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Selling Secrets: The Problem No One Is Talking About
The FBI has arrested nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana, for trying to sell government secrets, plans for building nuclear submarines, to an unnamed foreign power. It turns out the agent of the foreign power was an undercover FBI agent. They were picked up doing a dead drop, Jonathan dropping off the secrets with Diana standing guard. Bad stuff.
How did they get caught? It seems that Mr. Toebbe solicited the foreign power by email. Apparently, this email was intercepted by the FBI. An FBI agent responded, pretending to be an agent of the foreign power.
Here is what bothers me. How did the FBI (or the National Security Agency or whoever) intercept that original email enabling the undercover operation? Does this mean that the FBI and/or NSA or someone else from the government is monitoring all emails sent by everyone to anywhere? Or are they just monitoring emails going to and from the unnamed foreign power?
I’m glad to see these treasonous criminals caught, but I am concerned about the methods used to catch them. What do those methods mean for our privacy and our freedom?
Published in General
Nope – released and relocated to Israel
If he were using his work email, your employer has the right to monitor all emails. I assumed he worked for the Department of Defense. You are told repeatedly, the government has a right to monitor your emails that come from a federally owned computer. If you have a secret clearance, you better believe your emails to foreign powers are under scrutiny. And rightly so.
How dumb would you have to be to use a DoD email to solicit the sale of national secrets?
I can’t imagine.
The Toebbe’s have two kids who are now essentially orphaned. Of course, the first thing…will the Merrit Garland Justice department even prosecute them?
Pretty stupid. But they don’t seem too bright. Perhaps their social media pages tipped the government in some way.
They were rabid lefties. BLM supporting and Trump hating. She was a teacher/indoctrinator.
My guess is that the foreign power is France or Australia, but I could also see it being Japan or South Korea. The first two are a guess based on the recent kerfuffle in that realm. The other two are both independent entities that have their own nuclear power plant designs, but could use clarity for the sake of a boat based plant.
Obviously these are wild guesses.
Interesting. The AUKUS pact is giving Australia access to American nuclear powered submarine technology, and France already has them. So, I suspect not.
Even countries that already have good nuclear technology could be interested in finding out about newer and better technology that they didn’t have to pay for discovering themselves.
But something like that could explain why they would turn down the deal – perhaps after copying the information just in case they find something useful in it.
Yes, Kfir (sweet pun, BTW*) is an enhancement on the French Mirage jet. They were originally purchased from France, but when France embargoed Israel after the 6-day war and refused to provide planes that had been ordered to Israeli specifications, it was reverse-engineered. Some espionage may also have been involved.
*The sweet pun is that kfir is lion cub in Hebrew (lion of Judah being associated with King David and Judaism in general) and also sounds a bit like kafir, which is Arabic for non-believer.
It might be novel if the FBI spent more time apprehending people who commit crimes without the FBI initiating a conspiracy to entrap them.
“Lead us not into temptation” seems like a minimal standard of criminal law.
I suspect it pays companies that pays companies that pays companies that find volunteers to do it or leak it.
That we are aware of
I wonder what the discerning collector might pay for a Hunter original that included the text “Let’s go Brandon.”
Well, I suppose that’s legal. But if it were up to me, I’d just ignore the law.
I’m pretty sure the Pentagon is aware of any others, whether or not Wikipedia is.
No. This way it can pay multiple levels of Democrats to do the work. Most of the federal governments purpose is to support political cronies
Maybe or maybe not. I would have more faith if they actually won a war. Or even exit a war in a coherent manor. I suspect they have a better grasp on being woke than the number of nuke boats on the planet. One is relevant to their job the other is not.