Cnn
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Foreign opponents, including Russia and China, have recently ordered their intelligence services to strengthen the recruitment of US Federal employees Working in national security, targeting those who have been dismissed or believe that they could soon be, according to four families familiar with the recent American information on the issue and a document examined by CNN.
Intelligence indicates that foreign opponents are impatient to exploit the efforts of the Trump administration to make mass layoffs through the federal workforce – a plan exposed by the staff management office earlier this week.
Russia and China focus their efforts on recently dismissed employees with security authorizations and probationary employees at the risk of termination, which can have precious information on American critical infrastructure and the vital government bureaucracy, according to two sources. At least two countries have already created recruitment websites and started to aggressively target federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.
A document produced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said that the intelligence community had evaluated with “great confidence” that foreign opponents were trying to recruit federal employees and to “capitalize” in terms of the Trump administration for mass layoffs, according to a partially exposed copy examined by CNN.
He added that foreign intelligence agents were invited to seek potential sources on LinkedIn, Tiktok, Rednote and Reddit.
At least one foreign intelligence agent has led an asset to create a business profile on LinkedIn and publish employment advertising, and to actively pursue federal employees who indicate that they are “open to work,” said the NCIS document.
Opponents believe that employees “are the most vulnerable at the moment,” said another of sources. “Out of work, bitter to be dismissed, etc.”
“It does not take much imagination to see that they reject federal workers with a multitude of institutional knowledge represent incredibly attractive objectives for the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries,” said a third familiar source with recent American evaluations in the United States in CNN.
Intelligence seems to confirm what was previously a hypothetical fear for current and American officials: that mass layoffs could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services which could seek to exploit former financially vulnerable or resentful employees. The Ministry of Justice has charged several former military and intelligence officials for providing American information to China in recent years.
“China has always undertaken to develop relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in the internal affairs of the other,” said the spokesman for the Chinese embassy Liu Pengyu. “We oppose substantive speculation on China without factual basis.”
CNN contacted the office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as the Russian Embassy in Washington to comment.
CIA career officials have discreetly discussed this risk and how to alleviate it in recent weeks, current and old intelligence officials previously said cnn. The director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this week suggested that these discussions represented a “threat” made by employees of the unfair government – rather than a clinical warning of potential risks posed by the aggressive aggressive strategy of President Donald Trump – and that those involved should be penalized.
“I am curious to know how they think it’s a good tactic to keep their jobs,” Gabbard told Fox News Jesse Watters on Tuesday. “They are essentially exposed by doing this indirect threat using their propaganda arm via CNN that they used again and again to reveal their hand, that their loyalty is not at all in America. It is not to the American people or the Constitution. It is for themselves.
“And they are exactly the kind of people we have to get rid of, to get rid of so that the patriots who work in this area, who are attached to our main mission can focus on this,” she said.
Several current officials from all the national security agencies who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity expressed their frustration in the face of the administration’s response to what they consider very real warnings – and not partisan shifts.
“Employees who believe they have been mistreated by an employer have historically been much more likely to disclose sensitive information,” said Holden Triplett, who was director of counterintelligence at the National Security Council in the first Trump administration and is a former FBI attaché in the American Embassates in Moscow and Beijing. “We can create, although somewhat involuntarily, the perfect recruitment environment.”
“This is not reality TV,” said another former intelligence official. “There are consequences.”
The CIA and the Ministry of Defense weigh significant staff reductions. The Pentagon said in a memo last week that more than 5,000 probative employees, who, in most cases, were in their work for a year or less, could be dismissed in the short term. And the CIA has already dismissed more than 20 officers for their work on diversity issues, many of which now dispute their dismissal before the court.
The CIA is also aggressively seeking to recruit unhappy government employees in contradictory countries “all the time”, noted a former intelligence official – using similar tactics. The agency has published a series of public recruitment videos aimed at persuading employees of the Russian government unhappy to spy on the United States, videos which detailed the means to contact the agency safely.
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The CIA may have already inadvertently put certain American secrets within the reach of foreign spies and pirates. In an effort to comply with the executive decree to reduce the federal workforce, the CIA earlier this month sent to the White House an extraordinarily unusual email listing all the new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less-a list that included CIA officers who were preparing to operate under coverage-on an unanswered messaging server.
Some of these officers, who have had access to classified information on agency operations and professions, can now be terminated as part of the layoffs.
This story has been updated with new reports.
Sean Lyngaas of CNN contributed the reports.