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Tag Archives: spychology

Two American Military Intelligence Officers: One Dies A Hero; One Defects to the Islamofascist Devolution of Iran

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Monica Witt, Shannon Kent, spychology

Given who she really was, military officials had little choice in how they described Shannon Kent. They said only that she was a “cryptologic technician,” which anyone might assume meant that her most breakneck work was behind a desk.
In reality, she spent much of her professional life wearing body armor and toting an M4 rifle, a Sig Sauer pistol strapped to her thigh, on operations with Navy SEALs and other elite forces — until a suicide bombing took her life last month in northeastern Syria.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/us/shannon-kent-military-spy.html – 2/8/2019

Fox News, January 20, 2019

A former Air Force intelligence specialist who defected to Iran has been charged with espionage after authorities allege she gave that country’s government information about a highly classified military program and helped Iranian hackers target her former colleagues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-charges-former-air-force-intelligence-specialist-with-conspiring-to-share-classified-information-with-iran/2019/02/13/5e02d518-2f9c-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html
CBS News, February 13, 2019

According to Matt Zapotosky’s report in The Washington Post, Monica Witt had appeared in videos critical of the U.S. government, and the FBI had warned her of the potential for an Iranian recruitment effort. Had she been already on her way to defection at that point? Had steps been taken to change her itinerary — her assignments, her reach — in response to her signalling out potential infidelity?

Five years after having taken flight to the other side as a Muslim revert, the Monica Witt defection has become a part of this day’s really big news.

No less storied but somehow handled more quietly has come the story of the highly performing, highly patriotic Naval intelligence officer Shannon Kent who was killed in the suicide bombing that took place in Manbij, Syria on January 16, 2019.

One may wonder about these two woman and their respective motivations, one to marry, raise a family, and fight for her country so very far away from home; and the other to change her religion, her appearance, and to choose — with sensitive data — to fight against it and on behalf of a state that hangs children, thieves from its population, and supports the murder of innocents via Islamic Terrorism worldwide

Related Online

Oppel Jr., Richard A. “Her Title: Cryptologic Technician. Her Occupation: Warrior.” The New York Times, February 8, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “Syria – Assad – ISIL – Background.” BackChannels, December 9, 2016. In the medieval totalitarian mode promoted by Moscow through Damascus with the support of Tehran, the dictatorships manipulate ISIS as a useful foil for their own aggrandizement and functional enlargement through the basing of military assets and now cheap-as-rubble real estate acquisitions.

Zapotosky, Matt. “U.S. charges former Air Force intelligence specialist with conspiring to provide Iran with classified information.” The Washington Post, February 13, 2019.

–33–

The Quiet Assault – A Glance at Interdicted Tech Smuggling to Russia and China

18 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by commart in American Domestic Affairs, Political Spychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Russian espionage and smuggling, spychology

Set aside Anna and her ring.

Last week’s short wee-hour’s shutdown of a portion of Charleston’s port set off by a potentially disinformed conspiracy blogger and webcaster signaled popular American concern and sensitivity to the defense of the homeland, never mind the capabilities and sensitivities of the nation’s capacious national defense and security industry.

Made curious by the homegrown event, BackChannels recalled an incident in which a young Russian national living in the south had been arrested for shipping rifle scopes to Russian, but memory being what it is — some fluid-inscribed organization of thought suspended in brain chemistry and structure — I thought to briefly explore a more subtle aspect of assault on the homeland.  Two themes emerged: 1) the role of innocents either duped into the smuggling process or possibly ignorant of the law and the import of their actions (perhaps Fermenova’s “delivery” had been intended solely for hunting boar); 2) we might want the struggling democracy to get the shipment 🙂 — but, really, the action must be propelled by our own collective politics and government authorized.

Or else!

Here listed in chronological order are the morning’s result —

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wisconsin-woman-unwittingly-ships-military-hardware-russia/story?id=11290519 – 8/2/2010 – Conspiracy exploited an innocent to work an at-home job fiddling with packaging (“Don’t do it.  Go for a regular job in a regular business”).  🙂 -> Russia.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/latvian-beauty-anna-fermanova-months-prison-smuggling-sniper-scopes-russia-article-1.967810 – 10/25/2011 – Night vision goggles and sniper scope -> Russian ex-husband, “target master” at a hunting lodge.

 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/houston/press-releases/2012/russian-agent-and-10-other-members-of-procurement-network-for-russian-military-and-intelligence-operating-in-the-u.s.-and-russia-indicted-in-new-york – 10/3/2012 – 11-member “procurement network” – micro-electronics -> Russia.

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2014/10/08/officials-russian-man-attempted-to-smuggle-military-night-vision-technology/ – 10/8/2014 – Dmitry Ustinov – arms components – night scopes – thermal imaging technology -> Russia.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/russian-citizen-sentenced-federal-prison-illegally-exporting-firearm-parts-russia – 12/11/2014 – Viacheslav Zhukov – firearm magnifier scopes -> Russia.

http://nypost.com/2015/09/09/spy-pleads-guilty-to-smuggling-military-technology-to-russia/ – 9/9/2015 – Alexander Fishenko – $50 million – sensitive electronics -> Russia.

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/smuggle-military-technology-russia-brooklyn-doj/ – 10/6/2016 – Alexey Barysheff (naturalized), Aleksandrovish Karpenko, Alexey Krutilin – sensitive electronics -> Russia

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/27/bay-area-couple-charged-with-illegally-exporting-night-vision-scope-parts/ – 4/27/2017 – Naum and Irina Morgovsky – Night vision rifle scope parts -> Russia.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/la-woman-arrested-on-charges-of-smuggling-us-space-technology-to-china.html – 5/23/2017 – Cathy Chen – $100,000 worth of space communications technology -> China.

Also in this morning’s look-see, an attempt to distribute rifle scopes and thermal imaging technology to the westbound state of Ukraine:

http://www.uapost.us/en/news/u-ssha-zaareshtuvaly-ukrayincya-za-kontrabandu-teplovizoriv/ – 3/7/2017 – Volodymer Nedoviz -> Ukraine.  While BackChannels is with reason more concerned with the smuggling of “game-changing” restricted technologies to Russia, which may be reverse-engineered as well as distributed, it understands U.S. State’s interests and others in maintaining oversight of the same in a troubled world.

While the “live fire demonstration” that some consider the atrocious military behavior by Russian forces in Syria has boosted Russian defense sales, it would appear evident that Putin’s Federation has yet to figure out, much less build and distribute (much less commercialize) state-of-the-art night vision and thermal imaging technology.  Caution: don’t take the observation as authoritative, but rather a sensible conclusion drawn from the efforts of so many over time to attempt to ship the same toward Moscow.  If we need to be fanciful, and since the innocent’s packages (first URL cited in the above list) included military or police uniforms, that content suggests some interest in infiltrating American units (same uniform, same arms — slip a person into costume and plant).

Additional Reference

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article156277354.html – 6/15/2017. “No problem on ship at after threat claim at Charleston port” (AP).

–33–

Excerpts from Recent Correspondence on Political Spychology

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Journalism, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

confidentiality, journalism, political, spooks, spychology

The journalist asked, in essence, “How can I offer a source confidentiality if the government knows I know the source and has the power to intercept everything we talk about?”

Madame X,

More fuel for the fire: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/30/nsa-built-secret-shadow-social-network-getprism-and-youve-already-joined-it/

Our military-industrial complex in its surreptitious mode has made it very hard to casually produce a criminal domestic conspiracy — or should have by now: who’s to tell?

If it has, that leads the bad guys back to using runners to pass slips of paper or memorized signal to their associates or, alternatively, produce code, and perhaps along the lines you have suggested with the Jihad. ”Sweet nectar” may not be so sweet these days if it has been attached to a mission involving Islamic Jihad.

Unless you’re committing a crime, the only advice and course possible is to proceed as normal, as you CAN offer confidentiality unless knowingly (on your part) recording and passing information to a controller.

If you’re not doing that, why can’t YOU offer confidentiality?

What you cannot offer any longer is the guarantee of confidentiality — as in times of old and associated with all conflicts, “there are spies everywhere”.

Our own ability as independent writers to query the NSA gather-all-communications system — or test it for reflection of interest in ourselves — is probably nonexistent to primitive.

The circumstance may encourage us to give those who claim the FBI has been following them and such a second glance. Those we usually consign to the ranks of the American Paranoid Movements (of which there are many) and the plainly mentally ill, but with a lurking and invasive government, we might be inclined to taking a second look at some claims or tempted to test the system with breadcrumbs.

Not too many years ago, we had this same conversation and joked about slipping “C4″ and other triggers into correspondence, and I think we found that at least the Google robots were sensitive enough to return invitations to academic programs in national security.

🙂

It’s not just about Google’s impersonal robotic text scanning anymore, is it?

We have a known real enemy in the collection of Islamic Jihad groups and their backers in Islam, and those have cast a wide network across the earth to filter in like-minded thinkers and evildoers.

We have to ask whether developing SIGINT security system in their totality affords sufficient strength and wherewithal to hunt and distill adversary signal.

So far, not so good: Al Shabaab’s attack last week in Nairobi, Boko Haram’s latest in northern Nigeria, the swing of Syrian rebel FSA toward ISIL would seem to suggest our national foreign intelligence community failure or, alternatively, too parochial a collection of intelligence communities across the nations. Whatever the spooks – a most apt term, that one — may think they’re doing, they’re not getting in the way of the orchestration of these attacks or adverse shifts in political position.

A global threat wants for a globally integrated response.

I may post this response to you on my blog with attribution removed.

We are just at the start of “spychology” as security outsider enthusiasts.

_____

On that first paragraph, two notes ago: ” . . . but of nodal personality attracts similar traffic in a similar way.” It should have read ” . . . but of a nodal personality attracting similar traffic in a similar way.” Basically, the “person of interest” may become noted by other people having a conversation with him.

You have seen the spiderweb graphics illustrating relationships between organizations or persons. With a security mission, a node enlarged by the traffic it receives from lesser nodes 🙂 might attract interest.

For state intelligence communities tracking Islamic terrorism, everyone knows a “hit” or an “action” may be yet compelled by a nod or a few words scribbled on the back of a grocery slip. Where mafia methods work, they work.

This is really a good time for fiction writers who can either promote the technology, as is done with CIS and the old 24 series, or it can go the other way with events taking place out of the control of authorities (remember Jeff Bridges in Arlington Road?).

______

The cuckoo and the two peacocks who have made their names synonymous with American military and domestic intelligence leaks and then the machinery revealed have probably already inspired their share of scribbling intended to entertain, some of which will become movies or television episodes if not series.  The theme is “what you don’t know and can’t know conveniently,” and that terrain today includes what governments know about you and everyone with whom you associate via one form of telephony or another (two tin cans and a length of string excepted).

It is of course presumptuous, also narcissistic, and possibly paranoid to think government cares so much about Y-O-U.

Or M-E.

Then too, it seems it has never been more possible that, indeed, government does care, and whichever government it may be, today it may have some powers it could not have dreamed of having, say, 25 years ago.

Related

‘Homeland’ and ‘24’ Creator Howard Gordon on Terror, Tyranny and TV as Art – Tablet Magazine – 9/30/2013

Arlington Road Trailer – YouTube – Posted 5/23/2010

Arlington Road (1999) – IMDb

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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