Tag: espionage

Department of Energy employee arrested in Washington for allegedly trying to aid Iran-backed Houthis

A Department of Energy employee in Washington state was arrested Thursday for allegedly attempting to support the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist organization, with federal prosecutors accusing him of using his electrical engineering expertise to help improve the group’s communications capabilities.

According to the Justice Department, Ashton Hamed Ellaboudy, 51, of Richland, is charged with attempting to provide material support or resources to the Houthis, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Investigators also allegedly uncovered purchases of chemicals used to make explosives and components for building drones.

“As alleged, a U.S. government employee traveled overseas and used his specialized expertise in an attempt to aid the Houthis, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization backed by Iran,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Additionally, Ellaboudy acquired materials for the construction of explosive material and drones capable of delivering these explosives. These allegations are so deeply disturbing that they almost defy imagination.”

According to the Justice Department’s account of court records, the FBI began investigating Ellaboudy after receiving information that he had purchased precursor chemicals, components, and other materials commonly used to construct homemade explosive devices. Investigators subsequently found that he had also purchased parts used to build drones and remotely operated aerial systems.

The complaint alleges that in December 2024, the FBI learned Ellaboudy had taken sick leave from work, claiming exposure to highly concentrated nitric acid, a chemical commonly used in making explosive materials.

In September 2025, Ellaboudy allegedly traveled from Richland to Oman using an official passport previously issued to him while he worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Prosecutors say he used the same passport to cross into Yemen, intending to travel to the Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa.

When he returned to the United States, Ellaboudy allegedly told Customs and Border Protection officers that the trip had been official government business. His Department of Energy supervisor subsequently told investigators that Ellaboudy had no authorized official travel to that region.

During the investigation, Ellaboudy communicated with an FBI confidential source who claimed to be acquiring communications equipment for a Houthi “Colonel,” according to the release. The equipment was supposedly destined for a mobile communications center in Yemen.

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History Will Tell How Canada’s Spies Helped Trump in Cuba

Canada has long assisted the US bid to suffocate Cuba. And the roots of intelligence sharing undercut the idea of Ottawa standing up to US bullying.

On Saturday the Globe and Mail confirmed that Canada has long spied on Cuba for the US. In “Canadians passed intelligence to U.S. at time of alleged attacks in Cuba: source”, Robert Fife reports, “A Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana and Canadians were using satellite equipment brought into Cuba by the United States when officials from both countries began experiencing debilitating symptoms caused by alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia.”

The long story about the 2017 “Havana syndrome” describes how a Canadian diplomat gathered human intelligence on the island, which was often passed on directly to a CIA agent at the US embassy. Another source told Fife that “Canadians were using satellite equipment brought in surreptitiously by the United States.” The information gathered was sent to the intelligence division at Global Affairs, CSIS and to Five Eyes partners (US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand). Fife added, “the two sources said the Canadian embassy’s intelligence-gathering was valued by the U.S. because of Canada’s longstanding friendship with Cuba. Unlike the Americans, Canadian diplomats had better access to Cuban officials and were allowed to travel outside of Havana.”

As has been documented by multiple sources, including the 2015 International Journal article “Our men in Havana: Canadian foreign intelligence operations in Castro’s Cuba”, Canada has spied for the US since the Cuban revolution. In fact, Washington’s request for Canadian spying assistance is part of the reason Ottawa didn’t sever diplomatic relations with Havana after the 1959 revolution. In the 2007 book Three Nights in Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and the Cold War World Robert Wright explains: “Recently declassified State Department documents have revealed that, far from encouraging Canada to support the embargo, the United States secretly urged [Prime Minister John] Diefenbaker to maintain normal relations because it was thought that Canada would be well positioned to gather intelligence on the island.”

Ottawa did not let Washington down. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s NSA, listened to Cuban leaders’ secret conversations from an interception post in the Canadian embassy in Havana and Canadian diplomats were among the first to alert the US to incoming Soviet arms and troops before the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A senior Canadian official, close to Washington, in Inside Canadian intelligence: exposing the new realities of espionage and international terrorism “admitted that the U.S. made ‘far greater use’ of our intelligence during the Cuban Missile Crisis than has been revealed.” Pentagon and State Department sources cite the UK and Canada as the only countries that “supply any real military information on Cuba” with Canada providing “the best” military intelligence.

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Russian Plot to Infiltrate Department of War and Secret Service During Biden Administration Busted – US Tech CEO Charged

Federal prosecutors have charged an American tech CEO and a Russian national over a plot to hide their company’s ownership and access federal databases through contracts awarded under Biden. 

Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber, 55, of Boise, Idaho, and Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, 52, of Moscow, Russia, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The two are accused of “concealing from U.S. government agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and that its software was developed in Russia,” the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.

Reiber and Davydov allegedly concealed from federal agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and “conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies” to analyze data from US agencies.

The agencies affected included the Department of War and the Department of Homeland Security, including the “Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.”

According to the DOJ:

Reiber allegedly represented to the government that the company had no foreign ownership or control and that its software was developed in the United States, when in fact five Russian nationals, including Davydov, owned and controlled the company and its software was developed in Russia.

The complaint does not allege that the software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to any customer’s computer systems or data.

In a separate proceeding, a federal magistrate judge in the Central District of California on September 19 issued a warrant authorizing the seizure of corporate bank accounts, approximately 57 domains, and other cyberinfrastructure used in furtherance of the alleged acts. The domains and related infrastructure were seized on September 20.

According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, from March 2022 to the present, Reiber, Davydov, and others conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies through Oxygen Forensics Inc., a digital forensics company based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Digital forensic software is used to recover, preserve, and analyze electronic data from digital devices while keeping the original files unchanged.

The affidavit identifies the affected agencies as the U.S. Department of War and three components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These components include the U.S. Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.

According to the affidavit, Oxygen Forensics held itself out to the U.S. government as being an independent, U.S.-based company. In fact, Davydov and four other Russian nationals owned and controlled the company through a holding company based in Cyprus.

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Democratic megadonor who gave to Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris linked to murky honeypot spy saga

A California family who has injected millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns are facing renewed scrutiny over their connections to people and organizations tied to suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang.

The Yin family, who made a fortune operating McDonald’s franchises in the state, has donated more than $4.4 million to state and federal political causes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats, according to campaign records, CBS News reported.

The family’s political connections have drawn attention following the release of FBI files concerning Fang, also known as Christine Fang, whose relationship with disgraced former California Rep. Eric Swalwell became the subject of a major national-security controversy.

The documents released by the White House in August describe a working relationship between Fang and CC Yin, the 89-year-old patriarch of the Yin family, through the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs (APAPA) organization, which he helped establish.

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‘It’s been too long – Trump’s still in power’: Texts reveal wife of nuclear scientist accused of selling foreign power submarine secrets wanted to flee US due to TRUMP and not because she feared arrest

A teacher accused of selling nuclear submarine secrets with her Navy engineer husband only wanted to flee the country because she hated Donald Trump, a court has been told.   

Lawyers for Diana Toebbe, 45, claim she only wanted to exit the US because of her disdain for the former president, and not because she was worried about getting caught for allegedly trying to sell the classified information.

They made the claim in court papers filed Wednesday, complete with an exchange of messages said to have taken place between Toebbe and her husband Jonathan in March 2019. 

Those texts also allegedly saw Diana Toebbe discuss fleeing to France. The country they tried to sell the secrets to has never been mentioned, and is said to be a US ally, although officials told NBC News that France was not the country targeted. 

Diana begins: ‘We need to get out.’ Jonathan appears bored with her statement, answering: ‘*sigh* where? To do what?’

His wife then says: ‘To anywhere. To do something else. To teach in international schools. To take Macron up on his offer to harbor scientific refugees.’

In an apparent attempt to calm Diana, Jonathan says: ‘Biden/Warren will curb stomp Trump/Pence.’

But Diana was undeterred, and replied: ‘WE NEED TO GET OUT. Hilary (sic) was going to curb stomp trump. I’m done.’ 

Jonathan touted then then-unpublished Mueller Report into alleged collusion between Team Trump and Russia, which ended up posing no threat to Trump’s presidency.

He wrote: ‘The Mueller report is coming real soon.’

But Diana remained angry, answering: ‘It’s been too long. Nothing has changed. He’s still in power.’ 

Jonathan replied: ‘Nothing in government moves that fast — believe me, I speak from personal experience.’

Diana then said: ‘(Trump crony) Manafort got a slap on the wrist. It’s a signal that the entire system is rigged.’

The chat then turned to escaping, with Jonathan saying: ‘We’ve got passports, and some savings. In a real pinch we can flee quickly.’

And Diana answered: ‘Right. Let’s go sooner than later.’ 

The pair were arrested in October and charged with selling secret information about nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent who posed as an operative for a foreign country.

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Chinese National Working as CBP Supervisor at Maine-Canada Border Caught on Camera Swapping Hardware Inside Homeland Security Computers — Then Putting Them Back on the Government Network

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor assigned to the Maine-Canada border has been arrested and charged after FBI agents say he was caught on hidden camera tearing apart government computers, ripping out processors and memory, stuffing in cheaper parts, and plugging the machines back into CBP’s network.

Terry “Jiajia” Liu, 39, of Calais, Maine, described himself as a native of Guangzhou, China. He worked as a CBP supervisor at the Calais Port of Entry, with duties stretching to the Ferry Point and Milltown crossings.

CBP officers are required to be U.S. citizens. According to The Maine Wire, Liu has posted images suggesting he voted in 2020. That does not answer the question every American should be asking: how did a man from Guangzhou end up with after-hours access to Homeland Security computers on the northern border?

According to an FBI affidavit obtained by Steve Robinson at The Maine Wire, CBP IT staff discovered in late 2025 that computers at three Maine border facilities had been modified without authorization. The count grew to 46 machines: 38 in Calais, six at Ferry Point, two at Milltown.

Thirty-nine had their CPUs swapped. Six had RAM changed. Eight had hard drives replaced.

The original hardware included 14th-generation Intel Core i7 processors. What went back in were older, weaker chips, including Pentium-class parts that did not meet CBP specs. Many of those computers were then reconnected to the agency network.

Port Director Theodore Cummings had already told Liu in writing in March 2025: “Please do not move any computers or computer parts.” Stay in your lane. File a ticket. Liu allegedly kept going.

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Chinese Student Charged With Lying To Border Agents Over Alleged Airport Photo Assignments From Beijing

A Chinese national studying at a Canadian university has been charged with lying to American officials to conceal that he took photographs at a Chicago airport cargo facility at the direction of a suspected Chinese official, according to a federal complaint filed in Detroit on Aug. 26.

Zeng Weiheng, born in 2004, is charged with making false statements in a matter under federal jurisdiction. An undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Zeng was issued a B1/B2 visitor visa in October 2022 and has entered the United States 24 times since then, according to an affidavit filed with the complaint by an FBI agent.

He was arrested on Aug. 26.

Authorities stopped Zeng for an initial screening on Aug. 23 at the Ambassador Bridge border crossing in Detroit, after linking his vehicle to a security incident at a FedEx cargo facility at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on April 21.

That day, FedEx employees saw an Asian male spending roughly 20 minutes at the facility. Surveillance footage showed the man climbing onto a construction forklift to take photographs and attempting to open a parked delivery truck and shipping trailer before driving off in a minivan bearing an Ontario license plate.

Zeng underwent three interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials during secondary screening, during which his account of his April trip changed. according to court documents.

In his first interview, Zeng claimed that he had visited tourist sites during his April trip, and the photos of planes in his phone were “pictures of model aircraft being tracked for a flight radar website,” authorities said. When pressed in a second interview, Zeng allegedly admitted going to the FedEx facility to take photos of planes and revealed that he had also trespassed at a FedEx facility at Toronto Pierson Airport in 2025.

By the third interview, Zeng revealed that a contact in China had “assigned him specific planes and their tail numbers to photograph” and he was paid $20 to $30 per photograph, the court documents allege.

In his subsequent interview with the FBI, Zeng admitted that the aircraft photography was a cover story devised by his handler, and the “true task was to obtain interior photographs of the FedEx facility,” according to the affidavit.

His Chinese contact “was primarily interested in information on transportation and logistics in the United States” and “asked for information of flight freight logistics, bus routes, and trains routes and schedules,” the affidavit said.

Zeng also told the FBI that he suspected his Chinese contact was a Chinese regime official working for one of China’s security departments, in part because the contact had provided him with “videos of scenes that only security officials would have access to.”

For his communication with the Chinese contact, Zeng said he was mailed SIM cards from China’s state-run China Telecom, which allowed him to “by-pass Canadian cellular network and connect directly with the Chinese provider network” to send text messages, according to the affidavit.

Zeng was instructed to use the SIM cards only in a Huawei-made phone, swapping in a new card every few months and destroying the old one. He was also told never to bring the phone with him on trips to the United States.

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Chinese Hackers Broke Into NASA, Federal Reserve, DOJ & Senate: FBI Announces

The United States Department of Justice has on Wednesday announced US authorities thwarted a major state-sponsored hack which saw a temporary intrusion into NASA, the Federal Reserve, Senate, the DOJ, Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human services, along with four unnamed companies in the US and South Korea.

“Today we announced the disruption of a global botnet and hacking platform used by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to target U.S. critical infrastructure,” said FBI Director Kash Patel.

“These tools were used by PRC cyber actors to hide the origin of their attacks. Thanks to the work of FBI San Diego, FBI Cyber Division, and DOJ partners, we seized adversary infrastructure and shut these platforms down,” he added.

Domains utilized by two hacking platforms identified as “QScan” and “QTRouter” were seized by the DOJ in the large scale counter-cyberespionage operation.

Describing a pervasive botnet which was ultimately believed to be backed by Chinese state actors, The Wall Street Journal details that the “goal was to blend in with legitimate networking traffic, making the hacking activity hard to trace, federal officials say.”

“The group exploited software vulnerabilities to launch cyberattacks against U.S. government agencies, power companies and hospital systems, and operated a worldwide network of hacked devices—known as a botnet—to conduct its hacking campaigns, according to Brett Leatherman, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top cyber official,” WSJ continues.

As for the specific allegation that this had state backing, the DOJ press release states:

People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored group known as “QTFY,” employed by China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company, created and operated QScan and QTRouter.

The DOJ announcement additionally outlines efforts at concealment and ‘plausible deniability’ in the following:

QTRouter consists of these compromised IoT devices, as well as commercial proxy service devices and leased virtual private servers. QTRouter then serves as an “obfuscation network” – meaning it allows QTFY and other malicious cyber actors to conceal the PRC-origin of their computer intrusion activities because the malicious communications appear to originate from computers (such as those compromised by QScan) that are outside of the PRC and may even be local to the targeted networks. Because the seized domains were hard-coded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware and used for essential tasks such as communication and authentication, the court-authorized seizures made QScan and QTRouter inoperable. 

Neither Beijing’s foreign ministry nor the Chinese embassy in Washington have officially responded to the allegations, and as has been the pattern in the past is likely to reject the US charge altogether.

Earlier this year Google was among those warning of imminent stepped-up Chinese and Russian targeting of US defense companies. 

Google’s prior report seemed to preview some of the techniques on display in this latest hack. The report cited observations of “more China-nexus cyber espionage missions directly targeting defense and aerospace industry than from any other state-sponsored actors over the last two years.”

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Declassified Docs Show Deep State Letting Chinese Espionage Slide If It Helps Democrats

his week the FBI released newly declassified files on former Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Chinese national Christine Fang (Fang Fang). There are two heavily redacted packets: one from the San Francisco Division’s 2014 “Freshman Fifteen” public-corruption probe and the other covering counterintelligence and recruitment efforts. These documents fill in details that earlier reporting left incomplete and underscore how institutional choices allowed a suspected Chinese intelligence operative to operate with relative impunity.

Here is a brief summary of the case: Fang, a Chinese national who lived in the U.S. until 2015, was the daughter of officers in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). The FBI suspected her of being an MSS-linked operative and unsuccessfully attempted to recruit her as a source in 2013 and 2014.

Fang facilitated conduit contributions to Swalwell’s campaigns, contradicting the 2020 Axios report that claimed there was no evidence of illegal donations. She also placed interns in Swalwell’s office and maintained a sexual relationship with him. FBI agents built a case against both Fang and Swalwell and provided regular updates to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section (PIN), then led by Jack Smith, who later oversaw the special counsel investigations into Donald Trump. Declassified files now indicate the case was more serious than previously understood. It remains unclear why the DOJ did not arrest or charge Fang.

Swalwell cut ties with Fang after agents gave him a defensive briefing in early 2015. Fang fled to China in May that same year. She remains in China and is barred from re-entering the United States. The DOJ closed the Fang/Swalwell case without action against either party.

The declassified documents reveal a broader reluctance among institutions to address Chinese influence operations targeting Democratic officials. Field agents reported Fang’s illegal fundraising and other suspicious activities to Jack Smith’s Public Integrity Section. Yet, no decisive steps were taken before the suspected operative left the country. Once Fang was safely in China, the chance to prosecute or further disrupt her network disappeared. Closing the case without charges left the underlying security risk unresolved.

Democratic leaders further complicated the situation. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly supported Swalwell and kept him on the House Intelligence Committee for years, suggesting that party considerations took precedence over the counterintelligence warning the FBI had already delivered.

The Swalwell/Fang case is not an isolated incident. The same FBI San Francisco Division had earlier identified former Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s longtime driver and California staffer as a Chinese intelligence recruit. He reported on local politics to handlers linked to the San Francisco Chinese consulate for years before the bureau notified Feinstein in 2013. Sen. Feinstein dismissed him, yet no charges were filed. The breach occurred while she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the most sensitive oversight positions in government. Yet, her career proceeded without interruption or lasting professional consequence.

More recently, Linda Sun, a senior aide to Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government. The case ended in a mistrial.

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Leftwing Candidate for French Presidency Is Grandson of an Infamous Soviet Spy

Glucksmann hopes to be the Left’s candidate against favorite Le Pen.

The board is set, the pieces are moving: as we approach next year’s consequential French Presidential elections, a variety of candidates are making their play.

The election has a clear favorite: right-wing Marine Le Pen, from the RN party.

Ever since Jordan Bardella led the RN to a major victory in the June 2024 European elections, the RN ceased being just a competitive power alternative and became the clear leaders of the pack.

That’s over two years of undisputed leadership in the polls that has the left-wing parties and Macronist centrists scrambling to launch a variety of candidates, trying to capture the imagination of the French public.

And there are some ‘beauties’ in this group.

The odious MSM has gone overboard trying to paint right-wingers in France (and Europe) as ‘Putin’s puppets’ – but when facts are revealed, we rapidly find out who is who.

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