Source: Associated Press
President Barack is shaking up his national security team by naming a new secretary of defense and director of the CIA. AP White House Correspondent Mark Smith reports.

This is probably one of the most shocking stories I’ve read all year. US officials believe there is at least one Russian mole inside the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA). That’s not a small thing. It’s also unprecedented.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is conducting a counterintelligence probe at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters in a top-secret hunt for a Russian agent, according to a former intelligence official close to the agency.

The former official said the probe grew out of the case of 10 Russian "illegals," or deep-cover spies, who were uncovered last summer and sent back to Moscow after the defection of Col. Alexander Poteyev, a former SVR foreign intelligence officer who reportedly fled to the U.S. shortly before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited here in June.

Col. Poteyev is believed to be the source who disclosed the U.S.-based agent network.

NSA counterintelligence officials suspect that members of the illegals network were used by Russia’s SVR spy agency to communicate with one or more agents inside the agency, which conducts electronic intelligence gathering and code-breaking.

It’s also very interesting that we’re even reading about this. It can only mean one of two things. Either the mole hunt itself was leaked and has put the entire operation in jeopardy, or NSA intentionally leaked news of the hunt to provoke a reaction from the leaker. Meaning they possibly know who it is and by leaking word of the hunt they can make the person or persons do something out of the ordinary. I tend to believe it was intentionally leaked by NSA.

I wonder where DOD has that Russian Colonel stashed? Russia is probably using every intel asset they have in this country to learn the whereabouts of Col. Poteyev.

When you consider the lengths Russia went to murder Alexander Litvinenko on UK soil using radioactive polonium-210, I’d say we had best bury that Col. as far underground as we can get him.

Here’s a great documentary about Alexander Litvinenko:

From The Washington Post:

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the “perfect sleeper agent,” though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.Eventually, Mak’s job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China — fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.

Mak was sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to “send agents here to steal America’s military secrets.” But it may already be too late: According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication.

The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an “intellectual vacuum cleaner,” has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said. Some are trained in modern electronic techniques for snooping on wireless computer transactions. Others, such as Mak, are technical experts who have been in place for years and have blended into their communities.

“Chi Mak acknowledged that he had been placed in the United States more than 20 years earlier, in order to burrow into the defense-industrial establishment to steal secrets,” Joel Brenner, the head of counterintelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview. “It speaks of deep patience,” he said, and is part of a pattern.

Spies like Chi Mak should get the death penalty for living here all these years and pretending to be a honorable American, but betraying his country all along.

At the same time, U.S. agents could probably learn a lot from these guys. You have to admire the dedication and patience it takes to pull off an intelligence operation that lasts 20 years.

This guy was sent here more than twenty years ago to be educated, employed, and then send back information to China. Imagine how many opportunities there was for Chi Mak to stop reporting back and just live a normal life. I’m sure China sends these kind of operatives to many countries around the world to the exact same kind of thing.

I’m not sure an American agent could pull off something like that. I don’t think you could find a CIA agent willing to move to a foreign country for the rest of his life and work as an undercover operative.

The whole thing is pretty amazing, and it really shows what a cunning adversary China truly is.

-Chris Jones