Joint Statement On Dismantling Of International Cyber Criminal Infrastructure Known As Avalanche

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Soo C. Song of the Western District of Pennsylvania and Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Pittsburgh Division Robert Johnson issued the following statement today:

“November 30 began the start of a multi-national operation to dismantle a complex, criminal network of worldwide computer servers known as Avalanche. This network hosted more than two dozen of the world’s most pernicious types of malware and several money laundering campaigns. 

“The operation is being conducted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the FBI – Pittsburgh Division, and the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the United States Department of Justice, in close cooperation with the Public Prosecutor’s Office Verden and the Luneburg Police of Germany, Europol and Eurojust, located in The Hague, Netherlands, and investigators and prosecutors from more than 40 countries. 

“The operation involves an unprecedented and ongoing effort to seize, block and sinkhole more than 800,000 malicious domains associated with the Avalanche network. 

“The operation involves arrests and searches in five countries.  More than 50 Avalanche servers worldwide were taken offline. 

“The Avalanche network, which has been operating since at least 2010, is estimated to involve hundreds of thousands of infected computers worldwide.  The monetary losses associated with malware attacks conducted over the Avalanche network are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, although exact calculations are difficult due to the high number of malware families present on the network.

“Additional information on the dismantling of Avalanche and several Western Pennsylvania victims of Avalanche-based malware attacks will be provided early next week.” 

FBI's New Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive: Marlon Jones

The FBI released the below information:

A Jamaican man charged with murdering four people during a bloody gun battle in a Los Angeles suburb has been named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and a reward of up to $100,000 is being offered for information leading to his capture.

Marlon Jones is wanted in connection with the early-morning shootout that occurred on October 15, 2016 in a home being used as a restaurant. In addition to the murders, 10 individuals were wounded.

“It appears Jones was part of an East Coast Jamaican criminal group involved in the illegal distribution of marijuana, and his crew was in Los Angeles trying to settle a dispute with a rival Jamaican crew,” said Special Agent Scott Garriola, a member of the FBI’s Los Angeles Fugitives Task Force.

Because the crime happened so recently, Garriola said, “it is still very early in the investigation. We are not sure if the crews were business associates or if their dispute was over territory.”

There are also unanswered questions about Jones himself, who is believed to have been born in Jamaica and has a long criminal record in which he has used multiple names and dates of birth. “The biggest challenge right now besides finding him,” Garriola explained, “is trying to figure out who he really is.”

He added, “We’re calling him Marlon Jones based on his criminal history in New York, but at this point it’s anyone’s guess what his actual birth name is. We don’t believe he is a U.S. citizen.”

Here is the information investigators currently have about Jones:

He has an extensive and violent criminal record, including arrests for manslaughter, use of a deadly weapon during a burglary, and felony possession of marijuana.

He uses multiple aliases and dates of birth. He has been charged with crimes in New Jersey under the name of Rasheen Brantley and has served time in New York state under than name of Floyd Evans. Other aliases include Anthony Howard, Anthony Winter, and variations on those names. Dates of birth include birth years ranging from 1970 to 1981.

Jones is approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs between 160 and 170 pounds. He has brown eyes and black hair.

Because Jones operated predominantly on the East Coast, Garriola believes he has fled Los Angeles. Besides strong ties to New York and New Jersey, the fugitive also has connections in Connecticut, Tennessee, the Virgin Islands, and Jamaica.

 “Based on the nature of this crime, he will be armed and extremely dangerous,” said Garriola, who has been involved in multiple Top Ten Fugitive investigations and believes the significant reward could make a difference in this case.

“Even for his associates involved in the narcotics business,” Garriola said,” $100,000 is still a lot of money.” Garriola also stressed that anyone providing information can remain anonymous. “Everything is confidential,” he said.

If you have information regarding Marlon Jones, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate, or submit a tip on our website.

Jones is the 510th individual to be named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Since its creation in 1950, 478 of the fugitives named to the list have been apprehended or located—158 of them as a result of citizen cooperation.

Ralph Peters: What Our Nation Would Get With General Mattis As Defense Secretary

Retired U.S. Army Lt Colonel and author Ralph Peters offers his take on retired Marine General James Mattis (seen in the above DoD photo), who may become the next Secretary of Defense.

I’m lucky enough to know General James Mattis slightly. Just well enough to trust him unreservedly with our military and our nation’s security.

The president-elect could not choose a better man to be our next Secretary of Defense. Not just because Mattis is a battle-hardened Marine with a remarkable combat record. And not just because he has a mind of remarkable clarity and is, without question, the best-read general of his generation.

I trust Jim Mattis because he’s a man of character, that most un-Washingtonian quality. His public image is of one rough-and-tough Marine, but the man I’ve encountered is, above all, one of integrity. His code of honor is so out of fashion that one has to reach back to a Victorian vocabulary:  He has a noble spirit.

And he’s a genuine patriot, not a shouter with his eye on the next chance. He will do what’s right, not what’s expedient.  And he will never go along with anything he believes might harm our country.

In addition to plenty of dirty-boots experience in the Middle East and a deep knowledge of history—that most underrated study—Jim Mattis has another great qualification to be SecDef: He wasn’t looking for a job. He was happy in retirement, studying, helping his fellow Marines, and contributing thoughtfully to our national security behind the scenes.

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

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/01/ralph-peters-what-our-nation-would-get-with-gen-mattis-as-defense-secretary.html?cmpid=NL_opinion     

The Interplay Between Truth And Fiction: The Man With The Poison Gun

Ian Fleming wrote his highly romanticized James Bond thrillers unabashedly for pleasure - his own and the reading public's. The novels contained some fantastic elements, yet Fleming said there was a thin line between fact and his fiction.

"Everything I write has a precedent in truth," Fleming said.  

A case in point is the story of the poison gun used by Fleming in his last Bond novel, The Man With the Golden Gun, and the true story of the KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky, who used a poison gun to murder two men during the Cold War.

Lewis Jones at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a review of Serhii Plokhy's book on Stashinsky, The Man With the Poison Gun.

The title of Serhii Plokhy’s new book echoes that of Ian Fleming’s last and feeblest James Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, published posthumously in 1965. Fleming’s story opens with Bond, presumed dead after his last duel with Blofeld, turning up in London, brainwashed by the KGB to assassinate M with a “curious sort of contraption” that shoots a poisonous liquid.

Plokhy points out that, before Bond tries to kill him, M mentions the recent murders of “Horcher and Stutz” in Munich. Fleming must have had in mind the 1962 trial of Bogdan Stashinsky, a KGB assassin, for the murders in Munich of two of his fellow Ukrainians – Lev Rebet, a journalist, and Stepan Bandera, the leader of the nationalist underground – with just such a device.

The man with the golden gun was Francisco Scaramanga, who grew up in a Catalan travelling circus, as the mahout of Max the elephant. When Max went berserk in Italy, the carabinieri killed him with such upsetting brutality that Scaramanga ran away from the circus to become a paranoiac fetishist and the world’s most feared assassin. The subject of The Man with the Poison Gun is a more prosaic figure – his career began with dodging a train fare – but really a more interesting one. 

Plokhy writes rather badly, and tells us that M’s “true name remains a secret to us”, which does not inspire confidence when Bond himself names him as Admiral Sir Miles Messervy. But as a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, Plokhy knows his stuff, and his account of Bogdan Stashinsky’s life brims with skulduggery.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/real-man-golden-gun1/

You can also read an earlier post on Fleming (seen in the above photo) and the interplay between truth and fiction via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/03/interplay-between-truth-and-fiction-ian.html

Note to Lewis Jones: As for The Man With the Golden Gun being Ian Fleming's "feeblest" thriller, the author died in 1964 before he could polish the novel. Yet it is still a very good thriller, better than most.

Tricky Dick: Nixon Knew Castro Was A Communist From The Beginning

Carl Campanile at the New York Post offers a piece on Fidel Castro wondering how Richard Nixon knew he was a communist all along. (And so much for the false idea that bad America pushed Castro towards the Soviet Union and communism).

Fidel Castro charmed and fooled many during his lifetime. But he admitted he couldn’t trick Richard Nixon.

Nixon’s son-in-law Ed Cox visited Cuba in May 1987 with a group of European business executives, and El Comandante — who died Friday at the age of 90— agreed to a mano-a-mano chat with Cox.

Cox pulled out his old notes for the first time and revealed to The Post what he and Castro discussed during a wide-ranging four-hour meeting that ran into the wee hours.

“How did [Nixon] know I was a communist?” queried Castro. “My father-in-law was a very perceptive person,” Cox diplomatically told the dictator.

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

http://nypost.com/2016/11/30/nixon-had-a-sneaky-suspicion-castro-was-communist/?_ga=1.128227976.583927981.1478804164

Putin's Master Plan To Destroy Europe, Divide NATO, And Restore Russian Power And Global Influence

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Douglas E. Schoen's Putin's Master Plan to Destroy Europe, Divide NATO, and Restore Russian Power and Global Influence.

A day or so after Soviet Communism collapsed into a pile of rubble, I had a phone chat with a longtime pal, Herbert Romerstein, who knew — and hated — Communism with a fervor unsurpassed in Washington (or perhaps anywhere else).

As dedicated Red-baiters, we gloated a few minutes, then Mr. Romerstein quietly opined, “Before we shall cheer .”

I knew what he was thinking. Could a society constructed by a power-mad dictatorship undergo a permanent reformation? Or, in due course, could we expect more of the same from whoever ended up running Moscow?

The answer, via the book at hand, is one of the more frightening works I have read in years. It convincingly documents how Russian President Vladimir Putin is well into a planned power grab that extends far beyond his stated goal of “restoring Russia as a player on the world stage.”

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/29/book-review-putins-master-plan-to-destroy-europe-d/

FBI, Pentagon Counterspies Hunt Fraudulent Navy Officer

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz offers a piece at the Free Beacon on the hunt for a spy who is posing as a Navy officer.

Counterintelligence agents from the FBI and Pentagon are pursuing a suspected foreign agent posing as a Navy officer who offered fraudulent contracts to defense contractors in a bid to obtain sensitive and embargoed American technology.

The FBI on Wednesday sent a security alert about the scam uncovered recently by a contractor in Massachusetts to contractors engaged in secret defense work.

An FBI counterintelligence agent stated in the alert that the contractor reported “an individual posing as U.S. Navy officer” was issuing fake Navy contracts for computer and telecommunications equipment.

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

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/fbi-pentagon-counterspies-hunt-fraudulent-navy-contractor/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=35a872f146-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-35a872f146-45599609

Note: The above photo of the Pentagon was released by the U.S. Defense Department.