From the Vault: “The Counterintelligence Chief” – with FBI Assistant Director Alan Kohler

SpyCast

News, Education, History

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2024

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Summary Alan Kohler joins Andrew to discuss the FBI’s counterintelligence division. He is a recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Counterintelligence Investigation. ***FULL SHOWNOTES AVAILABLE HERE*** What You’ll Learn Intelligence -Counterintelligence vs. Counterespionage -How the FBI recruit’s foreign agents -Ideological motivations behind spying -Effect of technology on counterintelligence Reflections -Staying grounded under pressure -The value of creativity Notes Alan Kohler (LinkedIn, Website) has been the FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence since 2020. Alan and Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) talk all things counterintelligence. ***FULL RESOURCES AVAILABLE HERE*** *SpyCasts* -The FBI & Cyber with Cyber Division Chief Bryan Vorndran, Part 1 (2022) -The FBI & Cyber with Cyber Division Chief Bryan Vorndran, Part 2 (2022) -My Global Career as a Female FBI Agent with Kathy Stearman (2021) -The FBI Way with Counterintelligence Spy Chief Frank Figliuzzi (2021) ***FULL RESOURCES AVAILABLE HERE*** *Beginner Resources* -What We Investigate, FBI (n.d.) [webpage] -FAQ’S, FBI (n.d.) [webpage] -US Opens Counterintelligence Investigation into China Every 12 Hours (Dir. Wray), MSNBC (2022) [video] -What We Know About China’s Spy Agency, Bloomberg Originals (2019) [video] -Hollow Nickel/Rudolf Abel, FBI (n.d.) [Article] -NCSC Mission, Vision, and Goals, ODNI (n.d.) [Website] Glossary: -Counterintelligence: Information gathered, and activities conducted to identify, deceive, exploit, disrupt, or protect against espionage or other intelligence activities -FBI Attaché: a special agent assigned to a U.S. embassy or consulate overseas to liaise with local law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They pursue terrorist, intelligence, and criminal threats with international dimensions. -Occam’s Razor: a rule of thumb theory that states when you are faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest one is probably the correct one. Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th century English theologian. ***FULL RESOURCES AVAILABLE HERE***

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the CyberWire Network powered by N2K.
0:07.0	Welcome to this week's episode of Spycast.
0:13.0	My name is Dr. Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator.
0:17.0	Each week we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence in espionage.
0:24.0	Please support the show for free by leaving us a five-star review and recommending the show to a friend.
0:30.0	Consider a sacrificial offering of a minute of your time to appease those hard-headed lofty gods of the algorithm.
0:38.0	Coming up on Spycast is another of our top-rated podcast of 2023, an interview with the then assistant director of
0:46.1	counterintelligence for the FBI Alan Kohler, the person and agency that runs point on all counterintelligence investigations
0:55.0	inside the US of A.
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1:47.0	EDU slash MSSI. Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.
2:04.0	I'm your host Dr Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator.
2:09.5	If you seek intelligence on intelligence, you've come to the right place we're fascinated
2:15.3	in fact obsessed by this topic coming up next on spycast oh yeah yeah, yeah that unit that exact unit exists. It's a parallel
2:25.3	unit to the criminal serial killer unit and we use them extensively. So for
2:30.2	example when I was a supervisor in New York, we had the ghost stories cases, the
2:35.9	Russian illegals cases up there.
	...

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