Tag: espionage

HEAVENLY SPIES? Pope Leo XIV Urges Italian Secret Agents To Work Ethically, Not to Blackmail Politicians, Journalists or the Church

The Italian 007’s got a Papal warning.

Whether or not you agree with Pope Leo XIV in the multiple statements he has issued lately, one thing seems certain: he deals more and more in issues outside the scope of his mission as Pontifex.

Leo meddles in US immigration policies – with the usual leftist slant; he urges Donald J. Trump not to depose Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro by force – but only smother him with economic sanctions; and now he chastises the Italian secret service agents.

Yes, you read it right.

Maybe, like me, you wonder why Leo doesn’t take care of spiritual welfare of the Christendom, instead of going around ‘blessing the ice’ for Global Warming Cultists, and ‘thrashing ICE’ with the demented pro-immigration mob.

Leo met Friday (12) with officers from Italian intelligence services – and ‘warned them not to use confidential information for blackmailing or other nefarious purposes’.

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How the MI5 ‘allowed Britain’s top agent inside IRA to get away with murder’… these are the damning findings of a report into mole ‘Stakeknife’

Britain’s top spy inside the IRA was effectively allowed to get away with murder because the security services felt ‘a perverse sense of loyalty’ to him, a damning report has concluded.

The Daily Mail can reveal that the double agent codenamed ‘Stakeknife’ was even taken on holiday by his handlers to evade arrest when he was wanted by police.

The extraordinary revelation was contained in MI5 files disclosed to Operation Kenova, the nine-year police investigation into the man unmasked in 2003 as Freddie Scappaticci.

Once celebrated as Britain’s most prized asset in the intelligence war with the IRA, he is now thought to have cost more lives than he saved.

Directly linked to at least 13 murders, Stakeknife was a senior member of the terror group’s internal security unit, known as the ‘Nutting Squad’, which abducted, tortured and killed suspected informers.

Operation Kenova – led by Sir Iain Livingstone, the former Chief Constable of Police Scotland – slams MI5, accusing it of ‘serious organisational failure’ for trying to restrict the investigation. 

Sir Iain’s report, leaked to the Daily Mail, takes issue with a former head of MI5 for stating that the agency had ‘limited knowledge’ of Stakeknife’s activities. In fact, it says, MI5 was involved in running him ‘throughout the entirety of his operation as an agent’.

Astonishingly, the report reveals Stakeknife’s Army handlers ‘took him out of Northern Ireland on holiday when they knew he was wanted by [police] for murder’.

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Poland Announces Foreign Spy Plot Busted, Involved Photographing Secretive Facilities 

Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office announced Friday that five individuals have been charged with working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, following coordinated arrests which spanned November Tuesday through Wednesday of this week by the Internal Security Agency and police.

Those taken into custody include two Ukrainian nationals – identified only as Oleksandr S. and a minor, Sofia Ch. – and in addition three Belarusian citizens identified as Viktoryia M., Anton M., and Uladzimir U.

The group is accused of targeting the Polish state for espionage purposes, with prosecutors alleging that throughout much of 2024 the team collected information on sensitive locations.

“The suspects’ activities involved establishing contact with foreign intelligence representatives via Telegram and carrying out assigned tasks, including the creation and transmission of photographic documentation of critical infrastructure facilities and locations crucial to national security,” a press release translated from Polish to English read.

“For these tasks, the suspects were paid in cryptocurrencies,” it added. Likely Warsaw believes Russian intelligence was ultimately behind the plot. In some instances, Moscow is believed to have used pro-Russian Ukrainian nationals as assets in Europe.

Poland’s investigation comes amid a wider probe into espionage activities carried out by individuals of different nationalities in Rzeszów, Warszawa, Łódź – among some other regions – between March 2024 and February 2025.

But in some instances the activities seem minor, given prosecutors have cited activities as simple as putting up posters and producing graffiti, supposedly associated with foreign operations.

If convicted under Poland’s national laws, acts of espionage can result in five to thirty years in prison.

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Trump Stands by Huckabee After Unannounced Pollard Meeting

n 1987, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for selling national secrets to Israel. Last July, nearly a decade after his parole, the disgraced former Naval intelligence analyst met with U.S. Ambassador to Mike Huckabee at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.

The meeting was his first with U.S. officials since his release and immigration to Israel. A break with precedent, the move by Huckabee, even all these years after the crime, still alarmed intelligence officials.

The Trump administration was left in the dark. “The White House was not aware of that meeting,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told RealClearPolitics. It was reportedly left off the public schedule of the ambassador. And yet, the administration still condoned the actions of the U.S. envoy to Israel.  

“The president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Leavitt added, “and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel.”

The case sent shockwaves through both Washington and Tel Aviv at the time of the conviction. The rare spy who offered his services to an ally, Pollard pled guilty, confessing to selling thousands of pages of secret documents to the Israelis for cash, vacations to Europe, and promised future payments to be wired to a Swiss bank account. A federal judge dismissed pleas for mercy even after Pollard’s cooperation led to the indictment of an Israeli air force officer.

The episode came at the height of the Cold War when the CIA was on the lookout for Soviet, not Israeli, spies. The press had dubbed 1985 the “Year of the Spy” as President Ronald Reagan vowed to combat espionage wherever it might fester. “We’ve added resources, people, and top-level attention to this task,” Reagan said during a November radio address that year. “We will not hesitate to root out and prosecute the spies of any nation.”

The FBI nabbed Pollard two years later outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., during a failed attempt to gain asylum.

Pollard was released from prison in 2015 during the Obama administration. After his parole restrictions expired in December of 2020, at the tail end of the first Trump administration, the former spy emigrated to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted him on the tarmac, telling Pollard “You’re home.”

The private jet that flew him there was reportedly owned by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Republican megadonor who was a benefactor of both Netanyahu and Trump.

Pollard has no regrets for his actions. He told the New York Times, who first broke the news of his meeting with Huckabee, that it was necessary because the U.S. had cut Israel out of intelligence sharing. During that interview, the former spy, who was granted Israeli citizenship while incarcerated, reportedly called Trump a “madman who has literally sold us down the drain for Saudi gold.”

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Trump Ambassador Mike Huckabee Held Secret Meeting With Traitor Who Sold American Secrets to Israel

President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, held a secret meeting in July with traitor Jonathan Pollard, who served 30 years in prison for selling American secrets to Israel.

According to a report from the New York Times, Pollard met with Huckabee at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July for a discussion that was “kept off Mr. Huckabee’s official schedule,” and revealed for the first time on Thursday.

Pollard confirmed the rendezvous in an interview with the Times, telling the newspaper “it was a friendly meeting” and that “a lot of things that came up in conversation.”

In his interview with the Times, Pollard also attacked President Trump, calling him a “madman who has literally sold us down the drain, for Saudi gold.”

Huckabee’s senior advisor David Milstein – the stepson of Fox News host Mike Levin – was reportedly present at the meeting.

Three unnamed officials told the New York Times that the meeting “alarmed the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Israel.” The White House was also reportedly unaware that the secret meeting was taking place.

“The White House was not aware of the meeting in advance, according to a White House official and two people briefed on the matter,” reported the Times. “The White House official also said that senior officials there were alarmed when they learned it had taken place.”

Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after it was discovered that he had been selling American secrets to Israel, including the names of thousands of U.S. intelligence agency sources.

Pollard was released from prison in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020 – flying on a private jet owned by top Trump donor Sheldon Adelson to Tel Aviv, where he was given a hero’s welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Behind Israel’s Wars Lies a Global Spy Machine

In the aftermath of the devastating Twelve-Day War in June 2025, Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib made a striking claim that captured international attention: more than fifty foreign intelligence services had provided direct support to Israel during the conflict. Speaking during an official visit to Iran’s southwestern Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in October 2025, Khatib characterized this coalition as an “intelligence NATO” that coordinated efforts to destabilize Iran through hybrid warfare encompassing military attacks, psychological operations, cyber warfare, and media campaigns.

His statement came against the backdrop of the Twelve Day War that began on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing over 1,000 Iranians. Iran responded with “Operation True Promise 3,” involving twenty-two waves of missile strikes and over 550 ballistic missiles targeting Israeli territory. The United States intervened on June 22 with B-2 bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites before a ceasefire was brokered on June 24.

Khatib’s claims, while potentially inflated, align remarkably well with patterns this author previously documented in “The Illusion of Israeli Self-Sufficiency in Intelligence,” which exposed how Israel’s most celebrated operations relied on cooperation with the CIA, NSA cyberwarfare expertise, European intelligence networks, and covert collaboration with Arab regimes. As that analysis demonstrated, Israel’s intelligence empire survives not through independence but through reliance on Western logistics, intelligence sharing, and political approval.

The foundation of this multinational intelligence cooperation traces back decades. According to research covered by Israeli investigative journalists, the Berne Club—a secret European intelligence alliance founded in 1969—provided crucial support for Israel’s assassination campaign following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Through an encrypted communication system called “Kilowatt,” thousands of cables were exchanged among eighteen Western intelligence services, functioning as a secret clearinghouse for raw intelligence containing the locations of safe houses, vehicle registrations, the movements of high-value targets, and analytical assessments.

The core of Israel’s intelligence support network begins with the United States and extends through the Five Eyes alliance. The CIA-Mossad relationship dates to the early 1950s, with leaked documents revealing that the NSA shares intelligence with Israel’s Unit 8200 through a formal agreement. Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, “US intelligence dispatched a special unit to assist the IDF in the war in Gaza and established intelligence-sharing channels with Israel to help locate top Hamas commanders,” according to a report by The Conversation. During Israel’s June 2025 strikes on Iran, the United States joined the operation directly with B-2 bomber strikes.

The United Kingdom maintains similarly close cooperation. GCHQ documents reveal Britain “cooperating very closely with Israel.’ DeClassified UK reported that between 2023-2024, “the RAF conducted 518 surveillance flights over Gaza from Cyprus’s RAF Akrotiri, supplying real-time intelligence to Israeli forces.”

European nations have provided extensive intelligence infrastructure supporting Israeli operations. Germany announced this past summer plans to strengthen cooperation on cyber defense, with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt outlining a five-point plan for establishing a “Cyber Dome” including “establishing a joint German-Israel cyber research center.”

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Prosecutors: Ex-Hochul Aide Spied for China, CCP Paid Her Enough to Buy Mansion, Ferrari, Condo in Hawaii

A Chinese former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and millions of dollars in kickbacks working as an undeclared agent for China, federal prosecutors claim. 

Linda Sun, 41, is accused of working as an unregistered operative for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and using her position to influence the governors into acting favorably toward Beijing, the Daily Mail reported.

During Sun’s trial on Monday, prosecutors alleged that she earned a government salary of $145,000 but received millions of dollars in side deals orchestrated by Chinese officials. Per a Wall Street Journal report, Sun and her husband, Chris Hu, 42, used their alleged ill-gotten gains to buy a $3.6 million mansion in Long Island, a $1.9 million condo in Hawaii, and a 2024 Ferrari Roma worth $243,300. 

Sun allegedly regularly communicated with CCP insiders and even at Nanjing-style salted duck dinners made by the Chinese consulate chef, prosecutors claimed. She often traveled to China and even celebrated the CCP’s 70th year in power in Beijing, the court heard.

Prosecutors further claimed Sun funneled the money she received from China through Hu’s businesses. The couple is also accused of accumulating $2.3 million in kickbacks from imports on personal protection equipment during the coronavirus pandemic.

Sun began working in the Cuomo administration in 2012 and held various positions, including Global New York Trade Manager, Asian Outreach Director for the Office of the Governor, and Queens Regional Representative, according to the report. She was named “chief diversity officer” in 2018.

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Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan

With the looming end of the U.S. government shutdown amid a deal in the Senate, the House will soon be swearing in Adelita Grijalva to her rightful seat from Arizona, after a historic delay at the hands of Speaker Mike Johnson, taking direction from President Donald Trump, all aimed at blocking her from becoming the final signature needed to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

In mid-October, the House Oversight Committee released an interview with former U.S. prosecutor Alex Acosta, who told the panel that—contrary to widespread public reporting—he had never told Steve Bannon that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Acosta denied ever discussing Epstein with Bannon, and claimed to have “no knowledge as to whether he was or was not a member of the intelligence community.”

Yet, along with Acosta’s interview, the House panel also released a new cache of documents from Epstein’s estate containing direct evidence of Epstein’s links to Israeli intelligence: Epstein’s personal calendars reveal that a senior Israeli intelligence officer, with personal ties to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, lived at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment for multiple stretches between 2013 and 2016. When cross-referenced with emails leaked from the inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a portrait emerges of Epstein at the nexus of high-ranking intelligence officials in both the U.S. and Israel.

This is the fourth piece in Drop Site’s ongoing series on Jeffrey Epstein’s role in brokering intelligence deals for Israel.

In the first, we exposed Epstein’s role in brokering a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia. In the second, we identified Epstein’s effort to set up a backchannel between Israel and Russia during the Syria civil war. In the third, we showed Epstein’s role as a key facilitator of a security agreement between Israel and the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, we’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents. A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?

From a place of competition, we’re glad the media are sitting on their collective hands and we’re proud to have broken this series of stories, which give us a glimpse of a world that is often hidden from public view. But it’s also a topic that would benefit from the collective attention of our national media. Here’s hoping some will join in.

Either way, we’ll continue the work, and are grateful for the support of readers who make it possible. If you haven’t yet upgraded your subscription, please consider doing so.

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Ex-Army Sergeant Sentenced to 4 Years for Offering Secrets to China

A federal judge sentenced a former Army intelligence sergeant to 4 years in prison on Tuesday for offering national defense secrets to China. Sergeant Joseph Daniel Schmidt, who had top secret clearance, served in western Washington at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where he worked in military intelligence.

According to court documents, he served in the Army from January 2015 to January 2020. Schmidt was discharged after a mental health episode in late 2019.

The judge said he considered Schmidt’s mental health as well as the seriousness of the crime in sentencing him to 4 years in prison. Schmidt’s public defender requested that he be sentenced for time served, arguing that the crime was the result of schizophrenia. Schmidt mistakenly believed he was “subject to a mind control network operated by the FBI and [was] hoping to warn the Chinese government about the Program,” according to the public defender Dennis Carroll.

In the Army, Schmidt led a team that de-briefed and interrogated potential intelligence sources. His work gave him access to intelligence collection and reporting systems. After being discharged, he kept a device that gave him access to secure military computer networks. He later offered the device to Chinese authorities for them to access the secure system.

“He used his training to provide sensitive information to the Chinese security service. He knew what he was doing was wrong—he was doing web searches for such things as ‘Can you be extradited for treason,’” said Assistant United States Attorney Todd Greenberg in a statement.

In February 2020, Schmidt flew to Turkey. Court documents state that while there, he searched online about defecting from the United States. He also emailed the Chinese consulate offering to share information with a Chinese official in person.

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China, Russia use ‘asymmetric advantage,’ unleash sex warfare to seduce US tech execs, steal secrets: report

China and Russia have deployed attractive women to the United States to seduce unwitting Silicon Valley tech executives as part of a “sex warfare” operation aimed at stealing American technology secrets, according to a report.

Industry insiders told The Times of London that they have been approached by would-be honeypots — some of whom have even managed to ensnare their targets by marrying them and having children.

Chinese and Russian agents are also using social media, startup competitions and venture capital investments to infiltrate the heart of America’s tech industry, the report said.

“I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman,” James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at risk-assessment firm Pamir Consulting, told The Times.

“It really seems to have ramped up recently.”

A former US counterintelligence official who now works for Silicon Valley startups told The Times that he recently investigated one case of a “beautiful” Russian woman who worked at a US-based aerospace company, where she met an American colleague whom she eventually married.

According to the former counterintelligence official, the woman in question attended a modelling academy when she was in her twenties. Afterward, she was enrolled in a “Russian soft-power school” before she fell off the radar for a decade — only to re-emerge in the US as an expert in cryptocurrency.

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