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These were known Kremlin operatives already on the grid. Nothing unusual here. Except that the Russians were talking to people associated with Trump.
The precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public.
His information started to reach the FBI in Washington. It had certainly arrived by the time of the Democratic National Convention in late July, when the website WikiLeaks first began releasing hacked Democratic emails. It was at this moment that FBI director James Comey opened a formal investigation into Trump-Russia.
Later that month Steele had a series of off-the-record meetings with a small number of American journalists. They included The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo! News, The New Yorker, and CNN.
Democratic senators now apprised of Steele’s work were growing exasperated. The FBI seemed unduly keen to trash Clinton’s reputation while sitting on explosive material concerning Trump.
In August Reid had written to Comey and asked for an inquiry into the “connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”
prima facie
Its theme was the challenges facing the country after Putin’s cloaked invasion. (Canada has strong Ukraine ties: some 1.3 million citizens are of Ukrainian descent.) Another participant was Senator John McCain.
McCain believed it was impossible to verify Steele’s claims without a proper investigation. He made a call and arranged a meeting with Comey. Their encounter on December 8 lasted five minutes.
According to the same source, Comey didn’t let on to McCain that the agency had already begun an investigation into Trump’s associates, at this point more than four months old.
It was also going to his successor, the next guy in the Oval Office. Comey
the thankless job of briefing President-elect Trump.
Trump, it was clear, would dismiss the dossie...
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GCHQ and others had detected. One of Trump’s advisers had even conducted an enthusiastic correspondence with a Russian spy. And given him documents. Not in Moscow but in Manhattan.
His official job was attaché to Russia’s delegation to the United Nations. In reality, he worked for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR.
Yes, he was a spy under diplomatic cover. His actual task, though, was pretty mundane: gathering economic intelligence.
interlocutor
Sporyshev was working covertly in the United States, too,
True, the Russians had reason to complain. In summer 2010 the SVR suffered a devastating blow when ten of its long-term sleeper agents in the United States were exposed, including Anna Chapman. Federal agents had rolled up the SVR’s network of “illegals,” the term used for spies sent abroad under nondiplomatic cover.
Gazprom,
The question being asked inside the FBI was a troubling one: Was the president of the United States a patriot? Increasingly, the answer was no.
[intelligence community] people haven’t seen a president like that. They frequently have ones they disagree with on policy. They don’t fundamentally question whether they are patriots.”
It had an elemental plot line: a wronged man, a renegade chief, a possibly illegal hint, cunningly delivered off-camera.
the Teapot Dome affair that shook Warren Harding’s
This scandal involved a foreign adversary. If Comey’s statement was to be believed, it revolved around a president who was willing to abuse his power. In this case, that meant seeking to browbeat an investigator. The investigator—it appeared—was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. And so he was fired.
The buzz subsided to be replaced by what sounded like a waterfall: the multi-click of cameras. The former FBI director looked grim, waxen, baggy-eyed.
Mendacious
decide whether the president’s comments on Michael Flynn amounted to obstruction of justice. Comey said he took them as “direction.” The
Eugene Robinson observed, there was a “welcome air of sobriety” about the session.
A major effort is required in order to improve performance in the recruitment of Americans. —KGB ANNUAL REVIEW, 1984
Ronald Reagan, was in power in Washington. The KGB regarded his two predecessors, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, as weak.
By contrast Reagan was seen as a potent adversary.
Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975–1985.
In April 1985 this was updated for “prominent figures in the West.” The directorate’s aim was to draw the target “into some form of collaboration with us.” This could be “as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”
There were other questions, too: what was the likelihood that the “subject could come to
Czech spies were known for their professionalism. Czech and Hungarian officers were typically used in espionage actions abroad, especially in the United States and Latin America. They were less obvious than Soviet operatives sent by Moscow.
There was talk that Trump might secure the vice president slot, on a ticket with George H. W. Bush. In the end Bush picked Dan Quayle, the senator from Indiana.
Instead Trump was pranked into meeting with a Gorbachev impersonator, hired by a U.S. TV channel.
Alpine is an exclusive cliff-top borough, twenty miles north of New York, with property prices greater than West Palm Beach or Beverly Hills. It would shortly become the United States’ most expensive address.
There were a few wrinkles along the way. Agalarov was keen to demolish properties in a nearby village, believing they spoiled the view. Some villagers didn’t want to sell. The man at number 54—a decrepit redbrick cottage—was holding out despite being offered $1 million. “He’ll sell in the end,” Agalarov told me.
The migrant workers building Agalarov’s dream came from China, Tajikistan, and Belarus. The country that loomed large in Agalarov’s thinking, however, was America.
This was erroneous—a lie, in fact. There was no mention of the fact that the Kremlin had pre-promised “sensitive” material on Clinton that could help the Trump campaign.
president made out that the meeting was
exclusively about adoptions. It happened follo...
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One of those hired by Mueller was Andrew Weissmann,
Another recruit was Lisa Page.
material. Mueller was an obvious target for Russian espionage and technical collection measures such as bugging.
