Middle East-focused US/UK intel contractors discussed price for their spies to 'break stuff'
Documents filed Monday in an ongoing lawsuit between American and British intelligence contractors suggests exploration of electronic warfare and monitoring China/Iran trade in Strait of Hormuz ports.
Voluminous legal filings on Monday as part of an ongoing, multi-year lawsuit between American and British intelligence and information warfare contractors has revealed their partially redacted text message discussion of the upcharge for their spies to agree to escalate from information collection into what appears to be conducting electronic warfare against “secure facilities” in targeted countries, under cover of “an internet coverage test.”
Another partly redacted exchange refers to a new project for surveilling Iranian ports on the Strait of Hormuz in the aftermath of the March 27, 2021 trade deal between Iran and China. U.S. federal judge John L. Badalamenti on February 2 retroactively sealed four separate documents from the same case, in direct response to this publication’s reporting on their implications for American and British covert action in Iran.
The core allegation from the British plaintiffs and former Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) employees Alexis M. Everington and Richard White is that, as silent partners of the Austin-based information warfare business Madison Springfield Inc. (MSI) of defendant Timothy J. Riesen, they were entitled to more than just $1 million each when MSI was covertly sold to the San Francisco-based gig-work intelligence collection firm Premise Data in May 2022. Riesen has countered that the plaintiffs received that majority of the upside of the deal, as a result of Riesen accepting what he believed to be more than $28 million dollars worth of Premise stock, which he noted was actually “worthless.”
Everington and White repeatedly described MSI’s usage of their “shell company” based out of the United Arab Emirates — International Advisory Services (IAS) — as an example of “institutional layering,” which they explained as “a practice used in the defense and intelligence community whereby those who are working in the field operate through a separate corporate entity for operational security.” “IAS exists on paper in order to make sure that researchers are happy we are not some dodgy western company,” wrote Everington in a June 19, 2016 email to Riesen and White.
“The nature of the work is extremely sensitive,” stated Everington during his newly public August 13, 2025 deposition, adding that, “If there were some people that have known that it was MSI work that was being done, that could have put lives at risk.”
The American investigative outlet The Grayzone in May 2018 reported that, according to a source speaking on condition of anonymity, the predecessor to the MSI / IAS collaboration was “seeking a person to infiltrate Iran under journalistic cover and gather data on its population.” This publication independently reported based upon public records that Everington was training Arabic women’s rights activists in protest techniques in concert with his covert information operations contracts in the same countries.
Everington and White further used the term “stovepiping” to describe their compartmentalization even between each other of the identities of their paid spies, whom they describe as “consultants” or “researchers.” “It means there are certain people that are talking to me that they don’t want anyone else to know,” stated White during his August 12, 2025 deposition, before adding that “So I would not even tell Alexis who they’d be.”
A newly public December 30, 2015 email from Riesen to Everington and White motivated the separation of his American MSI from their British-owned IAS as a reproduction of the model followed by the U.S. State Department contractor ORB International, which maintains separate U.S. and U.K. branches.
The largest acknowledged customer for MSI / IAS duo has been U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and a list of dated invoice amounts from IAS to MSI in Monday’s filings totals more than $43 million. One of MSI’s most significant SOCOM contracts was given the acronym META, standing for “MISO Evaluation and Transregional Analysis,” which itself made use of the acronym for Military Information Support Operations, a common euphemism for disseminating propaganda and conducting other forms of psychological operations.
A predecessor contract focused on information collection in Iran was given the codename of BEOWULF and was the subject of a sealed False Claims Act lawsuit from former MSI president Ingrid de la Fuente, though the suit was voluntarily dismissed.
‘Break Stuff’
“I deliver the break stuff pricing tomorrow at 5 PM UK time,” wrote Riesen to Everington and White in a newly public text message, dated July 1, 2022, more than one month after MSI’s covert acquisition by Premise. “My advice would be to aim really high,” replied Everington, continuing that, “The projects seem to be getting sensitive and these guys, if they are doing sketchy stuff, will need high payment.” “If you want them to observe that is one thing but if we are going to ask them [to do] things that are risky…that will cost,” added Everington.
A follow-up text from Riesen noted two further redacted requests, then further asked, “Do you think WIFI/SVV would be possible in either country? Presumably [REDACTED] would be more expensive than SY/IR [Syria/Iran]?” (The meaning of the SVV acronym remains unclear to the author.)
Mr. White followed up by stating that he was “not sure if you can download the app and also it depends if its [sic] 200m [meters] in/next to a secure facility i would need different people.” “Its [sic] too obvious i cant [sic] hide its intention as an internet coverage test,” continued White.
Another newly published, partially redacted, text exchange from late March 2021 refers to a new effort to conduct what Riesen referred to as “two new port assessment projects” in Iran on the Strait of Hormuz (“SoH”). The target country is revealed through Riesen’s reference to a project codenamed METALLICA, which was revealed through previous legal filings to have surveilled “Iranian ports” in 2019.
The timing and details of a redacted follow-up message from Everington — particularly a reference to a “32% discount in buying Oil and petrochemicals from [REDACTED] or the [REDACTED],” strongly suggests the port surveillance effort is a response to Iran and China’s March 27, 2021 trade agreement, “Comprehensive Document of Iran-China Cooperation,” which received a brief reference in a 2024 report published by the Italian parliament. The analysis site ModernDiplomacy.eu wrote that the trade deal would allow “China [buying] Iranian petroleum products at least 32% cheaper,” citing excerpts from the agreement “revealed by the Economist Petroleum news site” in 2019.
The subsequent page of Monday’s legal filing includes a reference to the previously disclosed “Iran Market Research” effort codenamed QUIXOTE within an April 21, 2021 text message from Riesen which further states that, “It looks like they [the client] will downselect the product list and ask us to purchase 15 to 20 of three different products (total of 45-60 items).” “They said they will tell us the three products before the brief in May and hope we’ll come [sic] with pricing to buy them, ship them, and deliver them to a location in the US,” continued Riesen.
A subsequent text from Riesen referred to a “couple new” requirements in a project codenamed VITO, stating, “One is huge - 42,000 meters of WIFI in the capital city of the [REDACTED] location.”
‘PR Nightmares’
MSI’s references to “WIFI” surveillance efforts largely mirror the capabilities pitched by Premise Data to U.S. Special Operations Command on May 31, 2019, through a presentation entitled “A Dynamically Re-Taskable, Global System for Persistent Ground ISR,” using the acronym for Intelligence, Surveillance, & Reconnaissance. The document was first revealed by The Wall Street Journal in a June 2021 article which initiated public scrutiny of the company.
Monday’s new legal filings include a February 4, 2022 email from Riesen admitting that, during a roughly 90-minute call about their in-progress acquisition by Premise, he stated that, “the thing that kept me up at night was a disgruntled employee giving our secrets to the WSJ [Wall Street Journal].”
Riesen further summarized a Premise executive’s description of Premise’s own information collection as “white,” their subsidiary Native’s collection as “gray,” and MSI’s as “black” — using the traditional parlance of overt activities as “white” and covert activities as “black.”
Three weeks later, allegations of Premise’s usage by the Russian military sent the company into its worst public relations crisis yet: “the Kyiv government accused [Premise] of being used by the Russians to target airstrikes as part of Moscow’s invasion,” reported The Journal, before quoting a statement from Premise’s then-CEO, Maury Blackman, that, “This is unequivocally false.”
Two days after The Journal’s article was published, Riesen texted White that, “Premise is fucked.” “This will keep happening as long as their app is linked to them,” Riesen continued, before adding that “No way we do a deal with them if they don’t have a plan for stopping these PR nightmares.”
“Shite,” replied White.
It would later be revealed by this publication that, after a Christmas party in 2021 — the same month in which Native founder Matt McNabb pitched MSI on a possible acquisition — Blackman had been arrested by San Francisco police on suspicion of felony domestic violence. The case was subsequently dropped, and the incident report was sealed, serving as a pretext for Blackman initiating a failed $25 million lawsuit against this author, on top of being targeted by a private investigation firm hired by Premise’s then-general counsel.
Monday’s filings further reveal that the advisory firm of former U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff received a roughly $1.5 million cut of Premise’s dubious payout to Riesen, which resulted in Premise agreeing to a confidential settlement as a result of their provision to Riesen of what they claimed was more than $28 million of their company’s stock, but which quickly proved to be worthless. As a result of Premise’s financial woes, the company and its subsidiary MSI were sold to the Alexandria-based special operations contractor Culmen International by August 2025 — Riesen claimed July 3 — but retained well north of half a billion dollars in debt.
Premise financial manager Neil Minihane agreed in a newly public October 14, 2025 deposition that the remnant of Premise — “RemainCo” — still retained “approximately 650, $700 million” in debt.
As further noted by this publication on Sunday, Premise’s current parent company, Culmen, was in the first round of awardees of a controversial $55 billion U.S. Navy logistics program which was extended to include support for the current Trump administration’s massive domestic expansion of immigrant detention facilities, operating under the unwieldy acronym WEXMAC TITUS.