Free Republic

Ukrainian official blames Russia for daylight murder of senior security officerA senior Ukrainian spy has been shot dead by an assassin using a silenced pistol on the streets of Kyiv.Col Ivan Voronich, a senior operational officer in Ukraine’s security service, was crossing the street near a block of flats in the capital’s Holosiivskyi district when he was approached by a man with a gun on Thursday morning.Footage shared on Telegram showed the moment Col Voronich was shot five times next to a row of parked cars.Following the attack, a man can be seen running along the street in the opposite...

There’s something new under the sun. Linda Sun, the embattled ex-aide to Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo accused of being a Chinese spy, will stay free on bail after facing a federal judge Monday on fresh bribery charges. Sun and her husband Chris Hu both pleaded not guilty during a four-minute proceeding in Brooklyn that set the stage for a potentially sprawling trial focused on accusations she served as a foreign agent for the People’s Republic of China and Chinese Community Party while working at the highest level of New York’s government. A federal grand jury last week returned...

A former CIA analyst pleaded guilty today to retaining and transmitting Top Secret National Defense Information to people who were not entitled to receive it, information which was publicly posted on a social media platform in October 2024.According to court documents, Asif William Rahman, 34, of Vienna, was an employee of the CIA since 2016 and had a Top-Secret security clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).“Mr. Rahman betrayed the trust of the American people by unlawfully sharing classified national defense information he swore an oath to protect,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s...

An ex-CIA analyst was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for leaking top secret documents about Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran last year. Asif William Rahman, 34, had pleaded guilty in January to two counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information after he was arrested for absconding with records from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency last October that indicated Israel was planning to launch airstrikes in response to a massive Iranian missile attack. Rahman, who had been a CIA employee since 2016 and had access to top secret documents, leaked the stolen information on social...

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends. Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust...

Some 2,500 documents, photos, and belongings of executed spy Eli Cohen were retrieved from Syria in a special Mossad operation, the Prime Minister's Office said on Sunday. The trove was recovered due to a secret, complex operation in cooperation with the official Syrian archive, which held thousands of classified items ever since his capture and subsequent execution in Damascus's al-Marjeh Square in 1965. The items included the keys to his Damascus apartment, forged passports, and photos he took during his espionage, particularly of senior Syrian officials. He also left behind notebooks and diaries that were seized by Syria's intelligence...

The Biden administration authorized federal law enforcement four years ago to target Americans engaged in "concerning non-criminal behavior" in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, with a specific eye on those serving in the military, owning firearms, or spreading what officials considered to be "xenophobic" disinformation, according to newly declassified documents. The stunning breadth of the mandate was disclosed when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a fully unredacted version of the prior administration’s "Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism." The June 2021 memo exposed for the first time the law enforcement and intelligence framework that led...

National Guard members deployed in New York prisons have endured unacceptable treatment, including female members filmed changing clothes and exposure to noxious fumes from makeshift drug use, The Post has learned. Governor Kathy Hochul drafted in 8,200 members of the state National Guard and declared a state of emergency in February after an illegal strike by prison workers left facilities dramatically understaffed. However, after being mandated for duty, the guardsmen were badly trained and subjected to various horrors in the prison environment, according to a source. A group of eight female members stationed at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford...

An alleged sushi-slinging spy is in ICE custody. Ming Xi Zhang, known as “Sushi John,” the 61-year-old owner of Ya Ya Noodles in Montgomery Township, NJ, was arrested March 24 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark. Zhang was convicted in April 2024 of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and sentenced to three years’ probation. In May 2021, he pleaded guilty to having served as an agent of China in 2016 without notifying the U.S. Attorney General. ICE says he legally entered the U.S. in 2000 but later “violated the terms of his lawful admission.”...

Fortune 500 companies have unwittingly hired thousands of software engineers who claim to be American developers but are actually North Korean citizens using stolen or fake identities. Through legitimate employment, the IT workers are illegally funneling their salaries to Kim Jong Un’s regime to fund prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. Treasury, State Department, and FBI collectively estimate the IT workers scam has generated hundreds of millions each year since 2018. About 95% of the résumés Harrison Leggio gets in response to job postings for his crypto startup g8keep are from North Korean engineers pretending...

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” CNN Senior Political and Global Affairs Commentator, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, former Chicago Mayor, and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stated that “you can’t get tariffs high enough for me” on China due to their intellectual property theft and economic spying, but the Trump tariff plan is pushing Japan and South Korea towards China. Emanuel said that the Trump tariff plan is more damaging to America’s allies than its adversaries and added, “[J]ust take one part of the world I’m very familiar with in Asia, China, you can’t get tariffs high...

Rep. Nick Langworthy, a New York Republican, revealed that one of Governor Kathy Hochul’s top aids was indicted by the FBI on a raft of treason-related charges. Linda Sun, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, allegedly worked at the behest of the Chinese government and was paid millions of dollars by the CCP. For context, Democrat Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, has been mired in controversy since she decided to clash with the Trump administration over her punitive congestion regulations and insane open border policy. Linda Sun, the disgraced former...

Astonishing news out of Israel today and confirmed by at least one Israeli TV network that Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Gen. Esmail Qaani, commander of the crack Quds Force, is in Jerusalem after being identified as an Israeli intelligence asset.There's no doubt that Qaani was under suspicion. On Sept. 27, 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most well-guarded people in the world, was killed when at least 80 bombs were dropped on a bunker in Beirut, where Nasrallah was meeting with top aides. Qaani was placed under house arrest and interrogated, according to Middle East sources. Qaani...

Washington -- As President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they are forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job. For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security andintelligence experts say. Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as...

WTH, Great Britain?President Trump is working to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student who has been an organizer of pro-Hamas rallies and who has been committing crimes, recruiting others to commit crimes, and illegally supporting a terrorist organization as an alien. John has been doing yeoman's work covering this case. Immigration law is explicit about the last: you may not have, may not now, nor may you at any point as a visa or green card holder support terrorists. It is black letter law. The Left is going crazy, because, well, the Left. If it is bad, they support...

The government now has access to its citizens messages and camera roll. This is the biggest breach of privacy Western civilisation has ever seen. Britain is in big trouble.

The Chinese balloon that sparked panic when it flew over the US two years ago was, as long suspected, set up to spy on Americans — but surprisingly with US-made technology, according to a new report. The 200-foot-tall balloon was loaded with a satellite communication module, sensors and other technology from at least five American firms, two sources with direct knowledge of a classified US military report told Newsweek. The craft — which floated from Alaska over Canada and into the US Midwest before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023 — could...

Some of the US’s most sophisticated spy planes that typically monitor the Chinese and Russians are now flooding the air targeting Mexican drug cartels as part of President Trump’s crackdown, a new report says. The ultra-hi-tech aircraft include Navy P-8s with advanced radar — and a U-2 originally designed to conduct high-altitude surveillance of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, CNN said Monday. It’s the first time a U-2 is believed to have been used by the US to root out cartels, military experts told the outlet. The decked-out spy planes have flown at least 18 missions over the...

DeepSeek’s terms of service explicitly states it stores user data on Chinese servers and that it governs that data under Chinese law — which mandates cooperation with the country’s intelligence agencies. But that didn’t stop U.S. Department of Defense workers from getting caught up in the DeepSeek hype this week and connecting their work computers to Chinese servers, using the service for at least two days, Bloomberg reported. The Pentagon has since started blocking DeepSeek on some of its network, although some employees could still access the service, according to Bloomberg. The U.S. government is grappling with the national security...

The United Kingdom has confirmed that one of its Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines surfaced close to the Yantar, a notorious Russian spy ship late last year, to make it clear it was being observed. The revelation came as the Royal Navy was once again closely tracking the Russian ship after it returned to British waters. According to the U.K. defense secretary, the Yantar has, in recent months, been “mapping the U.K.’s critical underwater infrastructure,” at a time when NATO, in general, is increasingly concerned about apparent sabotage to undersea cables. The Yantar was sailing in British waters in November last...