China’s Hack Just Wrecked American Espionage

The Daily Beast ^ | 15 Jun 2015 | John Schindler

[Rockitz]

It's tough enough to be an undercover spy in the age of the Internet. China's hack of American personnel files just made it much, much harder.

The mega-hack of the Office of Personnel Management continues to get worse for Washington. Revelations of a second, even deeper intrusion into OPM servers bring distressing news that Pentagon employees, including intelligence personnel, are among the millions of Americans whose personal and security data have been compromised.

As The Daily Beast reported, this hack constitutes a disaster for Washington's counterintelligence operatives. Armed with very private information about the personal lives of millions of security clearance holders, foreign intelligence services can blackmail and coerce vulnerable officials. To make matters worse, foreign spies can use data purloined from OPM background investigations to head American mole-hunters off at the pass. For Beltway counterspies, the OPM breach will take decades to set right.

But there's an even more serious aspect of this compromise: the threat it poses to American intelligence operations abroad, particularly to officers serving under various false identities, or "covers," overseas. The Intelligence Community employs myriad cover mechanisms to protect the true identity of its spies posted outside the United States. Cover protects our officers and allows them to conduct their secret work without drawing as much attention to themselves. While many intelligence officers pose as diplomats, that is only one option, and some covers are deeper than others.

[9YearLurker]

Along with all the damage to our programs, how many lives are now at risk?

[Leaning Right]

Obama couldn’t be happier, hence his silence.

But I'm sure he is working on a response, should he be asked about this at his next press conference. Obama's answer will be some blend of "the computers were installed during the Bush years" and "the Republican budget cuts have made us all less safe".

Obama continues to talk as if he is some outside observer, and not the person responsible for the executive branch. And of course the media lets him get away with it.

[Future Snake Eater]

I just finished up a tour at a counter-intel unit. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

[molson209]

Obama’s way of helping out his Friends

[dware]

You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Well then, by all means, enlighten me!

[Carry_Okie]

Now why would there ever be such records wired into a network at all? The easy way to keep them totally secure is to have them transmitted only by request, with a person moving individual files across a physical barrier by flash drive.

[central_va]

Why is it Free Traders never show up on these types of threads?

[Lazamataz]

We are so screwed.

[SMARTY]

All Obama’s tech experts were busy over at Obama Care getting THAT enterprise up to speed. :)

[tacticalogic]

All Obama’s tech experts were busy over at Obama Care getting THAT enterprise up to speed. :)

I notice we haven't heard much from, or about Michael Daniel, Obama's "Cybersecurity Czar".

[Liberty Valance]

Well, Raymond Reddington can't fix this one, but on the upside he can't make it any worse.

[ForYourChildren]

This is actually because of Hilary’s server. But they can’t blame it on that. So they have found another patsy.

[Sheapdog]

Great point. Where are the free traders? Much like those who would have the US give all our technology to the East so as to level the playing field after WWII which is what happened. I’m sure we have many like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanson in place currently.

Here’s some relevant and disturbing history most would rather not acknowledge or say is all lies and conspiracy to keep up a façade rather than become disillusioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3vZNSAi-QM

The Best Enemies Money Can Buy — Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany — Prof. Antony C. Sutton

A classic interview by Professor Antony Sutton, who taught economics at California State University, and was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
In this talk, Prof. Sutton goes into his impeccable research on how a close-knit group of Western financiers and industrialists (centered around Morgan and Rockefeller in the US, and around Milner and the City financiers, in the UK) created and sustained their three supposed enemies right from the very beginning: Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and FDR’s Fabian socialism.

Particularly, he goes into how Wall Street/City of London financiers used their banking institutions and their industrial enterprises to:

1) Help finance and sustain the Bolshevik Revolution. Build up Soviet industry during Lenin’s Five-Year Plans, both through finance, technology/industrial transfers and technical assistance. Continue to build the Soviets throughout the entire Cold War, through the same kinds of deals. This included the Korea and the Vietnam eras, during which American troops were being killed by... Western-made Soviet equipment.

2) Build up Nazi Germany, both financially and industrially;

3) Get FDR into power in America as their man, and even draw up the New Deal policies, especially FDR’s National Recovery Act — designed by Gerard Swopes of General Electric and deeply welcomed by Wall Streeters Morgan, Warburg and Rockefeller.

Sutton was not a wild speculator. He was a distinguished academic researcher who documented his conclusions impeccably in his several works. Not being able to counter his research, the establishment (including academia) simply attempts to ignore it, and pretend it isn’t there.
The purpose for these Wall Street policies was very simple: to create, and globalize, what Sutton calls Corporate Socialism. A system under which everything in society is ruled by the state, and the state is, in its stead, controlled by financiers who, hence, get to rule and manage society, to their liking. In other words, to get society to work for the financiers, using a socialist state as an intermediary.
This is what we now know as the globalization economic model. As a result of all the clashes of the 20th century, most notably WWII and the Cold War (fought between powers that were manipulated and controlled by these banker cliques), the world has been ‘globalized’. Meaning that it has been entirely taken over by these financiers, and is ever closer to being completely ruled by them, through not only the national states and national central banking systems, but mainly through supranational agencies and institutions.

Go into Professor Sutton’s books, most notably the Hoover Institute’s series on Western technological/industrial transfers to the Soviets and the ‘Wall Street’ trilogy. If you have a difficulty in purchasing the original books, you’ll find most of them are easily available online, on pdf form.

[Thunder90]

The problem is that not only does China have this information, so do the Russians. That compramises all of our operations in both E. Asia and E. Europe, as well as the middle east if they share this info with Iran.

[HomerBohn]

The foreign exchange student is secretly pleased about all this. It makes the destruction of the nation he despises easier and quicker.

With the entire central socialist government full of either conspiracy agents or mental defectives, our demise is made much simpler.

[minnesota_bound]

This along with the clintons and obama taking bribes from anyone. Anytime you have democrats in charge our nations security is sold out.

[trebb]

Kind of ironic that the same government that wants to collect all that data "and only use it "if circumstances warrant") can't protect any of its data and has basically collected a huge pool of data that may be accessed by our foreign enemies (not to be confused with our own public servantsenemies). It looks like all the security lapses for the Obama Care "system" was just a small look into the overall lousy security posture.

[riverdawg]

“I remember back in the early 80’s that the Soviets were able to identify all CIA operatives in the field simply because their paychecks and retirement plans were different than regular Fed employees.......................”

Do you remember any details about this? It seems odd, because many CIA operatives have “cover” identities in which they are employees of (and receive paychecks from) the Department of State, the Department of Agriculture, USAID, or even NGOs and private companies which are then reimbursed by the CIA under an IPA agreement.

[Red Badger]

I don’t remember the exact details, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, a former KGB operative, in an interview said that they knew who everybody was, and that is how they were able to know who they really were.....................

[rockinqsranch]

“This will cost the lives of good people while the political class escapes paying for their stupidity.”

So true, but in your post #7 lies the greater truth. Why in the ‘H’ IS such important information tied to the internet where it can be hacked. It’s as though “THEY” are playing some high stakes game, perhaps a twist on Russian Roulette with our most sensitive of files, secrets, and documents.

It makes sense, and always has to me to have such information that is allegedly blanketed, cloaked with intense security off the internet.

I don’t think it matters the precedence of the founding of the internet, it’s original purpose. The internet isn’t what it was supposed to have been so many years ago as what it turned to be today. Someone dropped the ball long ago when it became quite obvious the direction the internet was taking. We asked for this by not taking our national security seriously enough.