Beyond the visible signs of Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war, such as taking over the role of the American Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean with Russia’s Pacific Fleet and the open line of credit to acquire advanced Russian weapons, Syria has become a beehive of Russian covert operations no one seems to be interested in exposing. Is the NSA capable of eavesdropping on Assad to understand Russian involvement in Syria’s affairs?
Information gathered from different sources over time paints a picture of absolute control over the safety of Assad and the immediate men waging the war against the rebels and the Syrian civilians demanding freedom from Assad’s tyranny.
The FSB, once called the KGB, is involved in the smallest of details over the security of Assad. For example, the FSB has established a highly secured email system using private lines to interconnect in VPN mode the top echelon of the Assad regime.
Long gone are the Hotmail accounts that were often used to exchange personal emails. If you recall, past emails were easily hacked in March of 2012, with some caught using the word “password 123” to secure their email accounts.
In retrospect, finding out that Asma al-Assad spent money online carelessly when her people were dying like flies is really inconsequential to the benefits the US could have derived from reading the emails of the unsuspected elites around Assad had the accounts not been hacked.
Who cares if Assad had a lover if it means we wasted the opportunity to find out more about Syrian WMD.
The FSB is also managing Assad’s security details ever since July 12, 2012 when a bomb ripped through a highly secured military location in Damascus killing many high officials, including the notorious brother-in-law Assef Shawkat. Assad’s movements are now State secrets to equal those pretending Syria is not helping Iran with its nuclear program.
This begs the question. Can the NSA eavesdrop on Assad just in case we want to upsmanship Putin?
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