the House probe, Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, frantically transferred money to accounts in their native Pakistan.

Awan and Alvi were indicted in August on fraud charges related to the transfers, but they have not yet been charged with criminal cybersecurity violations partly because some of the 45 Democrats have been passive about helping build the case, the House official said.

Each House member’s data is supposed to be stored on his own server, but Imran moved files to a computer that was only supposed to hold the files of the administrative office of the Democratic Caucus, the senior official said.

In the spring of 2016, House administrators became aware that the Awans were allegedly falsifying purchase orders. They followed the trail and found that the misconduct extended to aAIN Blog: UAVs Fly as Feathered Friends over Unfriendly Territory

The CIA developed Project Aquiline to fly a reconnaissance UAV over key intelligence targets without detection. The agency had intended for an aircraft the size of an eagle, but the UAV, shown here as one-tenth-scale model, ended up as big as a condor. (Chris Pocock)

News that the U.S. has been operating mini-UAVs disguised to look like large birds along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan reminded me of the time that I discovered Project Aquiline. This was a scheme devised by the CIA in the early 1970s to fly a reconnaissance UAV over key intelligence targets, such as ICBM sites and nuclear test grounds in the Soviet Union and China, without detection. The project was cancelled before deployment and