Category Archives: Media corruption

Rule Violations Meeting with Foreign Agents

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Members of Congress meet with foreign diplomats and agents all the time. These encounters happen in Washington DC in government buildings or at social events. This also goes for journalists. When members of government travel abroad, they coordinate the travel with the State Department before and after their meetings. This is a long standing rule. All members of government meeting with foreign personnel must have an additional personnel in these interactions for witness reasons, checks and balances and there are strict conditions that are applied to these confabs. It is not uncommon for security personnel, a CIA representative or liaison officer to be included officially or in a cover role.

All U.S. officials, members of academia, think tanks and heads of domestic corporations follow a set of rules related to their contact with foreign officials. There are strict rules and prohibitions against contact with officials from countries with which we do not have official relations. North Korea and Iran for instance. Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Afghanistan and China along with Russia have a second set of rules surrounding contact. Any U.S. official or military personnel meeting say with Russia, they are required to include the office of security and counterintelligence. Documenting the encounters are mandatory and the FBI and CIA are to be consulted for reasons of action or intentions.

Further, there is countless training and retraining that occurs for all U.S. personnel where any interaction with foreign services is required. Diplomatic settings, protocol and responsibilities are unique to countries due to relationships, culture, current policy objectives and respective titles of foreign agents.

For a view of foreign protocol, click here.

This brings us to meetings mentioned recently with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak by Trump representatives and those Democrats as well. If the rules are followed, there are records of the encounters. It is unclear whether those records are easily obtainable or access requires a FOIA request.

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So regarding General Flynn:

The Pentagon hasn’t found any documents indicating that Mike Flynn received authorization to accept money from a foreign government before traveling to Moscow in 2015 for a paid Russian state TV event, according to a letter from the acting Secretary of the Army.

The Pentagon finding came after lawmakers raised questions about whether the former White House national security adviser and retired U.S. Army general violated Pentagon rules that require retired officers to report income from foreign states.

Mr. Flynn accepted an invitation to Moscow in late 2015 to give a paid, sit-down interview with Russian state television network RT and to attend the channel’s 10-year anniversary gala, where he sat beside President Vladimir Putin.

The Department of the Army conducted “a thorough records search, and has not found any documents,” Acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer said in a Feb. 14 letter in response to Rep. Elijah Cummings, a ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who asked the Pentagon whether Mr. Flynn received approval.

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Yet we also have Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Clair McCaskill, Chuck Schumer in addition to Jeff Sessions having sessions with the Russian ambassador. Were all of these interactions reported and did they too follow the diplomatic protocol rules? This is unclear.

Image result for pelosi russia Business Insider

As for the Trump advisory team, JD Gordon, Carter Page and Jared Kushner all had either formal or information meetings with the Russian ambassador. Since Rex Tillerson assumed the position of Secretary of State, there have been no daily press briefings where media can ask further questions in regard to read-outs on meetings. It has been radio silence at Foggy Bottom since Tillerson took over the State Department, but that is to change in coming days. It is unclear whether the resuming briefings will be on camera or in closed settings.

Tillerson is making his presence felt behind the scenes. He “has had 32 separate phone conversations with representatives of various countries, 15 in-person meetings with foreign interlocutors here in the United States, as well as calls and meetings with U.S. government personnel, showing a deep commitment to coordinating with the White House and other federal agencies and obtaining a diversity of perspectives on issues of public concern,” a spokesman said. The department also issues the occasional comment under Tillerson’s name, including congratulations to other countries on their national days. More here.

Russian Ambo Kislyak also Met with WH’s John Holdren

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

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

Image result for sergey kislyak on the sofa bu.edu

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The full interview is here.

 

Democrats Version of Vetting, Ethics Violations and Terror

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The Federalist Papers reports that Imran Awan, ringleader of the group that includes his brothers Abid and Jamal, has provided IT services since 2005 for Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman. The brothers are from Pakistan. The Daily Caller reports that Jamal handled IT for Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves on both the intelligence and foreign affairs panels.

“As of 2/2, his employment with our office has been terminated,” Castro spokeswoman Erin Hatch told TheDCNF Friday.

Jamal also worked for Louisiana Democrat Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is on the Committee on Homeland Security.

Imran worked for Reps. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat, and Jackie Speier, a California Democrat. Both are members of the intelligence committee, and their spokesmen did not respond to TheDCNF’s requests for comment. Imran also worked for the House office of Wasserman Schultz.

Then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, employed Abid for IT work in 2016. She was a member of House committees dealing with the armed services, oversight, and Benghazi. Duckworth was elected to the Senate in November, 2016. Abid has a prior criminal record and a bankruptcy.

Abid also worked for Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat who is member of the foreign affairs committee. To actually see all the representatives that shared the salary expense or Imran Awan, go here. Sheesh, seems lots of democrats have some REAL explaining to do.

Imran Awan, a current staffer, earned an estimated salary of $165,130 as a Shared Employee through the most recent House pay period. This was 2.4 times greater than the median for a House staff.

Awan has been employed in Congress since at least Q3 ’09 (employment information is not available prior to ‘Q3 2009 for House staffers and ‘Q3 2011 for Senate staffers, so Awan’s actual start date may be earlier), and has also been a staffer for Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA14) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY9).

*** There is a formal investigation by Congress.

Congressional Aides in Criminal Probe Owed Money to Hezbollah-Connected Fugitive

Congressional aides suspected of criminally misusing their access to House computer systems owed $100,000 to an Iraqi politician who is wanted by U.S. authorities and has been linked to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Middle Eastern terrorist outfit.

Imran Awan and four of his relatives were employed as information technology aides by dozens of House Democrats, including members of the intelligence, foreign affairs, and homeland security committees.

The aides’ administrator-level IT access was terminated earlier this month amid a criminal probe by U.S. Capitol Police of a suspected security breach, including an off-site server housing congressional data.
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The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has reported that while working for Congress, the Pakistani brothers controlled a limited liability corporation called Cars International A, a car dealership with odd finances, which took—and was unable to repay—a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, wrote that Al-Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon, conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012—shortly after the loan was made. Al-Attar has also been accused of helping provoke the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a leader of Iraqi dissidents opposed to Saddam Hussein.

After moving to the U.S., Al-Attar made his money practicing medicine in Maryland and Virginia and defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies by billing for nonexistent medical procedures. The FBI raided his offices in 2009 and the Department of Health and Human Services sued his business partner in 2011.

Al-Attar was indicted in March 2012 on separate tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI found he used multiple bank accounts to hide income. He fled back to Iraq to avoid prison.

“He’s a fugitive. I am not aware of any extradition treaty with Iraq,” Marcia Murphy, spokesman for federal prosecutors in Maryland, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Tuesday. “If or when he returns to the U.S., the prosecution will continue.”

Brothers Imran, Abid, and Jamal Awan, as well as their wives Natalia Sova and Hina Alvi, were all on the congressional payroll.

Not long before the indictment, Pakistani-born Virginia resident Nasir Khattak, who co-owned Cars International A with Abid, still had access to some bank accounts holding Al-Attar’s assets.

Khattak was a realtor, and with Al-Attar’s permission, “acquired the money through adjustments to the accounts that he controlled as the realtor for Al-Attar,” court documents say.

Abid managed the car dealership’s daily operations, even though he was also employed full time running computers for representatives that have included Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and Yvette Clarke of New York. But the car dealership was hemorrhaging money. Customers were often shown cars borrowed from a dealership next door.

“It was very bad record-keeping in Cars International … it is close to impossible to make any sense out of all the transactions that happened,” Khattak said in court documents.

The dealership’s finances interwove with the House’s. A car-dealing associate who was owed money by the brothers, Rao Abbas, was placed on the congressional payroll.

Khattak said Cars International A was a “family business” and by 2010 Imran was its primary manager instead of Abid.

Abid filed for personal bankruptcy in 2012 because the dealership was in his name, listing $1 million in liabilities. Bankruptcies are a major security red flag in background checks for employees in sensitive positions.

The loan from Al-Attar was never repaid, leading to a lawsuit over the dealership’s future. Al-Attar claimed the loan default meant the dealership became his, but refused to testify in person, giving power of attorney to someone else to give evidence on his behalf.

Khattak said in court documents that was because “Ali Al-Attar was out of the country as he was involved in politics and the formation of the Iraqi government.” Though he was fugitive, that was also true.

Giraldi, the former CIA officer, wrote in The American Conservative in 2013 that Al-Attar advised President George W. Bush’s key Iraq policy advisers that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators.”

“In late 2002 and early 2003, [then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz regularly met secretly with a group of Iraqi expatriates, consisting mostly of Shias but also including several Sunnis, who resided in the Washington area,” Giraldi wrote. “The Iraqis were headed by one Dr. Ali A. Al-Attar.”

Al-Attar’s prediction was wrong, and his qualifications for making it—supposedly based on what the D.C.-area Iraqis were hearing from relatives—were questionable because, although Al-Attar was born in Iraq, his parents were Iranian.

But the U.S.-backed regime change served Al-Attar well, as in 2003, he told The New York Times that “he was one of four people chosen by Gen. Jay Garner to re-establish the Iraq Ministry of Health, and that he expected to be called to Baghdad next week.”

That stay in Iraq apparently did not last long, as in 2009, his medical license was suspended by Maryland for separate instances of billing patients and insurance companies for unneeded services.

In November 2010, the Maryland State Board of Physicians brought still more charges of “unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine and failure to cooperate in a lawful investigation.”

Al-Attar’s attorney said the board was a “Trojan horse” for the FBI. The board said Al-Attar’s “failure to cooperate with the board investigation was deliberate, longstanding, and defiant,” and in March 2012 revoked his license.

The Awan brothers worked for members including Andre Carson of Indiana, one of two Muslims in Congress, and a member of the ultra-sensitive intelligence committee.

Resistance Recess, Townhall Protests Operations

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Attend a Resistance Recess Event: Save our Health Care, our Communities, and our Democracy

The week of February 18–26 is the first recess of the 115th Congress—time specifically set aside for members of Congress to meet with constituents and get the pulse of the communities they represent.

This is the perfect time to raise our voices. We will show up at our elected officials’ events, town halls, other public appearances, and even plan our own events, if they refuse to meet with us, to make it clear to those who represent us, as well as to the media, that tolerance of Trump’s hurtful agenda is unacceptable and politically toxic.

*** And they are fulfilling the mission:

Protesters, supporters of Trump rally outside Darrell Issa’s office

House Oversight chair Jason Chaffetz slams town hall protesters

Noisy town hall protests show how the left is trying out tea party tactics to fight Trump
McClintock is escorted by police as protesters followed him shouting "Shame on you!"
McClintock is escorted by police as protesters followed him shouting “Shame on you!” Randall Benton / Sacramento Bee
***

Resistance Recess Materials

 

General materials:

Media/Press Guides:

Issue specific materials:

Training videos:

Russian Spy Operations History in the U.S.

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In 2015:

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Related reading: Russian Hacking, We knew Because we had an Inside Operative(s)

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

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

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

Founding through Civil war (1790-1865)

1 Dolley Madison, first-lady spy

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

White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

2 Winder Building Signal Corps cupola

Winder Building | PHOTO: Library of Congress

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

600 17th St. NW

3 Lowe balloon launch site

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

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

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

4 Mansion House Hotel

Sarah Emma Edmonds. | PHOTO: University of Michigan

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

121 N. Fairfax St., Alexandria, Virginia

5 Kirkwood House Hotel

Sketch of the Kirkwood House.

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

12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW

6 Gardner’s Gallery

Gardner Gallery | PHOTO: INSCOM

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

511 7th St. NW

7 Old Capitol Prison

Old Capitol Prison | PHOTO: National Archives

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

1st and East Capitol St. NE

8 Surratt boarding house

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

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

604 H St. NW

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

1 Van Deman offices

Maj. Gen. Ralph Van Deman | PHOTO: INSCOM

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

639 17th St. NW

2 A. Mitchell Palmer residence

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

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

2132 R Street NW

3 Bellevue Hotel

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

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

15 E St. NW

4 East Building, Office of Strategic Services headquarters

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

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

23rd and E streets NW

5 Vint Hill

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

4263 Aiken Drive, Warrenton, Virginia

6 Vichy French Embassy

Former Vichy French Embassy.

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

2129 Wyoming Ave, NW

7 Arlington Hall

Arlington Hall during World War II. | PHOTO: INSCOM

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

4000 Arlington Blvd., Arlington, Virginia

8 Mayflower Hotel

Mayflower Hotel.

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

1127 Connecticut Ave. NW

Cold war espionage (1946-1991)

1 British Embassy diplomats and Soviet spies

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

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

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

2 Air America

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

918 16th St. NW

3 Pullman House

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

1125 16th St. NW

4 Steuart Motor Company

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

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

5th and K streets NW

5 Exchange Saloon

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

1719 G St. NW

6 Hanssen signal site

Mugshot of Robert Hanssen.

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

1910 Creek Crossing Rd. NE, Vienna, Virginia

7 Aldrich Ames site

Aldrich Ames being arrested. | PHOTO: Central Intelligence Agency

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

North Quebec Street and Nelly Custis Drive, Arlington, Virginia

8 Jonathan Pollard meeting site

Meeting site in Dumbarton Oaks.

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

1703 32nd St. NW

Today’s spies (1992-2016)

1 CIA memorial

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

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

CIA headquarters, McLean, Virginia

2 Cuban Embassy

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

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

2630 16th St. NW

3 Ana Montes residence

Mugshot of Ana Montes.

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

3039 Macomb St. NW

4 Stanislav Gusev operation

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

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

2201 C St. NW

5 Tysons-Pimmit Library

Tysons-Pimmit Library.

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

7584 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia

6 Final resting place

Arlington National Cemetery.

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

Arlington Veteran Cemetery, Memorial Drive, Arlington, Virginia