New in SpyWeek: China, Cuba, Iran and an Air Force Defector

New in SpyWeek: China, Cuba, Iran and an Air Force Defector Also: Spy agencies undermine Trump claims on Iran, CIA hit squads in Mexico, Tulsi tumult, Kash crash, big terrorism bust Witt’s Run: The defection of former Air Force intelligence specialist and OSI agent Monica Witt to Iran was revealed by the Justice Department in 2019, so it’s not clear why the FBI ballyhooed this week that it was offering $200,000 for information leading to her capture (unless it was an attempt to deflect attention from yet another report on the unbecoming behavior of Director Kash Patel.) Witt is believed to have converted to Islam and defected to Iran in 2012-2013. The pattern of her evolution from a Farsi-trained, airborne cryptologist to ideological defector got an interesting treatment from the Warsaw-based law firm Skarbiec, in “The Sergeant Who Became Fatemah Zahra.” Cuba Con Carnage: The purpose of CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Havava last week was to “deliver a warning to the government that it had to make economic changes and stop allowing Russia and China to operate intelligence posts in Cuba,” said The New York Times. The expected DOJ indictment of Raúl Castro this Wednesday “will ramp up pressure for regime change in Cuba and could be a prelude to a U.S. military operation, just as the Trump administration sent troops into Venezuela in January to capture indicted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro,” USA Today controversially opined. The political groundwork and possible pretext for attacking Cuba appeared Sunday in an anonymously sourced Axios report, based on “classified intelligence shared with Axios,” asserting that “Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and possibly Key West, Fla., 90 miles north of Havana.” Snap back: In 1962 the Pentagon and CIA developed “Operation Northwoods,” a plan that called for CIA operatives to carry out assassinations and sabotage ops against U.S. military and civilian targets, blame them on the Cuban government, and use them to justify a war against Cuba, according to multiple accounts over the years. The JSC approved it, but President Kennedy nixed the plan. CIA Hit Squads/Mexico: “Since last year, CIA operatives inside Mexico have directly participated in deadly attacks on several, mostly mid-level cartel members—a lethal campaign that’s gone largely unnoticed,” CNN exclusively reported last Tuesday. One of them came “earlier this spring,” when “a mysterious explosion blew up a car carrying an alleged cartel operative in broad daylight, on one of Mexico’s busiest highways, just outside of its capital city,” wrote Natasha Bertrand and colleagues.“It was a targeted assassination facilitated by CIA ops officers on the ground.” Don’t miss last week’s SpyTalk podcast with former CIA officer Jerry Watson and journalist Bob Drogin on the disastrous story of the CIA and “Curveball,” the infamous source who peddled a phony story of Iraqi WMD, and its relevance to today’s war against Iran. Tehran’s Got Guns: Intelligence leaks continue to undermine claims by senior Trump administration officials that they’ve got Iran on the ropes. “The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities,” The New York Times reported last Tuesday. SpyTalk’s Jonathan Broder wrote yesterday that U.S. intelligence gave Trump plenty of warnings about the volume and accuracy of Iran’s missiles, but he evidently ignored them. She You Later: The U.S. delegation to Beijing dumped everything their hosts gave them before leaving China on Friday. “American security personnel collected items such as burner phones, badges, press invitations, souvenirs, and memorabilia before discarding them prior to boarding the aircraft,” according to reports, because of “stringent American security protocols driven by espionage concerns.” Even while in Beijing, a New York Post headline screamed, “Chinese communists are infiltrating the U.S. by honeytrapping spies, duping pols, buying farmland, more.” But as the presidential party flew home, Trump seemed to brush off security officials’ longtime alarms about Chinese espionage and U.S. infrastructure hacking, telling reporters, “We spy like hell on them too.” Last Monday, meanwhile, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., resigned after the DoJ announced she had been charged with acting as an illegal foreign agent of China. CCP Blue: On Wednesday May 13th, a New York jury found Lu Jianwang, 64, guilty of running a clandestine foreign police station on American soil. It portrayed itself as an office to help Chinese nationals here with visa and other problems, but was actually set up to track PRC dissidents who sought refuge in the United States. (Fox) Top Jihadi Jammed Up: An Iraqi man accused of plotting at least 18 terror attacks in Europe in retaliation for the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, including firebombing a bank in Amsterdam and stabbing Jewish men in London, has been arrested and charged with supporting Iran-backed terrorist organizations. “According to a complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi sought to attack a New York City synagogue last month and provided an undercover law enforcement officer with photos and maps of Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, that he planned to target,” the A.P. reported. “Al-Saadi is also accused of involvement in two recent attacks in Canada: an attack on a synagogue and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto in March. U.S. prosecutors said he directed and urged other people to attack U.S. and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews.” And more. The Week in Tulsi: “In April 2025, DNI Tulsi Gabbard announced a new task force charged with restoring transparency and accountability to the intelligence community. Less than a year later, the panel was shuttered after it managed to smear an innocent woman as the January 6 pipe bomber.” Interesting tale of “How Tulsi Gabbard’s Secret Task Force Imploded,” from SpyTalk alum Seth Hettena. The Munchausen Candidate: The family of a Florida man is suing Google on grounds that its Gemini artificial intelligence large language model (LLM) indulged and encouraged his conspiracy fantasies and drove him to attack Miami International Airport, after which he killed himself. “It’s one of several federal court cases accusing so-called frontier AI firms of allowing their LLM models to contribute to death,” writes Peter Beck at Court Watch. “The cases paint a picture of Americans, young and old, affluent and poor, urban and rural, and educated and not, falling victim to AI’s most extreme effects.” I call bullshit on the claim that Cuba was planning to attack the US with drones or anything else. Unlike us, their leaders aren't insane.