Foreign intelligence officers were being ordered to look for potential sources on social media platforms — including LinkedIn, TikTok, RedNote and Reddit — while at least one foreign intelligence officer ordered an asset to create a company profile on Linkedin with a job posting and look for federal employees whose profiles state they are “open to work,” the document read.
The intelligence community believes with “high confidence” that foreign foes are trying to enlist fired U.S. federal employees and “capitalize” on the Trump administration’s sweeping reorganization plans, according to a redacted document from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service viewed by CNN.
When it comes to intelligence agencies, “you take whatever number of employees who are gonna get cut loose and they have knowledge of sensitive programs — that by definition is an insider risk,” a U.S. official told CNN earlier this week.
“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that these cast-aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries,” the source said.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also fired more than 100 U.S. spies across 15 different spy agencies after she said sexually explicit chats were unearthed on an official government instant messaging forum.
