Russian spies have 'almost certainly' infiltrated US intelligence, a legal analyst has claimed.
It comes as Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' has stretched into its eighth week in Ukraine. The US, echoing other countries across the world, has enforced sanctions and continues to support Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
According to the US government, Russian espionage has targeted a number of different areas, including but not limited to Covid, elections, healthcare and even video gaming.
On the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) website, it notes: "The Russian government engages in malicious cyber activities to enable broad-scope cyber espionage, to suppress certain social and political activity, to steal intellectual property, and to harm regional and international adversaries."
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In a new interview, Lis Wiehl – a former federal prosecutor and author of A Spy In Plain Sight – said there needs to be a focus on knowing Putin's next moves and uncovering any counterespionage operatives in the US.
The book chronicles the case of Robert Hanssen, a Russian spy who managed to embed himself in the FBI for two decades, and is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences without parole. It's been dubbed the 'worst intelligence disaster in US history'.
Wiehl told The Sun: "We have to be very aware that this could happen again. It was shocking to me when I did my interviews and asked the FBI agents and CIA officers.
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"Every interview I ended with, ‘Could there be another Hanssen today?’ and, to a person, a hundred percent, the response was yes. And the follow up with many of them was that there probably already is.
“That's critical when you're thinking about our national intelligence and what we need to know."
For example, former FBI Special Agent Jack Thompson told her: "I can say almost with certainty that people in the DOE have been recruited by foreign intelligence services."
Wiehl said the US needs to "know what the Russians are doing and planning and the Chinese and the North Koreans... what we don't realise is where we get our real intelligence to stay ahead, to find out what they're doing.
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"The way you get that is by getting people in that country to spy for you. That’s just a way of doing business, it always has been."
“If we lose those people because of a counter spy here in this country, then we've lost a hell of a lot of information at a time like this where we need to be anticipating what Russia's next move is going to be.”
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Cameron Frew