Latest in espionage
The Justice Department finds that a former CIA and FBI official provided sensitive intelligence information to the Chinese government for almost a decade.
A Defense Department linguist, Mariam Thompson, was charged today by federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia with transmitting sensitive classified national defense information to a foreign national with apparent connections to Hezbollah. The affidavit filed in support of a criminal complaint alleges that the information transmitted by Thomas included classified information regarding the true names of active human assets.
On Nov. 5, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee examined three evolving homeland security threats: domestic terrorism, Chinese cyber and counterintelligence operations, and the risk new technologies pose to the American public.
The Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint against Xuehua "Edward" Peng for acting as an illegal foreign agent. The complaint alleges that Peng handed over U.S. national security information to officials from China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Extensive details of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation against Peng are also included in the complaint, which can be read here.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment in the Southern District of California charging 10 defendants, including Chinese intelligence officers and their recruits, in two conspiracies to steal sensitive commercial aerospace information and technology from American companies in violation of provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The full indictment is below.
Editor's Note: This post contains the text of a speech that Sen. Mark Warner (D.-Va.) delivered on Friday, June 8 at the National Security Agency’s 29th annual Law Day.
Good afternoon. Thank you, Glenn, for that generous introduction and thank you all for the warm welcome. I am delighted to be here and want to thank NSA for hosting Law Day.
On Wednesday morning, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis III presided over opening arguments in the espionage trial of former U.S. intelligence officer Kevin Mallory. Last summer, a grand jury returned an indictment against Mallory for turning over classified information to aid a foreign power in violation of the Espionage Act and lying to the FBI about it.
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A review of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster 2016)
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A Review of Michael V. Hayden, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (Penguin 2016).