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
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
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
What An Indictment of Alleged Chinese Intel Operatives Reveals About U.S. Double Agent Operations
On October 24, the Department of Justice announced the indictment of Guochun He and Zheng Wang, a pair of alleged Chinese intelligence officers, on money laundering and obstruction-related charges (but not, interestingly, for espionage itself). He and Wang are accused of attempting to procure sensitive information about the ongoing prosecution
Exclusive: Inside “Steady Stare,” the Trump-era Plan to Monitor All Chinese Students in the U.S.
The Trump administration took a decidedly confrontational approach to China on national security issues. Among other moves, it forged closer ties to Taiwan, blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giants from access to critical computer chips, and revved up the “China Initiative,” a controversial Justice Department-led crackdown on the theft of trade secrets