==America’s Throwaway Spies

How the CIA failed Iranian informants in its secret war with Tehran==

By JOEL SCHECTMAN and BOZORGMEHR SHARAFEDINFiled Sept. 29, 2022,

very long article and interesting

Rather than betrayal, Hosseini was the victim of CIA negligence, a year-long Reuters investigation into the agency’s handling of its informants found. A faulty CIA covert communications system made it easy for Iranian intelligence to identify and capture him. Jailed for nearly a decade and speaking out for the first time, Hosseini said he never heard from the agency again, even after he was released in 2019. The CIA declined to comment on Hosseini’s account.

Hosseini’s experience of sloppy handling and abandonment was not unique. In interviews with six Iranian former CIA informants, Reuters found that the agency was careless in other ways amid its intense drive to gather intelligence in Iran, putting in peril those risking their lives to help the United States.

One informant said the CIA instructed him to make his information drops in Turkey at a location the agency knew was under surveillance by Iran. Another man, a former government worker who traveled to Abu Dhabi to seek a U.S. visa, claims a CIA officer there tried unsuccessfully to push him into spying for the United States, leading to his arrest when he returned to Iran.

Such aggressive steps by the CIA sometimes put average Iranians in danger with little prospect of gaining critical intelligence. When these men were caught, the agency provided no assistance to the informants or their families, even years later, the six Iranians said. Former chief of CIA counterintelligence, said any unnecessary compromise of sources by the agency would represent both a professional and ethical failure.

“If we’re careless, if we’re reckless and we’ve been penetrated, then shame on us,” Olson said. “If people paid the price of trusting us enough to share information and they paid a penalty, then we have failed morally.”

The men were jailed as part of an aggressive counterintelligence purge by Iran that began in 2009, a campaign partly enabled by a series of CIA blunders. Tehran has claimed in state media reports that its mole hunt ultimately netted dozens of CIA informants.

To tell this story,Reuters conducted dozens of hours of interviews with the six Iranians who were convicted of espionage by their governmentbetween 2009 and 2015.

Hosseini was the only one of the six men Reuters interviewed who saidhe was assigned the vulnerable messaging tool. But an analysis by two independent cybersecurity specialists found that the now-defunct covert online communication system that Hosseini used – may have exposed at least 20 other Iranian spies and potentially hundreds of other informants operating in other countries around the world.

This messaging platform, which operated until 2013, was hidden within rudimentary news and hobby websites where spies could go to connect with the CIA. Reuters confirmed its existence with four former U.S. officials.

These failures continue to haunt the agency years later. In a series of internal cables last year, CIA leadership warned that it had lost most of its network of spies in Iran and that sloppy tradecraft continues to endanger the agency’s mission worldwide. Four former intelligence officers interviewed by Reuters said the agency is willing to take bigger risks with sources when it comes to spying on Iran.

Much has been written about the decades-long shadow war between Iran and Washington, in which both sides have avoided a full military confrontation but have carried out sabotage, assassinations and cyberattacks. But the six informants, interviewed by Reuters for the first time, gave an unprecedented firsthand account of the deadly spy game from the perspective of Iranians who served as CIA foot soldiers.

The espionage busts could pose a challenge to the CIA’s credibility as it seeks to rebuild its spy network in Iran. The country’s state media publicized some of these cases, portraying the agency as feckless and inept.

“It’s a stain on the U.S. government,” Hosseini told Reuters….

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/

Judicial Watch sues California for allegedly pushing YouTube to censor video

Judicial Watch on Thursday announced a suit against the California secretary of state for allegedly pushing social media giant YouTube to censor a video on election integrity that the group published.

The suit alleges that the California Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC), which Secretary of State Shirley Weber oversees, caused YouTube to remove the video. Judicial Watch contends that, in so doing, the state violated the group's First Amendment rights.

Judicial Watch suit against California

On Sept. 20, 2022 Judicial Watch posted a video featuring group President Tom Fitton discussing the vote-by-mail process and highlighting security risks and other complications in voting systems, the suit noted.

The video, titled "ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!" was removed on Sept. 25, 2022.

The suit purports to reveal communications between OEC Social Media Coordinator Akilah Jones and Google/YouTube representative Andrea Holtermann in which the California state employee reports the Judicial Watch video and Holtermann confirms its removal from the platform.

The California Secretary of State's office said it did not comment on pending litigation.

"Smoking gun documents show California government officials, who were being advised by the Biden campaign PR operation, caused YouTube to censor a key Judicial Watch video just before the 2020 election," Fitton said.

"This egregious government censorship and election interference violated Judicial Watch’s civil rights, and our lawsuit seeks to stop and expose the growing corruption of leftist government officials colluding with Big Tech allies to attack the free speech rights of Americans," he concluded.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/judicial-watch-sues-california-allegedly-pushing-youtube-censor-video

GOVERNMENT OVERREACH

Intelligence Community Developing AI Tool To Unmask Anonymous Writers

The program will also be used to scramble linguistic patterns, making it impossible to crack the identity of authors that they wanted to keep under lock and key…

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has announced they are developing an AI tool to unmask anonymous writers.

A press release on Tuesday from the ODNI revealed that the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), their research and development arm, is starting work on the Human Interpretable Attribution of Text Using Underlying Structure program – HIATUS for short.

“Humans and machines produce vast amounts of text content every day,” with “text containing linguistic features that can reveal author identity,” a document from IARPA notes. The HIATUS tool would therefore use AI to identify anonymous writers via features such as “word choice, sentence phrasing [and] organization of information.”

tion.”

“Think about it as like your written fingerprint, right?” program manager Dr Timothy McKinnon said in February. “What characteristics make your writing unique? So the technology would be able to identify that fingerprint compared against a corpus of other documents, and match them up if they are from the same author.”

McKinnon said that the AI program would be used by the intelligence community to track “disinformation campaigns,” and combat “human trafficking and other malicious activities that go on in online text forums.”

In the same vein, HIATUS would be able to detect whether text was not authored by a human, but generated by another machine.

The second use of the HIATUS program is to hide the identity of authors that it wanted to keep under lock and key. Using the same system, HIATUS could rewrite and modify text so that those same linguistic fingerprints in a text could be scrambled, making it impossible to attribute authorship.

With AI models that use deep learning, they often function as a “black box,” where the AI works perfectly well, but their methods are undecipherable to the human eye. HIATUS will be designed differently, implementing “explainable AI techniques” so that human operators can understand why it has identified a text as having a certain authorship, so that no mistakes are made.

20 different contracts have been awarded as part of the HIATUS project, including to groups such as Raytheon, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Univeristy of Southern California.

“We have a strong chance of meeting our goals, delivering much-needed capabilities to the Intelligence Community, and substantially expanding our understanding of variation in human language using the latest advances in computational linguistics and deep learning,” McKinnon concluded.

According to the timeline provided by the ODNI, the project will take at least three and a half years to conclude before the intelligence community will be able to use it, if it is successful.

https://valiantnews.com/2022/09/intelligence-community-developing-ai-tool-to-unmask-anonymous-writers/

Europe’s descent into deindustrialisation

Philip Pilkington

The rapid economic collapse that Britain is facing is simply an accelerated version of what the whole of Europe is about to go through; unsustainable borrowing to fund the gap between high energy prices and what households can actually afford. With the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, there is now no feasible way back. Europe can no longer physically import Russian gas – prices will remain high until Europe builds more energy capacity, which could take years.

What is likely to come of this? High energy prices will render European manufacturing uncompetitive. European manufacturers will be forced to pass through the higher energy costs in the form of higher prices and consumers will find it cheaper to buy products from countries with normal energy prices. The only logical European response to the threat of widespread deindustrialisation is to raise tariffs. This is the only way to equalise prices between more expensive European goods and cheaper foreign goods, therefore artificially supporting European manufacturing. This strategy will lower living standards, depriving Europeans of cheaper goods, but it will at least preserve some manufacturing jobs.

The only logical European response to the threat of widespread deindustrialisation is to raise tariffs

This process looks remarkably like the start of the Great Depression. In the 1920s, due to lopsided financial arrangements initiated in the Treaty of Versailles, western economies accumulated enormous amounts of debt. In 1929, the collapse of the American stock market removed one of the key remaining props and the western economies collapsed. Europe went first and, as trade dried up, America followed it down the hole.

Modern western economies have been accumulating debt for decades. But since the lockdowns in early 2020, this debt accumulation has gone into overdrive. In 2019, Eurozone government debt-to-GDP was 83.8 per cent. In 2020, after the lockdown bailouts were unveiled it shot up to 97.2 per cent. In the same period, Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio went from 83.8 per cent to 93.9 per cent. These are the largest single increases in history. The run-up in debt during the lockdown was probably unavoidable. But it certainly triggered the beginning of the inflationary pressures we now see everywhere, especially because the lockdowns themselves completely demolished supply chains. So, more money chasing fewer goods. But what has happened since the start of this year is something else entirely.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered an energy price war in Europe that is forcing even higher levels of government borrowing to cover energy costs. Unlike the lockdowns, these energy price increases are putting direct pressure on both prices and the trade balance between countries. Higher energy prices mean that Europe must send more euros and pounds abroad to get energy and so the value of imports rises and these higher import costs are fed through to consumers as businesses try to offset rising energy costs by raising prices. The situation is no longer remotely sustainable. This is almost certainly our 1929 moment.

In the 1930s, Europe fell into an economic black hole. Its economy collapsed and so all the trade that it did with the rest of the world was sucked down the hole with it.

Could the same thing happen today? The Office of the United States Trade Representative estimates that the United States engaged in over $5.6 trillion of trade – roughly 26 per cent of GDP – in 2019. In the same year, trade with the European Union was estimated at $1.1 trillion – that is approximately 20 per cent of total trade. As European falls into the hole, this trade will fall with it. The American economy, already frail, will likely fall too.

One key difference this time around is that there is a rival economic bloc that could be insulated from these dynamics, the emerging Brics+: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Argentina – with Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia also joining the queue. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Brics countries have been solidifying trade and financial ties and adding new members. It appears that the goal is for these economies to decouple as much as possible from the West. If they are successful in doing that – and it looks like they may be – they may avoid the depression. The Nord Stream sabotage could be the point at which future historians mark the end of western dominance.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/europe-s-descent-into-deindustrialisation

People think the British Empire (the world's largest) was no more..

1 of 2Fascinating

But that's functionally incorrect. It simply passed the reigns to the American Empire, which now exercises global hegemony thru the "rules-based international order". Britain and Sons Ltd. is still in business.

Moreover, many people still do not understand what the "rules-based international order" actually is. They often confuse it with freedom & democracy.

Or they think it's the same as the UN international rules. It's not. The "order" is mainly monetary:.

This is why many people are confused when the Five Eyes nations (🇬🇧,🇺🇸,🇨🇦,🇦🇺,🇳🇿) seemingly moved in lockstep with each other… even when those moves were contrary to the interests of their masses.

Britain & Sons Ltd. is one company… led by the elites of their societies. People are even more confused when the EU nations (at the behest of the U.S. through NATO) seemingly made decisions that are contrary to the interests of their masses. Britain & Sons Ltd. also have European elite "shareholders". Together they control the world's monetary system.

So what are the monetary instruments of this system? SWIFT, USD as world reserve currency, IMF, World Bank, British controlled offshore tax havens & a number of large Wall Street banks & investment firms.This is the core part of the "rules-based international order".

Like any world order, the "rules-based international order" also has its own military to enforce submission. They're called the U.S. military.

And since Britain & Sons Ltd. is a pan-European company, its "shareholders" also contribute to the military. They're called NATO.

Moreover, like most companies, Britain & Sons Ltd. also has its own PR and marketing arm. They're called Western media.. Would you be surprised if I told you the world's biggest media & entertainment companies are owned and controlled by just a handful of Western billionaires?

Does Britain & Sons Ltd. have non-Western collaborators? Absolutely. And they're all over the world.. The Chinese government has successfully prosecuted some of the billionaire collaborators within its borders. Some managed to escape to the West and fight the CPC from there. So why do Britain & Sons Ltd. and their "shareholders" see China as a threat?

The answer is clear when you understand that the "rules-based international order" is mainly a monetary system. China has built a parallel monetary system that's more equitable for developing nations. China's monetary system was initially designed to shield its own (and by extension its trading partners') economy from being abused by the Western elites that control the current monetary system. For example, Britain & Sons Ltd. has sanctioned numerous countries it doesn't like…

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1543520118692626432.html

>>17621498

People think the British Empire (the world's largest) was no more

2 of 2

So in order to escape the financial stranglehold of the "rules-based international order", China created:

• AIIB as alt. to IMF & World Bank

• CIPS as alt. to SWIFT

• UnionPay as alt. to MasterCard & VISA

• eYuan as potential alt. to USD

… and the BRI as the modern Silk Road.

Since China is the largest trading partner of most countries in the world, these countries were able to bypass the monetary system of Britain & Sons Ltd. and transact directly with China. They chose China's system due to better terms, fairness, respect and mutual benefits.

Moreover, countries that are heavily sanctioned under the "rules-based international order" were able to survive and trade due to China's alternative system. Russia (currently sanctioned by Britain & Sons Ltd.) is one of the many beneficiaries of this Chinese system.

Conclusion:

• Britain & Sons Ltd. and their "shareholders" know that by controlling the world's monetary system, they exercise great power over the world's governments.

• It's a monopoly that they will never willingly relinquish.

• And they would risk WW3 to preserve their "order".

Conclusion: Britain & Sons Ltd. has also assessed that only China has the financial, technology, economic & military means to successfully defy its "rules-based international order". This is why the "company" has been waging asymmetric (esp. info) wars against China.

Addendum: I coined the term 'Britain & Sons Ltd.' to better explain the continuation of Western imperialism via the "rules-based international order". But do not forget that although the EU elites are "shareholders" of the "company", it's mainly the USA & UK that runs the show.

Addendum: 148 years ago, there was an actual British company that had an army twice the size of the British army. It had the royal charter to make war, mint money & even colonise countries.

It ruled India, HK & parts of SE Asia.

It was called the British East India Company…

Britain & Sons Ltd.

🇬🇧 = Founder & Chief Advisor

🇺🇸 = CEO

🇦🇺 = Chief Marketing Officer & Deputy Sheriff

🇳🇿 = Chief Compliance Officer

🇨🇦 = Assistante Personnelle du Président-Directeur Général (Personal Assistant to the CEO)

🇪🇺 = Shareholders

Appendix: Have you found this thread useful in helping you understand how the British Empire passed the baton of imperialism to the USA?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1543520118692626432.html

Rappers Gunna and Young Thug had their rap lyrics used against them when they were arrested on gang charges in an ongoing trial.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bill restricting use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases

Rappers Young Thug and Gunna were arrested in Atlanta and their lyrics were used against them in an indictment related to gang-related charges

By Louis Casiano |

California on Friday enacted a new law limiting prosecutors from using rap lyrics as evidence against criminal defendants.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills, including AB 2799, which requires a pre-trial hearing to determine if hip-hop lyrics are relevant to a case. The bill was approved by state lawmakers in August.

"For too long, prosecutors in California have used rap lyrics as a convenient way to inject racial bias and confusion into the criminal justice process," Dina LaPolt, entertainment attorney and co-founder of Songwriters of North America, told Variety in a statement. "This legislation sets up important guardrails that will help courts hold prosecutors accountable and prevent them from criminalizing Black and Brown artistic expression. Thank you, Gov Newsom, for setting the standard. We hope Congress will pass similar legislation, as this is a nationwide problem."

Assembly member Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr. championed the bill, saying it protects rap artists, who are mostly Black and Latino.

"Their stage name might be Little Murder, but that doesn’t mean they’re a murderer," Jones-Sawyer previously stated, Fox San Franciscoreported. "We found that the lyrics that they were using in the court to prosecute someone, those weren’t even that person’s lyrics. It was written by someone else. The music was written by someone else, and they were just performing it."

The bill came amid the prosecution of Jeffrey Williams, better known as Young Thug, and Sergio Kitchens, known as the rapper Gunna. The two high-profile rappers were arrested in Atlanta on gang charges and their lyrics were quoted in an indictment.

Supporters of the legislation said there is a difference between rap lyrics and what an artist does in real life.

"This is about justice. This is about making sure that the court system looks at that individual and not what people think about that individual," said Jones-Sawyer.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-gov-gavin-newsom-signs-bill-restricting-use-rap-lyrics-evidence-criminal-cases

CA politicians seemingly getting large kick backs from criminals, if they can keep on producing violent music.

Western media says Russia blew up Nord Stream. But why would Moscow destroy pipelines it spent billons of dollars building?

1 of 2

Several days on from news of the explosions, details surrounding the deliberate sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines remain opaque and uncertain, although the Western media is certain of one thing – Moscow itself is to blame.

That's right, writers and editors either believe, or are pretending to believe, that Russia blew up infrastructure that it poured billions of dollars into building. The same country they routinely, and falsely, smear as a "mafia state."

One wonders have they paused to ponder what sort of crime syndicate would destroy one of its chief revenue streams? Especially afterspending over €23 billion on building the infrastructure, according to Gazprom's own statements.

That would, of course, require self-awareness. But there's little time for that when they have propaganda to push.

Moscow, as it happens, believes the truth lies elsewhere. As President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, “those who benefit are responsible, of course,” alluding to the involvement of what he called the "Anglo-Saxons." A Russian turn of phrase which basically means the US and its anglophobe allies, led by Britain.

Who REALLY blew up Nord Stream?

On the crucial question of why Moscow would deliberately destroy a gas pipeline into which it had invested billions to construct over several years, and which was a valuable source of income – by some estimates the natural gas still stored therein alone was worth up to €800 million – Western journalists remain at a total loss.

Several media outlets have accordingly published lengthy articles speculating on the Kremlin’s motives for doing so. But there has inevitably not been a single comparable investigation of the reasons why Russia wouldn’t do so, of which there are clearly a great many. There has also been no probe of the numerous actors with far more obvious motives, far more to gain by doing so, and the capability to implement such a plan.

This is despite several pro-Western sources actively praising the sabotage. For example, Radoslaw Sikorski, a European Parliament member and former Polish foreign minister, took to Twitter in the immediate aftermath and posted a photo of the environmentally destructive gas leak that resulted from the damage. His message was stark: “Thank you, USA.” Mysteriously, the post has since been deleted. Perhaps somebody has a word.

Of course, theexplosions occurred just before Poland and Norway opened an alternative pipelinerunning through Denmark that brings in gas from the North Sea rather than from Russia.

Moscow's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia claimed at a UN Security Council meeting on Friday that the Nord Stream pipeline leak is "beneficial" to the United States. He stated that American suppliers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) "should celebrate" as the European Union moves away from Russian gas.

Nebenzia added that "it makes no sense for us to destroy the project with our own hands"and stressed Russia must be part of any investigation into the matter, along with the likes of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. "If someone thinks that it is possible to conduct an investigation without Russia's participation, we have reasons to doubt the objectivity of this investigation," he said at the Security Council.

‘Hi-tech crewless vehicles’

There has also been zero acknowledgement that an attack on Nord Stream had long been a major concern for Gazprom’s executives, and Russian officials. While Moscow’s proposals to equip Nord Stream 2 with security measures, such as early warning systems, were framed as the Kremlin insidiously seeking to extend its military and intelligence infrastructure across Europe, fears of precisely what has come to pass turned out to be well founded.

In November 2015, a few kilometers east of the Baltic island of Öland and near where the pipeline runs,an armed remote-controlled mine disposal vehicle was foundduring an annual routine check of the structure. It was removed by the Swedish Armed Forces, but it has never been revealed how the explosive-packed vehicle ended up adjacent to Nord Stream, or when, why, who or what was operating it…

https://www.rt.com/news/563826-who-blew-up-nord-stream/

>>17621664

2 of 2

It’s a matter of record, though, that the US – which for decades aggressively opposed, both covertly and overtly, Western European projects to receive Russian energy –is a world leader in underwater drone innovation. In mid-June of this year, NATO’s annual maritime-focused BALTOPS exercise was conducted off the coast of Denmark.

The US Navy used the event “as an opportunity to test emerging technology,” in particular “the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology,” and “demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.” This exercise was coincidentally conducted very, very close to where the Nord Stream strings are located, and where the recent explosions occurred.

It’s likewise been confirmed that the Ukrainian military recently received extensive training from Britain’s Royal Navy in the use of “hi-tech crewless vehicles to help them hunt mines.”Soldiers learned how to operate the devices, which can operate at a depth of up to 100m – almost precisely the depth of the Nord Stream pipelines – and can detect, locate and identify mines using sensors, so the Ukrainian Navy can remotely destroy them with weapons systems attached to the drones.

Dare call it a conspiracy

Despite such obvious grounds for skepticism about Russia’s culpability in the sabotage, speculation online that Washington, or other hostile belligerents in the Ukrainian conflict, may in fact be responsible has been dismissedas a “conspiracy theory.”

What’s verifiably not a conspiracy theory is the CIA has a history of targeting pipelines, and gives no consideration whatsoever to the destructive consequences of such actions. Indeed, in the early 1980s, the agency hatched a devilish plan whereby Soviet agents were allowed to acquire control software from a Canadian company that was embedded with a Trojan horse virus.

This was used to run pumps, turbines, and valves on the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline. In June 1982, the CIA used the Trojan horse to disrupt a routine pressure test by changing pump speeds and valve settings to double the usual amount of pressure released, at a level far in excess of what pipe joints and welds could withstand.

This produced an explosion with the power of a three-kiloton nuclear weapon, significantly disrupted gas supplies to and from the Soviet Union, damaged Moscow’s overseas earnings and caused disruption to its domestic economy. It also had a significant psychological impact, as it left Soviet officials worried and uncertain about what other equipment – whether domestically produced or foreign-bought – could similarly be catastrophically flawed.

It should be considered rather suspect then that back in June the CIA apparently issued“vague” but “strategic” warnings to numerous European countries, including Germany, that both Nord Stream pipelines could be subject to attacks in the future. Why this information was neither publicized at the time, nor prompted Berlin to undertake security measures to prevent such an event, is anyone’s guess.

It’s not been confirmed whether the CIA identified in its warnings which state or non-state actor was the potential or likely future culprit, and the agency – typically so quick to blame Russia for any and all malfeasance at home and abroad – has remained eerily silent since the explosions took place.

US officials have also been uncharacteristically reticent to attribute blame to Russia, or indeed any party. A White House spokesperson simply stated on September 27 that: “Our partners are investigating this, so we stand ready to provide support to their efforts once they have completed their investigation.”

And the last thing that bears remembering is a comment made by President Joe Biden in early February, when he declared that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2” as “we will bring an end to it.”

When asked how the US would be able to do that since the project was co-owned by Germany, Biden responded: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

https://www.rt.com/news/563826-who-blew-up-nord-stream/

>>17621778

Seriously what to hell is that?

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1576325969673351168?s=20&t=iroNarqlPZ1LnEDpachwIA