Former CIA Operatives Concerned About Personal Data Security Breach

 

Howard Altman at the Tampa Tribune offers a piece on why former CIA officers like Gary Berntsen (seen in the below photo) are concerned about the computer security breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Managment (OPM) reportedly by Communist Chinese hackers.

Last year, former CIA operative Gary Berntsen spent more than a week filling out a 127-page security clearance application that seeks a wide range of personal information. Aside from the individual’s Social Security numbers, it demands names and Social Security numbers of cohabitants, history of arrests, bankruptcies and mental health issues and lists of foreign contacts, business associates, investments and personal information of foreign-born relatives — including whether they work for other governments or intelligence agencies.

“The form is a personal and financial colonoscopy,” says Berntsen, who led the first teams of CIA operatives into Afghanistan in 2001.
And now that information may be in the hands of Chinese hackers, who could use it to damage U.S. national security by compromising American spies and developing a better understanding of what American intelligence and military personnel are doing, several former spies and a Florida congressman on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence told The Tampa Tribune.

The local head of a national organization of former intelligence officers says the hack is further proof that the United States and China are already involved in a cyberwar.

The concern over the hack is so great that on Tuesday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the matter.  

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

http://tbo.com/list/military-news/former-cia-operatives-concerned-about-info-nabbed-in-government-hack-20150616/

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on Gary Berntsen and his role as the CIA commander in Afghanistan after 9/11 via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/08/operation-jawbreaker-look-back-at-cias.html

Tale Of 1980s Spy Ring Broken In Tampa Getting Attention

Elaine Silvestrini at the Tampa Tribune offers a piece on a 1980s spy story that will soon be a book and film.  

During the Cold War, when the world was threatened with potential annihilation, when the United States and its allies faced the Soviet Union and its satellites in a high-stakes nuclear standoff, a group of American soldiers in Germany was giving the enemy secrets that could have crippled NATO.

The spy ring was discovered in the late 1980s. The investigation landed in Tampa, where FBI agent Joe Navarro and a team of dogged agents and analysts matched wits with Roderick James Ramsay (seen in the above photo), a former Army sergeant with a near-genius IQ who drifted from his mother’s trailer to a friend’s house and living out of his car.

The more-than-year-long relationship that developed between Navarro and Ramsay unlocked the secrets of a spy ring that had operated for decades, compromising the most sensitive intelligence on how the U.S. and its allies planned to protect Europe in the event of an invasion.
 

In the end, Ramsay went to prison, serving about 23 years before being released in 2013. He gave information that led to convictions for three other American military personnel who participated in the massive betrayal.
 

But for the most part, the case drifted into obscurity after the last of the suspects went to prison.

“I frankly was always surprised that it never got as much notoriety as I thought it should,” said Tampa attorney Greg Kehoe, who prosecuted Ramsay for the Justice Department, “because what these guys did so significantly compromised our NATO forces that I don’t know of another case in Europe that so placed as many soldiers in jeopardy as this breach of security.”

Now, 25 years after the case broke wide open, it may be about to get much more attention.

Actor George Clooney’s production company, Smokehouse Pictures, has purchased the rights for a book yet-to-be-written by Navarro and another author, to be called “Three Minutes to Doomsday.”

The book is pitched as “a real-life John le Carre thriller, telling the never-before-told story of how Navarro, by noticing and decoding a suspect’s trembling cigarette, led him to uncover the worst security breach in US history: a multi-generational spy ring that had put the U.S. on the brink of annihilation at the height of the Cold War; he describes the 42 interviews that entailed hundreds of hours of questioning and thousands of hours of preparation, the bureaucracy that questioned the veracity of the confessions he extracted and the ramifications of a year  of interviews and nine years of trials, which left Navarro emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausted.”

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

http://tbo.com/news/crime/tale-of-1980s-spy-ring-broken-in-tampa-getting-attention-20150502/

Time To Get Your Frogman On: 'Act Of Valor' Film Is The Real Deal, Navy SEALs Say

Howard Altman at the Tampa Tribune wrote an interesting piece on the upcoming film Act of Valor.

Act of Valor uses active duty Navy SEALs rather than actors and the feature film, inspired by true events, is reported to be the most realistic film made about SEALs and Special Operations.

Act of Valor" centers around a platoon of SEALs on a mission to recover a kidnapped CIA agent; in the process, the group learns about an imminent threat against the nation. But more than just an action shoot-'em-up, the movie shows the scope of special operations missions, from emotional goodbyes to jumping out of airplanes to the first time the Navy ever allowed one of its few nuclear subs to be used in a movie.

Beyond the SEALs, the film also uses other real military personnel, including sub and ship crews and Army special operations aviators.

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

http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/feb/10/act-of-valor-flick-is-the-real-deal-real-seals-say-ar-357189/

You can watch the film's trailer via the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnlPgo9TaGo

You can visit the Act of Valor web site via the below link:

http://actofvalor.com/  

You can also read about the 50th anniversary of the Navy SEALs via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2012/01/navy-seals-turn-50-elite-frogmen-muster.html