American Universities Infected By Foreign Spies

 

Daniel Golden at Bloomberg.com reports that American universities are a target of foreign intelligence services.

Hearkening back to Cold War anxieties, growing signs of spying on U.S. universities are alarming national security officials. As schools become more global in their locations and student populations, their culture of openness and international collaboration makes them increasingly vulnerable to theft of research conducted for the government and industry.

“We have intelligence and cases indicating that U.S. universities are indeed a target of foreign intelligence services,” Frank Figliuzzi, Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director for counterintelligence, said in a February interview in the bureau’s Washington headquarters.

While overshadowed by espionage against corporations, efforts by foreign countries to penetrate universities have increased in the past five years, Figliuzzi said. The FBI and academia, which have often been at loggerheads, are working together to combat the threat, he said. 

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/american-universities-infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-fbi.html

Note: The above photo of Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI assistant director for counterintelligence was taken by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.

FBI Says Russian Spies Got Close To Obama Cabinet Member

Bill Gertz, the outstanding national security correspondent at the Washington Times, reports on why the FBI rolled up the Russian spy ring last year.

The FBI rounded up a network of deep-cover Russian spies last year after the group came close to placing an agent near a Cabinet official in the Obama administration, a senior FBI counterspy said Monday as the bureau released once-secret documents on the case.

Frank Figliuzzi, assistant FBI director for counterintelligence, did not identify the Cabinet official, but other U.S. officials said it was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

You can read the rest of the newspaper story via the below link.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/31/fbi-says-russian-spies-got-close-to-cabinet/?page=all#pagebreak

In the above photo released by the FBI, two Russian spies pass information by performing a tradecraft procedure known as a "brush pass."