Zach Dorfman @zachsdorfman Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@Garden_Gn0me

@BasarRumah

@ffinomw6

@louvplacez

@ovvica

@swampfrogfirst

@MJS_PTI

@RiichardRips

@galery_basah10

@MainchaAz

@asterixjournal

@13_27_00

@P0rnsstar

@BairdWeisman

@crisskimball

@aydemirbs

@Optissoin_

@rsc_ssa

@DGA

@falfordjr

@23q_ab

@bokeplokalmalam

@iowasboy

@AI3lock

@Anthonxy_

@rndm_ashn_

@vipvp77571

@elf__hae

@KevvGee__

@GamesHelin

@Tedlinknews

@Ashu28181998

@axiermundi

@JohnMorris1982

@ArminOppitz

@IRIAM_shirayuki

Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Sad day for the “authoritarian states are strong and unified, liberal democracies are weak and messy” crowd

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

I don’t know whether the alleged Zelensky assassination plot was, in fact, foiled by FSB snitches, as the Ukrainians say. But saying the tip came from with the FSB itself is maximally designed to send the FSB into a counterintelligence ouroboros.

Zelensky assassination plot foiled, Ukrainian authorities say

"We are well aware of the special operation that was to take place...to eliminate our president."

www.axios.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Look at the size of this protest in Prague—a city that knows a thing or two about a Russian invasion. Ukrainian and EU flags. Like watching a tectonic shift in the politics of the continent in real time.

Lukas Biba

@bibalukas

2 years

Ukrajinsky prezident @ZelenskyyUa na Vaclavaku🙏🏻🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

3 years

Just want to pause for a second to acknowledge that, if Russia does indeed launch a new war against Ukraine, the Ukrainian people will suffer terribly, and many civilians will likely die. The human costs are going to be terrible.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Imagine sending this video back to 2003 and trying to comprehend a word of it.

Liz Cheney

@Liz_Cheney

2 years

“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” Dick Cheney

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Imagine being a spy service, investing years on an asset in a big tech company, it pivots radically from its original remit, confuses senior intel officials by advertising that “legs are coming soon” or something equally impenetrable, then fires your source amid mass layoffs

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

@kenklippenstein People have lost their damn minds.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

An ex-CIA official once said to me that the agency was the “secret foreign policy wing of the U.S. government.” It’s very difficult to judge, say, the Obama admin’s record on Ukraine without factoring in its covert support & training for Ukrainian intel/special operations.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

“Your security services are flipping to our side for ideological/policy reasons” is terrifying to any spy agency. Look, spying for money is bad enough. But when people start doing it for a cause…

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Ukrainian information operations during this conflict have been shockingly well-targeted.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

The bomb that killed the ultranationalist war blogger was hidden within a small statue … of his own likeness, given to him during a speech at the cafe.

Influential Russian Military Blogger Is Killed in St. Petersburg Bombing (Published 2023)

Vladlen Tatarsky represented a radical wing of pro-invasion bloggers and activists who backed Moscow’s war but also criticized what they saw as the flaws in the Russian Army.

www.nytimes.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Spare a thought tonight for the families of Americans whose loved ones are still imprisoned in Iran.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Killing a war propagandist with a statue of his own image: that’s a biblical-literary level of vengeance, folks. Le Carre would have rejected it as too on-the-nose.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

NEW: How a now-shuttered CIA paramilitary training program on Ukraine's eastern frontlines helped prepare Kyiv for the current Russian onslaught. The effect of the agency training programs “cannot be overestimated,” said a former senior CIA official.

Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion

As the battle lines hardened in the Donbas following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

3 years

Inflicting mass human suffering for a war of choice is a good measure of a leader’s ghoulishness.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

“Minions: The Rise of GRU” sounds very much like a book I’d like to read on a subject quite different than the movie

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

11 days

In the 1980s, the FBI recruited a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to secretly ship millions in sabotaged hi-tech to the Soviet Bloc. My exclusive story—on the never-before-revealed OPERATION INTERING—in @politico / @POLITICOMag :

Moscow’s Spies Were Stealing US Tech — Until the FBI Started a Sabotage Campaign

During the early days of Silicon Valley, a tech industry entrepreneur teamed up with the FBI to ship faulty devices to Moscow.

www.politico.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

"Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping."

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

A former intelligence official said to me recently that what was scariest was the dawning realization among many within the USG that Putin actually likely believes this drivel; that he’d entered “Kim Jung Un territory” and was “self-brainwashed.”

Ragıp Soylu

@ragipsoylu

2 years

⚡️Putin does not expect agreements with "a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis that settled in Kiev and took hostage the entire Ukrainian people"

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 months

Johnson went from being a backbencher to a member of the Gang of 4. He’s gone from 0 real intel awareness to mainlining the strongest stuff—covert actions, ultrasensitive collection programs, exquisite source reporting. Some of that has shaken him, and he’s said as much publicly.

Greg Sargent

@GregTSargent

4 months

Important but overlooked: Mike Johnson explicitly says he's acting on Ukraine because believes what our intel agencies say about the awful consequences of abandoning it. That's a striking rebuke to MAGA's lies about the "deep state" and the war. 1/ Link:

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

It’s hard to overstate the importance, or weight of the mission, of the @AssociatedPress team—the only international journalists in the city—on the ground in Mariupol today.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

In the 80s a CIA officer, FBI agent & KGB officer went out for dinner in VA. They got incredibly drunk. The FBI agent turned to the next table & said loudly, “Guess what? I’m FBI, he’s CIA, & this is a KGB guy we’re recruiting.” That table happened to be a group of CIA analysts.

John Sipher

@john_sipher

1 year

@petestrzok If you go into large bureaucracies in search of a single dipshit, you are always guaranteed success.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

In the annals of geopolitical own goals, for Russia, Finland joining NATO after the Ukraine invasion has got to be among the costliest.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

. @BuzzFeed calling it straight: “Vladimir Putin has lied about his army not targeting civilians in what he calls a ‘special military operation,’ and has also lied about establishing safe corridors for people to flee his deadly violence.”

Christopher Miller

@ChristopherJM

2 years

Irpin Mayor Oleksandr Markushin said about 8 people died from Russian shelling today. “Two children died in front of my eyes,” he said in a video posted to his Telegram channel.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

This understated and candid account by @douglaslondon5 --describing a degraded, politicized environment at CIA during the Pompeo era--is shocking and deserves wide readership.

The CIA in the Age of Trump

Neither Pompeo nor Haspel have been willing to spend any of their political capital on encouraging Trump to be more supportive of the Intel Community.

www.justsecurity.org

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

This is one of the biggest stories of the year.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

I asked a senior Trump admin official why they didn’t try & provide Ukraine with more in-country mil training. Trump was “completely focused” on the conspiracy theory that UKR had a server with hacked DNC materials, to the detriment of other UKR matters, said the official.

Sahil Kapur

@sahilkapur

2 years

Trump says Putin's military move on Ukraine is "genius." "Putin is now saying, 'It’s independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper... We could use that on our southern border." "Here’s a guy who’s very savvy."

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Widespread state hacking of airport biometric data. A compromise of CIA officers in Moscow. The end of fake IDs. Based on conversations w over 40 officials, @JennaMC_Laugh & I did a deep dive on how the digital age has transformed human spying forever:

'Shattered': Inside the secret battle to save America's undercover spies in the digital age

When hackers began slipping into computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management in the spring of 2014, no one inside that federal agency could have predicted the potential scale and magnitude...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

"I may have pardoned a war criminal, but look, here's a puppy"

David Nakamura

@DavidNakamura

5 years

Trump is about to speak to reporters in Rose Garden for unscheduled event. Pooler @hunterw says rumors among press corps are an appearance from Conan the hero dog from Baghdadi raid

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

When a head of state believes a peaceful democratically elected government led by a Jew is actually a drug addled Nazi cabal committing genocide, it might be time to re-examine our priors about his worldview and capacity for empirical analysis

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

3 years

By the time former President Donald Trump was sworn in, CIA officials were “really concerned” about the growing relationship between Russian extremists and their Western counterparts, according to a former senior agency official.

U.S. intelligence report details 'indirect' Russian government support for Western neofascist groups

A U.S. intelligence community assessment obtained by Yahoo News concludes that the Russian government is providing “indirect and passive support” to neofascist groups operating in the U.S. and...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

@georgiaisaverb @kenklippenstein “Your joy—which is harmful to no one, and encapsulates the fundamental human desire to understand and be understood— is ipso facto an affront to me”

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Re-upping this @POLITICOMag story of mine about how Kissinger secretly conspired with the Chilean military dictatorship to undermine the Carter admin. He counseled Chile to subvert a US terrorism investigation into a lethal bombing in Washington.

How Henry Kissinger Conspired Against a Sitting President

Watch out, Donald Trump: This could happen to you, too.

www.politico.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

This is a pretty incredible disclosure from GCHQ--and a window into both Russian prowess and a future where assigning attribution is going to become more fraught.

Russian cyberattack unit ‘masqueraded’ as Iranian hackers, UK says

Turla group hijacked the tools of an Iran unit to lead attacks against 35 countries

www.ft.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

18 days

This is a superb @RollingStone profile by @arawnsley of the lead CIA analyst for the landmark intel community report on Russian election interference in 2016.

He Confirmed Russia Meddled in 2016 to Help Trump. Now, He’s Speaking Out

Trump viewed the 2017 intel report as his 'Achilles heel.' Now the analyst who wrote it opens up about Trump, Russia and what really happened in 2016.

www.rollingstone.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 months

@BeijingPalmer “The Boston Polycule”: the worst prog band you’ve never heard of

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Russia’s invasion plan was to decapitate Ukraine’s civilian government. So far, what we’re seeing instead is a decapitation of Russia’s military leadership in Ukraine. A stunning inversion.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

The problem for an invading, and potentially occupying, army is that events like these live in the memories of a free people for a very long time.

Christopher Miller

@ChristopherJM

2 years

Audio from Snake Island, Black Sea: Russians: This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you’ll be bombed. Ukrainians: Russian warship, go fuck yourself. They were all killed

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

He spied for the GRU, KGB, *and* SVR. There’s probably never been a better placed mole within the US intel community.

The International Spy Museum

@IntlSpyMuseum

1 year

BREAKING INTEL: @CBSNews has confirmed that Robert Hanssen, a former @FBI agent and one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history, has died. He was found unresponsive this morning, per the Bureau of Prisons. Hanssen was 79 and had spent the last 22+ years in federal custody.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

I was told there were NSC folks worried about precisely this issue—that Starlink use would become a very prominent signal for Russian targeting. (NSC declined to comment.)

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

2 years

Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

This falsehood—which I keep seeing repeated and shared online, and has continued to gain currency—is, at best, misinformation; at worst, it is willful disinformation. There is no evidence whatsoever that substantiates the claim.

Andrea Junker

@Strandjunker

2 years

The fact that CIA agents were killed, captured, or compromised because Trump sold their names to our enemies should be a much bigger story.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Finland sealing NATO membership is a huge deal, with reverberations for European and transatlantic security that will last decades.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Anyhow, “secret foreign policy wing of the U.S. government” is a phrase I was never able to shake once I heard it.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Some ex-agency officials with whom I’ve spoke also say that, in their experience, Democratic administrations are bigger proponents of covert action than Republican ones (though this is hard to quantify from the outside).

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Honored to find out that @SeanDNaylor , @Isikoff and my story on WikiLeaks is a finalist for an SPJDC Dateline Award for investigative reporting. Here’s the piece:

Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against...

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

This story from May 2018 is worth re-reading in light of recent events.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

11 months

This is a hell of an answer.

60 Minutes

@60Minutes

11 months

60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley asks Ukrainian President Zelenskyy: “Can you give up any part of Ukraine for peace?”

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

“Investigators determined that Flynn received nearly $450,000 from Turkish and Russian interests in 2015, including for an appearance in Moscow alongside President Vladimir Putin, but found no records that he had sought government approval beforehand.”

Michael Flynn cited for unauthorized foreign payments

The retired general and former Trump adviser was notified by the Army that it was seeking to recoup at least $38,550 from him.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

A former FBI agent recently told me that, in the 1990s, CIA turncoat Edward Lee Howard—who successfully escaped to Moscow in 1985–would occasionally drunkenly call the US embassy in Moscow. One can only imagine the reaction of US personnel there, particularly at the CIA station.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 months

Duty to warn—extending even to America’s geopolitical adversaries—is a real bright spot in U.S. policy and an example of the salutary use of intelligence.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

11 days

For my fellow nerds out there: this is, to my knowledge, the most detailed reporting out there on a Cold War-era U.S.-authored, tech-focused sabotage offensive counterintelligence campaign. No need to rely on the what-ifs of Gus Weiss anymore!

Moscow’s Spies Were Stealing US Tech — Until the FBI Started a Sabotage Campaign

During the early days of Silicon Valley, a tech industry entrepreneur teamed up with the FBI to ship faulty devices to Moscow.

www.politico.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Whats’s amazing about Proghozin’s public statements lately is that, were he to have uttered them privately, they would have represented explosive and closely-held intelligence. But the man is just putting it all out there for the world to hear.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Spurred by the recent @Reuters report, I wrote about the catastrophic compromise of CIA's covert communications system in China and Iran roughly a decade ago.

On Agent Compromise in the Field

In 2017, a team of New York Times journalists revealed that, beginning in 2010, Beijing’s counterintelligence apparatus had systematically rolled up the CIA’s sources in China. What caused the...

thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

14 days

On the one side, dissidents and journalists. On the other, assassins and deep-cover spies. This wasn’t a “trade,” or a “swap.” This was hostage-taking by an authoritarian power, versus an array of liberal democracies putting their values first.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

To risk stating the obvious, Zelenskyy apparently mulling sacking his intel chief in the middle of an existential fight for his country is not exactly a vote of confidence in the SBU at the moment.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

It is absolutely incredible that the Mueller investigation is only the third biggest story of this presidency.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

I get that it’s a busy news day, but NATO doubling its border with Russia overnight, and adding a new member with serious artillery capabilities: big deal.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

Again: We need something like a 9/11 Commission on the COVID-19 response. It's that catastrophic of a failure. Many people will die because of the bungled response.

Jeff Asher

@Crimealytics

4 years

The American failure on testing remains utterly staggering.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

Ah, ok. "Grenell used to do consulting work on behalf of an Eastern European oligarch who is now a fugitive and was recently barred from entering the U.S. under anti-corruption sanctions imposed last month by the State Department."

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

“Burn after Reading” has nothing on real life.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Gates told the FBI that the RNC had advance knowledge of the Wikileaks dumps, and Flynn told the Trump team that Russian intelligence couldn't have been involved in the hacks(?) and that he'd use his intel contacts to get the emails for Trump.

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@zachsdorfman

2 years

Every time I read about the Russian military obliterating some apartment building or otherwise obviously civilian-populated building in Ukraine I think of the former senior CIA official who told me the Russians had “very precise fires” when it came to artillery.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

A former senior CIA official said to me recently that one of their top concerns was that a cash-poor Russia, cut off from global financial markets, would start directing its intel agencies to behave like the North Koreans services & start widespread hacking for profit.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

This story courtesy of Bearden and Risen’s incredible “Main Enemy.” The FBI agent was taken off the case after the CIA analysts reported what happened. The KGB guy wasn’t recruited.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

NEW: Via the declassified Polish cold war intel archive, I obtained a KGB-era Russia-language document cataloging a massive U.S. bugging operation of Soviet diplomatic facilities in DC, NYC, & SF, as well as of the apartments and cars of Soviet personnel.

Unearthed File Reveals Huge Cold War-Era U.S. Bugging Operation Against Soviets

There are a number of unwritten rules in the world of espionage. These practices of the profession — though quietly accepted universally as “fair game” — can engender haughty rhetorical denunciations...

thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Senior officials pressed the CIA about how it could help effect a coup in Venezuela, according to a former senior Trump administration official involved in the discussions.

Exclusive: Why the CIA balked at Trump-era coup discussions in Venezuela

During Bolton’s time in the White House, senior officials pressed the CIA about launching coup in Venezuela but the agency balked at the request.

thebrushpass.projectbrazen.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

Former Sec of State Mike Pompeo has announced he will not run for president in 2024. As CIA Director, Pompeo repeatedly advocated for kidnapping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK, & rendering him back to the US.

Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against...

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Loud and noisy behavior by Russian or Chinese intelligence operatives in the U.S.--like, say, rolling up to a U.S. military base with JSOC facilities contained therein, with FBI CI almost certainly tailing you--is sometimes a cover for action for *other* operational acts

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

@ChristopherJM Hey, Christopher, your coverage has been uniformly so excellent. Thank you

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

@QW5kcmV3 @kenklippenstein @tytinvestigates I think that's fair when you're talking about cartels or other violent extremist groups. The interfaith coalitions? No. That's just first amendment activity. Hard to see how this bubbie or her crews' activities "may result in harm" to the US military.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

"US intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen."

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

As someone who has reported in this space, I think this type of speculation is irresponsible at best. The causality behind asset losses is often complex, opaque even to CI experts, & overdetermined. Also, basic social science teaches that correlation is not equal to causation.

Tristan Snell

@TristanSnell

2 years

POTENTIALLY MASSIVE in light of what we know now: In Oct 2021, CIA Counterintelligence sent a top secret cable warning an unusually number of confidential informants were being killed, captured, or compromised. In Jan 2021, Trump stole documents on these kind of informants.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

1 year

The Rock knew about the Bin Laden raid before it was public

Ken Klippenstein 📎

@kenklippenstein

1 year

James Cameron beat the entire press to the Navy microphone story

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

The president's personal lawyer's close associate in the Ukraine coercion scheme allegedly hid a $1 million "loan" from a Putin-aligned Ukrainian oligarch currently under U.S. federal indictment for racketeering charges. Am I getting this right?

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Every presidential administration produces reams of classified documents. The bare fact of their transportation to Mar-a-Lago is potentially far less substantial than what precisely they reveal. Why were these documents, above all others, taken by former president Trump?

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

@chrislhayes @PeterBeinart Imagine, as CIA Director and Sec of State, receiving the mostly highly classified intelligence in the U.S. government for 4 years straight, truly the Crown Jewels —after sitting on House Intel, by the way—and believing the head of a teacher’s union is a bigger threat than Xi.

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@zachsdorfman

5 years

If you're interested in understanding the global reach of Iran's proxies, I highly recommend this @JoshMeyerDC story--one of my favorite pieces of investigative journalism of the last few years.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Iraqi intelligence recruited a courier working with al-Baghdadi's family, and passed the info on to CIA. Strong liaison relationships--with the Iraqis and Kurds--were critical to decapitating ISIS. And how they got him underscores the value of HUMINT.

Nowhere left to run: how the US finally caught up with Isis leader Baghdadi

The hunt for the Islamic State leader had lasted years until Iraqi officials got a break last month

www.theguardian.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

One thing that I think our politics would benefit from greatly is a moratorium on employing the word "coup" for anything other than an actual coup.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Must be amazing to sit at the apex of coordination for a vast and powerful military, intelligence, diplomatic, and economic complex and talk about . . . purchasing Greenland.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

This is an incredible story, but the underlying takeaway is dispiriting. A sitting U.S. Senator shouldn’t need a Deep Throat-figure to point him toward intelligence to which he should have already had access.

Garrett M. Graff

@vermontgmg

2 years

THREAD: In @SenatorLeahy 's new memoir, there's a wild story in it that I haven't ever seen before—a rare glimpse into the shadowy way that the intel agencies interact with Members of Congress. It feels ripped from a political thriller movie...:

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

“Two of the U.S. officials said there was additional intelligence indicating a false flag by Russia would involve the use of a chemical agent that would immobilize civilians, then use cadavers to make it appear as though the Ukrainians had gassed and killed civilians.”

Ellen Nakashima

@nakashimae

2 years

Our latest: U.S. intelligence shows Russia’s military pullback was a ruse, officials say. @shaneharris @michaelbirnbuam @alexhortonTX and me

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Trying to imagine who is having a worse week right now: SVR economic intelligence folks or FSB internal counterintelligence officers

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

I'm thrilled to announce that I've started a new role as a writer/producer at @ProjectBrazen , where I'll be developing an investigative intelligence podcast and writing a weekly newsletter, The Brush Pass-- @brushpass1 --on all things national security, intel & cybersecurity.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

The massive Iranian intelligence leaks on Iraq and Chinese government leaks on Xinjiang feel epochal—like authoritarian states will increasingly grapple with the type of highly disruptive documentary disclosures that Western governments have struggled with for half a decade.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

To believe that neo-Nazism doesn’t constitute a national security threat only requires complete and total amnesia of the twentieth century.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

@StevenACash Ha, it was the image that came to mind!

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

30 days

This is a huge story in the national security world. I’m a bit speechless.

Robbie Gramer

@RobbieGramer

1 month

🚨 Sue Mi Terry, a US security expert who had worked on the White House National Security Council, has been indicted on U.S. charges she worked as an unregistered agent for South Korea's government in exchange for luxuries and other gifts, according to a newly unsealed indictment

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

“We tried to really focus on operational planning, then really hard military skills like long-range marksmanship—not just the capacity to do it, but to know how to do it on a battlefield, to really deplete the leadership on the other side,” said a former senior intel official.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

I know there’s a lot going on right now. But if you can spare a few minutes, please consider making this story—based on 6+ months of reporting, and interviews with over 40 officials—from @JennaMC_Laugh and me, your weekend read:

'Shattered': Inside the secret battle to save America's undercover spies in the digital age

When hackers began slipping into computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management in the spring of 2014, no one inside that federal agency could have predicted the potential scale and magnitude...

www.yahoo.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Too much focus on "great and unmatched wisdom" and not enough on "obliterate the economy of Turkey"

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

13 days

This is absurd. The Nuremberg Trials were completed by 1946. The Tokyo Trials by 1948. Mass murderers can receive relatively speedy trials. And if the evidence has been irrevocably tainted by torture, that’s on the torturers, not the military officials trying to close the book.

Carol Rosenberg

@carolrosenberg

13 days

BREAKING: The U.S. defense secretary revoked a plea deal with three men accused of plotting Sept. 11, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case. My developing story start here.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

‘Aren’t you supposed to be the gentlemen who lie for the good of their county?’ ‘That’s diplomats. We’re not gentlemen.’ ‘So you lie to save your hides.’ ‘That’s politicians. Different game entirely.’ —John Le Carre, “Our Kind of Traitor”

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Stunning BBC interview with a Ukrainian journalist who, stuck in Russian-occupied Kherson, organized a clandestine insurgent network that provided target packages to the Ukrainian security services and planted car bombs.

BBC News - Ukrainecast, 'Worse than Bucha'

A journalist who fled Kherson tells of atrocities in the Russian-occupied city

www.bbc.co.uk

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Seems like an issue for the former head of a U.S.intelligence agency.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

Would the U.S. assassinate a PLA general? How about the head of the GRU? Or even a North Korean official? The answer to that question is why the killing of Suleimani will likely precipitate Iran’s race for the bomb.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

Chinese influence operations targeting state and local politicians goes back decades, per former intelligence officials. A few years ago, @BethanyAllenEbr and I did a deep dive into one such case in SF. It’s a good example of alleged MSS modus operandi.

Exclusive: How a suspected Chinese spy gained access to California politics

Christine Fang built connections with up-and-coming California politicians including Eric Swalwell and Ro Khanna.

www.axios.com

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

2 years

The program taught sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles & other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery;

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

5 years

The growing consensus in the US national security community that some form of industrial policy will be necessary to counter China's rise has the capacity to reorder bedrock, widely-held, 20th century US ideological principles about the proper role of the state in the economy.

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Zach Dorfman

@zachsdorfman

4 years

According to EO 12333, CIA is forbidden from using journalists as cover for intelligence officers. The MSS has no such limitations.

Kate O'Keeffe

@Kate_OKeeffe

4 years

NEW: The U.S. now views the U.S. ops of 5 Chinese state media outlets as foreign diplomatic missions. Xinhua, China Radio, CGTN and the distributors of China Daily & People’s Daily now have to report all personnel & real estate to State Dept w @JChengWSJ

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