How foreign spies are infiltrating US police

This week, the UK has been coming to terms with the influence of foreign spies, after MI5 warned about a ‘Chinese agent’ who had infiltrated parliament. The United States has been dealing with foreign agents in its midst too, following the arrest in New York last week of an Egyptian-American accused of spying on exiles opposed to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s repressive regime. His case has lifted the curtain on a ‘significant’, but little noted national security issue: the recruitment of US state and local police by foreign intelligence agencies. And it’s a playbook that’s very likely to be in use around the world, including in the UK.

Pierre Girgis, a dual Egyptian-US citizen in Manhattan, worked at the ‘direction and control’ of several Cairo agencies to advance the regime’s interests in the United States from 2014 through 2019, according to a federal indictment handed down on January 6. 

Girgis, who worked as a Capital One bank vice president and who openly promoted interchanges between Egyptian officials and American police, had a secret helper according to the Justice Department: a source in local law enforcement.