Epstein Secrets

arfare, conventional defensive rules do not apply. “There are no rivers or hills up here. It’s all flat. All advantage goes to the attacker,” General Hayden said in an inter- view in 2015 with the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. His point was that because there are no defensive positions, the United

cure debriefing room, he said that he had information that Russia would find interesting, but he wanted money in return. What interested me about the Pelton case was that Cherkashin proceeded to recruit Pelton, even though he was no longer working at the NSA and no longer had access to @ the NSA. In addi

urse grab them.” The final recruitment I asked Cherkashin about was that of Ronald Pelton, the civilian employee of the NSA who had retired in 1979. Pelton had left the NSA without taking any classified documents with him. After retiring, he had financial difficulties, and he sought to get money from the

and they are very grateful” American intelligence officers knowledgeable about the operations of the FSB, agreed with Kalugin’s assessment. General Hayden, for example, who served both as director of the NSA, CIA, and Air Force counterintelligence, told me in an interview that he saw no other possibilit

urse grab them.” The final recruitment I asked Cherkashin about was that of Ronald Pelton, the civilian employee of the NSA who had retired in 1979. Pelton had left the NSA without taking any classified documents with him. After retiring, he had financial difficulties, and he sought to get money from the

return. What interested me about the Pelton case was that Cherkashin proceeded to recruit Pelton even though he was no longer working at the NSA, and Pelton no longer had access to the NSA. In addition, since the FBI had 24 hour surveillance on the embassy, Pelton had almost certainly been photographed en

RSIGHT_020405 254 10. CHAPTER FIFTEEN Did Snowden Act Alone? > “Totality of Snowden’s Actions,”— Author’s interview with Michael Hayden. Also, “Hayden interview,” Meet The Press, NBC, December 15, 2013 “Maclean stole immensely valuable. ..”—See Appendix A, Donald Maclean “Whistle blower Bradley Bi

ously tapped into Soviet undersea cables in the Sea of Okhotsk, which connected a to the Soviet Pacific Fleet's mainland headquarters at Vladivostok. Pelton received another $30,000 from the KGB. “Did the information in his head proved valuable?” I asked. “As long as the NSA didn’t know the tap was comp

he residence of the Soviet ambassador to Austria. A KGB’s electronic communications expert, Anatoly Slavnov, was then sent to Vienna to supervise the Pelton debriefings. The debriefing sessions, which went on for 15 days, were from 8 AM to 6 PM. In them, Pelton managed to recall Project A, a joint NSA-CIA

. Unlike the telephone program that Snowden revealed, the PRISM program produced actionable intelligence until the time when Snowden blew it. General Hayden, who was NSA director during the three years following the 9/11 attack, wrote that these surveil- lance powers, among other things, “uncovered illici

4 “There's definitely a deep state”: Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, “Snowden Speaks.” 255 according to Cherkashin: Cherkashin, interview with author. 258 Pelton had left the NSA: George E. Curry, “Ex-intelligence Expert Guilty of Espionage,” Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1986. CHAPTER 26 The Handler 261 “As for