Let's Talk About Israelis Hacking The FBI and Our Democracy
The problem is large and should be a part of any peace discussion
Over the years I’ve been targeted by Israeli hacking operations. That experience was a major part of my decision to become a confidential human source for the FBI and to do all that I could to counter the threat.
To some extent I have failed. The weapons continue to be used against Americans. I haven’t been terribly surprised to see the proliferation of these weapons targeting Americans. “Cyber is a real instrument of power,” as Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu told us at a cybersecurity conference.
One time — a Turkish friend of mine — watched as my entire phone was downloaded right in front of him. Several apps were opened and screenshotted. Another time I got a message when I signed up for a dating website with 🇺🇸 and middle finger emojis. I’ve been banned from nearly all the dating sites given their Israeli ties. (No great loss!)
In some other cases the Israelis have come after me because of the companies I’ve started while in other cases it’s because of my alleged connections with pro-Palestinian or far right types, both of which are targets of Israeli activity.
I’ve also had fake venture capital firms — really Israeli fronts — steal my ideas and try to sideline me from my own companies. It’s become somewhat cartoonish, to be honest, and I take it all in stride.
In still other cases they’ve reached out to me in a kind of elicitation after many years of not speaking. The Fifth Column is real and probably goes up to the cabinet level as recent activity in Gaza makes all too clear.
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Here’s The New Yorker discussing whistleblower Johnathan Buma:
Buma moved on to other projects, eventually cultivating sources related to the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Yet he wrote in his statement that he felt internal pressure to cease contact with one of the best of those sources. According to Buma, the ostensible reason was racist statements that the source had posted online, even though such overt racism was part of what enabled the source “to infiltrate various tightly knit, dangerous and violent fringe groups.” By the beginning of 2022, Buma felt so thwarted by his superiors that he filed a whistle-blower complaint with the Bureau, complaining of what he described as unjustified reprisals and efforts to thwart legitimate investigation.
I’m that source — codenamed GENIUS — and it’s true that I was reporting on Israeli and other foreign intrigue around January 6th, the full story of which has never really been discussed in the press or the mainstream media.
Inspired, in part, by the great documentary series, The Lobby, about Israeli activity in the UK, I decided many years ago to infiltrate a lot of these types of organizations. (Shamefully the U.S. version of The Lobby wasn’t released in the United States due to pressure from Nick Muzin, a pro-Israel spy lobbyist who worked for Senator Tim Scott and Ted Cruz and, for a time, acted as a go between the Kushner administration and the Qataris.)
One of the ways I continue to be victimized by the Israelis is by journalists trying to suggest I’m some kind of alt-right troll or Trump supporter. I support President Joe Biden and Governor Chris Christie who helped arrest Israelis spies, including Charles Kushner.
Interestingly a lot of journalists are having a hard time understanding that getting close to a lot of deeply compromised or problematic people was always my intent. I would have thought that journalists would understand that this is called a cover… or is it an excuse for avoiding talking about the Israeli elpehant in the espionage world? You’ll find that there’s a lot of compromised journalists, or even spies, at major newspapers.
Anyway, the FBI has a hard time talking about Israeli activity in large measure because the compromised nature of FBI special agents. Special Agent Charles McGonigal certainly didn’t act alone and I certainly find it interesting that the September 22nd report noted that the FBI office in Los Angeles and New York were both investigating. That’s a curious detail. So too is this one: “McGonigal kept framed portraits of himself shaking hands with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama as well as former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj in his home office.”
Did you catch that detail I emphasized? McGonigal never worked in Los Angeles so why is the FBI investigating in the Los Angeles office?
Might one of McGonigal’s accomplices have been Sussana Iljazi, an immigrant FBI agent who became a kind of poster girl for FBI diversity efforts and who worked with McGonigal in New York? Iljazi was recently reassigned abroad, her class notes detailed. Here it is:
Sussana Iljazi, SNR ’03 was recently promoted to Unit Chief, International Operations Division of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Iljazi has been with the FBI for 16 years, starting as a Contract Linguist. Prior to joining the FBI, Iljazi worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a District Adjudication Officer.
Promoted? Or exiled?
And how should we take the seeming early retirement of Acting Special Agent Rick Smith who has gone to go work for the Indian casino industry?
And isn’t it interesting that I was terminated as a confidential human source right when Smith became Acting Special Agent in Charge?
This termination was, of course, right after I was accused of my reports being “too good” despite being used as part of the President’s intelligence briefing.
A casino is a funny place to find a believing Mormon though perhaps not totally surprising given the history of Las Vegas.
Smith reportedly got very upset with Special Agent Buma when Buma was investigating Elon Musk’s ties to organized crime, especially Russian, cartel, Chinese and Israeli activity. I helped on those inquiries and introduced Buma and Musk right hand Jared Birchall.
Smith, who is Mormon, had been in touch with Birchall, who is Mormon, about Buma. Birchall was upset that Buma didn’t work with SpaceX lobbyist Bill McCabe, son of former FBI agent Andy McCabe. Yeah, it’s an incestuous revolving door relationship.
There’s also a religious angle here. Buma is an ex-Mormon and a religious skeptic. (The only time Buma had ever gotten mad at me was when I told him I was praying for him and his family! Buma and I bonded over having both been abused as young men — he be an elder in the Mormon church.)
Anyway not for nothing has it been suggested that there’s a cabal of Mormons operating and covering up for each other’s crimes in the LA field office, especially in the counterintelligence division. It’s worth quoting in detail from this post on “Why Mormons Make Great FBI Recruits”:
In 1984, FBI agent Richard W. Miller was arrested; he later became the first FBI agent ever to be indicted for and eventually found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. (Miller wasn’t the first Mormon to be in this position, though: earlier in 1984, a Mormon who had worked in Army intelligence was arrested for passing secrets to the Soviets.) Miller had been recruited at BYU in the 1960s, the New York Times reported. At the time, the FBI had been particularly interested in candidates with strong Spanish skills, and Miller had minored in the language. By the 1980s, though, he was under close supervision at work and had started dabbling in petty theft, when a Soviet woman approached him.
Miller had been assigned to interview émigrés like Svetlana Ogorodnikov, but she was much better at her job than he was at his. His performance as an agent had been lackluster, and his personal life was not going much better, as, not long before his arrest, he was excommunicated from the Mormon church for adultery. Soon, he and Svetlana were sleeping together and discussing plans to exchange information for money. Miller later said he was trying to use Svetlana as a source, not the other way around, but he did pass a classified document to her and her husband, Nikolay.
At Miller’s trial, testimony revealed a tangle of religion and work at the Los Angeles bureau where he worked. One Mormon FBI agent said that he’d understood that Miller had been put under his command, on a prestigious counterintelligence squad, “because of our common religious background.” Another agent, Matt Perez, testified that Richard T. Bretzing, the head of the L.A. bureau and a Mormon bishop, had protected Miller and kept him from being fired.
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Not long before Miller’s Soviet dalliance came to light, Perez, a Latino FBI agent, had filed his first discrimination complaint with the equal employment opportunity office. In the course of the next few years, he, along with more than 300 other agents, would file a class action suit against the FBI for racial and religious discrimination. Part of their complaint was that their Mormon higher-ups had favored agents of their own religion.
The judge ruled in the Hispanic agents’ favor on the racial discrimination charge, and though he rejected the religious discrimination charges, he did write that the testimony at the trial showed that Mormon leaders “made personnel decisions which favored members of their church at the expense of Hispanic class members.”
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Often, after a long career in the FBI, agents will join the Latter-day Saints’ Security Department. Bird, the FBI agent who worked with Hoover, became head of church security; Richard Bretzing, the L.A. bureau chief who was so key in the spread of the idea of a Mormon Mafia, left the bureau in 1988—and became managing director of the same office.
It's worth paying a lot more attention to the Netanyahu family connection to the Mormons... and to his closeness with the Mormon who got closest to becoming president in his own right: his old friend Mitt Romney.
Boy did America dodge a bullet by avoiding a Romney presidency.
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We’re going to talk about Israeli activity a lot more whether people like it or not and whether or not it’s safe for us to do so.
Author James Bamford suggests that the FBI is essentially uninterested in bringing counterintelligence cases against Israelis. It is true that for a long while Israeli operations seemingly went unpunished… that is, until now.
What particularly got my attention in today’s announcement from the DOJ was this statement:
From approximately November 2014 to September 2019, AZARI engaged in an extensive spearphishing campaign that targeted individuals and companies in the U. S. and around the globe. AZARI owned and operated an Israeli intelligence firm. Clients hired AZARI to manage “Projects” that were described as intelligence gathering efforts but were, in fact, hacking campaigns specifically targeting certain groups of victims, including climate change activists and individuals and financial firms that had been a critical part of the German payment processing company Wirecard A.G. AZARI paid different hacking groups, including a particular group located in India, to send spearphishing emails to victims of the various Projects. The hacking groups updated AZARI on their progress, including sending him lists that tracked their hacking efforts against specific victims. The hackers also sent AZARI reports, advising when they were successful in accessing victims’ accounts and stealing information.
One of AZARI’s hacking Projects was focused on targeting individuals and organizations involved with climate change advocacy. Some of the hacked documents that were stolen from various of the victims’ online accounts were leaked to the press, resulting in articles relating to the New York and Massachusetts Attorneys Generals’ investigations into Exxon Mobil Corporation’s knowledge about climate change and potential misstatements made by Exxon regarding what it knew about the risks of climate change.
Clients of AZARI’s Israeli private intelligence company paid AZARI more than approximately $4.8 million over a nearly five-year period for managing the intelligence gathering and spearphishing campaign. AZARI executed his crimes deliberately and over an extended period primarily for his own self-enrichment. Some of AZARI’s thousands of victims have described the devastating personal, financial, and reputational impact AZARI’s crimes had on them. Victims have described the persistent and relentless targeting of them and their associates, as well as the theft of their identities and personal data, as “psychological assault” that has caused them “anxiety, paranoia, depression, sleeplessness, and fear,” and the victims have expressed continued concerns for their personal safety.
Why are Israelis hacking climate activists? Why are they hacking critics of Wirecard? Israeli interesting all the ties between Christian Angermayer and Wirecard isn’t it?
We need to explore that more closely, I should think.
But the most under explored story lately is the role of Israeli hacking efforts within the United States, particularly against Hunter Biden. There we need look no further than Yaacov Apelbaum, an Israeli who seemingly pops up all over the place.
Rather hilariously even USA TODAY is getting involved:
There's no evidence to suggest Apelbaum, 60, is a spy. He has acknowledged contracting with government intelligence and defense agencies, but he's tight-lipped about much of his background.
"I used to operate in that world," he said, declining to elaborate.
Actually Yaacov Apelbaum still is an Israeli spy and the Israelis, particularly those in military intelligence, have been heavily involved in hacking our sense making apparatus. They’ve robbed us of our sense of safety even in our own homes. By raiding Special Agent Buma they are sending a message: We will treat you as Palestinians.
For those paying attention at home Apelbaum helped implement “anti-spying infrastructure” then popped up to provide a blogger in St. Louis cover to provide Steele and January 6th disinformation, attack congresswomen Ilhan Omar and AOC and set up Hunter Biden.
Apelbaum even has a contract with Border Patrol now. Sure makes you wonder what’s going to happen with all that money spent on the border…
My, it’s sure going to be pretty awkward when the released January 6th tapes show all the Israeli activity at the Capitol.
Maybe that’s the real reason that Netanyahu asset Kevin McCarthy refused to release the tape?
We will tackle this subject of Apelbaum later.