Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Foreign Spies on our College Campuses

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International Espionage on Campus

Bishop/CB: The idyllic American university campus conjures the image of a safe and open academic environment where students spend four or more years learning new ideas and preparing for future careers.  Professors challenge eager students to open their minds to old and new perspectives in science, mathematics, business, and of course, the arts and humanities.  Universities nurture an atmosphere where academics and scientists can engage in groundbreaking research, make advances in technology, and publish on novel theories and discoveries.

For many students, college may be the first time they are living on their own, allowing them to explore not only academic freedom but personal freedom. For parents coping with their children leaving home, some comfort is found in the expectation that while students are on campus the university will be actively taking measures to protect them from physical harm and risks that could affect their future.  Parents don’t realize that for some students, college may be the first time students are exposed to the clandestine world of international espionage.

Espionage knows no boundaries.  Foreign intelligence officers and spies lurk wherever there is information of value to be had or people with access to it. Information does not have to be a government secret for a foreign intelligence service to want to steal it.  Nation states play the Great Game to gain an advantage, whether political or economic, over their adversaries.  And there is plenty of information of value on American college campuses to attract the attention of adversary nations.  From advanced research in sciences and technology to professors with access to U.S. government officials, American universities are a target-rich environment for intelligence collection, intellectual property theft, and the illicit transfer of research and technology.   The welcoming nature of American universities—from unlocked entrances to university facilities, minimal investigation into the backgrounds of students enrolling in classes, and open admission to conferences, seminars, and other campus events—creates the perfect opportunity for undercover foreign intelligence officers or their human sources to slip onto campus and search for students who have potential for entering sensitive positions in the U.S. government or landing jobs with American companies engaged in the development and production of emerging and advanced technologies.

While the threat of espionage may not be apparent to parents and students, American universities have little excuse for not knowing about it.  Federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI regularly attempt to advise universities of the potential espionage threats on campus, and the media also has reported extensively on them.  The risks are real, knowable, and preventable, and universities that ignore the threats could face potentially devastating consequences to their reputations, relationships, and financial well being.  For students who do not fully appreciate the risk and get wrapped up on the wrong side of the clandestine world, the impact on their futures can be tremendous and irreversible.  Espionage on campus and the often-related illicit transfer of research and technology from school laboratories also contribute to immediate and long-term decline of U.S. national security interests and the competitive advantage the United States possesses in sciences and technology.  The university campus has been part of the Great Game chessboard for years. This is nothing new and not much has changed.

In 1930s Great Britain, five college students with communist sympathies came under the spell of espionage at the University of Cambridge.  Donald MacLean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, and Kim Philby were in their undergraduate years when the NKVD, the Soviet precursor to the KGB, recruited them to serve the communist cause.  At the time, none of the students had access to information of value or persons of interest, but the NKVD believed these men, who came from the right social class, would find their way into positions of influence and access. They all did.

MacLean landed key positions in the UK’s foreign office, the equivalent of the U.S. Department of State.  Burgess held positions with the foreign office, the BBC, and MI6.  Blunt spent some time in MI5, served as the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, and used his standing in academic and social circles to spot other potential Soviet spies. Cairncross made the rounds at MI6 and Bletchley Park, the precursor to the UK’s Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ).  Kim Philby was the prize of the five.  While starting his espionage as a freelance journalist in the Spanish Civil War, which gave him access to pro-Franco forces—the ideological enemies of the Soviet Union—Philby returned to the UK and entered MI6.  There, he steadily rose through the ranks, eventually overseeing MI6’s counterintelligence operations against the Soviet Union. The Cambridge spies, most notably Philby, are still considered to be some of the most damaging spies in UK espionage history. The notoriety of these men is well known in England, and their association with the University of Cambridge as the Cambridge Ring or Cambridge Five will forever be remembered.

American universities have not been immune to the espionage efforts of foreign intelligence services.  In 1984, a student-spy working for the Cuban intelligence service and studying at Johns Hopkins University “spotted” Ana Montes as a potential Cuban recruit.  After being introduced to Cuban intelligence officers, Montes agreed to spy for Cuba while still a graduate student at Johns Hopkins.  She later became an intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), focusing on Cuban issues.  She was arrested in 2001 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Other known espionage or technology/research theft cases affecting the American university community include:

  • In 2002, Qingqiang Yin, a former Cornell University researcher was arrested before boarding a flight to Shanghai from New York.  He was carrying numerous bacteria samples and yeast cultures belonging to the university.  The FBI investigation revealed Yin was seeking a job with a research facility in China and offered to bring the bacteria and yeast cultures to China for commercial enzyme production.  He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
  • In 2006, Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University, admitted during a plea hearing that he had been a Cuban spy for nearly 30 years, gathering and transmitting information about Cuban exile groups to Cuban intelligence agents.  His wife Elsa, also a professor, admitted knowing of her husband’s conduct.  They were sentenced to five and three years’ imprisonment, respectively.  
  • In 2012, the FBI arrested 12 deep-cover Russian SVR intelligence officers who were engaged in espionage against various American targets.  One of the SVR officers was Cynthia Murphy, a.k.a. Lydia Guryeva, who while studying for a master’s degree at Columbia University, was tasked by the SVR to develop relationships with classmates and professors who have or will acquire access to secret information and to report on their backgrounds and characteristics, providing assessments on their vulnerability for recruitment as spies. The SVR also directed Guryeva to collect information on students seeking employment with the CIA.  After pleading guilty to failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, the United States returned Guryeva (and the other deep-cover officers) to Russia in exchange for prisoners held there. 
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  • In 2013, Hua Jun Zhao, a Chinese research assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin, was arrested and charged with economic espionage after stealing cancer research compounds and shipping them to China, where he allegedly planned to take them to a Chinese university for further development.  He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of illegally downloading research data and was sentenced to time served (four-and-a-half months).
  •    Image result for Hua Jun Zhao
  • Since 2004, the Chinese government has opened numerous Confucius Institutes at universities across the world, including approximately 64 institutes at American universities.  While the stated mission of the institutes is to promote the study of Chinese language and culture abroad, concerns have been raised about the ulterior motives of these institutes.  Allegations have also surfaced that the institutes may be Trojan Horses used by the Chinese government to conduct espionage activities. Regardless of the public evidence available on the alleged intelligence function of these institutes, from this former intelligence officer’s perspective, they are the perfect front for penetrating American universities and targeting their students.  

Again, these are only examples of the espionage threats facing American universities.  These incidents and others have been well documented in the public domain, and American universities dedicated to risk management should know about them, if not for their own protection, then for the benefit of their donors and students and U.S. national security.

Today’s American university receives funding from a variety of sources, including alumni, businesses, philanthropic organizations, and federal and state governments.  Research grants from the public and private sectors are a significant source of income for universities, and donors want the university to reap the benefits of their contributions.  No donor wants to see years of research and funding illegally diverted to a foreign government or competitor.  A university that does not take this risk seriously could begin to see expected research grants and contributions being provided to other schools or facilities, especially when the U.S. government is the funding source.

Universities should also consider the disruption a law enforcement investigation into espionage on campus can have on its day-to-day operations, reputation, and ability to maintain investor (philanthropic) confidence.  The media will undoubtedly provide thorough coverage of an espionage investigation, the accuracy of which is not guaranteed.

Investigators will be removing and combing through files and records.  Computers may be seized, and electronic files of all kinds will be requested.  Interviews of those with knowledge of the incident or perpetrators will be required, and if a public trial takes place, there will be more disruption and publicity.  A university wanting to maintain or salvage its reputation after the uncovering of espionage on its campus will find it advantageous if it can truthfully state it has been cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation rather than have a story surface that the university was one of the obstacles law enforcement had to overcome in order to put an end to the espionage. Having the university’s name negatively associated with a foreign espionage investigation is not the kind of publicity a university will find easy to overcome.
For students, the consequences of becoming entangled in espionage could be severe.   Students make easy targets, and their idealism and naiveté can often get in the way of their judgment.  Once a student is recruited as a spy, his opportunities for reversing course without consequence are limited.  One only needs to look at the choices made by Glenn Duffie Shriver, an American just out of college and living in China, who was slowly manipulated by Chinese intelligence to seek employment with the CIA.  Shriver was arrested and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit unlawful conveyance of national defense information.  Shriver was released from prison in 2013, but he will be forever remembered as a Chinese spy.  Not a great resume builder.

From a national security perspective, espionage on campus also contributes to the perpetual and long-term decline of the United States’ competitive advantage over its adversaries.  The technology and research lost to other countries through espionage and theft robs the American economy of the commercial and economic benefits it would have derived in terms of jobs, profits, and scientific and technological advancement.  The stolen knowledge increases the commercial and economic standing of the countries that committed the theft to the detriment of the United States.  If the stolen technologies and research have military, defense, or security applications, then the losses also contribute to the threats the United States faces from countries and adversaries who seek to challenge or harm its national security interests.

Universities are a soft target for espionage and offer potentially lucrative rewards for our adversaries’ intelligence targeting efforts.  Every loss resulting from espionage or foreign theft at an American university is a gain for the adversaries of the United States. These risks and potential consequences transcend the inerrant concept of the open, academic environment.

U.S. Military ‘Inside’ and Prepared for Cyber Wars

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U.S. Govt. Hackers Ready to Hit Back If Russia Tries to Disrupt Election

by Ken Dilanian, William M. Arkin and Cynthia McFadden

NBC: U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia’s electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. deem it necessary, according to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents reviewed by NBC News.

American officials have long said publicly that Russia, China and other nations have probed and left hidden malware on parts of U.S critical infrastructure, “preparing the battlefield,” in military parlance, for cyber attacks that could turn out the lights or turn off the internet across major cities.

It’s been widely assumed that the U.S. has done the same thing to its adversaries. The documents reviewed by NBC News — along with remarks by a senior U.S. intelligence official — confirm that, in the case of Russia.

U.S. officials continue to express concern that Russia will use its cyber capabilities to try to disrupt next week’s presidential election. U.S. intelligence officials do not expect Russia to attack critical infrastructure — which many believe would be an act of war — but they do anticipate so-called cyber mischief, including the possible release of fake documents and the proliferation of bogus social media accounts designed to spread misinformation.

On Friday the hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0” — which U.S. officials say is a front for Russian intelligence — tweeted a threat to monitor the U.S. elections “from inside the system.”

As NBC News reported Thursday, the U.S. government is marshaling resources to combat the threat in a way that is without precedent for a presidential election.

The cyber weapons would only be deployed in the unlikely event the U.S. was attacked in a significant way, officials say.

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U.S. military officials often say in general terms that the U.S. possesses the world’s most advanced cyber capabilities, but they will not discuss details of highly classified cyber weapons.

James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that U.S. hacks into the computer infrastructure of adversary nations such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — something he says he presumes has gone on for years — is akin to the kind of military scouting that is as old as human conflict.

“This is just the cyber version of that,” he said.

In 2014, National Security Agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers told Congress that U.S. adversaries are performing electronic “reconnaissance” on a regular basis so that they can be in a position to disrupt the industrial control systems that run everything from chemical facilities to water treatment plants.

“All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said at the time.

Rogers didn’t discuss the U.S.’s own penetration of adversary networks. But the hacking undertaken by the NSA, which regularly penetrates foreign networks to gather intelligence, is very similar to the hacking needed to plant precursors for cyber weapons, said Gary Brown, a retired colonel and former legal adviser to U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s digital war fighting arm.

“You’d gain access to a network, you’d establish your presence on the network and then you’re poised to do what you would like to do with the network,” he told NBC News. “Most of the time you might use that to collect information, but that same access could be used for more aggressive activities too.”

**

Brown and others have noted that the Obama administration has been extremely reluctant to take action in cyberspace, even in the face of what it says is a series of Russian hacks and leaks designed to manipulate the U.S. presidential election.

Administration officials did, however, deliver a back channel warning to Russian against any attempt to influence next week’s vote, officials told NBC News.

The senior U.S. intelligence official said that, if Russia initiated a significant cyber attack against critical infrastructure, the U.S. could take action to shut down some Russian systems — a sort of active defense.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, who served as NATO commander of Europe, told NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. is well equipped to respond to any cyber attack.

“I think there’s three things we should do if we see a significant cyber-attack,” he said. “The first obviously is defending against it. The second is reveal: We should be publicizing what has happened so that any of this kind of cyber trickery can be unmasked. And thirdly, we should respond. Our response should be proportional.”

**

The U.S. use of cyber attacks in the military context — or for covert action — is not without precedent.

During the 2003 Iraq invasion, U.S spies penetrated Iraqi networks and sent tailored messages to Iraqi generals, urging them to surrender, and temporarily cut electronic power in Baghdad.

In 2009 and 2010, the U.S., working with Israel, is believed to have helped deploy what became known as Stuxnet, a cyber weapon designed to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Today, U.S. Cyber Command is engaged in cyber operations against the Islamic State, including using social media to expose the location of militants and sending spoof orders to sow confusion, current and former officials tell NBC News.

One problem, officials say, is that the doctrine around cyber conflict — what is espionage, what is theft, what is war — is not well developed.

“Cyber war is undefined,” Brown said. “There are norms of behavior that we try to encourage, but people violate those.”

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UK Announces New Policy on Cyber Attacks: ‘We Will Strike Back in Kind’

The interactions of the Active Cyber Defence program

In recognition of the risk cyber attacks pose, the government’s 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review classified cyber as a Tier One threat to the UK – that’s the same level as terrorism, or international military conflict. …

AtlanticCouncil: [W]e must keep up with the scale and pace of the threat we face. So today I am launching the government’s National Cyber Security Strategy for the next 5 years. The new strategy is built on three core pillars: defend, deter and develop, underpinned by £1.9 billion of transformational investment.

First of all Defend. We will strengthen the defences of government, our critical national infrastructure sectors like energy and transport, and our wider economy. We will work in partnership with industry to apply technologies that reduce the impact of cyber-attacks, while driving up security standards across both public and private sectors. We will ensure that our most sensitive information and networks, on which our government and security depend, are protected.

In practice, that means government taking a more active cyber defence approach – supporting industry’s use of automated defence techniques to block, disrupt and neutralise malicious activity before it reaches the user. The public have much to gain from active cyber defence and, with the proper safeguards in place to protect privacy, these measures have the potential to be transformational in ensuring that UK internet users are secure by default.

We are already deploying active cyber defence in government and we know it works: we’ve already successfully reduced the ability of attackers to spoof government e-mails as a key example. Until 6 weeks ago we were seeing faking of some @gov.uk addresses, such as ‘[email protected] ’. Criminals have been using these fake addresses to defraud people, by impersonating government departments. 50,000 spoof emails using the [email protected] address were being sent a everyday – now, thanks to our interventions, there are none.

The second pillar is deterrence. We will deter those who seek to steal from us, threaten us or otherwise harm our interests in cyberspace. We’re strengthening our law enforcement capabilities to raise the cost and reduce the reward of cyber criminality – ensuring we can track, apprehend and prosecute those who commit cyber crimes. And we will continue to invest in our offensive cyber capabilities, because the ability to detect, trace and retaliate in kind is likely to be the best deterrent. A small number of hostile foreign actors have developed and deployed offensive cyber capabilities, including destructive ones. These capabilities threaten the security of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and our industrial control systems.

If we do not have the ability to respond in cyberspace to an attack which takes down our power networks leaving us in darkness, or hits our air traffic control system, grounding our planes, we would be left with the impossible choice of turning the other cheek and ignoring the devastating consequences, or resorting to a military response. That is a choice that we do not want to face – and a choice we do not want to leave as a legacy to our successors. That is why we need to develop a fully functioning and operational cyber counter-attack capability. There is no doubt in my mind that the precursor to any future state-on-state conflict would be a campaign of escalating cyber-attacks, to break down our defences and test our resolve before the first shot is fired. Kinetic attacks carry huge risk of retaliation and may breach international law.

But in cyber space those who want to harm us appear to think they can act both scalably and deniably. It is our duty to demonstrate that they cannot act with impunity. So we will not only defend ourselves in cyberspace; we will strike back in kind when we are attacked.

And thirdly development. We will develop the capabilities we need in our economy and society to keep pace with the threat in the future. To make sure we’ve got a pipeline talented of people with the cyber skills we need, we will increase investment in the next generation of students, experts and companies.

I can announce we’re creating our latest cyber security research institute – a virtual network of UK universities dedicated to technological research and supported by government funding. The new virtual institute will focus on hardware and will look to improve the security of smart phone, tablets and laptops through innovative use of novel technology. We’re building cyber security into our education systems and are committed to providing opportunities for young people to pursue a career in this dynamic and exciting sector. And we’re also making sure that every young person learns the cyber life-skills they need to use the internet safely, confidently and successfully.

These three pillars that I’ve outlined – deter, defend and develop – are all supported by our new National Cyber Security Centre, based in Victoria in central London.

For the first time the government will have a dedicated, outward-facing authority on cyber – making it much simpler for business to get advice on cyber security and to interact with government on cyber security issues. Allowing us to deploy the high level skills that government has, principally in GCHQ, to support the development of commercial applications to enhance cyber security.

The Centre subsumes CERT UK and will provide the next generation of cyber security incident management. This means that when businesses or government bodies, or academic organisations report a significant incident, the Centre will bring together the full range of technical skills from across government and beyond to respond immediately. They will link up with law enforcement, help mitigate the impact of the incident, seek to repair the damage and assist in the tracing and prosecution of those responsible.

Across all its strands, the National Cyber Security Strategy we’re publishing today represents a major step forward in the fight against cyber attack.

Excerpts from “Speech Launching the National Cyber Security Strategy,” by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Nov. 1, 2016.

Kaine, Hillary’s VP, but Her Cabinet Secretary Choices?

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So, an earlier post from this site listed a handful of names that would likely find a home in the Hillary Clinton White House if elected. Use your imagination, there are hundreds of other names to be added, yet the list below will help you with the Marxists that could be ahead.

Pray for the FBI and a political earthquake ahead…

If Hillary Wins, Who Will be in the White House….

  

Due to this Podesta email with Hillary aide/lawyer, Cheryl Mills, could this list below which appears to be the initial VP choice list be amended to be some of her Cabinet picks? Any and all of these names are terrifying including the former military given their PC bent style while in active service.

At least we don’t have Vicious Sidney Blumenthal on the list but he for sure will lurk in the shadows..

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Re: People worth looking at

To: [email protected]
Date: 2016-03-12 19:59 Subject:
Re: People worth looking at

Twitter War Report Describes Spamming the Election Tweets

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And Twitter users believed….

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Twitter Election Bots Hide Tons of Reply Spam Behind Boring Themed Accounts

Motherboard: A much-discussed research paper out of Oxford this month concluded that millions of tweets about the presidential election are generated by highly automated Twitter accounts. According to the authors’ analysis, about a third of pro-Trump traffic, and one fifth of pro-Clinton tweets, is “driven by bots and highly automated accounts.”

The Oxford study pegged Twitter accounts as highly automated if they posted at least 50 times a day using any one of a group of election hashtags—such as #MAGA, #TrumpTrain, #ImWithHer, and #StrongerTogether—over a three-day period.

The paper conceded that “extremely active” humans might post 50 or more times per day on one of the 52 hashtags they selected, “especially if they are simply retweeting the content they find in their social media feed.”

At the Electome, a project of the Media Lab at MIT, we use complex machine learning algorithms to analyze the election conversation on Twitter. The Oxford paper made us curious about the possibility of spotting bots in the dashboard we recently built for journalists covering the election.

Read more: How Mexican Twitter Bots Shut Down Dissent

Bot detection can be challenging, partly because they come in different varieties. Some are purely automated accounts, while others layer some manual curation on top of automated tweets.

Last week, we noticed a spike while searching our Twitter data on the keyword “rigged.”

In early September, the “rigged” discussion on Twitter, which previously had revolved around a variety of issues including economic inequality and the electoral process, shifted suddenly toward immigration—that is, tweets containing the word “rigged” also used terms connected to immigration.

Digging into the data, we found one verbatim tweet showing up across a dozen or so handles, each of which posted the same message over and over each day: “Immigration Policy is RIGGED against American Workers #Trump2016 #FeelTheBern.”

Beyond using identical phrasing—including idiosyncratic capitalization—the tweets coming from these accounts all linked to the same video, which compares statements by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders about immigration policy. Each video, in turn, linked to the same anti-Clinton Twitter account.

Although the accounts don’t have the telltale bot profile image—the egg—based on their characteristics and activity, including breakneck output of strikingly similar content, these are clearly spam handles, and apparently at least somewhat automated.

Wading in further, we found that each account puts out a stream of photos and GIFs on a given theme, on top of a common rotation of anti-Clinton videos and memes.

The bots follow the same playbook: Publicly they tweet the same innocuous content fitting their theme, while simultaneously flooding the replies of public figures and media outlets—essentially piggybacking on famous tweets to influence users who see those tweets’ replies—with campaign-driven videos and memes.

One apparent bot account has pumped out more than 27,000 tweets since its creation in March, with content that tends to mix videos of Clinton advisor John Podesta with memes from the 1970s film A Clockwork Orange:

          TheTweetest @TheTweetest

you found out…

Hillary killed Osama bin Laden

..WITH HER EYES

@HillaryClinton

A zombie-themed account boasts 30,000 tweets since April: Podesta mingled with the undead:

Then there’s the seeming food porn handle that has put out 21,000 tweets since March: Podesta plus photogenic snacks:

In the last few days, these three accounts have tweeted thousands of times, sometimes hundreds of posts in a single hour. Most went entirely dark on October 30, for some reason, then geared up early on October 31 to put out hundreds more by noon.

Other apparently automated accounts pay homage to burgers, the Doge meme, geese, Hydrox cookies, knights, pigs, pulp science fiction, Putin, trains, and Transformers. They vary in frequency of activity, but each circulates the same videos with identical accompanying text.

Spambots like these have been spotted at other points in this election. In April, a conservative activist noticed a few hundred accounts frantically tweeting an identical call to file federal complaints against Ted Cruz for robocalls.

In June, a reporter for New York magazine mined the feeds of three pro-Trump, alt-right accounts, noting that they consistently replied to Trump’s tweets within mere seconds and with memes attached. Like the accounts we’ve identified here, many of their replies lacked any connection to the subject of Trump’s original tweet.

Last week, one of those three accounts circulated a hoax image of immigration officers arresting Hispanic voters, according to ProPublica’s Electionland.

Difficult as it is to track down accounts like these or gauge their prevalence, it’s even harder to discern how they might affect the overall Twitter discussion about the election. Whether or not the Oxford analysis proves accurate, its authors performed a service merely by raising public awareness of election bots.  More here including additional tweets.

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Then there was that weird FBI release on Twitter:

FBI to Conduct Internal Probe of Election-Season Tweets

GovernmentExec: Suddenly renewed activity on an FBI Twitter account publicizing Freedom of Information Act releases has prompted an internal bureau review of the propriety of such activity so close to the Nov. 8 election, according to a source involved in the matter.

In emails obtained by Government Executive sent to an ex-investigative reporter who filed complaints, the deputy at the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility on Tuesday revealed that the complaint about possible political favoritism in tweeting has been referred to the FBI’s Inspection Division.

“Upon the completion of its investigation, the matter will be referred to my office for adjudication,” wrote Candice Will, assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility to Jonathan Hutson, a former investigative reporter and now a media consultant. He received a similar email from Nancy McNamara, assistant director of the FBI’s Inspection Division, with two more FBI employees copied.

An FBI official told Government Executive that on Oct. 30, electronic patches were sent through the FBI’s content management system to fix the automatic feed of information that goes through the FOIA Twitter account.

First reported on Thursday by the liberal-leaning news service Think Progress, the new probe comes days after questions were raised about the FBI FOIA office’s release on Monday of 129 pages of documents pertaining to the 2001-2005 investigation of President Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose wife was a longtime Clinton donor.

That probe, led for a time by current FBI Director James Comey as a U.S. attorney, ended with no prosecutions, which is why the Hillary Clinton campaign immediately complained that its timing seemed questionable. “Absent a (Freedom of Information Act) deadline, this is odd,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted. “Will FBI be posting docs on Trumps’ housing discrimination in ‘70s?”

It also comes less than a week after Comey shook up the presidential race with his letter to lawmakers and FBI staff suggesting that newly uncovered emails in an unrelated probe might be “pertinent” to the bureau’s suspended investigation Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of State Department emails.

The FBI responded to this week’s complaints with a statement outlining its FOIA policies:

“The FBI’s Records Management Division receives thousands of FOIA requests annually which are processed on a first in, first out basis,” it said. “By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI’s public reading room shortly after they are processed. Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures.”

But critics have now zeroed in on the bureau’s Twitter account at the FBI Records Vault. As noted by ex-investigative reporter Hutson, who first filed a complaint with the Justice Department inspector general, the FBI’s FOIA Twitter account had been silent for the past year.  “For the first few years after its 2011 launch, most of its tweets produced only 10 re-tweets, the most being 122,” Hutson said. “But suddenly, at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 30, it roared to life, not for business and not usual.”

The Tweet on Bill Clinton’s Marc Rich pardon, which was part of a probe on the Clinton Foundation, “was highly negative for Hillary Clinton” because it didn’t mention that no charges were brought, while another recent FBI tweet, announcing new documents pertaining to Republican candidate Donald Trump’s father’s past housing industry activities, favored Trump by “calling him a philanthropist,” which in Hutson’s view is “editorial shading.”

Also, Hutson said, “it is significant and telling” that the FBI FOIA people also recently tweeted the FBI’s ethics manual. “That shows they know full well that is it illegal for bureau employees to influence or effect the outcome of an election.” Hutson believes there may be violations of the Hatch Act, Justice Department guidelines and the FBI ethics manual. The FBI vault item on the Clinton Foundation, he pointed out, now has 9,000 re-tweets.

FOIA specialists consulted by Government Executive had mixed evaluations of this turn of events, both for the release of the FOIA documents and the related tweeting. “It’s nothing abnormal,” said Ronald Kessler, an author and longtime investigative journalist who has written on the FBI. “People don’t understand that it would be improper for the FBI to withhold a release of material to try to manipulate media coverage simply because agents happen to finish their work on it late Friday afternoon or just before an election. Like all of us humans, agents try to work extra hard to finish a project that is close to completion before a long weekend.”

Anne Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, said after all her years of sending FOIA requests to the FBI, she found it “astonishing” that the FBI is tweeting, saying it “adds to the unprecedented nature” of this fall’s FBI’s intervention in the presidential race. She also found it odd that the FBI released what appears to be a “first round, partial” file of documents in the Marc Rich case, “with no context.” “Unless you knew they were talking about a major, very serious investigation of a former president, you wouldn’t know that the FBI never prosecuted Clinton,” she said. “I’ve pushed the FBI in litigation for release of documents on a rolling basis, and they always say no.”

Alex Howard, a senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, said the FBI has some flexibility in releasing documents. “Agencies are mandated to acknowledge a FOIA request in 20 days, although many in practice do not. Unless an agency is under instruction by a judge to release records responsive to a FOIA lawsuit on a specified timeline or by a given deadline, however, agencies can have some discretion in when they disclose records to a requester, unless their FOIA regulations specify otherwise. The “first in, first out” standard is one such rule: some agencies have pending FOIA requests going back over a decade.”

Daniel Schuman, policy director for Demand Progress, said, “There’s not enough information to make a judgment, which is why we would welcome an independent investigation, but on its face it is unusual.”

Cyber CIA: Brennan Rebuilt the Agency for Digital Future

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NEW DIRECTION: John Brennan at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination to be the director of the CIA in 2013. Brennan has restructured the agency to REUTERS/Jason Reed

Digitizing the CIA

John Brennan’s attempt to lead America’s spies into the age of cyberwar

The CIA director has put the U.S. spy agency through a historic restructuring to cope with the era of digital warfare. Many in the agency are unhappy with the shake-up. In a series of interviews, Brennan outlines his strategy. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.”

ReutersInvestigates:WASHINGTON – When America goes to the polls on Nov. 8, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, it will likely experience the culmination of a new form of information war.

A months-long campaign backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election – through hacking, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns – is likely to peak on voting day, the officials said.

Russian officials deny any such effort. But current and former U.S. officials warn that hackers could post fictional evidence online of widespread voter fraud, slow the Internet to a crawl through cyber attacks and release a final tranche of hacked emails, including some that could be doctored.

“Don’t underestimate what they can do or will do. We have to be prepared,” said Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and defense secretary in President Barack Obama’s first term. “In some ways, they are succeeding at disrupting our process. Until they pay a price, they will keep doing it.”

John Brennan, the current CIA director, declined to comment on the Russian efforts. But he said Russian intelligence operatives have a long history of marrying traditional espionage with advances in technology. More broadly, Brennan said, the digital age creates enormous opportunities for espionage. But it also creates vulnerabilities.

Citing an array of new cyber, conventional and terrorist threats, Brennan announced the most sweeping reforms of the CIA in its 69-year history 18 months ago.

Weakening the role of the Directorate of Operations, the agency’s long-dominant arm responsible for gathering intelligence and conducting covert operations, Brennan created 10 new “mission centers” where CIA spies, analysts and hackers work together in teams focused on specific regions and issues. He also created a new Directorate for Digital Innovation to maximize the agency’s use of technology, data analytics and online spying.

The information age “has totally transformed the way we are able to operate and need to operate,” Brennan told Reuters in a series of interviews. “Most human interactions take place in that digital domain. So the intelligence profession needs to flourish in that domain. It cannot avoid it.”

When a new American diplomat arrives for duty at the U.S. embassy in Moscow or Beijing, CIA official say, Russian and Chinese  intelligence operatives run data analytics programs that check the “digital dust” associated with his or her name. If the newcomer’s footprint in that dust – social media posts, cell phone calls, debit card payments – is too small, the “diplomat” is flagged as an undercover CIA officer.

The Russian-backed campaign to discredit the U.S. election is not isolated. Hackers believed to have links to Chinese intelligence began stealing the personal information of 22 million federal employees and job applicants in 2014, the worst known data breach in U.S. government history. Islamic State’s online propagandists continue to inspire lone wolf attacks in the United States even as the group loses territory.

A senior official from the Directorate of Operations, who backs the shake-up, said the agency is experiencing its greatest test in decades.

“The amount of threats and challenges that are facing this organization and this nation are greater than at any time in the last 30 years,” said the official, who declined to be named. “The days of a black passport, a fistful of dollars and a Browning pistol are over.”

INNER CIRCLE: President Barack Obama with Brennan and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough at the White House in 2013. The president and the CIA chief are criticized by some former agents for being overly cautious in Syria, Russia and elsewhere. Courtesy Pete Souza/The White House/Handout via REUTERS

“Most human interactions take place in that digital domain. So the intelligence profession needs to flourish in that domain. It cannot avoid it.”

John Brennan, CIA director

James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, praised Brennan and his efforts to retool the CIA for a new era in an interview. So did Lisa Monaco, Brennan’s successor as the President Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser.

But some current and former officials question Brennan’s strategy, arguing his reforms are too digitally focused and will create a more cautious, top-heavy spy agency. At a time when the agency needs to refocus its efforts on human espionage, they say, the concentration of power in the new mission centers weakens the ability of the Directorate of Operations to produce a new generation of elite American spies.

The reforms have hurt morale, created confusion and consumed time and attention at a time of myriad threats, according to interviews with ten former officials.

Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert officer, supports Brennan and his reforms but said they have sparked a mixed reaction among directorate of operations officials who believe human intelligence is getting short shrift.

“The value the CIA can fundamentally add is to steal secrets, and the ultimate secret is intention,” the often inscrutable aims of foreign leaders, Carle said. “Obtaining that is a human endeavor.”

At the same time, Brennan has stirred a different sort of criticism – that he has defied Congressional oversight. Liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress say the Brennan-Obama tenure has been tarnished by a lack of transparency with congressional oversight committees and the public regarding surveillance, drone strikes and the agency’s use of torture against terrorism suspects during the administration of George W. Bush.

“While I think John’s overall legacy will be as a reformer, that legacy will suffer from his refusal to come to grips with the CIA’s troubled torture program,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, vice chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee. “I think the new president’s CIA director must prioritize a high level of trust between the CIA and Congress to insure proper oversight is conducted.”

It’s unclear how closely the country’s next president will hew to Brennan’s strategy.

The front-runner, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has an incentive to beef up American cyber-espionage: U.S. intelligence officials blame the continuing leak of emails from her campaign on Russian-backed hacking. Clinton also expressed support for covert action in a transcript of a 2013 speech she gave to Goldman Sachs that was recently released by Wikileaks.

Republican Donald Trump, meanwhile, pledged to make cybersecurity a top priority in his administration in an October 3 speech. “For non-state terror actors, the United States must develop the ability – no matter how difficult – to track down and incapacitate those responsible and do it rapidly,” Trump said. “We should turn cyber warfare into one of our greatest weapons against the terrorists.”

In interviews at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Brennan declined to comment on either candidate or discuss operational details of the CIA. But he and eight other senior CIA officials gave the most detailed description yet of their rationale for the most radical revamp of the agency since its founding in 1947.

“I look out at the next 10, 20, 30 years, and I look at technology, I look at complexity, I look at the global environment,” Brennan said. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.”

JUST-WAR THEORIST

Brennan, a 61-year-old native of north New Jersey, looks like a linebacker but talks like a technocrat. He speaks excitedly about how the CIA and other government bureaucracies can be configured in “a way to ensure optimal outcomes.”

The son of devout-Catholic Irish immigrants, Brennan speaks reverently of CIA officers as public servants who risk their lives without public accolades. He joined the agency in 1980, at the age of 24, after receiving a Master’s Degree in government with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas.

“The value the CIA can fundamentally add is to steal secrets, and the ultimate secret is intention. Obtaining that is a human endeavor.”

Glenn Carle, former CIA covert officer

Educated in various Catholic schools, including Fordham University, Brennan says he is an adherent of just war theory – a centuries-old Christian theological argument that war is justified when it is waged in self defense, as a last resort and minimizes civilian casualties. Those beliefs, he says, have guided him in one of the most controversial aspects of his tenure in the Obama administration.

As Obama’s White House counter-terrorism adviser and CIA director, Brennan played a central role in carrying out 473 U.S. airstrikes outside conventional war zones between 2009 and 2015, primarily by drone. U.S. officials estimate the attacks have killed 2,372 to 2,581 people, including 64 to 116 civilians. Human rights groups say the totals are vastly higher. Last year, for instance, a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan accidentally killed American aid worker Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, who were both being held captive by al Qaeda.

Brennan declined to comment on specific strikes, but said, “I still can look myself in the mirror everyday and believe that I have tried to do what is morally right, what is necessary, and what is important to keep this country safe.” He also acknowledged mistakes.

“You question yourself. You beat yourself up. You try to learn from it,” Brennan said, in a rare display of emotions. “But you also recognize that if you’re not prepared to make the tough decisions in the jobs that have been entrusted to you, you shouldn’t be in those jobs.”

Today, Brennan says the United States faces the most complex array of threats he has seen since joining the agency 36 years ago. As a CIA analyst, operative and executive, he has lived through the Cold War espionage duels of the 1980s; the disintegration of nation-states after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of non-state terrorist groups since 2001; and the current digital disruption. Now, he says, all four dynamics are converging at once.

BOLD AND INNOVATIVE RIVALS

CIA officials say their greatest state competitors are the Russian and Chinese intelligence services. While smaller countries or terrorist groups may want to strike at the United States, Russia and China are the only two adversaries with the combination of skills, resources and motivation needed to challenge Washington.

In recent years, Moscow’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, has become adept at waging “gray zone” conflicts in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria, the officials said. In all three countries, Russian intelligence operatives have deftly shrouded protagonists, objectives and war crimes in ambiguity.

GREAT RIVALS: U.S. President Barack Obama with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in Beijing in 2014. Washington has faced barrages of digital threats from Beijing and Moscow; CIA insiders say the two nations remain the biggest challenge for the United States. REUTERS/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

“You beat yourself up…. But you also recognize that if you’re not prepared to make the tough decisions in the jobs that have been entrusted to you, you shouldn’t be in those jobs.”

John Brennan, CIA director

One target is America’s increasingly politically polarized democracy. As Russian-backed hacking unfolded this summer, the Obama White House’s response fueled frustration among law enforcement and intelligence officials, according to current and former officials. The administration, they said, seemed to have no clear policy for how to respond to a new form of information warfare with no rules, norms or, it seemed, limits.

White House officials said the administration is still considering various methods of responding, but the responses won’t necessarily be made public.

China presents another challenge. Chinese businessmen and students continue trying to scoop up American state and economic secrets. In one bright spot, Beijing appears to be abiding by a 2015 pact signed by Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the two governments would not conduct economic espionage against one another. Chinese hacking appears to have slowed from the voracious rate of the past, which included hacking into the computers of the 2008 presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama but not releasing what was found.

“The question is whether or not it is due to greater care in terms of covering one’s tracks,” Brennan said of the apparent change. “Or whether or not they realize that they’re brand is being tarnished by this very rapacious appetite for vacuuming up things.”

Regional powers are also increasing their digital espionage efforts.

In 2014, the Obama administration blamed North Korea for the hacking of Sony Pictures’ computer system. This spring, U.S. prosecutors indicted seven Iranian hackers for allegedly trying to shut down a New York dam and conducting a cyber attack on dozens of U.S. banks. They also indicted three Syrian members of the “Syrian Electronic Army,” a pro-Syrian government group,  who hacked into the websites of U.S. government agencies, corporations and news organizations.

In a 2015 case that U.S. officials said marks a worrying new trend, federal prosecutors indicted a 20-year-old hacker from Kosovo. With the help of a criminal hacker, Ardit Ferizi stole the home addresses of 1,300 members of the U.S. military, providing the information to Islamic State and posting it online, and calling for attacks on the individuals. Ferizi was arrested in Malaysia, where he was studying computer science. In September, he pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

“This blend of the criminal actor, the nation-state actor and the terrorist actor, that’s going to be the trend over the next five years,” said John Carlin, who recently stepped down as head of the Justice Department division that monitors foreign espionage in the United States.

But some active clandestine officers argue that the intelligence community has grown too reliant on technology, a trend they trace back four decades to the directorship of Stansfield Turner. Satellite photography, remote sensors and communications intercepts have become more sophisticated, but so have encryption techniques and anti-satellite weapons.

More important, they argue, is that technology is no substitute for “penetrations” – planting or recruiting human spies in foreign halls of power. The CIA missed India’s 1998 nuclear tests and misjudged Saddam Hussein’s arsenal in 2003 because it lacked spies in the right places.

Today, these current and former CIA officials contend, American policymakers have little insight into the thinking of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Presidents, kings and dictators often don’t share their true intentions electronically, putting this valuable information largely beyond the scope of digital spying. The best sources are still people, and these officials believe the agency is not mounting the kind of bold human spying operations it did in the past.

Brennan and other CIA officials flatly denied downplaying human intelligence. They said aggressive, high-risk human spying is under way but they cannot go into operational detail.

One of Brennan’s predecessors, Michael Hayden, former CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says the agency strayed from its core mission during the Bush years. After the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hayden said, the CIA had to shift to become a paramilitary organization that devoted its most talented officers to tracking and killing terrorists. It now needs to reverse that trend by focusing on espionage against rival nations, he said.

“The constant combat of the last 15 years has pushed the expertise of the case officer in the direction of the battlefield and in the direction of collecting intelligence to create physical effects,” said Hayden, using an intelligence euphemism for killing. “At the expense of what the old guys called long-range, country-on-country intelligence gathering.”

‘OPTIMIZING CAPABILITIES’

Brennan and the eight other senior CIA officials made the case that their modernization effort will address the needs and threats described by Hayden and others. Technological advances, they said, have leveled the intelligence playing field. The web’s low cost of entry, creativity and speed benefits governments, hackers and terrorists alike.

A veteran covert operative who runs a new CIA mission center compared Brennan’s reforms to the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The landmark 1986 legislation reorganized the U.S. military into a half dozen regional commands where the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines work together. It was a response to inter-service rivalries that bedeviled the American military in Vietnam.

The CIA equivalent involves having the agency’s five main directorates – Operations (covert spies), Analysis (trends and prediction), Science and Technology (listening devices and other gadgetry) and Digital Innovation (online sleuthing) and Support (logistics) – provide the personnel needed by each regional mission center.

CORE MISSION: Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says the agency went deeply into anti-terrorist operations during the Bush years and needs to return to its traditional mission of spying. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Andrew Hallman, director of the new Directorate for Digital Innovation, said the CIA has embraced cloud computing as a way to better share intelligence. In a move that shocked insiders and outsiders, the CIA awarded an $600 million contract to Amazon in 2013 to build a secure cloud computing system where multiple CIA databases can be quickly accessed.

For decades, different directorates maintained their own separate databases as a security measure, said Hallman. Some of the applications the agency used were so old – up to 30 years – that the manufacturer was no longer in business.

Turning to Amazon was designed to immediately put private-sector computing advances at the fingertips of CIA operatives. It was also an admission that it was easier for the agency to buy innovation from the private sector than try to create it internally.

Several former CIA officials criticized the new team-focused system, saying it dilutes the cultures that made each agency directorate strong. The best analysts are deeply skeptical and need to be separated from covert operatives to avoid group-think, they said. And the best covert operatives are famously arrogant, a trait needed to carry out the extraordinarily difficult task of convincing foreigners to spy for America.

Richard Blee, a former CIA clandestine officer, said the agency needed reform but highlighted a separate problem created by technological change. Instant secure communications between CIA headquarters and officers in the field has centralized decision-making in Washington, Blee said. And regardless of administration, senior officials in Washington are less willing to take a risk than field officers – virtually all of whom complain about headquarters’ excessive caution.

“The mentality across the board in Washington is to take the lowest common denominator, the easiest option, the risk-free option,” Blee said. “The Chinese are taking tough decisions, the Russians are taking tough decisions and we are taking risk-averse decisions. And we are going to pay a price for that down the road.”

Brennan says his reforms will empower CIA officers: The integrated teams in each new mission center will improve speed, adaptability and effectiveness.

“To me, that’s going to be the secret of success in the future, not just for CIA but for other organizational structures,” Brennan said. “Taking full advantage of the tools, capabilities, people and expertise that you have.”

The old ways of spycraft, Brennan argues, are no longer tenable. Asked what worries him most, he gave a technocratic answer: Twentieth century American government management practices are being rendered obsolete in the digital age.

“U.S. decision making processes need to be streamlined and accelerated,” he said. “Because the problems are not going to wait for traditional discussions.”

THE LONG VIEW: CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “I look out at the next 10, 20, 30 years, and I look at technology, I look at complexity, I look at the global environment,” Brennan says. “I think CIA really needs to up its game.” REUTERS/Jason Reed

The politics of espionage in the Obama era

By David Rohde

SEPARATION OF POWERS: Brennan at his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The two later crossed swords over the Senate’s probe into the Bush era CIA’s use of torture. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

Supporters hail CIA director John Brennan as a devoted public servant with a strong moral core and a tenacious work ethic. He has increased the recruitment of minority intelligence officers and promoted women to senior posts. He wears a lanyard around his neck every day that celebrates LGBT diversity at the CIA.

But some former covert operatives say Brennan is too cautious and political. Liberals accuse Brennan of protecting the CIA instead of forcing it to become more accountable to Congress. In particular, they blame Brennan for convincing President Barack Obama to oppose the release of the full 6,000-page U.S. Senate report detailing torture by the CIA during the presidency of George W. Bush. In private hearings, they said, Brennan bristled at questions from senators regarding the report.

After CIA officials searched the computer of a Senate staffer investigating torture, an outraged Sen. Dianne Feinstein accused Brennan’s CIA of provoking a “constitutional crisis” by thwarting Congress’ ability to perform its mandated right to oversee the executive-branch agency. Two other Democratic Senators called for Brennan’s resignation. Obama and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough aggressively defended Brennan, who eventually apologized to Feinstein.

“The exhaustive 6,000-page Senate Intelligence Committee report fully documented the program,” Feinstein told Reuters, “but the CIA under John’s leadership has had difficulty confronting this dark chapter and learning from its mistakes.”

Leon Panetta, who served as President Obama’s first CIA director, said he understood Brennan’s desire to protect CIA officers who carried out interrogation methods deemed legal at the time by the Bush administration. But he said it was important to also be open with Congress and the public.

“I think you can do both,” Panetta said. “You can protect people there [at the CIA]. And be honest with the American people.”

Brennan and his aides vehemently defend his reforms, his transparency and his response to the Senate torture investigation, which they say exaggerated the scale of CIA abuse. They say Brennan, who opposes waterboarding, successfully struck a middle course – ending torture while protecting the identities of CIA operatives.

“He did more to stand up for human rights than any other official in the administration,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale Law School professor who served as Hillary Clinton’s top legal adviser in the State Department.

In the interview, Brennan said the actions of CIA officials who exceeded the Bush-era interrogation guidelines were “reprehensible.” But he said the Senate report  exaggerated the scale of abuse. Brennan contended that the vast majority of CIA officers followed the Bush-era guidelines and were being unfairly “maligned by individuals who have political agendas.”

“When we do things that are within our authorized mandate, things that we are directed to do by our presidents, things that are deemed lawful by our Department of Justice,” Brennan said, “for us to be dragged through the coals on that, I find that reprehensible as well.”

Friends say Brennan say he has privately expressed frustration with the White House’s cautious response to the war in Syria and growing Russian assertiveness. But, they add, he is in many ways similar to Obama himself, questioning America’s ability to unilaterally change the world.

Brennan declined to comment on his own policy views. But he said, “I really feel as though my moral compass is pretty similar” to Obama’s. And he echoed a central tenet of Obama’s worldview.

The U.S. should act as the “world’s organizer of support to countries that are in desperate need,” Brennan said,  but “recognize that our influence and power over the course of events is limited.”

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Digitizing the CIA

By David Rohde

Additional reporting by John Walcott and Jonathan Landay

Video: Zachary Goelman

Graphics: Christine Chan

Photo editing: Barbara Adhiya

Edited by Michael Williams