Guest Post by Paul J. Redmond This story was originally published by FBI Studies, 10 July 2023. Paul J. Redmond served 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s Clandestine Service, operating primarily against the Warsaw Pact/Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. He served as Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center from 1991 to 1995, where he led the CIA’s investigation that identified Aldrich Ames. In 1995, Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch appointed Redmond as the Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence. After retiring in 1997, he was appointed Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the…

Russia’s intelligence agency has been on a mission to generate “mayhem on British and European streets,” the head of MI5 has said.MI5’s director general Ken McCallum also warned the UK faces the most “complex and interconnected” threat the organisation has ever seen. The director general also said that there have been 20 Iran-backed plots in the UK since 2022. He said the complex mix of terror-related threats and threats from nation states means that MI5 has “one hell of a job on its hands”. He said Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem…

Israel has expanded its military operation in Lebanon with up to 15,000 members of the Israeli Defence Forces on the ground in the country. The disclosure came just hours after the IDF announced it had claimed to have killed a senior Hezbollah figure in Beirut. The IDF said that it had killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, who ran Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, in airstrikes on Lebanon’s capital and other areas overnight. On Monday alone, the IDF’s air force hit the country 120 times in attempts to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal. The IDF also announced that it was expanding its ground incursion…

By Michael Sulick, Lucinda Webb, Mark Kelton This story was originally published by The Cipher Brief, 05 February 2023. OPINION — Robert Baer’s book The Fourth Man leads readers to conclude—falsely—that highly accomplished, retired CIA officer Paul Redmond was himself a long-time spy for the KGB. As former leaders of Counterintelligence who were directly involved over decades in the Russian operations and investigations discussed in the book, we found the book to be riddled with errors and what we found to be irresponsible, false assumptions from Mr. Baer’s primary sources. Let’s dig in to why. CIA counterintelligence investigators who were directly involved in the…

This story was originally published by The Telegraph. Phil Shiner made a string of high-profile accusations that the British Army abused Iraqi civilians, but now his world has come crashing down. Once upon a time, Phil Shiner was the superstar Left-wing lawyer feted by civil rights groups Liberty and Justice. After all, he was the man daring to accuse members of the British armed forces of the murder and physical abuse of hundreds of Iraqi civilians during the Second Gulf War. Both Liberty and Justice named him as their lawyer of the year in 2004. But now, in the space of just a…

This story was originally published by Oana Lungescu, RUSI. Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte assumes the mantle of NATO Secretary General amid significant global challenges. How can he succeed in his new role? The beginning of October marks the end of an era for NATO. Jens Stoltenberg will complete his decade-long tenure, and former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will take over as Secretary General. They will start the day together on 1 October at NATO headquarters in Brussels, laying a wreath at the granite memorial for the fallen and addressing the alliance’s civilian and military staff, before Stoltenberg hands over the…

Ukraine is creating a new military industrial complex to strengthen its defence capability and reduce reliance on Western Allies.

Israel has sustained its first casualties since the launch of its cross-border incursion into southern Lebanon. Eight soldiers have been killed in battles with Hezbollah and, tragically, they are unlikely to be the last casualties of this conflict. Captain Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, a squad commander in the ‘Egoz’, an elite commando unit specialising in guerrilla warfare, was killed in what was reported to be an ambush by Hezbollah fighters in a village in southern Lebanon. Other Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) personnel killed in clashes with Hezbollah on Wednesday include four members of a commando unit, two soldiers serving with…

Israel is fighting for its survival in a multi-front war being funded by Iran and executed by the Islamic state’s proxies, a former US senior officer has claimed. US Admiral Mike Hewitt spoke out less than 24 hours after Israel was attacked by more than 200 Iranian ballistic missiles. The former officer also said that he now expected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order his commanders to directly target Iran’s senior leaders. Adm Hewitt also said that he believed the Israeli Defence Forces would also target Iran’s military Industrial base and try to denude its ability to fire more…

Britain has been urged to create a spacecraft capable of removing the growing amount of debris and redundant satellites from the earth’s orbit. Speaking at the Labour Party Conference, Stephanie Ayres of UK Space said that the UK could become the “garbage man” by taking on the role of minimising low earth orbit collisions between defunct satellites. Many scientists fear that the collisions between satellites, known as the Kessler Effect, could create a disaster with a chain reaction of collisions potentially taking out nearly all of earth’s communications. In the UK alone this would cost the economy £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion)…

I had to search over 37 years to find a time when we saw such a positive change in attitude. The last time this occurred at a similar level was when the IFP announced its participation in the 1994 election,

The hostages have been forgotten and there had been an “abject failure of international diplomacy” in securing a hostage return deal.