THIS DOESN'T REALLY WORK BOTH WAYS -- The Washington Post includes excerpts from reporter Joby Warrick’s new book about Carlos the Jackal, the infamous terrorist who electrified Europe in the 1970s. Warrick describes meeting Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a son of Venezuelan leftists, in Poissy Central Prison last year. Apparently, Carlos/Iilich wanted to show Warwick that he’s still got it. “I killed 83 people by my own hand,” he boasted. But when asked about a hostage taking in Vienna in 1975, in which three people died, he said, “You know,we didn’t intend to kill anyone.” Guess you can’t always have it both ways, eh?
And a birdie told us that retired LTG Mark Hertling’s book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, was announced as a Gold Winner by the Nonfiction Authors Association. Congrats LTG!
THE KREMLIN’S HIT JOB IN POLAND? The Associated Press reports that Poland has foiled an alleged Russian plot to assassinate a Ukrainian-American citizen in Warsaw—the first known attempt by Russia to target a U.S. citizen on the territory of another NATO country, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Polish authorities arrested a Russian citizen on Aug. 7 who allegedly had been recruited by Russian intelligence. The operation to thwart the would-be assassin was said to have been conducted in cooperation with U.S. intelligence services. But the identity of the intended victim—and precisely how the hit was supposed to go down—remain classified. Tusk offered one clue about Moscow’s motive: The target, he said, was “uncomfortable for the Putin regime.” Well that narrows it down.
DID YOU SEE THIS? New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) used its newly released 2026 threat assessment to disclose that it had quietly shut down an attempt by a Chinese state-linked outfit to get a foothold in the South Pacific — not through a shell company or a diplomatic cutout, but an observatory. According to reporting by Reuters, Purple Mountain Observatory, based in China, tried to install ground-based satellite-tracking equipment in New Zealand by working through a local company that was likely unaware that the equipment could collect intelligence of military value. NZSIS says China is the only country that has been conducting espionage "at scale," in New Zealand, though Intel officials stopped short of telling Kiwi businesses to stop doing deals with Chinese partners. (Especially for outfits with telescopes, apparently.)
GET YOUR A** OUT OF THE BOARDROOM — Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg reportedly has asked major defense firms to send board members, not just CEOs, into the Pentagon for classified briefings on "the severity of the threat" facing the U.S. It's an unusual move as the department pushes for a wartime industrial footing. His message to contractors: "Those who don't [change]... will be gone."
PYONGYANG’S SIDE HUSTLE: North Korea has apparently found a new way to monetize the American workplace: work-from-home jobs. A year-long Wall Street Journal investigation found that North Korean IT operatives are using stolen identities, AI-generated résumés and even face-swapping technology to land remote jobs at U.S. companies. This isn’t exactly a new headline but there are compelling new details about how it happens. According to the reporting, one cell applied to more than 1,000 companies in just three months time. But the paycheck is the point. The Treasury Department has found that as much as 90% of the workers’ salaries flows back to Kim Jong Un’s regime, with the operation generating as much as $800 million a year. Investigators traced some of that money to a company sanctioned for its connection to Pyongyang’s weapons program. And because even North Korean espionage needs an American gig economy, U.S. facilitators provide laptops, bank accounts and even stand-ins for job interviews and company meetings.
GERMANY’S SPIES GET PERMISSION TO SPY: The Guardian reports that the German cabinet has approved legislation dramatically expanding the powers of the country’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, and domestic security service, the BfV — including the authority to hack computer systems, disrupt foreign cyber operations and use spyware and AI to analyze data. The reforms (which must still pass parliament) would also allow German intelligence to take active measures against threats, including secretly neutralizing explosives. That provision comes amid growing concern over hybrid operations, including last week’s discovery of an explosive-laden drone at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt calls the overhaul a “security revolution” and said the goal was to turn Germany’s intelligence agencies into “genuine secret services.” Germany’s postwar intelligence apparatus has traditionally operated under unusually tight restrictions, thanks to the country’s less-than-fond memories of what happens when governments give spies too much freedom. For now, Germany is about to give its spies permission to do more spy stuff.
THE LAUNDRY TRUCK THAT WASN’T: President Trump’s recently revealed catering-truck switcheroo in Turkey has apparently given new life to one of the stranger bits of 9/11 lore. On a recent Joe Rogan Experience podcast, journalist Annie Jacobsen, by her own admission passed along an unverified tip, saying a “CIA spy pilot” named Ken Collins told that her George W. Bush was smuggled around Texas (or Florida) in a laundry truck on 9/11 to evade possible attacks before being taken to the “doomsday plane.” There’s just one problem: Bush’s movements that day are exceptionally well documented. He went from Sarasota to Barksdale Air Force Base to Offutt Air Force Base and then back to Washington aboard Air Force One. The Bush Presidential Library confirms the itinerary, as does extensive contemporary and retrospective reporting with no references to doomsday planes let alone laundry vehicles. Collins, who died in 2022 at age 93, is an intriguing source. He was a genuine CIA-associated A-12 Oxcart test pilot, later profiled extensively by Jacobsen herself, in her book Area 51 but not exactly a presidential security insider. So now we have a genuine 2026 presidential catering-truck deception apparently giving an entirely unverified 2001 laundry-truck tale a second life and putting us through the spin cycle.
RUSSIA’S LEIPZIG MESSAGE? WE COULD HAVE BLOWN UP YOUR PLANE. U.S. intelligence believes the explosive-laden drone discovered at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport was a Russian operation. According to The Guardian, German authorities, however, have not publicly endorsed that conclusion, leaving public attribution officially unresolved. The drone was found beside a Ukrainian cargo aircraft carrying ammunition and was packed with Semtex and a detonator. It reportedly may have struck the aircraft — but the bomb didn't explode. Investigators still aren't certain why. Which raises a deliciously sinister possibility: What if the point wasn't to blow up the plane, but to demonstrate that someone could? A Russian intelligence operation that leaves behind an unexploded bomb might be less about destruction than communication. No evidence currently establishes that was the plan. But if Moscow wanted to send a message without starting a war, “Nice airport you have there. Shame if something happened to it” is a pretty unmistakable one.
MOSSAD'S "BRING BACK AHMADINEJAD" PLAN GETS THE AXE — SO DO ITS ARCHITECTS: Regime change is easier to propose than to pull off. According to the Times of Israel, citing Israel's Channel 12, Mossad Director Roman Gofman has removed the chiefs of the agency's Intelligence Directorate and Iran Division. According to the reporting, the officials were believed to be the architects of a plan to topple the regime in Tehran by arming Kurdish factions under Israeli/U.S. air cover and installing former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new man in charge. Yes, that Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying one. Netanyahu reportedly used the plan to help talk President Trump into February's war. It didn't survive contact with reality, and neither did the two officials' job titles — though both are said to be staying on in Mossad in quieter roles. Their removal is a fate The National suggests is really about insulating Netanyahu from blowback.
ARE THERE ALIENS IN THE PAPERWOK? The Department of War is apparently not ready to phone home just yet. On Friday, the Pentagon announced the fifth release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena files, as part of something called the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters or “PURSUE.” (Because apparently even UFO disclosure needs an acronym.) The latest batch is now posted on the Pentagon’s UFO website, with the department promising that more files will be released on a “rolling basis.” The Pentagon offered few details about what’s actually in this latest installment, so this is a see for yourself kind of operation.
EX SECAF LOSES CLEARANCE. APPARENTLY AIR FORCE ONE DOESN’T TAKE CRITICISM WELL: The Pentagon announced on Friday that former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has lost his eligibility to access classified information and is barred from holding any sensitive position, accusing him of improperly disclosing classified information about the capabilities of the new Air Force One. Kendall says he did no such thing and says he hasn’t even been told precisely what he supposedly disclosed. The Pentagon’s action sends a very clear SIGNAL from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: suspected mishandling of classified information will not be tolerated. Well, at least from some people about some topics. Either way, the message from Hegseth is clear: Loose lips sink clearances and apparently, so do loose comments about pet presidential projects.
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