Initially printed at The Final American Vagabond.
For years, Erik Prince – the founding father of mercenary agency Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a serious supply of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade in the past, Prince has appeared within the information for pushing to denationalise a number of wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of worldwide arms embargoes and his unusually shut ties with Challenge Veritas, amongst different notable occasions and connections.
Nonetheless, a few of Prince’s antics in recent times haven’t but made it into the information – specifically his determination to crew up with an Israeli spy to construct a really secretive firm that has – till now – evaded scrutiny. That firm, Comframe Options, seems to function as an intelligence entrance and explicitly targets elements of the American navy concerned in extremely delicate fight operations. As this investigation will present, Prince’s associate in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a collection of obvious, and admitted, Israeli intelligence entrance corporations, a number of of which have a give attention to know-how. But Prince and his shut affiliate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have performed every little thing they’ll to cover their affiliation with the extremely secretive firm. Why may that be and what precisely is Comframe as much as?
From “Military Brat” to Cyber Spy
Lital Leshem was raised as an “military brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted within the Israel Protection Forces (IDF) as she was “really dedicated to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She rapidly rose within the ranks, turning into Operations Officer within the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later turning into a Main, a place she continues to carry to this date by her “reserve responsibility actions.” In keeping with her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli navy intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, extra particularly, served in its alerts intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli college deeply tied to its navy and intelligence equipment. There, she met Amir Elichai and the 2 would co-create the corporate Reporty, which later grew to become Carbyne911 – right now recognized solely as Carbyne.
Carbyne was initially based as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, whereas Dizengof beforehand labored for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Workplace. Earlier than it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured not less than 1 million {dollars} into the corporate on the behest of his shut affiliate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of administrators – which Barak chaired – included the previous commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, in addition to Epstein affiliate turned enterprise capitalist Nicole Junkermann. Within the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, amongst others, have been faraway from the board and have been largely changed with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and regulation enforcement businesses. Leshem had left the corporate in 2017, however has continued to personal shares within the firm.
Carbyne is a Subsequent-Technology September 11 (NG911) platform and the specific aim of NG911 is for all 911 techniques nationwide to turn into interconnected. It’s at the moment lively all through the USA, its important goal market. Its software program has been criticized on account of “severe privateness issues” concerning the quantity of knowledge it harvests from smartphones that decision a 911 name middle operating Carbyne’s software program. As an illustration, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the next data from the telephones on which it’s put in:
“Machine location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the decision middle, textual content messages in a two-way chat window, any information from a consumer’s cellphone if they’ve the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any data that comes over an information hyperlink, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice hyperlink drops out.”
The potential for Carbyne as a instrument for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by Narativ, MintPress Information and different retailers. As well as, Carbyne shops all information on previous calls and occasions to be able to “enabl[e] determination makers to precisely analyze the previous and current conduct of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” Consequently, Carbyne – together with different Israeli intelligence-connected corporations in search of to dominate the American “public security” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, insurance policies.
Along with Carbyne, Leshem additionally labored for Black Dice, which has since been faraway from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the companies Director of Advertising. Black Dice was particularly outed as an Israeli intelligence entrance group in a 2019 article printed by Calcalist Tech. That very same article additionally comprises the beautiful revelation that many Israeli corporations, together with Black Dice, have been based as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence tasks that have been beforehand carried out in-house within the Israeli navy and Israel’s important intelligence arms are transferred to corporations that in some instances have been constructed for this precise objective.” The article additionally provides that:
“In some instances, managers of improvement tasks within the Israeli navy and intelligence arms have been inspired to type their very own corporations which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] venture.”
With Leshem having labored for one firm already recognized to be a product of this deliberate coverage, it’s price scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such entrance, particularly contemplating the widespread tie of Ehud Barak to each corporations. As well as, Leshem has additionally labored for one more firm tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the infamous Pegasus software program. Referred to as Toka, its high executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, the place Leshem additionally served, or former commanders of Israeli navy cyber operations.
Toka, which Ehud Barak based in 2018, could be very, very more likely to be one of many entrance organizations produced because of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence coverage. The corporate is straight partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Protection and different Israeli intelligence and safety businesses since its founding and the corporate solely sells its merchandise to international locations which can be thought-about allies of Israel. It purports to have the ability to hack, not simply smartphones, however any system with web connectivity, equivalent to doorbell cameras and different “good” gadgets. As will probably be famous later on this article, Leshem herself has famous that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.
After being concerned with a collection of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli navy intelligence by her “reserve responsibility actions”, Leshem was courted by a shocking determine – Erik Prince, warfare profiteer and founding father of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.
Partnering with Prince
Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled throughout his path and joined his crew.” There, per her web site, she “managed his enterprise portfolio and his world investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the manager director of world enterprise improvement of Frontier Useful resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Useful resource Group was based by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated funding agency partnered with main Chinese language enterprises, together with not less than one state-owned useful resource big that’s eager to pour cash into the resource-rich continent,” in accordance with the South China Submit. It not solely operates in Africa, but in addition different international locations on account of its contracts to help China’s One Belt One Highway initiative, which have been signed in 2019.
FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Companies Group (FSG), which Prince additionally based. In 2013, he bought a majority share of FSG to the China Worldwide Belief Funding Company (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese language funding firm that’s among the many largest of the nation’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, through the mid-Nineties, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms vendor and was a key determine within the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White Home. As detailed in One Nation Beneath Blackmail, that scandal concerned the illicit switch of American navy know-how to China and the illicit switch of Chinese language weapons, whose sale within the US was banned throughout this time, into the USA. Mark Middleton, a White Home aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are among the names apparently concerned with these actions. “Chinagate” seems to have been a three way partnership between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has by no means been correctly investigated by federal authorities. Plainly Prince, who was (and should still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in related actions by way of FRG/FSG. For instance, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s know-how to China by way of her function at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was almost analogous to Carbyne, however extra explicitly centered on surveillance, on the similar time that Carbyne launched its first 911 name system in the USA.
As well as, TRTWorld notes, the corporate DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the eye of Chinese language officers at a sensible cities convention in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and navy operations, signed a International Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese language tech big. The center man on this sale was none apart from Erik Prince. Leshem and one other Prince affiliate, Dorian Barak, even have enterprise ties to the UAE by way of their distinguished roles on the UAE-Israel Enterprise Council.
“With related know-how getting used, and the identical mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who introduced collectively UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance know-how with China, indications level to a probable switch of surveillance know-how from Epstein’s Israeli firm [Carbyne] to China.”
Comframe – Secretive Firm or Intelligence Entrance?
Prince’s and Leshem’s joint actions after Leshem left FRG recommend that this sample of conduct has not solely continued, however deepened. In keeping with Leshem’s web site, a 12 months and a half after she began working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to discovered Comframe, an organization that takes the perfect of Israeli protection know-how suppliers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem additionally says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and enterprise improvement platform for deploying superior navy, particular operations, public security and HLS options in the USA, and a large community of partnership, each authorities and civilian.”
In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the corporate she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Particular Operations and protection procurement veterans with billions of {dollars} of profitable gross sales to USG and overseas authorities to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing advanced procurement and integrations packages from intelligence gathering & evaluation, to contracting, program gross sales and personnel deployment, is phenomenal.”
What Leshem says of the corporate clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. As an illustration, its web site, which is notably brief on content material, lists the next corporations as companions – TomCar, BlueBird Aero Programs, Common Robotics, SafeStrike, Ops-Core (now a part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its companions web page, Comframe says that that is “a small sampling of our present companions we’ve chosen to work with.” Most of those corporations have been created by Israeli navy/navy intelligence veterans.
Other than the companions web page, there’s little different data accessible on the Comframe web site. It describes its mission as “to supply cutting-edge, progressive applied sciences that safely and securely resolve articulated U.S. authorities issues” and touts its “get it performed” dedication and the way its workers “get up each morning wanting to seek out options that maintain the U.S. authorities protected and extra deadly.” It lists the corporate’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who skilled with Erik Prince, doesn’t listing Comframe on his LinkedIn or in another web site discussing his work historical past. He’s at the moment the CEO of navy contractor Regulus International. Burgess beforehand ran a mercenary agency he based, Greystone Ltd., that was beforehand affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was initially supposed to be Blackwater’s “sister firm.”
Each Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to combat within the present battle between Russia and Ukraine. Each corporations deny this. The accusations got here after Prince had deliberate to create a “personal military” in Ukraine, one thing he has tried to do (and generally succeeded) in numerous battle zones, equivalent to Afghanistan. Prince has additionally tried to supply “deadly companies” to Russia’s Wagner group.
Other than Burgess’ obvious unwillingness to affiliate himself publicly with Comframe, there’s additionally the truth that the one worker publicly related to Comframe in any respect is Lital Leshem. Certainly, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the corporate. One other oddity is the truth that Comframe’s web site has an “Business Information” web page that comprises a number of weblog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. Nonetheless, the content material of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe additionally supposed to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the web site appears to conflict with Leshem’s characterization of the corporate.
So, what’s Comframe precisely and what’s it supposed to do? Why are the one folks related to the corporate two skilled mercenaries, one in all whom is a recognized CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article printed within the Jerusalem Submit appears to spotlight Comframe’s mysterious internal workings and certain objective.
That article notes that Comframe acted as a intermediary in forging an settlement to create an meeting line in El Paso, TX to ensure that the Israeli firm Tomcar to “provide its newest fashions to the US Armed Forces.” The settlement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a serious contract manufacturing firm that works with Ford, Common Motors and Tesla, amongst others. Prince Manufacturing was notably based and run for a few years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – seem within the Panama Papers as does the former holding firm that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.
The article notes that Comframe “is targeted on recognizing wants within the US protection business and matching them to potential options, normally involving progressive Israeli corporations.” Nonetheless, the article notes, “to fulfill the calls for of American safety wants, one should have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been residing in Phoenix for 15 years, however he can’t try this [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We are able to.”
In different phrases, per Leshem, Comframe makes use of Prince and presumably Burgess to promote Israeli protection know-how and merchandise to the American navy that might in any other case not occur on account of nationwide safety issues round shopping for foreign-made merchandise for delicate protection and navy operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Particular Forces and different branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is particularly concentrating on Particular Ops. She additionally means that, other than the US navy, one other supposed marketplace for the corporate is NATO – she informed the Jerusalem Submit that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s protection business.”
The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when gross sales are associated to nationwide safety, one nonetheless has to have “boots on the bottom,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal internet and on-line presence. That is much like one other firm Leshem has been working for whereas at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, on the finish of this very article, Leshem makes use of Toka for example concerning Comframe’s “boots on the bottom” gross sales method. She states:
“Hello-tech corporations like Toka with purchasers just like the CIA, can’t focus on what they do utilizing Zoom.”
A New Sample for Prince
Comframe is a really suspect firm – it’s extremely, extremely secretive, targets delicate American navy businesses with overseas know-how, and its recognized workers are obvious spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not solely that, however the historical past of Israeli espionage in the USA – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and past – exhibits a concerted effort to focus on the American navy and safety businesses, typically with bugged or “backdoored” know-how.
Along with the above, Prince has additionally lately engaged in efforts to market a really suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That cellphone was “designed in Israel” and the corporate that produces it’s known as Unplugged. In keeping with stories, Unplugged’s “day-to-day know-how operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former worker of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now notorious hacker-for-hire agency NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, can be a veteran of Unit 8200.
Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE personal intelligence firm that was talked about earlier on account of its affiliation with Prince, as soon as marketed an “ultrasecure” cellphone known as Katim, solely to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. As well as, Prince debuted Unplugged’s cellphone on Steve Bannon’s “Conflict Room” program. Each Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese language billionaire Guo Wengui, also referred to as Miles Guo.
That Prince would assist market this cellphone particularly to MAGA Republicans is disturbing provided that his affiliate Leshem and different Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have performed a serious function in growing the infrastructure for the US’ “Conflict on Home Terror,” which is especially focused on the political proper and has already utilized mass surveillance by smartphones and different applied sciences to justify arrests, together with “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content material of this investigation, Prince’s ties to overseas governments and intelligence businesses needs to be closely scrutinized, particularly Comframe – whose secretive actions could also be drastically undermining American nationwide safety.
