All posts tagged "Internationalespionage"

China’s espionage efforts in Cuba targeting the United States are not recent and date back at least three decades, a retired army counterintelligence agent has told the Miami Herald. It took U.S. intelligence agencies nine years to figure out who was behind the repair and enhancements spotted during the 1990s at a “signals intelligence facility” — a reference to the interception of electronic communications — in the town of Bejucal, a 45-minute drive from Havana. “We saw the enhancements over a decade, a steady evolution; clearly something was going on, but we didn’t know what,” said Chris Sim......

The large Chinese spy balloon that floated over half the U.S. before being shot down by a fighters jet in February was reportedly made in part with off-the-shelf U.S. equipment. It’s unclear if materials used to make the balloon were acquired legally, according to ABC News, which is a cause for concern since the U.S. restricts what can be sold to certain countries. The nature of the American-made materials found in the balloon is also not clear. U.S. officials said in February the balloon contained technology that would allow it to intercept secret communications. However, ABC News reports tha......

The U.S. Department of Defense released a previously classified “selfie” Wednesday, taken from the cockpit of a U-2 intelligence plane. Behind the pilot can be seen the now-infamous Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month. The image, first reported by CNN, clearly shows the balloon’s “payload,” which is related to the transport of data. General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the balloon was 200 feet tall, with a payload that weighed “a couple of thousand ......

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Just days after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon capable of collecting communications signals, two California lawmakers have introduced a bill intended to block hostile foreign governments from conducting surveillance of sensitive American locations. Assembly Bill 475, co-introduced by Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, and Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, prohibits any foreign government from purchasing, acquiring, leasing or holding a financial interest in any property located within 50 miles of a U.S. military or California National Guard base. T......

Ana Montes, a Cuban spy who gave up American secrets for 17 years while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from prison Friday. Montes, 65, served more than 21 years of her 25-year sentence. She did her time at FMC Carswell, a women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Montes was arrested in September 2001, just 10 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. By that time, her bosses were already suspicious of her, and they didn’t want to risk her leaking the plans for the invasion of Afghanistan. Potentially facing the death penalty, Montes cut a deal with federal prosecu......

Ana Belén Montes, the convicted Cuba spy who is set to be released from prison in January, was willing to pass military secrets about the U.S. war in Afghanistan if requested by her spymasters in Havana, even if that resulted in the death of American soldiers on the ground, she told FBI investigators after her arrest in September 2001. Montes, who before her arrest was the most senior analyst of the Cuban military at the U.S. Department of Defense, also passed classified information about a U.S. secret satellite program to Cuba that was so sensitive that prosecutors were banned from using it h......