More from @20committee

John Schindler

@20committee

Sep 16, 2018

https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/1041403797111623680

OK, except Woodward is exculpatory on Trump's Kremlin collusion only in a highly narrow and technical way, which makes perfect sense if you know Bob's longstanding MO, which he's been chugging at in DC for 45 years and counting.

I shall elaborate....

https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/1041403797111623680

Bob interviews everybody around POTUS. Anybody in the WH not stupid makes sure to talk to Bob to make sure their take is in the book. Trump, of course, was stupid. So, FEAR isn't exactly flattering to the WH. Bob does NOT interview IC folks at any working level. No access there.

Nobody (except a few top bosses) in the IC will talk to Woodward because 1. They fear and distrust journalists (with good cause), and 2. They remember VEIL, Bob's 1987 trainwreck about Reagan's CIA and DCI Bill Casey. After that, all Bob's IC bridges were burned for good.

Read 6 tweets

John Schindler

@20committee

Aug 29, 2018

OK, America, it's time to wake up and cut the shit. I have no dog -- zero -- in any partisan fight, but let's discuss what's happened here. It's truly shocking. /1

nytimes.com/2018/08/28/us/…

A former CIA official's SF86 (ie SSBI to obtain or keep TS/SCI) information seems to be out there -- and is being exploited by her political enemies. This is a VERY serious development, on both the privacy and the counterintelligence fronts. /2

Either her political enemies have a mole inside CIA who's breaking a mountain of laws, or this is tied to HoIS. Remember when the PRC made off with several million SF86s in 2015 because OPM can't shoot straight? Yeah, that. /3

Read 5 tweets

John Schindler

@20committee

Jul 30, 2018

In my latest column, I compare today's DC Russian penetration problems with the terrible experience the USA had with Kremlin espionage 70 years ago, at the dawn of the last Cold War.

Some lessons and warnings clearly present themselves. /1

observer.com/2018/07/cold-w…

First, the Russian spy network is bigger than you think. And hidden. Public discussions of Kremlin spies represent the mere tip of the espionage iceberg. Most of the turncoats clandestinely working for Moscow will never been unmasked, much less prosecuted. That's reality.

/2

Second, espionage is a tough crime to prove, even when the US Government has gold-standard top-secret intel like VENONA in its back pocket. Does Mueller have something similar today? We may know that answer soon.

/3

Read 7 tweets

John Schindler

@20committee

Jul 20, 2018

Time for a tweetstorm on the realities of covert action and influence ops in elections. Since Trumpers are now citing the "Everybody does it" line regarding what Russia and its friends did to the USA in 2016 to help put Trump in the WH. So, here's some espionage #realtalk.../1

First, everybody who can, which means all developed countries, does SIGINT, which today means much cyber collection. So, NSA has collected ("hacked" in amateur parlance) emails and whatnot from foreign dignitaries and VIPs. Yes, it's illegal, but, really, everyone does it. /2

Western countries do this for intelligence purposes, ie informing statecraft, broadly. While small bits of SIGINT may be used for narrowly defined covert action, USG/IC does NOT use this intel to broad-brush shift elections and subvert governments, as Russia did in 2016... /3

Read 12 tweets