Smolenkov had been a junior diplomat in the Russian Embassy in Washington from 2006 when Yury Ushakov was the ambassador (1998-2008). After Ushakov returned to Moscow and became the foreign policy advisor to the President (2012), Smolenkov joined as a junior member of Ushakov’s staff. In detailing what intelligence sources revealed about Smolenkov’s rank and access to Kremlin intelligence, the Bellingcat organization of NATO has failed to identify when Smolenkov had been recruited; what intelligence access he had in Moscow; and when he was removed from his post – as the Kremlin later claimed. I was looking forward to reading Spyfail by James Bamford (Hachette, 2023) but the very first sentence of the introduction talks about the raid on Mar a’Lago in “Palm Springs, Florida”.

Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of

Left: Claudia Wright’s report on more espionage at a higher US government level than Bamford is aware of; it was published in 1986 by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), Belmont, Massachusetts; the AAUG wound up in 2007. Right: published in February 2022, the first history of US espionage in the Arab world based on Arab sources. James Bamford is forty years late in discovering that Israel not only spies against the US, but does so constantly and comprehensively, effectively escaping prosecution at the highest levels of government in Washington, and almost always lower down. Also before this, Bamford notes that North Korea was NOT a giant Potemkin village, let alone one without a façade.

Benjamin Church, Edward Bancroft and — most infamously — Benedict Arnold damaged the patriot cause during the Revolution.Of the three, only Arnold’s treason was revealed before he could operate for a significant period as a spy — and then only by happenstance, rather than due to any concerted counterintelligence effort.George Washington lamented the leaking of his military plans in the press of the day, saying that he “wished that our printers were more discreet”.And Abraham Lincoln famously quipped, “It’s not me that cannot keep a secret, it’s the people I tell that can’t.” MI5 also issued an alert to Parliament, accusing Christine Lee, a UK-based lawyer, of being “knowingly engaged in political interference” on behalf of the Chinese Communist party. She denies the allegation saying it is false and is suing MI5 for breach of human rights. The decision to issue the alert was taken after the authorities concluded the official secrets Act was not suitable for bringing a prosecution against her. MI5, working with counter-terrorism police, is understood to have issued other alerts to disrupt Chinese spy networks. Nevertheless, it is the person or persons who took those tools who are ‘to blame’ for giving the North Koreans the wherewithal to do what they did.More generally, the author appears incapable of the unbiased and dispassionate critique necessary to the success of any endeavor as uncertain as CI. At the same time, however, we should understand that, as CIA CI Chief James Angleton (or, more likely, one of his deputies citing his boss) said, “there are no friendly intelligence services.There are only the intelligence services of friendly nations”.All intelligence services are in business to collect privileged information and influence events to the benefit of the countries they serve. History is replete with examples of this involving even our closest allies.

Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Colla…

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative party leader and joint chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), an international group established to counter the Beijing regime, said the stark contrast between the Uk and the US in pursuing alleged spies highlighted Westminster’s “weak position”. Even before getting to the first actual “Spy Fail,” we have Sony execs going racist on Obama in text messages, and worse, they’re Jewish Sony execs. James Bamford . . . rips away the secrecy with [ The Puzzle Palace]. There have been glimpses inside the N.S.A. before, but until now no one has published a comprehensive and detailed report on the agency. The quality and depth of Mr. Bamford's research are remarkable . . . Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director's safe. In some sections it appears that he may even have that . . . By revealing the scope and opening up the operations of the N.S.A. without giving away its most sensitive secrets, Mr. Bamford has performed an important public service with this impressive book.”

Not a single suspect has been prosecuted in the UK for spying for China, compared with almost 150 in the US in the past three years alone, the Telegraph can disclose. Still, Bamford has convinced the French publisher Hachette to print a news update of the Israeli takeover of the US government. The issue is whether it is just that we're the ones who got the raw end of the deal, or if the code doesn't match the description.