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March 29 - April 5, 2019
“Erika Thompson.”
She’s introduced to me as a member of the Australian High Commission (that’s Britspeak for embassy), where she’s an assistant to Alexander Downer, the High Commissioner (that’s Britspeak for ambassador). And guess what? She is no fan of Trump. “He’s a menace,” she says. “He’ll be a pariah. No one will ever take him seriously. Downing Street hates him.”
What do our allies who have grown accustomed to America playing the policeman of the world think of his isolationism and his protectionist tariff-rattling? What do our own State Department and intelligence services think?
I get yet another invite via email on about May 6. It’s from Erika, the Australian “diplomat” who is “dating” the Israeli “political officer” Christian Cantor.
high-profile reporter based in Washington recently told me that Christian and Erika were both intelligence officers for their respective countries, something Erika has repeatedly denied.
Downer is oozing aggression by comparison. After our introduction, the first thing he says is, “Tell your boss he needs to leave my friend David Cameron alone, and you should leave him alone too.’’
Downer starts talking: He tells me he’s connected to a British security firm called Hakluyt. He boasts about being a board member and that the firm has a great presence in London and close ties to the Obama administration. “We advise many governments,” he says.
“George, I used to be the UN envoy to Cyprus, and what you are talking about in Cyprus is wrong, and it’s a threat to British interests.”
“I know all about your work in the Middle East and the energy business, and you’re wholeheartedly wrong in your assessment. You know the Turks deserve the north of Cyprus,” he says. “The energy fields in Cyprus and Israel—Turkey should be the gateway for that energy and not Greece.’’
He tells me he’s very pro-Clinton, and he hates Obama.
Or more accurately, Downer later claims something happens. In his version of events, he asks me a question about Russia and Trump.
I then tell him that the Russians have a surprise or some damaging material related to Hillary Clinton. I have no memory of this. None. Zero. Nada.
Downer’s version, however, is the one that matters. But that version is quite murky. The High Commissioner has contradicted himself numerous times about the event and failed to answer pointed questions about whether he was spying on me. Some reports stated he spoke directly with the US deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in London, Elizabeth Dibble, about our meeting. Later, I would find out that Dibble was in close touch with embassy operatives Gregory Baker and Terrence Dudley, who were monitoring me as well. The most widely reported sequence of events is that within forty-eight hours
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I still don’t know the specific remark Downer attributed to me. The contents of the cable he sent to his superiors in Canberra remain a mystery. What did he quote me as saying? In a 2018 interview with an Australian newspaper, he revealed I never used the words “dirt” or “emails” in my alleged remarks about Clinton and Russia.
“He didn’t say dirt,” Downer told the paper. “He said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn’t say what it was.”
Why would an Australian diplomat record my conversation? Does this prove my allegation that he was illicitly spying on me?
At any rate, two months after my run-in with Downer, when WikiLeaks began posting emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian hackers, Australian intelligence reportedly notified US intelligence operatives about Downer’s report claiming I said the Russians had damaging goods on Clinton.
When Downer told me he was a Hillary Clinton fan, he wasn’t kidding. It turns out that, as Australia’s foreign minister, he engineered one of the biggest donations to the Clinton Foundation. As The Hill reported, he got the Aussie government to pony up $25 million for an AIDS research project administered by the Foundation. When the deal was done—which was part of the Australian government’s $2 billion spend on foreign aid in 2006—he posed with Bill Clinton for a handshake. Both men have enormous mutual-admiration-society grins on their faces.
In his telling, he was just sharing disturbing information he had stumbled across. Yet, in an April 28, 2018, interview with The Australian, he admits that nothing I said “indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton…He didn’t say Trump knew or that Trump was in any way involved in this. He said it was about Russians and Hillary Clinton; it wasn’t about Trump.”
While that sounds even-handed and fair, let’s not kid ourselves. He didn’t need me to mention Trump to ignite an investigation. All he needed was someone on the campaign to mention the R-word and repeat a rumor that could be interpreted as calculated election interference. The mere suggestion of impropriety would kick off a full-fledged FBI investigation. And that’s exactly what happened.
But there were a lot of loose threads out there: A former FBI lawyer at a bizarre London think tank, a meeting at a university used as a CIA training ground, a mysterious professor named Mifsud who worked at that university, a blonde woman play-acting as Putin’s niece, a Russian think tank vet named Timofeev, a British reporter with close ties to Downing Street, two diplomats who were probably CIA agents, an Israeli diplomat who introduced me to his girlfriend who was an Australian intelligence officer.
I immediately run into Christian Cantor and Erika Thompson. They act as if they are chaperoning me, introducing me to various diplomats including the head of the Middle East division of the US embassy in London. She looks at me with scorn and horror, as if I have some kind of toxic disease. “Your candidate has no shot in hell of winning the election,” she says.
It’s called Operation Crossfire Hurricane. And I’m about to be swept up in it.
I also want to learn about NATO’s role in the Mediterranean. Trump has recently flagged Greece as one of only five NATO members spending two percent of its GDP on the organization, and I wondered if this fact could further cement a US-Greece alliance.
“Ash Carter humiliated me when he was defense secretary,” he says about Obama’s old cabinet member. “He had me meet with his deputy.”
“Look, George, if Clinton wins, this is going to be really horrible for relations with us. She supported the Muslim Brotherhood; she’ll probably freeze weapons to us.”
He caught a lot of flak for immigration plans and statements that were attacked as anti-Muslim.
I’m feeling great about my work in Athens. And then on May 26, I screw up. I have a meeting with the Greek foreign minister, Nikolaos Kotzias. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. Kammenos, the defense minister, is from a right-wing background. Kotzias, however, is a former member of the Communist Party of Greece and a Marxist scholar. Greece at this time is ruled by a coalition government, which makes for unexpected alliances.
This information throws me off my game. After all the constant drumbeat of Russia, Russia, Russia that seems to engulf me everywhere I go, I lose my perspective and the diplomatic tone I always want to strike. I say: “I’ve heard the Russians have Hillary Clinton’s emails.” It is one of those horrible, idiotic moments everyone has. As soon as the words are uttered, you want to reach out and take them back. But you can’t. The foreign minister’s mood changes instantly. His eyes narrow. “Do not ever repeat that again. That is not something that should ever be mentioned.”
But how much of a secret do we have? If he’s warning me to be silent, can I assume he’s going to follow suit? I leave the meeting and head back to my hotel. My head is spinning. Did I just make a huge mistake? Did I totally embarrass myself? What the fuck did I do? I just told a committed Marxist that Russia had Clinton’s emails, and he was meeting Putin the next day—and then accompanying him on a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of Athos. Of course, Putin has as much in common with Karl Marx as he does with Groucho Marx, but still.
Later I hear that Putin wanted to stay at the Grande Bretagne—but his team didn’t book rooms in time and nothing was available. If they can’t book a hotel room, I think, how can they steal emails? Maybe Mifsud’s story is bullshit. Everything else he told me was.
And then, he pulls out a phone and places it in the middle of the table. I don’t say anything about the phone, but I do find the placement disturbing.
“I can introduce you to a lot of people in Russia,” he goes on, with a pitch that echoes Mifsud. “I could be a middleman for you.” He shares more details about what he’s done. I say, “Okay, great to meet you. Let’s keep in touch.” Within a week of meeting, he emails me with an invitation to an energy conference in Moscow: “It will be my pleasure and honor to arrange energy meetings, extensive briefings from top energy experts in Russia and Europe (including top executives and government decision makers), scheduling your speaking arrangements, and anything else that is within my scope of
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I take a chance and flag the invite to Rick Dearborn. His response is quick and direct. No. Don’t waste your time.
The next time we meet later that month, it’s at the basement bar of the Andaz Hotel. The place is deserted when we show up. It’s just us and the waitress—as quiet as a morgue, initially. Then a couple comes in and takes the table right next to us. In a totally empty bar. At that point, Millian starts talking to me about how he wants to introduce me to Russian officials. Again.
realize the government’s civil rights record is horrible and Putin’s affection for the GRU is inescapable. But both nations share concerns about the rise of radical Islam, terrorism, and China’s swelling global influence. There should, theoretically, be ways to work together. I report Ellwood’s concerns back to Dearborn.
ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2016, a Cambridge University professor named Stefan Halper emails me out of the blue and invites me to London to discuss the Leviathan natural gas field.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald—an avowed fan of Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, it should be noted—has reported that Halper, working within the Reagan administration, managed CIA operatives who spied on President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy team “to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering.”
It’s worth noting that Reagan’s vice president was George H.W. Bush, the former director of the CIA, and Halper is said to have strong ties to the Bush family.
Halper’s spy ties don’t end there. His father-in-law, Ray Cline, was a top CIA official during the Cold War. Recently, Halper has reportedly worked with MI6, Britain’s version of the CIA. Articles in the Washington Post and the Daily Caller claim that Halper has worked closely with Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6, while at Cambridge, directing the Cambridge Security ...
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“You are wrong,” he says. “Everything you say about Turkey is wrong. They are our ally. Your positions on the whole area are against US intelligence assessments.”
Now this exchange starts to make a little more sense to me. The guys from the US embassies in London and Athens were very nervous about what I was recommending about Turkey.
As I leave Halper to enjoy the company of his assistant, I get an email from the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They would like to meet with me. Could I come by the Foreign Commonwealth Office and see Tobias Ellwood? This is pretty interesting. How do they know I am even in town? I suppose it could be a total coincidence. Or perhaps Halper told someone.
Like Halper, they seem to have a message to deliver. They tell me that Brexit is a disaster for England and that Trump’s support for Brexit isn’t helping things. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Ellwood tells me.
As a businessman, he is very aware of the world’s fifth largest economy.
It’s great that Russia is helping you and the campaign, right, George? George, you and your campaign are involved in hacking and working with Russia, right? It seems like you are a middleman for Trump and Russia, right? I know you know about the emails.
As of this writing, I’ve found out many interesting things about Stefan Halper, Alexander Downer, and some of Trump’s foreign policy advisors.
I learn that Halper is also connected to Hakluyt—the same intelligence shop that Downer, claiming he was a board member, bragged to me about.
also discover, via an excellent piece by John Solomon in The Hill, that “according to documents and government interviews, one of the FBI’s most senior counterintelligence agents visited London the first week of May 2016.” One week later, on May 10, I met Alexander Dow...
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Solomon’s article also reports that in June 2016 a Cambridge University graduate student who studied with Halper invited Carter Page, the so-called Russia expert on Trump’s ...
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