A bit of espionage in the last Morning Jolt of the week:

Hint: Look For the NSA Staffer With CTU Experience
Sounds like an old-fashioned mole hunt is underway. The Washington Times reports, “The National Security Agency (NSA) is conducting a counterintelligence probe at its Fort Meade, Md., headquarters in a top-secret hunt for a Russian agent, according to a former intelligence official close to the agency. The former official said the probe grew out of the case of 10 Russian “illegals,” or deep-cover spies, who were uncovered last summer and sent back to Moscow after the defection of Col. Alexander Poteyev, a former SVR foreign intelligence officer who reportedly fled to the U.S. shortly before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited here in June. Col. Poteyev is believed to be the source who disclosed the U.S.-based agent network. NSA counterintelligence officials suspect that members of the illegals network were used by Russia’s SVR spy agency to communicate with one or more agents inside the agency, which conducts electronic intelligence gathering and code-breaking.”
William Jacobson feels like his suspicions are confirmed: “When the story broke last June about the arrest of 10 Russian sleeper agents, none of whom seemed to be in a position to do any real damage, many people laughed at the supposed ineptitude of the Russian secret services, and joked about femme fatale Anna Chapman. I didn’t laugh, being a former student of Soviet Studies, and avid (and naturally suspicious) reader of Jean LeCarré novels in my youth. Now it makes sense. The sleeper agents who were rolled up were not the spies. They were helping to service the real spy, a mole in the National Security Agency, or at least that is what is reported by The Washington Times. It’s still a dangerous world out there, folks. There is no Russian term for Kumbaya.”
Barbarossa at The Jawa Report observes, “If history is any indicator (e.g. the Robert Hansen case), the mole is leading the investigation.”
Strange thought about the WikiLeaks development: How many foreign intelligence services put enormous resources and effort into intercepting, copying, or otherwise getting their hands on U.S. diplomatic cables in the past ten years? My guess is more than a few, and my guess is that the cost in money and man-hours is pretty darn high.
How would you like to be Boris Badinov, having perfected disguises, bribed and seduced embassy employees, knocked out guards, squeezed through ventilation shafts, calculated and decoded passwords, attaching hidden monitoring devices, escaping barking guard dogs – yes, I know real life is not like the movies, work with me here – and otherwise busting your tush for months or years in order to steal secrets… and then one day, some guy who looks like Tim Burton’s interpretation of Bill Maher suddenly posts all of those secrets on the Internet? Had you waited a few months or years, all of that classified information would be all over the New York Times. No wonder Assange is in hiding. Never mind the good guys, there’s probably a slew of irate spies after him, too.