Chinese Spies and Russian Honey Traps | Episode 102

William Tucker returns for our regular Thursday evening counterintelligence chat. We start off by discussing the resource and coordination challenges in addressing Chinese espionage but quickly pivot to thoughts on Russian cases, honey traps, and the universally terrible outcomes experienced by American defectors and spies.

The Poisoning of Sergei Skripal | Episode 94

Fred Burton, former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the Diplomatic Security Service and the author of GHOST: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent’s Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice, and Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi joined me shortly after the attack on Sergei Skripal. Skripal. a former Russian double agent now living in the UK, was poisoned with a Russian novichok nerve agent developed during the Soviet era. We look at the many implications of this brazen attack, security issues surrounding it, and the need for a serious response.

The Jerry Chun Shing Lee Case | Episode 92

William J. Tucker, a regular contributor on counterintelligence and security topics for Blogs of War and Covert Contact, returns for a look at the Jerry Chun Shing Lee case. Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA case officer, is suspected by many to have compromised CIA activities in China but has only been charged with the less serious crime of unlawful retention of national defense information.

Economic Espionage: No One Is Immune | Episode 84

William J. Tucker, a regular contributor on counterintelligence and security topics for Blogs of War and Covert Contact, joins me for a deep dive on economic espionage. Organizations face far more risk from this threat than they realize, or want to realize, and most are no match for an interested foreign intelligence service. We discuss these threats, share some case studies, and look at what companies can do to better protect themselves.

You can follow William on Twitter @tuckerwj.

Beyond Russia: Overlooked Counterintelligence Threats | Episode 72

Russian intelligence presents a significant challenge for the United States but it is far from the only threat. There are dozens of nations and non-state actors actively collecting against us at any given time. There are countless companies engaging in corporate espionage. Every organization has a hostile insider – or will soon enough. Threats are everywhere. Podcast regular William J. Tucker joins me to review these threats, how governments allocate resources to fight them, and strategies that any individual or organization can employ to protect themselves.

Russia, Trump, and Hillary | Episode 62

In episode 62 I look at what may have been the most bizarre presidential debate in U.S. history. Covert Contact regular William Tucker joins me later in the show to discuss the U.S. government’s formal acknowledgement that Russia is meddling in the U.S. election.

Listener email makes its debut in this episode. If you’d like to submit your own thoughts for possible inclusion in future episodes please drop me a line at covertcontact@protonmail.com.

Russian Hackers Run Wild on the DNC | Episode 52

Regular Blogs of War and Covert Contact contributor William Tucker joins me to discuss the apparent Russian state-sponsored hack of the DNC. We also spend quite a bit of time discussing the sorry state of security. We’re talking about cyber issues constantly but the intrusions, threats, and vulnerabilities seem to be mounting. There is a lot of cybersecurity chatter but it seems to have generated very little urgency or understanding.