City of Secrets: A real spy is never who you think they are
6/19/2019
https://wtop.com/j-j-green-national/2019/06/city-of-secrets-a-real-spy-is-never-who-you-think-they-are/
City of Secrets: Big tech, big talk frame the future of spying in Washington
6/21/2019
https://wtop.com/j-j-green-national/2019/06/city-of-secrets-big-tech-big-talk-frame-the-future-of-spying-in-washington/
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City of Secrets: Estimated 10,000 people in DC are spies
6/17/2019
https://wtop.com/j-j-green-national/2019/06/city-of-secrets-an-estimated-10000-dc-residents-are-spies-heres-how-they-blend-in/
In WTOP’s three-part series “City of Secrets,” WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green talks to some of the best in the espionage game to find how spies have infiltrated Washington, D.C., and what can be done to catch them.
Every day, in the predawn hours, long before official Washington, D.C. stirs from its slumber, the quiet rumble of transit begins deep beneath the city, in the streets, on its waterways and in the skies. It grows, hour by hour, to a full-blown symphony of organized chaos, punctuated by voices, horns, sirens and motorcades, as the city of 700,000 swells to more than one million.
Waves of civil servants, military and law enforcement officers, business people, students, diplomats and tourists saturate the city.
That is the scene on a typical weekday in the world’s most powerful city — whose business revolves around secret meetings, information and documents. Woven into that orderly bedlam are sophisticated networks of foreign nationals whose sole purpose is to steal secrets.
They are spies.
According to the International Spy Museum in D.C., an educational and historical center of U.S. intelligence documentation and artifacts, there are “more than 10,000 spies in Washington.”
While there may be some quibbling about the actual numbers, the FBI agrees with the premise.
“It’s unprecedented — the threat from our foreign adversaries, specifically China on the economic espionage and the espionage front,” said Brian Dugan, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Counterintelligence with the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
As this unparalleled wave of international espionage, aided by technology, explodes in D.C., the variety of spies has diversified, as well.
“A spy is nondescript. A spy is going to be someone that’s going to be a student in school, a visiting professor, your neighbor. It could be a colleague or someone that shares the soccer field with you,” Dugan said.
The archetypal international spy in Washington for many years has been undercover diplomats and foreign intelligence agency assets.
There are more than 175 foreign embassies, residences, chanceries and diplomatic missions in D.C. Tens of thousands of international students reside in the region. And untold numbers of business people with links to foreign intelligence services flow in and out every day.
The training of highly skilled spies, especially those who work in Washington, makes them virtually invisible to ordinary, unsuspecting people.
Washington, according to current and former U.S. intelligence sources, is normally the place where most countries send their best spies.
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