Jim Bamford
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Jim Bamford is an American author whom John Kiriakou describes as "a gifted writer and researcher, who wrote really the definitive book on NSA years ago."

On the day of this interview Bamford published Spy Fail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence, and Kiriakou raised it unprompted for one finding in particular.

The mole in the counterintelligence unit

"Over the last 10 years, the FBI has lost 10 of its China intelligence sources. 10 people have been either killed by the Chinese government or arrested for working on behalf of the FBI. Why is that? Because Peter Strzok's counterintelligence unit at the FBI had a Chinese mole in it."

The mole, on Bamford's account as Kiriakou relays it, was "a former CIA operations officer who was directed to go to the CIA and then later on to the FBI as a Chinese translator. This guy was arrested quietly in 2019 and is awaiting trial in Hawaii, of all places."

What Kiriakou takes from the silence

His reaction is directed at the press rather than at the bureau: "Why isn't this front-page news? There was a Chinese mole inside the FBI and we're now just learning about it thanks to Jim Bamford? That tells me that there's something grossly wrong with the mainstream media here."

See also

- Peter Strzok
- NSA Surveillance
- The death of investigative journalism
- FBI
