Domestic Security Correspondent, @USAToday. Tips on extremism, terrorism, other threats: jmeyer@usatoday.com. Priors: @latimes @politico @NBCInvestigates
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Apr 26, 2022 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
After reading so many stories about how rich Vladimir Putin is, I decided to try to unravel HOW he got his wealth and where he keeps it all.👇
A port city, a steel cage, a palace: The steps that made Putin 'the richest man in the world' usatoday.com/story/news/wor… via @usatoday
Putin's financial empire was built with a four-step methodical system, using public resources and a close circle of friends. He made billionaires out of fellow spies and associates from his hometown of St. Petersburg who helped him.
Oct 21, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The US spy community issues its first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on climate change – and it's not pretty (a thread) usatoday.com/story/news/pol…
Coming just ahead of the @COP25CL climate summit in Glasgow, the IC -- the Intelligence Community -- concludes that climate change will pose ever-greater challenges internationally in the decades to come – and faster than previously expected due to political squabbling/inaction.
Oct 12, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I’ve known Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas since he was a federal prosecutor in the 90s and learned even his most important edicts are often understated. After he spent an hour answering questions from @USATODAY, I pored over the transcript for clues. And I found a good one.
@DHSgov Secy. Mayorkas said a lot of threats and issues keep him up at night, including ransomware. But he singled out a largely publicized cyberattack on a Florida water treatment plant in February as something “that should have gripped our entire country.”
Jun 21, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Epic story:
They joined the Wisconsin Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism. usatoday.com/story/news/nat… via @usatoday@willcarless@jaspercolt
Daniel Berry, along with a member of the Wisconsin Proud Boys and another former recruit, told USA TODAY the group is a den of racism and antisemitism.
Jun 4, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
U.S. spymasters have warned for years, mostly in private, that one of the most critical components of their information-gathering effort – known in spy parlance as human intelligence or "humint" – has been decimated by Beijing’s aggressive efforts to shut down these networks.
The CIA also hasn’t devoted enough resources to rebuilding the networks by recruiting Chinese turncoats who can pry secrets from Communist Party officials, scientists and others, acc to intvws with current/former U.S. natsec officials, congressional testimony and other sources.
Feb 11, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Wow, @SethAbramson. No surprise you hate this @CJR/@lyzl profile of you but it’s bizarre that you’re dragging me (and my former employer Politico) into your Twitter beef over it when we have literally nothing to do with anything in it. But I’ll correct your many falsehoods here.1
2/As that four-year-old email you tweeted today indicates, I did appreciate your discussing with me some information you’d gathered – mostly from other peoples’ reporting, as you volunteered at the time – on various threads of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Nov 7, 2019 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Why were the nine Americans killed in an ambush south of the border this week, including three mothers and their children, casualties of the opioid crisis in America too? wapo.st/2JVsZTh
No one's sure why they were killed by Mexican organized crime gangsters, but authorities -- and @realDonaldTrump -- say they were caught in the crossfire of two warring drug cartels, one linked to the biggest, the Sinaloa cartel.
Aug 29, 2018 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
For more than seven years, @SenJohnMcCain and Vladimir Kara-Murz aka @vkaramurza had each other’s backs as each criticized Putin and what they saw as his autocratic tendencies in Russia. /1
Last April, a mutual friend brought Kara-Murza a personal message from McCain. The senator had been diagnosed nine months earlier with an aggressive form of brain tumor known as a glioblastoma and wanted the young Russian to be a pallbearer at his funeral. Would he agree? /2
Jul 28, 2018 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
“She had tickets for stuff there,” the source added. “Movie nights, things like that.” Accused Russian agent met with suspected Kremlin spy who headed Russian "cultural center" in DC that's been a suspected Kremlin spy hub for many years. @POLITICOpoliti.co/2veJzFw
The state-run Russian Cultural Center in DC and parent org Rossotrudnichestvo also have come up in two separate ways in the Trump-Russia probes by Congress & Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including re: Michael Cohen's alleged mtg with Kremlin spooks in Prague (which he denies)
Jul 8, 2018 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
Sometimes one interesting story leads to another. Last year I wrote about how some U.S. govt probes into global drug trafficking by Hezbollah’s terrorist wing were derailed by the Obama admin's zeal for the Iran nuclear deal. politi.co/2jbt6fW
After we published that story, a message popped up in my encrypted email inbox. A former DEA and Justice Dept official told me the same thing happened to his team, but worse... and in Afghanistan.
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