The FBI says the scheme to sell secret information about nuclear submarines began in April 2020 when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information.
Authorities say he also provided instructions for how to conduct the secretive relationship, with a letter that said: "I apologize for this poor translation into your language. Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax."
Is this how spying is done? Is this really it, or is this the equivalent of my sister calling herself a chef when she served me a black piece of bread that was supposed to be an EZ Bake Oven cake?
Typically, intelligence agencies don't take walk-ins or cold calls. It's too easy for them to get burned. Often, they will report such contact to their counterparts from the country it originated as a sign of good will.
He's a spy, just not a good one. Spying doesn't have to be initiated by the party receiving the information, and the spy doesn't have to be motivated by anything more noble than money. He failed at the second hurdle - making undetected first contact with the other party - but had he succeeded he might have put himself in contact with people who had a better idea of what they were doing.
This guy was all over the place. A lot of what he did was decent trade craft, but he also did stupid shit like drive his own car and park it nearby when hitting the deaf drop.
He got caught up in playing spy, while at the same time he had doubts, and communicated those doubts to the FBI thinking they were Country 1, saying the feds are lazy and to broke to pay out 100s of thousands so they can collect the evidence.
Hope we find out who Country 1 is, a lot of speculation on France at the moment.
Is this how spying is done? Is this really it, or is this the equivalent of my sister calling herself a chef when she served me a black piece of bread that was supposed to be an EZ Bake Oven cake?
I mean, it’s about the difficulty level that China has with elected officials.
Typically, intelligence agencies don't take walk-ins or cold calls. It's too easy for them to get burned. Often, they will report such contact to their counterparts from the country it originated as a sign of good will.
He's a spy, just not a good one. Spying doesn't have to be initiated by the party receiving the information, and the spy doesn't have to be motivated by anything more noble than money. He failed at the second hurdle - making undetected first contact with the other party - but had he succeeded he might have put himself in contact with people who had a better idea of what they were doing.
This guy was all over the place. A lot of what he did was decent trade craft, but he also did stupid shit like drive his own car and park it nearby when hitting the deaf drop.
He got caught up in playing spy, while at the same time he had doubts, and communicated those doubts to the FBI thinking they were Country 1, saying the feds are lazy and to broke to pay out 100s of thousands so they can collect the evidence.
Hope we find out who Country 1 is, a lot of speculation on France at the moment.