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Classified Documents Seized at Trump’s Home Undergoing Security-Risk Assessment

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WASHINGTON—U.S. intelligence agencies are conducting a damage assessment of classified documents recovered from the Florida residence of former President

Donald Trump,

according to Director of National Intelligence

Avril Haines.

Separately, a federal judge in Florida on Saturday signaled she intends to appoint a special master to review documents seized at Mar-a-Lago at the request of Mr. Trump’s lawyers.

Ms. Haines told lawmakers in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that her office would lead an intelligence-community assessment of “the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents.”

The intelligence chief provided no other details about the assessment in the brief letter, dated Friday, which was sent to House Intelligence Committee Chairman

Adam Schiff

(D., Calif.) and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman

Carolyn Maloney

(D., N.Y.).

In a statement Saturday, Reps. Schiff and Maloney welcomed the damage assessment.

The affidavit partially unsealed on Friday “affirms our grave concern that among the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago were those that could endanger human sources,” they wrote. “It is critical that the [intelligence community] move swiftly to assess and, if necessary, to mitigate the damage done.”

A damage assessment includes identifying disclosed or compromised national-intelligence information, including of spy agencies’ sources and methods; a description of the circumstances under which the incident occurred; and an estimate of the actual or potential damage to U.S. national security.

A heavily redacted affidavit released by the Justice Department Friday says boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago early this year contained over 184 classified documents and there was “probable cause to believe that additional documents” containing classified national defense information remained. Photo: Jim Bourg/Reuters

Boxes retrieved from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home early this year contained more than 184 classified documents, including some deemed top-secret or derived from clandestine human-intelligence sources, according to a heavily redacted affidavit released Friday laying out the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s justification for its extraordinary search of the Florida estate in early August.

Mr. Schiff and Ms. Maloney had written to Ms. Haines on Aug. 13 asking for a damage assessment following reports that Mr. Trump had removed and retained highly classified information at Mar-a-Lago.

In her letter Friday, Ms. Haines said her office and the Justice Department are working together on a classification review of the apparently mishandled documents.

A spokesman for Ms. Haines said the review she is leading is consistent with a request from Sens.

Mark Warner

(D., Va.), and

Marco Rubio

(R., Fla.), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Warner said on Friday that the committee had made a bipartisan request for information on the classified documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago and the national security threat posed by their mishandling.

In Florida, U.S. District Court judge

Aileen M. Cannon

said in a short filing that she was prepared to appoint a special master—but that her order wasn’t final. She scheduled a Thursday hearing for arguments on the matter.

The judge also ordered the Justice Department to file under seal a more detailed receipt showing what property was seized during the Aug. 8 search and a status update on investigators’ review of the items.

A special master is a respected third party, usually a retired judge, tasked with reviewing evidence and filtering out irrelevant materials or communications protected by attorney-client privilege, executive privilege or similar legal doctrines.

Mr. Trump’s legal team on Aug. 22 filed a motion requesting the appointment of such a position, calling the FBI search a “shockingly aggressive move,” and asked the judge to order investigators to immediately stop examining the items.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in their motion that the appointment of a special master is “the only appropriate action.”

Sen.

Roy Blunt

(R., Mo.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that the appointment of a special master would help sort through the controversy.

“Good thing they’re going to have a special master…sort through the documents that the president had every right to have and the documents that he hadn’t yet turned over,” Mr. Blunt said. “I understand he turned over a lot of documents; he should have turned over all of them. I imagine he knows that very well now as well.”

New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu criticized the Justice Department for not making more information publicly available about its investigation.

“I’m not saying, put all the documents on the internet. But give us some sense of the subject matter. Give us some sense of the timing,” Mr. Sununu said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You had pages upon pages upon pages redacted, to the point where you say, ‘Well, what’s the point?’”

Sen.

Elizabeth Warren

(D., Mass.) said it is critical for the Justice Department to push on with its investigation “without fear or favor.”

“I am deeply alarmed about what we’re learning,” Ms. Warren said on CNN, saying Mr. Trump “could be putting our national security at risk, he could be putting the lives of individual people who work for the United States at risk.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), who is retiring from Congress and was one of 10 GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach Mr. Trump on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, said members of Congress who mishandled classified information in this way would “be in real trouble.”

“No president should act this way, obviously,” Mr. Kinzinger said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Alex Leary and Timothy Puko contributed to this article.

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com, Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team earlier this week filed a motion requesting the appointment of a special master. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the motion was filed last week. (Corrected on Aug. 27)

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World

Socialite who charmed Nato staff in Naples was Russian spy, say investigators | Espionage

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A team of investigators claim to have unmasked a deep-cover spy from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, who spent a decade posing as a Latin American jewellery designer and partied with Nato staff based in Naples.

The investigators say the woman went by the name of Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, and told people she met that she was the child of a German father and Peruvian mother, born in the city of Callao, Peru.

In fact, she was a career GRU officer from Russia, according to research by Bellingcat in partnership with a number of media outlets including La Repubblica in Italy and Der Spiegel in Germany, and shared with the Guardian before publication.

“Rivera” was what the intelligence community call an illegal, a deep-cover agent trained to pose as a foreigner. Moscow’s intelligence agencies have used illegals since the early Soviet period. Sometimes, they stay living in their fake identities for decades.

Posing as “Rivera”, the illegal moved between Rome, Malta and Paris, eventually settling in Naples, home of Nato’s Allied Joint Force Command, around 2013. She set up a jewellery boutique called Serein and led an active social life.

Her acquaintances said that by taking on the role of secretary at the Naples branch of the international Lions Club, she was able to befriend many Nato staff and other affiliates. One Nato employee told the investigators that he had a brief romantic relationship with “Rivera”.

Traditionally, illegals have been extremely hard for counterintelligence agencies to find, but in a world of biometric data, facial recognition software and open source investigation possibilities, it has become harder for Russia to keep its illegals below the radar.

‘Rivera’ (pictured right) took a one-way flight to Moscow the day after Bellingcat published a joint article suggesting the 2018 Salisbury novichok poisoning suspects were GRU operatives. Photograph: Supplied by Bellingcat

Christo Grozev, Bellingcat’s CEO and lead investigator, said in an interview that he had first found the trail of a possible GRU illegal when he was looking at a leaked database of border crossings logged by Belarusian border guards and provided by a group of hackers in opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

Grozev searched for Russian passport numbers in ranges known to have been used by GRU operatives, and found numerous hits. Most had Russian names, but one stood out: Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera.

Looking more closely at “Rivera”, Grozev found that she travelled on several Russian passports with serial numbers in a range used by other known GRU operatives, including an officer who had been indicted for the alleged novichok poisoning of the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, and another GRU officer reportedly involved in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018.

He also discovered that on 15 September 2018, “Rivera” bought a ticket from Naples to Moscow. The previous day, Bellingcat and its Russian investigative partner, the Insider, published an article on the two Salisbury poisoners, who travelled under the cover identities Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, noting irregularities in their passport data suggesting they had security services links.

It seems “Rivera” was withdrawn by her bosses, who feared that other operatives with similar passport numbers could be compromised. She does not appear to have left Russia again.

Two months after her sudden departure from Naples, she posted a Facebook status in Italian, apparently as a way of explaining her disappearance and silence.

“It’s the truth I must finally reveal … Hair is growing now after chemo, very short but it’s there. I miss everything, but I’m trying to breathe,” she wrote.

Some GRU illegals only travel abroad for quick, short-term missions and change identities regularly, while others like “Rivera” spend years inhabiting the same cover identity.

In June, the Netherlands deported a man arriving on a Brazilian passport in the name of Viktor Muller Ferreira, accusing him of being a Russian illegal named Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov. He had apparently spent a decade preparing his identity, including stints studying in Ireland and the US, and was suspected of trying to infiltrate the international criminal court in The Hague.

The unusual thing about “Rivera” is that she travelled on a Russian passport, when usually illegals disguise their links to Russia or the Soviet Union. It seems that an earlier attempt to pass off “Rivera” as a Peruvian citizen failed: an official Peruvian document from 2006 notes that her application for citizenship was rejected as fraudulent.

Apparently, unfazed by the setback, the GRU then relaunched the “Kuhfeldt Rivera” identity with a Russian passport. This was a strange decision, but it is possible she had already made valuable contacts under that identity and did not want to lose them.

Numerous people who had met “Kuhfeldt Rivera” said she told them her Peruvian mother had taken her to the Soviet Union in 1980 and left her there. She had apparently tried various routes to gain a western European passport over the years.

Bellingcat said it had identified the real Russian woman behind the fake “Rivera” persona, based on information and photo matching from various databases and open source research. She did not reply to requests for comment from the Guardian.

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World

FBI took 11 sets of classified material from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home while investigating possible Espionage Act violations

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The property receipt, which was also released on Friday, for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home shows that some of the materials recovered were marked as “top secret/SCI” — one of the highest levels of classification.

The search warrant identifies three federal crimes that the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation: violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records. The inclusion of the crimes indicates the Justice Department has probable cause to investigate those offenses as it was gathering evidence in the search. No one has been charged with a crime at this time.

Agents also took four sets of “top secret” documents, three sets of “secret” documents, and three sets of “confidential” documents, court documents show. In total, the unsealed warrant shows the FBI collected more than 20 boxes, as well as binders of photos, sets of classified government materials and at least one handwritten note.

The warrant, which was unsealed and released publicly following a federal judge’s order, was obtained by CNN ahead of its release. The moment marks an unprecedented week that began with the search — an evidence-gathering step in a national security investigation.

Search warrant reveals new details about scope of FBI probe

While details about the documents themselves remain scarce, the laws cited in the warrant offer new insight into what the FBI was looking for when it searched Trump’s home, an unprecedented step that has prompted a firestorm of criticism from the former President’s closest allies.

The laws cover “destroying or concealing documents to obstruct government investigations” and the unlawful removal of government records, according to the search warrant released Friday.

Also among the laws listed is one known as the Espionage Act, which relates to the “retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material.”

All three criminal laws cited in the warrant are from Title 18 of the United States Code. None of them solely hinge on whether information was deemed to be unclassified.

One of the less-sensitive items taken from Trump’s resort, according to a the property receipt, was a document about pardoning Roger Stone, a staunch Trump ally who was convicted in 2019 of lying to Congress during its probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Trump pardoned Stone before leaving office, shielding Stone from a three-year prison term.)

It’s unclear how the Stone-related document seized during the search is tied to the broader criminal probe into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified materials.

During the search, FBI agents also recovered material about the “President of France,” according to the warrant receipt. The French embassy in Washington declined to respond Friday to the development.

FBI agents searched ’45 Office’ at Mar-a-Lago

The court documents released Friday also offer new details about the search itself and revealed that FBI agents were only allowed access to specific locations within Mar-a-Lago as they combed Trump’s resort residence for potential evidence of crimes.

The judge authorized the FBI to search what the bureau called the “45 Office,” an apparent reference to Trump’s place in history as the 45th President. Agents were also permitted to search “all other rooms or areas” at Mar-a-Lago that were available to Trump and his staff for storing boxes and documents.

“The locations to be searched include the ’45 Office,’ all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate,” the warrant says, using the acronym “FPOTUS” to refer to the Former President of the United States.

The FBI’s warrant application to the judge specifically said that federal agents would avoid areas being rented or used by third parties, “such as Mar-a-Lago members” and “private guest suites.” Trump owns the sprawling estate, and it is his primary residence as well as a members-only club and resort.

“It is described as a mansion with approximately 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, on a 17-acre estate,” FBI agents told the judge in their application, describing the Mar-a-Lago property.

Trump did not oppose release of search warrant

The FBI search at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday was followed by days of silence from the Justice Department, as is the department’s normal practice for ongoing investigations.

Then on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the department had moved to unseal the search warrant and two attachments, including an inventory list, but also stressed that some of the department’s work must happen outside of public view.

“We do that to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and to protect the integrity of our investigations,” Garland said, while explaining that he would not provide more detail about the basis of the search.

Trump said in a late-night post on his Truth Social platform Thursday that he would “not oppose the release of documents” and that he was “going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents.”

The court had instructed the Justice Department to confer with Trump about its request to unseal the warrant documents and set a Friday deadline to report back on whether he opposed their release.

Trump’s team had contacted outside attorneys about how to proceed, and the former President’s orbit was caught off guard by Garland’s announcement.

In a pair of posts to Truth Social following Garland’s statement, Trump continued to claim that his attorneys were “cooperating fully” and had developed “very good relationships” with federal investigators prior to Monday’s search at Mar-a-Lago.

“The government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it,” Trump said. “Everything was fine, better than most previous Presidents, and then, out of nowhere and with no warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 in the morning, by VERY large numbers of agents, and even ‘safecrackers.'”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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World

Microsoft says Russia has stepped up cyber espionage against the US and Ukraine allies

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American organizations were the top target of the Russian hacking attempts outside of Ukraine, according to Microsoft, but the alleged Russian hacking has spanned 42 countries, and a range of sectors that might have valuable information related to the war, from governments to think tanks to humanitarian groups.

It’s a reminder of the voracious appetite that Russian cyber operatives have for strategic information as the Kremlin is more isolated on the international stage than it has been for decades.

Those hacking attempts have successfully penetrated defenses 29% of the time, according to Microsoft. Of those successful breaches, a quarter resulted in data stolen from networks.

But measuring the “success” of a Russian cyber-espionage is difficult, and Microsoft said it didn’t have a full view of the hacking because some customers stored data on their own systems rather than in Microsoft’s cloud computing infrastructure.

CNN has reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington for comment. Moscow routinely denies hacking accusations.

Various governments have likely stepped up their offensive cyber activities related to the Ukraine war as they search for insights on how the fighting and the global fallout from it.

Cyber Command, the US military’s hacking unit, has conducted a “full spectrum” of offensive, defensive and information operations in support of Ukraine, the head of the command confirmed this month.

China, too, has trained some of its very capable hackers on targets related to the Ukraine war, according to cybersecurity researchers. Suspected Chinese hackers appeared to try to break into computers linked to officials in the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, near the Chinese border, according to cybersecurity firm Secureworks.

US officials continue to study Russia’s efforts to supplement its kinetic war in Ukraine with cyber operations.

Significant alleged Russian hacking incidents in Ukraine since the February invasion include a hack of a satellite operator, which knocked out internet service for tens of thousands of satellite modems as the invasion unfolded, and waves of data-wiping hacks aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian government agencies.

Ukrainian officials have also accused the Russians of routing internet traffic in occupied parts of Ukraine through Russian internet providers and subjecting those connections to censorship.

Some of those tactics “may form parts of China’s playbook” in future attempts by Beijing to project power beyond its borders, according to Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

“The cyber dimensions of [what Russia is trying doing in Ukraine] are incredibly important to us, especially in the Defense Department, to understand what the playbook might be if another cyber-capable country were to attempt to do this,” Eoyang said Tuesday at an event in Washington hosted by the think tank Third Way.

NATO members a focus for Russian hackers

NATO, the 30-country military alliance that includes the US, Canada and European allies, has been a particular target for Russia’ computer operatives, according to the Microsoft report.

After the US, Poland — a hub for delivering humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine — was the NATO member targeted the most by Russian hackers in recent months, Microsoft researchers found.

Prospective, and not just current, NATO members have had to keep their guard up for potential Russian cyberattacks. The governments of Sweden and Finland have been vigilant for Russian hacking before and after they announced their intention to join NATO in May.

Swedish officials for months have encouraged critical infrastructure operators to lower their thresholds for reporting suspicious cyber activity to authorities, said Johan Turell, a senior analyst in the cybersecurity department of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, a government organization that prepares for natural and man-made crises.

The Kremlin has warned Sweden and Finland, which shares hundreds of miles of border with Russia, against joining NATO.

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by video conference with the Finnish parliament on April 8, a cyberattack briefly knocked offline the websites of Finland’s ministries of foreign affairs and defense. The websites quickly came back online. Some digital forensics specialists linked the hack, which did not cause any serious disruption, to Russia.

“We don’t know if this was Russian patriotic hackers or an entity linked more directly to [the] Russian government,” Mikko Hyppönen, a prominent Finnish cybersecurity executive, told CNN. “But I have no doubt that the attack was Russian,” he said after reviewing the technical evidence.

“If Russia is trying to scare us with these attacks, they are failing,” said Hyppönen, who is chief research officer at cybersecurity firm WithSecure.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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World

U.S. Walks Fine Line Sharing Intelligence With Ukraine in War With Russia

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WASHINGTON—The United States is walking a fine line as it shares vast amounts of classified intelligence with Ukraine, trying to help Kyiv defeat Russia’s invasion and avoid dragging the U.S. into direct conflict with Russian President

Vladimir Putin,

according to current and former American officials.

U.S. intelligence-sharing policy, they say, in essence comes down to this: Washington provides data on the movement of Russian troops, tanks and ships; Ukraine, which also has its own intelligence capabilities, decides when to take a shot.

Revelations this past week that Ukraine used American intelligence to locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, and to conduct strikes that killed Russian generals on the battlefield have heightened focus on what the officials said is a virtually unprecedented pipeline of data being sped from U.S. spy agencies to Ukraine’s government.

A drone view of a heavily damaged Russian tank near Irpin, Ukraine, this past week.



Photo:

Carlos Barria/Reuters

While U.S. officials openly publicized declassified intelligence about Russia’s plans in the lead-up to its Feb. 24 invasion and in the war’s early weeks, they have been more cautious about describing its battlefield intelligence exchange with Kyiv. Administration spokespersons pushed back vigorously against suggestions Washington was instructing Ukraine on which Russian military platforms to attack or personnel to kill.

White House press secretary

Jen Psaki

said the U.S. didn’t give Ukraine “specific targeting information” regarding the Moskva, and didn’t have prior knowledge of Kyiv’s intent to attack the ship, which sank in mid-April after Ukrainian forces struck it with two Neptune missiles.

“We do provide a range of intelligence to help them understand the threat posed by Russian ships in the Black Sea and help them prepare to defend themselves against potential sea-based assaults,” she said.

As the war grinds through its third month, and the Ukrainians take possession of more advanced weaponry being dispatched by Washington and its allies, it can’t be determined whether the Biden administration can continue to strike what U.S. officials acknowledge is a tricky balance. Mr. Putin isn’t likely to appreciate the nuance in U.S. intelligence-sharing policy, former officials said, heightening the risks that Moscow sees the Biden administration’s direct involvement in attacks that kill Russian soldiers and sailors.

“The way we see it, we’re giving them tactical intelligence—which is, there’s a command center here, there’s a naval vessel there,” said Dan Hoffman, a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in Russia. “They make their own decisions.”

Moscow doesn’t view the exchange the same way, however, Mr. Hoffman said. “The key is how the Russians see this, and they want to see this as a proxy war with the United States.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the U.S. wants to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do what it has been doing in Ukraine.



Photo:

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Bloomberg News

The Biden administration has also tried to straddle a line in supplying weapons to Ukraine. It has sought to avoid arms that could strike deep into Russia or that Moscow might see as escalatory, such as combat jet fighters.

While Washington has supplied weapons and engaged in intense intelligence sharing with partners before, such as with Iraqi and Afghan counterterrorism units, the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine presents the prospect of direct confrontation with Russia.

The U.S. last month moved to significantly expand the intelligence it provides Ukraine so Kyiv could target Moscow’s forces in Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea. U.S. officials, citing security concerns, haven’t detailed the information they are sharing, although it is known to include satellite imagery and almost certainly communications intercepts as well.

U.S. officials have outlined only a handful of limits on the intelligence partnership. The U.S., they say, doesn’t provide Ukraine with information that would help it strike targets on Russian territory. Washington also doesn’t share information to help Ukraine target Russia’s top tier of military and civilian leaders, they said.

The U.S. stance on intelligence-sharing, as well as its provision of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine, is part of a Biden administration effort to impose steep costs on Russia’s military for its invasion without sparking conflict between the world’s two leading nuclear-armed powers.

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Defense Secretary

Lloyd Austin

said after a late-April visit to Kyiv with Secretary of State

Antony Blinken.

Current and U.S. officials also cautioned against underestimating Ukraine’s own intelligence capabilities, which improved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and destabilization of the Donbas, with help from the U.S. military and the CIA.

“It’s a big mistake to underestimate the significant intelligence capabilities the Ukrainians themselves have,” CIA director

William Burns

said Saturday at an event organized by the Financial Times newspaper.

Mr. Burns also criticized reporting in the news media about the intelligence sharing: “It is irresponsible, it’s risky, it’s dangerous when people talk too much.”

Douglas London, a retired 34-year CIA operations officer, said it is clear that the U.S. is giving Ukraine tracking of potential targets, but unclear if that includes data such as live feeds from drones, which Washington has shared with partners in the past.

For the CIA, he said, there is an important distinction between working with proxy forces and working with partners, as in the case of Ukraine.

Proxy military units fall under U.S. command and control, and have to abide by U.S. laws and policies, Mr. London said.

Partners have more latitude.

“There’s no wink-wink, nod-nodding” when the U.S. provides Ukraine intelligence on the disposition of Russian forces, he said. “We’re not telling them to do it…They’re a sovereign nation, they have an independent agenda.”

—Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

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Technology

NSO Group Rival Spyware Firm Has Also Been Helping Hack iPhones

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Photo: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto (iStock by Getty Images)

As surveillance controversies have raged in connection with Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group, another, lesser known spyware firm from Israel has also apparently been helping hack iPhones all over the world.

Reuters reports that the company QuaDream is a smaller, “lower profile” surveillance vendor that nevertheless boasts similar hacking capabilities to NSO and, in fact, was partially founded by two former NSO employees. Apparently based in Tel Aviv, the firm hasn’t had much exposure in the American press until now but, like NSO, QuaDream has similarly exploited “many of the same vulnerabilities” in Apple’s software to help its clients hack iPhone users, Reuters reports.

QuaDream reportedly sells a “zero-click” exploit—a sneaky cyberattack that can silently compromise phones without any need for phishing. That exploit, cheerfully dubbed REIGN, is thought to be almost identical to FORCEDENTRY, a fearsome NSO cyber exploit that is reputed to be “one of the most technically sophisticated exploits” ever produced, according to the Google researchers who analyzed it.

Similarly, QuaDream’s spyware seems to have frightening capabilities that can completely and utterly invade a person’s digital life. Reuters writes that REIGN has the capability to:

…take control of a smartphone, scooping up instant messages from services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, as well as emails, photos, texts and contacts, according to two product brochures from 2019 and 2020 which were reviewed by Reuters. REIGN’s “Premium Collection” capabilities included the “real time call recordings”, “camera activation – front and back” and “microphone activation”, one brochure said.

Not a whole lot is known about QuaDream’s client base, though the company has reportedly worked on behalf of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Singapore, Reuters reports. It may have also worked for the government of Indonesia, according to the outlet.

Israel has a thriving surveillance industry and is reportedly one of the biggest hubs for cyberweapons distribution in the world. Four other Israeli surveillance firms, including CobWebs Technologies, Bluehawk CI, Cognyte, and Black Cube, were all kicked off of the company formerly known as Facebook’s platforms in December after it was revealed they had been engaged in ongoing espionage activities targeted at tens of thousands of users.

Relatedly, NSO’s ongoing scandals have caused significant distress in Israel, where the company is alleged to have close ties with the government and has often been used as a diplomatic tool. The recent revelations about QuaDream are unlikely to help that situation.

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US

Left Behind After U.S. Withdrawal, Some Former Afghan Spies and Soldiers Turn to Islamic State

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KABUL—Some former members of Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained intelligence service and elite military units—now abandoned by their American patrons and hunted by the Taliban—have enlisted in the only force currently challenging the country’s new rulers: Islamic State.

The number of defectors joining the terrorist group is relatively small, but growing, according to Taliban leaders, former Afghan republic security officials and people who know the defectors. Importantly, these new recruits bring to Islamic State critical expertise in intelligence-gathering and warfare techniques, potentially strengthening the extremist organization’s ability to contest Taliban supremacy.

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World

US asks UK court to allow Julian Assange to face espionage charges in US

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The United States asked Britain’s High Court on Wednesday to overturn a judge’s decision that Julian Assange should not be sent to the United States to face espionage charges, promising that the WikiLeaks founder would be able to serve any prison sentence he receives in his native Australia. 

In January, a lower court judge refused an American request to extradite Assange on spying charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. 

An attorney for the U.S. government, James Lewis, argued Wednesday that the judge erred when she ruled Assange would be at risk of suicide because of the oppressive conditions. He said American authorities had promised that Assange would not be held before trial in a top-security “Supermax” prison or subjected to strict isolation conditions, and if convicted would be allowed to serve his sentence in Australia. 

Julian Assange’s partner Stella Moris, fourth left, and Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristin Hrafnsson, fifth left, with supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hold placards and take part in a march in London on Oct. 23, 2021, ahead of next week’s extradition case appeal.
(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

QUEEN ELIZABETH, 95, SPENT NIGHT IN HOSPITAL TO BE CHECKED: PALACE 

Lewis said the assurances “are binding on the United States.” 

U.S. authorities also argue that Assange does not meet the threshold of being so ill that he cannot resist harming himself. 

Lewis said Assange did “not even come close to having an illness of this degree.” 

“Once there is an assurance of appropriate medical care, once it is clear he will be repatriated to Australia to serve any sentence, then we can safely say the district judge would not have decided the relevant question in the way that she did,” Lewis said. 

Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said in a written submission that Australia had not agreed to take Assange if he is convicted. Even if Australia did agree, Fitzgerald said the U.S. legal process could take a decade, “during which Mr. Assange will remain detained in extreme isolation in a U.S. prison.” 

He accused U.S. lawyers of seeking to “minimize the severity of Mr Assange’s mental disorder and suicide risk.” 

Several dozen pro-Assange protesters rallied outside London’s neo-Gothic Royal Courts of Justice before the hearing, which is scheduled to last two days. 

Assange, who is being held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, had been expected to attend by video link, but Fitzgerald said Assange had been put on a high dose of medication and “doesn’t feel able to attend the proceedings.” 

A video link later showed Assange appearing to listen to the hearing at times. His lawyers say he has experienced a number of physical and mental health problems over the years. 

Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, said outside court that she was “very concerned for Julian’s health. I saw him on Saturday. He’s very thin.” 

The two justices hearing the appeal — who include England’s most senior judge, Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett — are not expected to give their ruling for several weeks. That will likely not end the epic legal saga, however, since the losing side can seek to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court. 

U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, though Lewis said “the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months.” 

Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, addresses protestors outside the High Court in London on Oct. 27, 2021.
(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment freedom of speech protections for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In her January judgment, Baraitser rejected defense arguments that Assange faces a politically motivated American prosecution that would override free-speech protections, and she said the U.S. judicial system would give him a fair trial. 

Assange, 50, has been in prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that he spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador’s London embassy, where he fled in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. 

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed, but Assange remains in prison. The judge who blocked extradition in January ordered that he must stay in custody during any U.S. appeal, ruling that the Australian citizen “has an incentive to abscond” if he is freed. 

Britain’s former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, left, and Stella Moris, partner of Julian Assange, attend the “Belmarsh Tribunal” at Church House in London on Oct. 22, 2021. 
(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

WikiLeaks supporters say testimony from witnesses during the extradition hearing that Assange was spied on while in the embassy by a Spanish security firm at the behest of the CIA — and that there was even talk of abducting or killing him — undermines U.S. claims he will be treated fairly. 

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Moris, who has two young sons with Assange, said it was “completely unthinkable that the U.K. courts could agree” to extradition. 

“I hope the courts will end this nightmare, that Julian is able to come home soon and that wise heads prevail,” she said. 

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Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and wife arrested for trying to sell submarine secrets to foreign power

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A Maryland-based Navy nuclear engineer and his wife have been arrested on charges of selling secret information about the design of nuclear power warships to someone they thought was a foreign power but was actually an undercover FBI agent. 

The Justice Department claims Jonathan Toebbe, through his Pentagon-issued national security clearance, had access to restricted data about naval nuclear technology and used that access to send a package to a foreign government on April 1, 2020. After that, the affidavit alleged he began corresponding with someone he believed to be an agent of another country, but who was an undercover FBI agent. Court documents claim the Navy engineer agreed to sell this restricted data to the undercover agent for $10,000 in cryptocurrency. 

Toebbe and his wife, Diana, then allegedly went to West Virginia, where the Navy engineer placed a memory card inside half a peanut butter sandwich, with his wife on the lookout. According to the Justice Department, the card contained restricted data about submarine nuclear reactors.

Based on the criminal complaint, the engineer at one point suspected a trap, but continued with more such “dead drops.” 

“I am sorry to be so stubborn and untrusting, but I can not agree to go to a location of your choosing,” the engineer said, according to a criminal complaint. “I must consider the possibility that l am communicating with an adversary who has intercepted my first message and is attempting to expose me.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the complaint “charges a plot to transmit information relating to the design of our nuclear submarines to a foreign nation.”

“The work of the FBI, Department of Justice prosecutors, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Department of Energy was critical in thwarting the plot charged in the complaint and taking this first step in bringing the perpetrators to justice,” Garland said. 

— CBS News’ Catherine Herridge contributed to this report 

Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.

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Navy Nuclear Engineer Attempted Espionage, FBI Says

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WASHINGTON — A nuclear engineer for the U.S. Navy and his wife have been charged with trying to share some of the United States’ most closely held secrets on submarine technology with another country, according to court documents unsealed on Sunday.

The engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, was accused of trying to sell information on the nuclear propulsion system of U.S. Virginia-class attack submarines — the technology at the heart of a recently announced deal with Britain and Australia.

While rivals like Russia and China have long sought details of U.S. submarine propulsion, it was unclear whether the unsolicited offer was to an adversary or an ally.

Mr. Toebbe has worked for the military as a civilian since 2017 and was originally part of the active-duty Navy. He has worked on naval nuclear propulsion since 2012, including on technology devised to reduce the noise and vibration of submarines, which can give away their location.

The classified material in question included designs that could be useful to many different countries building submarines. In the Australia deal, the United States and Britain would help the country to deploy nuclear-powered submarines, which are equipped with nuclear propulsion systems that offer limitless range and run so quietly that they are hard to detect.

Nuclear propulsion is among the most closely held information by the U.S. Navy because the reactors are fueled by highly enriched uranium, which can also be converted to bomb fuel for nuclear weapons. Building compact, safe naval reactors is also a difficult engineering task. Until the deal with Australia, the United States had shared the technology with only Britain, starting in 1958.

According to the court documents, the investigation into the Toebbes began in December 2020, when the F.B.I. obtained a package that had been sent to another country with operational manuals, technical details and an offer to establish a covert relationship. The package was intercepted in the other country’s mail system and sent to an F.B.I. legal attaché.

“Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency,” a note in the package read. “I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax.”

The F.B.I. followed the instructions in the package and began an encrypted conversation, in which the sender offered Navy secrets in return for $100,000 in cryptocurrency.

Over a series of exchanges, the F.B.I. persuaded the sender to leave information at a dead drop in return for cryptocurrency payments. The F.B.I. then observed Mr. Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe, at the location of the drop, in West Virginia.

With Ms. Toebbe acting as a lookout, Mr. Toebbe left an SD card concealed inside half a peanut butter sandwich in a plastic bag, according to the court documents. After the undercover agent retrieved the sandwich, Mr. Toebbe was sent $20,000.

Agents then set up another dead drop in Pennsylvania and a third in Virginia, where they said Mr. Toebbe deposited an SD card concealed in a package of chewing gum.

While working at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, a little-known government research facility in West Mifflin, Pa., Mr. Toebbe would have had access to the documents that he is accused of passing to the undercover F.B.I. officer.

Many of the details of the exchanges were redacted in the court documents, but there was a reference to scaled drawings and maintenance details. One cited a note, which the documents suggest was written by one of the Toebbes, that the information “reflects decades of U.S. Navy ‘lessons learned’ that will help keep your sailors safe.”

The F.B.I. and the Naval Criminal Investigative Services arrested Jonathan and Diana Toebbe on Saturday. They will appear in federal court in Martinsburg, W.V., on Tuesday.

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