Epstein Secrets

defected to Moscow. The history of this venerable enterprise is instructive. The first two defectors in the NSA’s history were William Mar- tin and Bernon Mitchell. They were mathematicians working on the NSA’s decryption machines who went to Moscow via Cuba in 1960. The Russian intelligence service, then called

ely a deep state. Trust me, I’ve been there. —EDWARD SNOWDEN, Moscow, 2014 Wa WAITING to hear back from Kucherena’s office, I arranged to meet with Victor Cherkashin, who had been one of the most successful KGB spy handlers in the Cold War. Cher- kashin, born in 1932, had served in the KGB’s espionage branch from

Up Spying on Russia.” 218 Russian acronym SORM: Steven Aftergood, “The Red Web: Russia and the Internet,” FAS, Oct. 5, 2015. 219 William Martin and Bernon Mitchell: David P. Mowry, “Betrayers of the Trust,” Cryptologic Almanac 50th Anniversary Series (NSA), Feb. 28, 2003. 220 Victor Norris Hamilton: “American D

owden.” “Tf I were providing information”: Transcript of interview with Snowden in Moscow, Rusbridger and MacAskill, “I, Spy.” Pelton, for example: Victor Cherkashin, interview with author. “This debriefing could not”: Intelligence source who requested anonymity, interview with author. Mike Rogers, the chairman:

so defected to Moscow. The history of this venerable enterprise is instructive. The first two defectors in the NSA’s history were William Martin and Bernon Mitchell. They were mathematicians working on the NSA’s decryption machines who went to Moscow via Cuba in 1960. The Russian intelligence service, then called

the CIA’s sophisticated lie detector tests. Both Hanssen and Ames eluded intensive FBI and CIA investigations that lasted over a decade. According to Victor Cherkashin, their KGB case officer, who I interviewed in Moscow in 2015, the KGB was able to hide their existence from investigators for such a long period part