National Security Correspondent for NPR Greg Myre’s article analyzes the background of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man dubbed “Putin’s Chef,” and his role in the Russian government. “He epitomizes a real renaissance man in contemporary Russia, which is to say that he runs some very high-end restaurants,” said Angela Stent, the head of Russian Studies at Georgetown...
Category: Blog
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‘The Report’: Dianne Feinstein’s War With the CIA
This movie premiered recently at the Sundance film festival, which means it might be headed to a theater near you. That depends on whether a studio thinks that a movie that is critical of both the CIA and President Obama has commercial prospects. I hope so. The story of how the CIA–with the help of...
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Wagner, the Private Russian Security Force, Reportedly in Venezuela
I blogged about Wagner, the Russian private military contractor, as an instrument of President Vladmir Putin. PMCs, like Wagner, are a way that government’s secretly project power without taking responsibility. Just as the Bush administration used Blackwater in Iraq, Putin uses Wagner in Syria and now, according to The Guardian, Venezuela. “The order came down...
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Reuters: Ex-NSA Cyberspies Reveal How They Hacked Foes of UAE
This is a story about how intelligence agencies deploy private contractors for surveillance and repression. It’s about the globalization of intelligence. Exhibit A: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which detained an innocent British graduate student as a spy and conferred with the chief of Israel’s Mossad. The UAE is an ally of the United States,...
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Will House Intelligence Staff Get Clearances Necessary to Do Their Jobs?
That’s the question facing Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff. Right now many committee members do not have staffers with the Top Secret clearance necessary to review many classified records. Daniel Schuman in Just Security: Members of HPSCI must rely on committee staff to support them on highly classified matters, and those staff are hired by...