longer a proven fact. It is also important to note that the German regime under orders from Hitler was building countless advanced weapons many of which the United States gained possession and exploited them in domestic production as well as relocating German engineers. This includes the production of early versions of nuclear weapons of which too, the Germans sold the research papers and associated documents to Japan.

It is suggested to review the document below for what the SIS operation did uncover as it relates to German, Argentina, Paraguay, Japan and other areas in Latin America. This is but one of eight segments.

SIS History_Vol 2

Countries in Latin America have a nasty history not only with the Nazi regime but more recently with Iran. Adolf Eichmann was tracked to Argentina and captured, brought back to Israel, put to trial and found guilty. More recently is the case of the murder of Alberto Nisman who was investigating the case of Iran/Hezbollah 1994 bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires, where 85 people were killed.

The recent former president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner is implicated in the cover-up and complicity of the operation with obstruction of justice. Don’t think many of these tactics are not being applied today and Latin America is a southern neighbor where many countries are corrupt, ungoverned and remain a threat.

He Was Deported 19 Times, Raped her on a Bus

Posted on December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

Seems we may have a district attorney or two that need to be sued, disbarred and jailed as accomplices. In fact this could have been done under edict by the White House and the Department of Justice.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP)— A Mexican man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus that traveled through Kansas had been deported 10 times and voluntarily removed from the U.S. another nine times since 2003, records obtained by The Associated Press show.

Three U.S. Republican senators — including Kansas’ Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts — demanded this month that the Department of Homeland Security provide immigration records for 38-year-old Tomas Martinez-Maldonado, who is charged with a felony in the alleged Sept. 27 attack aboard a bus in Geary County. He is being held in the Geary County jail in Junction City, which is about 120 miles west of Kansas City.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, from Iowa and chairman of the judiciary committee, co-signed a Dec. 9 letter with Moran and Roberts to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, calling it “an extremely disturbing case” and questioning how Martinez-Maldonado was able to re-enter and remain in the country.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it has placed a detainer — a request to turn Martinez-Maldonado over to ICE custody before he is released — with Geary County. ICE declined to discuss his specific case beyond its October statement regarding the 10 deportations.

Court filings show Martinez-Maldonado has two misdemeanor convictions for entering without legal permission in cases prosecuted in 2013 and 2015 in U.S. District Court of Arizona, where he was sentenced to serve 60 days and 165 days respectively.

A status hearing in the rape case is scheduled for Jan. 10. Defense attorney Lisa Hamer declined to comment on the charge, but said, “criminal law and immigration definitely intersect and nowadays it should be the responsibility of every criminal defense attorney to know the possible ramifications in the immigration courts.”

Nationwide, 52 percent of all federal prosecutions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 were for entry or re-entry without legal permission and similar immigration violations, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

It’s not unusual to see immigrants with multiple entries without legal permission, said David Trevino, a Topeka immigration attorney also representing Martinez-Maldonado. Most of Martinez-Maldonado’s family lives in Mexico, but he also has family in the United States, and the family is “devastated,” Trevino said.

“(President-elect Donald Trump) can build a wall 100 feet high and 50 feet deep, but it is not going to keep family members separated. So if someone is deported and they have family members here … they will find a way back — whether it is through the air, under a wall, through the coast of the United States,” Trevino said.

He declined to comment on his client’s criminal history and pending charge.

Records obtained by AP show Martinez-Maldonado had eight voluntary removals before his first deportation in 2010, which was followed by another voluntary removal that same year. He was deported five more times between 2011 and 2013.

In 2013, Martinez-Maldonado was charged with entering without legal permission, a misdemeanor, and subsequently deported in early 2014 after serving his sentence. He was deported again a few months later, as well as twice in 2015 — including the last one in October 2015 after he had served his second sentence, the records show.

ICE said in an emailed statement when it encounters a person who’s been deported multiple times or has a significant criminal history and was removed, it routinely presents those cases to the U.S. attorney’s office for possible criminal charges.

Cosme Lopez, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Arizona, declined comment on why prosecutors twice dismissed felony re-entry after deportation charges against Martinez-Maldonado in 2013 and 2015 in exchange for guilty pleas on misdemeanor entry charges.

Arizona ranks third in the nation — behind only the Southern District of Texas and the Western District of Texas — for the number of immigration prosecutions among the nation’s 94 federal judicial districts for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, TRAC records show.

Moran told the AP in an emailed statement that the immigration system is “broken.”

“There must be serious legislative efforts to address U.S. immigration policy, and we must have the ability to identify, prosecute and deport illegal aliens who display violent tendencies before they have an opportunity to perpetrate these crimes in the United States,” he said.

**** And the FBI is putting out a warning: Hear the FBI podcast here.

Mollie Halpern: During this busy holiday travel season and beyond, the FBI is asking those who cross our nation’s borders, use airports, and other ports of entry to keep an eye out for border corruption.

Teresa Tampubolon: You just have to keep your eyes open and be situationally aware. And if you see a screener doing something they shouldn’t be, you see an official taking money—if you see something that’s suspicious, then you have to report it.

Halpern: That was Supervisory Special Agent Teresa Tampubolon, who says not only does border corruption lead to drug, weapon, and sex trafficking, it can jeopardize our country’s national security.

Tampubolon: National security is border security, it really is. To protect our nation, we’ve got to protect our borders, everything. National security is border security, and the threat is real.

Halpern: Don’t turn a blind eye. Report border corruption to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov. Support the effort on social media using #ReportBorderCorruption. With FBI, This Week, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.

Hillary was a Target of Russia Spies for Many Years

Posted on December 30, 2016December 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

The Obama administration says that even though a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly was targeted for cultivation by a Russian spy ring, there is no evidence that Clinton herself was a target of the spies.

“There is no reason to believe that the Secretary of State was a special target of this spy ring,” P. J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state and Mrs. Clinton’s chief spokesman, told Declassified. News reports suggested that New York financier and tycoon Alan Patricof, a longtime Clinton supporter, was probably the American financier alleged, in a Russian spy message, to have had several meetings with a Russian operative who used the name Cynthia Murphy. Murphy was one of eight alleged Russian spies arrested on Monday by federal authorities, who accused them of carrying out long-term, “deep cover” assignments inside the U.S. for Russia’s principal, post–Cold War foreign-intelligence agency, known as the SVR. More from Time.

Russian spy ring complaint <— 37 page deposition and fascinating read including foreign trips, fake documents and burying money.

According to court documents relating to the spies’ arrest, Murphy had been in contact with a fundraiser and “personal friend” of Hillary Clinton, who took the office of Secretary of State in January 2009. The fundraiser, Alan Patricof, said in a statement in 2010 he had retained Murphy’s financial services firm more than two years before, had met with her a few times and spoke with her on the phone frequently. Patricof said they “never” spoke about politics, the government or world affairs.

A spokesperson for Clinton told ABC News in 2010 that at the time there was “no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring.” More here from ABCNews.

****

FBI: WASHINGTON—Ten individuals pleaded guilty today in Manhattan federal court to conspiring to serve as unlawful agents of the Russian Federation within the United States and will be immediately expelled from the United States, the Justice Department announced today.

In hearings today before Judge Kimba M. Wood in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, each of the 10 defendants arrested on June 27, 2010, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government within the United States without notifying the U.S. Attorney General. Under their plea agreements, the defendants were required to disclose their true identities in court today and to forfeit certain assets attributable to the criminal offenses.

The defendants known as “Richard Murphy” and “Cynthia Murphy” admitted they are Russian citizens named Vladimir Guryev and Lydia Guryev and are agents of the Russian Federation. Defendants “Michael Zottoli” and “Patrica Mills” admitted they are Russian citizens named Mikhail Kutsik and Natalia Pereverzeva, and are agents of the Russian Federation. Defendants “Donald Howard Heathfield” and “Tracey Lee Ann Foley” admitted they are Russian citizens named Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, and are agents of the Russian Federation. “Juan Lazaro” admitted that he is a Russian citizen named Mikhail Anatonoljevich Vasenkov and is an agent of the Russian Federation.

The defendants Vicky Pelaez, Anna Chapman and Mikhail Semenko, who operated in this country under their true names, admitted that they are agents of the Russian Federation; and Chapman and Semenko admitted they are Russian citizens.

The United States has agreed to transfer these individuals to the custody of the Russian Federation. In exchange, the Russian Federation has agreed to release four individuals who are incarcerated in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies.

“This was an extraordinary case, developed through years of work by investigators, intelligence lawyers, and prosecutors, and the agreement we reached today provides a successful resolution for the United States and its interests,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

“Counterintelligence is a top FBI investigative priority, and this case in particular represents the dedicated efforts of the men and women who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to counter the efforts of those who would steal our nation’s vital secrets,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller.

This case is the result of a multi-year investigation conducted by the FBI and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community; the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; and the Counterespionage Section and the Office of Intelligence within the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Farbiarz, Glen Kopp, and Jason Smith of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and Trial Attorneys Kathleen Kedian and Richard Scott of the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

***Even back in 2009, the Hillary camp was in denial. So examining the spy ring facts from 2010 after a long investigation reads as follows:

More from Time: According to FBI documents about the investigation that were made public on Monday, investigators apparently intercepted a February 2009 electronic message among alleged members of the spy ring reporting that alleged spy Cynthia Murphy “had several work-related personal meetings” with a person described as a “prominent New York–based financier.” The message also described the financier as “prominent in politics,” “an active fundraiser” for an unnamed political party, and “a personal friend of” someone the FBI described as “a current Cabinet official, name omitted.” The government says that Russian intelligence headquarters, known in spy jargon since the Cold War as Moscow Center, sent a reply in which it said that the unnamed financier had been “checked in C’s [Moscow Center’s] database—he is clean. Of course he is very interesting ‘target.’ Try to build up little by little relations with him moving beyond just [work] framework. Maybe he can provide [Murphy] with remarks re US foreign policy ‘roumours’ [sic] about White house [sic] internal ‘kitchen,’ invite her to venues … etc. In short, consider carefully all options in regard to [financier].”

Patricof, a well-known venture capitalist and longtime supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, confirmed to The Washington Post that he believed he was the financier and fundraiser targeted by the alleged spies. He apparently met the woman who called herself Cynthia Murphy while a client of a Manhattan tax-preparation service called Morea Financial Services, where Murphy, who reportedly had an MBA degree, worked. (Morea declined to comment.)

Patricof did not respond to several messages left by Declassified on Tuesday and Wednesday requesting comment, but told The Washington Post that he and Murphy “never discussed anything but paying the bills and taxes in normal phone calls or meetings. … She never once asked me about government, politics, or anything remotely close to that subject.” Patricof was first identified as the prominent fundraiser mentioned in FBI documents by Politico.

While Patricof’s political activities have been closely identified in news reports with the Clintons, a senior U.S. official familiar with the spy investigation, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that Patricof also “knows lots of political figures.” The official added that from information available so far, “it doesn’t appear that [the accused Russian spies] were particularly successful in gaining insights beyond what is readily available through Google.” Court papers say that in addition to trying to get close to a wealthy fundraiser like Patricof, the Russian undercover spies also established contact with “a former high-ranking United States Government national security official”—so far unidentified—and another unnamed person who worked at an unidentified U.S. government research facility on strategic planning related to nuclear weapons.

Several of the accused Russian spies are expected to appear at federal court hearings in Manhattan, Boston, and Alexandria, Va., on Thursday.

UPDATE: After this item was posted, financier Alan Patricof sent us the following statement: ”Cindy Murphy worked for Morea Financial Group, a firm I retained approximately two and a half years ago to handle my personal bookkeeping, bill paying, accounting and tax services. During the course of that time, I met with her a limited number of times and spoke with her frequently on the phone on matters relating to my personal finances. We never – not once – discussed any matter other than my finances and certainly she never inquired about, nor did we ever discuss, any matters relating to politics, the government, or world affairs. Since I understand she was employed by Morea approximately ten years before I became a client, I highly doubt that I could have been an intended target by her.”