There's the world you think you know. Then, there's the world of The Brush Pass — a weekly newsletter exploring the shadowy world of espionage.
On the Mystery of “Caribou,” the CIA’s Secret Agent in Polish Intelligence
While reporting Spy Valley, my six-part podcast on the case of Silicon Valley-based nuclear spy James Harper, there were some key folks with whom I wanted to talk, but for various reasons, couldn’t. Retired FBI agents. Ex-CIA officers. Old Silicon Valley bigwigs. But there was no spectral presence who
Pentagon Mistakenly Sent Classified Ballistic Missile Report to Imprisoned U.S. Spy
The Pentagon mistakenly released a highly-classified report to a convicted American spy serving a multi-decade sentence for espionage in federal prison as part of an epically botched response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, according to documents obtained by The Brush Pass and firsthand interviews with the convicted
Into the Archives: Uncovering Details About a Spy Case Through Studying Microfiche
In my quest to learn more about James Harper, I left the comfort of my laptop to go to San Jose Public Library and scoured through the microfiche to learn more about his spy activities from the early 1980s.
How James Harper Became A One-Man Megasupplier Of Illegal Tech To Moscow
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a parallel, mostly covert battle has been waged in the shadows.
The Silicon Valley Spy Who Was As American As Apple Pie
While reporting Spy Valley, I was amazed at how tightly James Harper’s life story was intertwined with the evolution of the cold war—and the birth of Silicon Valley.
On Getting To Know An American Spy For Moscow's Proxies
James Harper was perhaps the most perplexing interview subject of my journalistic career.
The Surreal Leaks of Jack Teixeira
The recent anonymous disclosures of classified Pentagon documents is the most surreal leak scandal in living memory.
Four Burning Questions on Ukraine
There are four burning intelligence questions about Ukraine in the year since Russia launched its bitter war.
Spyhunter, Traitor
On Jan 23rd, the Justice Department dropped a bombshell of an indictment. It alleged that the FBI’s former top counterintelligence official in New York City, Charles McGonigal, had cultivated an illicit relationship with a businessman who had once worked for Albanian intelligence. This businessman, an Albanian-American and a former
Investigating Havana Syndrome
In 2016, U.S. diplomatic personnel, including undercover CIA officers, in Havana, Cuba, began reporting a series of extraordinary, and worrying, physical ailments. Affected individuals reported suffering extreme nausea, dizziness, headaches, and memory loss, among other symptoms. Many of the affected officials said they had heard an ear-shattering, high-pitched sound
The Russian Spies of San Diego
It’s the early 1990s. The cold war has ended, and U.S. counterintelligence agents, though savoring their victory against the Soviets, are skeptical that the Russians were going to stop spying on the U.S. The old Eastern Bloc–Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and others–had turned decisively toward the
Alex Joske on China's Influence Operations Abroad
Most national security analysts in the United States will tell you that China presents a unique challenge to the U.S.-based order. What U.S. officials refer to as the “scope and scale” of the threat from Beijing outstrips that posed by other Western adversaries, even Russia, these officials
