CIA, NSA Missed Warning Signs Of Snowden Betrayal

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz offers a piece at the Free Beacon on a congressional report on NSA leaker, spy and traitor Edward Snowden (seen in the above photo).

Both the CIA and National Security Agency missed warning signs that renegade contractor Edward Snowden was a disgruntled worker who would eventually steal 1.5 million secret documents, according to a congressional study made public Thursday.

Snowden, who fled to Moscow after publicizing some of the documents through left-wing journalists, also “has had, and continues to have contact with Russian intelligence services” and voiced admiration for China during his brief career at the CIA and then NSA.

A declassified and redacted report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Snowden’s actions resulted in the Obama’s administration’s most damaging intelligence failure.

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

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cia-nsa-missed-warning-signs-snowden-betrayal/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=dab8b55c9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-dab8b55c9d-45599609

You can also read an earlier post on Snowden via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/is-behavior-of-hero-whistleblower-or.html

My Crime Fiction: 'Twas A Crime Before Christmas'

As the Christmas season is upon us once again I thought I would offer a link to my short story Twas a Crime Before Christmas.

As a crime reporter and columnist, I was compelled to look into a report of a burglary of an unemployed construction worker on Christmas Eve in South Philadelphia.

 The burglar or burglars broke into the home early on the morning of the 24th. They stole the family’s TV and other household goods. They also took a dozen or so wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree that were intended for the family’s two children.

I interviewed the victim, who was so devastated by the burglary that he could hardly speak. I also spoke to a detective who said he presently had no leads on the case but he planned to keep working it, and I spoke to a local priest who told me that the church was collecting donations for the poor family.

Lastly, I spoke to a man of great wisdom and experience. The jolly old fella was kind enough to pause during his special night out to talk to me about crime.

I interviewed Santa Claus as he was packing up his sleigh and getting ready to head off on his magical trip, bringing toys and goodies to good children around the world.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard on his chin was white as snow. His eyes twinkled and his dimples were merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. He looked like a candidate for a heart attack.

And he smoked. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke encircled his head like a wreath (the Surgeon General would not approve). He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot (PETA would not approve) and his clothes were tarnished with ashes and soot (Mrs. Santa would not approve). With a lumpy sack over his shoulder, he looked like a homeless person.

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

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/12/my-crime-fiction-twas-crime-before.html

Merry Christmas.

The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, An Unbreakable Code, And the FBI's Hunt For America's Stolen Secrets

Howard Schneider offers a review of Yudhijit Bhattacharjee's The Spy Who Couldn't Spell for the Wall Street Journal.

In December 2000 Steven Carr, a special agent in the FBI’s counterintelligence unit in Washington, D.C., received a parcel from the bureau’s New York City office. It contained stolen American military secrets that had been passed on to the New York FBI by an informant in the Libyan consulate. The secrets had been mailed to the consulate along with encrypted cover letters from an individual who, the bureau would conclude, clearly worked in an American intelligence organization. The letter-writer offered to supply Libya with more secrets in exchange for money. Carr was assigned the job of finding the anonymous renegade. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s “The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets” is an excellent, highly engrossing account of the search for a man who was cunning, avaricious—and a dreadful speller.

The FBI’s target turned out to be Brian Patrick Regan, a most improbable traitor: He was a former Air Force master sergeant whose last assignment before retiring from the military was at the National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive agency “responsible for managing the nation’s spy satellites.” Regan was born in 1962 and raised on Long Island by strict Irish Catholic parents. His life was troubled from an early age because he was dyslexic. His behavior and speech were peculiar, and even his “friends” mocked and harassed him. But he had a gift for “spatial intelligence” and a “knack for stealth” (as a teenager he burglarized a neighbor’s house). He also cultivated a desire to overcome his problems and make something of himself. When he was a high-school senior, he cheated on a military aptitude test and scored high enough to allow him to enlist in the Air Force. After basic training he was assigned to study signals intelligence and analysis, and notwithstanding his past shoddy schoolwork, he succeeded, working harder than he ever had to master his lessons. As an intelligence analyst, Mr. Bhattacharjee writes, he discovered that his disability was actually an advantage: Dyslexics’ “global view helps them make connections between disparate pieces of information and recognize patterns in data that might elude more linear thinkers.”

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

http://www.wsj.com/articles/treason-the-easy-way-1482446149

Spies, Crooks, Terrorists And Jan Fedarcyk, The FBI's First Lady

In my previous post - http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/12/the-fbis-first-lady-my-q-with-jan.html - I offered my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with Jan Fedarcyk, the former Assistant Director of the FBI's New York Office and author of Fidelity.

Below is an accompanying piece on Jan Fedarcyk:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

The FBI's First Lady: My Q&A With Jan Fedarcyk, Former Assistant Director In Charge Of The FBI's New York Office And Author of 'Fidelity'

My Q&A with Jan Fedarcyk, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Office and author of Fidelity, appears in the current issue of The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International.

You can read the piece below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

On This Day In History The Continental Congress Created A Continental Navy

As History.com notes, on this day in 1775 the Continental Congress created a Continental Navy in Philadelphia.

You can read about the event via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/continental-congress-creates-a-continental-navy?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1222-12222016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=126364523&kx_EmailCampaignID=8838&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1222-12222016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa%20&os_ehash=44@experian:de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: The above U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command photo is of a painting by W. Nowland Van Powell. The painting depicts Lieutenant John Paul Jones raising the "Grand Union" flag on the Alfred as the ship was commissioned in Philadelphia.

Ex-Navy SEALs And Intelligence Officers Helping Two Former Russian Spies

Veteran journalist Bryan Denson, author of The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained To Spy for Russia, offers a piece in Newsweek on the efforts of former Navy SEALs and intelligence officers to aid two former Russian spies.

An unlikely group of Americans has come to the rescue of two Russian spies who defectedto the U.S. and gave troves of information to the CIA and FBI, only to be booted off the government payroll and stranded in Oregon with no jobs.

An ad hoc network of former special operations and intelligence officers, no fans of Russia’s spy network, has rallied behind Jan and Victorya Neumann, two former employees of the Federal Security Service, (a KGB spinoff known as the FSB). They are disappointed that the U.S. has failed to honor a system to pay and protect foreign spies who help America by spilling secrets about their homelands.

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

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-spies-navy-seals-jan-neumann-victorya-neumann-cia-fbi-533188

You can also read my Q&A with Bryan Denson via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/11/my-q-with-bryan-denson-author-of-spys.html