Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel named a new chief of the domestic intelligence service on Monday, moving his government closer to a showdown with the Supreme Court, which temporarily suspended the dismissal of the current spy chief earlier this month. Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced that Eli Sharvit, a former head of the Navy, would … Read more
The war in Ukraine is at an inflection point, with President Trump seeking rapprochement with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, and pressing for an end to the fighting. But for nearly three years before Mr. Trump’s return to power, the United States and Ukraine were joined in an extraordinary partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning … Read more
President Trump has long had, at best, a cavalier attitude about the handling of classified material. In his first term, he took a photograph of a satellite image of an Iranian launch site that had been included in his daily intelligence brief and posted it on social media. During a meeting in the Oval Office, … Read more
Defense secretaries usually take a hard line when it comes to the disclosure of classified information on their watch. During the George W. Bush administration, Donald H. Rumsfeld said that those who break federal law in doing so should be imprisoned. His successor, Robert M. Gates, said it should be a career-ending offense for anyone … Read more
It was a hoax. The information wasn’t classified. Somehow the journalist got “sucked into” the Signal chat, either deliberately or through some kind of technical glitch. In the days since the editor in chief of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently included in a group chat of top U.S. officials planning a military strike … Read more
Members of President Trump’s cabinet insisted at a House committee hearing on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with using a consumer messaging app to discuss U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen. On Tuesday, the spy chiefs told the Senate that they did not believe any of their material, no classified “intelligence,” … Read more
Oleg Gordievsky, who was the top K.G.B. agent in London until he defected to the West in 1985 and revealed himself as a longtime double agent for British intelligence — making him one of the most highly placed Western spies during the Cold War — was found dead at his home in Godalming, southwest of … Read more
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Trump’s push to close down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a federally funded news organization that was born out of the American efforts to counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. The judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a … Read more
The nation’s top two spy chiefs who participated in a Signal chat discussing U.S. strikes in Yemen rejected assertions that detailed military information on planned and completed strikes was classified intelligence under questioning from Democratic senators on Tuesday. But even as the two officials, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, … Read more
A foul cell in a Moscow detention center was about the last place an American businessman named Michael Calvey expected to find himself after spending 25 years building a flourishing venture capital firm in Russia that transformed some tech startups into global brands. First, beefy agents from the F.S.B., the federal security service, ransacked his … Read more