Latest in Counterintelligence
American businesses have not fully recognized the enhanced nation-state threat environment within which they are operating, and they do not entirely appreciate the difference between risks and threats.
When Doug Wilson and I set out to write the first edition of “National Security Investigations and Prosecutions” (NSIP), the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were still recent, George W. Bush was in his first term as president of the United States, Vladimir Putin was in his first term as the leader of Russia, Robert Mueller was director of the FBI and Lawfare was not even a gleam in its founders’ eyes.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will host a hearing entitled "Lessons from the Mueller Report: Counterintelligence Implications of Volume 1" at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday. A video of the hearing is available below.
The attorney general has now directed John Durham, the U.S.
After years of focusing on counterterrorism, a mainly kinetic threat, the U.S. intelligence community must now adapt to a long-term cyber struggle with nation-state adversaries. This struggle includes election interference and other socio-political disruption, cyber sabotage, theft of secrets, and competition in emerging technologies such as quantum computing and 5G wireless communications. To succeed against these threats, the intelligence community must shift its approach in two related ways.
According to Attorney General William Barr, the Mueller team concluded that it “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Assuming that Barr has not misquoted Special Counsel Robert Mueller—and I am confident he has not—I am not terribly surprised that the investigation produced this result.
The New York Times reported on Jan. 11 that the FBI “began investigating whether President Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests” soon after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. In other words, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the president.
The New York Times has reported that, in the wake of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president. At one level, of course, this is not surprising—John Bellinger identified Donald Trump as a potential danger to U.S.
The New York Times’ recent report on an FBI counterintelligence investigation into the president has placed a new focus on the counterintelligence aspect of the Mueller investigation. That story is sourced in part to congressional testimony given by former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker, my colleague at Lawfare.
Between Friday’s New York Times story and other earlier material, we might be in a position to revisit the relationship between the “collusion” and obstruction components of the Mueller investigation.