Here’s a telling story about the common culture of secret intelligence services and high-tech platforms. A Twitter executive responsible for social media giant’s international operations is a reservist in a British military brigade engaged in “psy-ops,” otherwise known as “information warfare.” Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company’s UK office six years ago, has...
Category: Spies
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Spanish Security Company Spied on Assange for the CIA
El Pais, the reliable Madrid daily, reports how the CIA kept tabs on Julian Assange while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. U.S. intelligence used the Spanish firm in charge of the embassy’s security to eavesdrop on Assange and his lawyers. David Morales, the owner of the company, supposedly handed over...
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US Extracted Top Spy from Russia Amid Concerns about Trump
There have been times when the CIA didn’t trust the president. JFK, Nixon, and Carter for example. But those differences concerned policy, not the keeping of secrets. With Trump, the agency doesn’t trust him to protect the identify of their spies. So they pulled a spy out of Russia, rather than risk his life. The...
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The Egyptian Spy Who Worked for Mossad
Heba Salim was an Egyptian woman who said she spied in service of peace. Her story is the basis a famous Egyptian movie, Al sood ila al haweyah. (Climbing to the Abyss) I never knew her story until I read it in Egyptian Streets. At a time when Egyptian President Sadat was planning his next...
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Dutch Mole Aided the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet Cyberattack on Iran
One intelligence service may need another–or two to successfully mount a covert operation. Case in point: the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Its long been known that the United States and Israel collaborated on creating a computer virus known as Stuxnet. The virus caused the Iranian computers controlling centrifuges used to enrich uranium to...