Epstein Secrets

owden breach. Despite the immense potential damage of the theft, it was not until June 10 that the CIA’s director, John Owen Brennan, and his deputy, Michael Morell, were briefed by the NSA. When Morell realized how much data Snowden had taken, he was astounded. “You might have thought of all the government enti

sian espionage. It came in the form of a message from one of its best-placed moles in the Russian intelligence service. This surreptitious source was Alexander Poteyev, a fifty-four-year- old colonel in the SVR, which was the successor agency to the first chief directorate of the KGB. While the FSB took over the KGB

rk zone where there are just so many dan- gerous things going on.” The effects of Snowden’s intervention were soon realized by the CIA, according to Michael Morell, who had closely followed intel- ligence about terrorist groups in the Middle East ever since he had acted as the CIA’s briefer for the president on

who requested anonymity, interview with author. CHAPTER 18 The Unheeded Warning 185 “The NSA—the world’s”: Morell, Great War of Our Time, 287. 185 Alexander Poteyev: Sergei L. Loiko, “Former Russian Spymaster Convicted of Treason,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2011. 186 “live under cover in the West”: Pavel Sudop

by Russia to block secret sources of NSA surveillance. “Within weeks of the [Snowden] leaks, communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Michael Morell who was at that time the Deputy Director of the CIA, revealed. It indicated that at least part of the US communications intelligence that Snowden had

out after the Cold War ended, the KGB also had the ability to sustain moles for decades. The CIA also had its share of long term successes, such as Alexander Poteyev, who fed the CIA secrets for over ten years while burrowing into Russian intelligence. In the choreography of these operations, as in Le Carre’s fict