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Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election? Are His Online Supporters Russian Moles?
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Vincent
May 23, 2018, 9:57:48 PM5/23/18
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He is a low-rent racist, a shameless misogynist, and an unbalanced
narcissist. He is an unrelenting liar and a two-bit white identity
demagogue. Lest anyone forget these things, he goes out of his way
each day to remind us of them.
At the end of the day, he is certain to be left in the dustbin of
history, alongside Father Coughlin and Gen. Edwin Walker. (Exactly
– you don’t remember them, either.)
What more can I add?
Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
in modern history.
Which brings me to the only question about Donald Trump that I
find really interesting: Is he a traitor?
Did he gain the presidency through collusion with Russian
President Vladimir Putin?
One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the
president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power.
Just step back and think about that for a moment.
The fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House
is the greatest threat to U.S. national security in modern
history.
His 2016 campaign is the subject of an ongoing federal inquiry
that could determine whether Trump or people around him worked
with Moscow to take control of the U.S. government. Americans must
now live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether the president
has the best interests of the United States or those of the
Russian Federation at heart.
Most pundits in Washington now recoil at any suggestion that the
Trump-Russia story is really about treason. They all want to say
it’s about something else – what, they aren’t quite sure. They are
afraid to use serious words. They are in the business of breaking
down the Trump-Russia narrative into a long series of bite-sized,
incremental stories in which the gravity of the overall case often
gets lost. They seem to think that treason is too much of a
conversation-stopper, that it interrupts the flow of cable
television and Twitter. God forbid you might upset the right wing!
(And the left wing, for that matter.)
But if a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work
with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the
United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election,
that is almost a textbook definition of treason.
In Article 3, Section 3, the U.S. Constitution states that
“treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying
War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid
and Comfort.”
Based on that provision in the Constitution, U.S. law – 18 U.S.
Code § 2381 – states that “[w]hoever, owing allegiance to the
United States, levies war against them or adheres to their
enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or
elsewhere” is guilty of treason. Those found guilty of this high
crime “shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than
five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000;
and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United
States.”
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 31: FBI Director Robert Mueller, right,
arrives on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate (Select)
Intelligence Committee hearing in Hart Building entitled "World
Wide Threats." (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call
via AP Images)
FBI Director Robert Mueller, right, arrives on Capitol Hill to
testify before a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on
Jan. 31, 2012. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Now look at the mandate given to former FBI Director Robert
Mueller when he was appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein, who was acting in place of Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself because of his role
in the Trump campaign and the controversy surrounding his own
meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
On May 17, 2017, Rosenstein issued a letter stating that he was
appointing a special counsel to “ensure a full and thorough
investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in
the 2016 presidential election.” He added that Mueller’s mandate
was to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the
Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of
President Donald Trump; and any matters that arose or may arise
directly from the investigation.” Rosenstein noted that “[i]f the
Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the
Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising
from the investigation of these matters.”
How closely aligned is Mueller’s mandate with the legal definition
of treason? That boils down to the rhetorical differences between
giving “aid and comfort, in the United States or elsewhere” to
“enemies” of the United States and “any links and/or coordination”
between the Russian government and Trump campaign aides related to
“the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016
presidential election.”
Sounds similar to me.
As a practical matter, the special counsel is highly unlikely to
pursue treason charges against Trump or his associates. Treason is
vaguely defined in the law and very difficult to prove. To the
extent that it is defined – as providing aid and comfort to an
“enemy” of the United States – the question might come down to
whether Russia is legally considered America’s “enemy.”
Russia may not meet the legal definition of an “enemy,” but it is
certainly an adversary of the United States. It would make perfect
sense for Russian President and de facto dictator Vladimir Putin
to use his security services to conduct a covert operation to
influence American politics to Moscow’s advantage. Such a program
would fall well within the acceptable norms of great power
behavior. After all, it is the kind of covert intelligence program
the United States has conducted regularly against other nations –
including Russia.
Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB were constantly
engaged in such secret intelligence battles. The KGB had a
nickname for the CIA: glavnyy vrag or “the main enemy.” In 2003, I
co-authored a book called “The Main Enemy” with Milt Bearden, a
retired CIA officer who had been chief of the CIA’s Soviet/Eastern
European division when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union
collapsed. The book was about the intelligence wars between the
CIA and the KGB.
Today’s cyber-spy wars are just the latest version of “The Great
Game,” the wonderfully romantic name for the secret intelligence
battles between the Russian and British empires for control of
Central Asia in the 19th century. Russia, the United States, and
other nations engage in such covert intelligence games all the
time – whether they are “enemies” or simply rivals.
In fact, evidence of the connections between Trump’s bid for the
White House and Russian ambitions to manipulate the 2016 U.S.
election keeps piling up. Throughout late 2016 and early 2017, a
series of reports from the U.S. intelligence community and other
government agencies underlined and reinforced nearly every element
of the Russian hacking narrative, including the Russian preference
for Trump. The reports were notable in part because their findings
exposed the agencies to criticism from Trump and his supporters
and put them at odds with Trump’s public dismissals of reported
Russian attempts to help him get elected, which he has called
“fake news.”
In addition, a series of details has emerged through unofficial
channels that seems to corroborate these authorized assessments. A
classified NSA document obtained by The Intercept last year states
that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, played a role
in the Russian hack of the 2016 American election. In August, a
Russian hacker confessed to hacking the Democratic National
Committee under the supervision of an officer in Russia’s Federal
Security Service, or FSB, who has separately been accused of
spying for the U.S. And Dutch intelligence service AIVD has
reportedly given the FBI significant inside information about the
Russian hack of the Democratic Party.
On February 16, just hours after this column was published, the
special counsel announced indictments of 13 Russians and three
Russian entities for meddling in the U.S. election. The special
counsel accused them of intervening to help Trump and damage the
campaign of Hillary Clinton. The indictments mark the first time
Mueller has brought charges against any Russians in his ongoing
probe.
Given all this, it seems increasingly likely that the Russians
have pulled off the most consequential covert action operation
since Germany put Lenin on a train back to Petrograd in 1917.
TOKYO, Japan - The former KGB headquarters in Moscow is
photographed in October 2011. The Russian government has been
linked to cyber attacks on Asian, American and European companies
for alleged economic gains, according to a report released in
January 2014 by CrowdStrike Inc., a U.S. cybersecurity firm. An
expert said persons connected to the Soviet KGB are suspected to
be involved in cyber crimes. (Kyodo) The former KGB headquarters
in Moscow, photographed in October 2011. Photo: Kyodo/AP
THERE ARE FOUR important tracks to follow in the Trump-Russia
story. First, we must determine whether there is credible evidence
for the underlying premise that Russia intervened in the 2016
election to help Trump win. Second, we must figure out whether
Trump or people around him worked with the Russians to try to win
the election. Next, we must scrutinize the evidence to understand
whether Trump and his associates have sought to obstruct justice
by impeding a federal investigation into whether Trump and Russia
colluded. A fourth track concerns whether Republican leaders are
now engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice through
their intense and ongoing efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe.
This, my first column for The Intercept, will focus on the first
track of the Trump-Russia narrative. I will devote separate
columns to each of the other tracks in turn.
The evidence that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump
win is already compelling, and it grows stronger by the day.
There can be little doubt now that Russian intelligence officials
were behind an effort to hack the DNC’s computers and steal emails
and other information from aides to Hillary Clinton as a means of
damaging her presidential campaign. Once they stole the
correspondence, Russian intelligence officials used cutouts and
fronts to launder the emails and get them into the bloodstream of
the U.S. press. Russian intelligence also used fake social media
accounts and other tools to create a global echo chamber both for
stories about the emails and for anti-Clinton lies dressed up to
look like news.
To their disgrace, editors and reporters at American news
organizations greatly enhanced the Russian echo chamber, eagerly
writing stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party based on
the emails, while showing almost no interest during the
presidential campaign in exactly how those emails came to be
disclosed and distributed. The Intercept itself has faced such
accusations. The hack was a much more important story than the
content of the emails themselves, but that story was largely
ignored because it was so easy for journalists to write about
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.
The attack on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party looks
like the contemporary cyber-descendant of countless analog KGB
propaganda efforts.
To anyone who has studied the history of the KGB, particularly
during the Cold War, the attack on the Clinton campaign and the
Democratic Party during the 2016 U.S. election looks like the
contemporary cyber-descendant of countless analog KGB propaganda
efforts. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the KGB frequently engaged
in ambitious disinformation campaigns that were designed to sow
suspicion of the United States in the developing world. The KGB’s
so-called “active measures” programs would use international front
organizations, cutouts, and sometimes unwitting enablers in the
press to disseminate their anti-American propaganda.
The most infamous and dangerously effective KGB disinformation
campaign of the Cold War was known as Operation Infektion. It was
a secret effort to convince people in developing countries that
the United States had created the HIV/AIDS virus.
In 1983, a newspaper in India printed what purported to be a
letter from an American scientist saying the virus had been
developed by the Pentagon. The letter went on to suggest that the
U.S. was moving its experiments to Pakistan, India’s archenemy.
Meanwhile, the KGB got an East German scientist to spread
misinformation supporting the Moscow-backed conspiracy theory that
the U.S. was behind the virus.
While these lies never penetrated the U.S. mainstream, they
nonetheless spread insidiously through much of the world.
Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer during the 1980s when the KGB was
conducting this disinformation campaign. He was stationed in East
Germany in the late 1980s, and there is a good chance he knew
about the East German component of Operation Infektion.
President Boris Yeltsin shakes hands with Vladimir Putin, the head
of the Federal Security Service, at a country residence near
Moscow, Friday, November 20, 1998. The Kremlin waffled Friday on
whether Boris Yeltsin will visit India next month, two days after
reviving speculation about his ailing health by saying he had
canceled the trip. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS) President Boris Yeltsin
shakes hands with Vladimir Putin, then head of the Federal
Security Service, or FSB, at a country residence near Moscow in
1998. Photo: Itar-tass/AP
AFTER THE FALL of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB was broken up
and its successor agencies renamed. But the KGB never really went
away. Instead, it underwent an extensive rebranding that did
little to change its culture and traditions.
The KGB’s First Chief Directorate, its foreign intelligence
service, was renamed the SVR. Like its predecessor agency, it was
still housed in the First Chief Directorate’s headquarters in the
Yasenevo District of Moscow, which was known as the “Russian
Langley” for its similarities to CIA headquarters. In the late
1990s and early 2000s, I met many former KGB officials in Moscow,
including Leonid Shebarshin, the last leader of the First Chief
Directorate, who was running the agency in 1991 when communist
hardliners launched a coup against Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev. By the time I met Shebarshin, he was retired and
running an “economic intelligence” firm out of an office in
Moscow’s old Dynamo Stadium, the home of the KGB’s soccer team. A
mural on his office wall depicted scenes from the Battle of
Stalingrad and the Bolshevik Revolution, signaling his immersion
in the Soviet era.
After the Soviet collapse, the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate,
which handled spy-hunting and counterintelligence, along with
other directorates that handled the KGB’s internal police state
functions, were bundled into a new organization known as the FSB,
the Federal Security Service. I conducted extensive interviews
with one of the most legendary spy-hunters of the Second Chief
Directorate, Rem Krassilnikov, a man whose personal history showed
how entwined Russian intelligence still was with its Soviet past.
His first name, Rem, was an acronym for Revolutsky Mir – the
“World Revolution” Soviet leaders had longed to bring about. His
father had been a general in the NKVD, the Stalinist predecessor
to the KGB, and whenever I talked to him, Krassilnikov made it
clear that he still considered the United States his adversary. He
proudly took me on a tour of sites around Moscow where he had
arrested American spies.
No one even bothered to rename the GRU, Russia’s military
intelligence agency. During the Cold War, the KGB considered the
GRU a lower-class cousin, much as the CIA has always looked down
upon the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. Today, the GRU
has added cyber and hacking capabilities like those of the
National Security Agency. The GRU was involved in the Russian hack
of the 2016 American election, according to a classified NSA
document obtained by The Intercept, yet it still operates in the
shadows of the more influential FSB and SVR.
Russian intelligence was briefly weakened following the collapse
of the Soviet Union, but under Putin – the first KGB man to run
the country since Yuri Andropov died in 1984 – it has come roaring
back. During his KGB career, Putin served in both the First and
Second Chief Directorates. One of his key formative experiences
occurred in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was stationed
in East Germany at the time, and his biographers have written that
the personal humiliation he felt watching the Soviet empire
collapse helps explain his drive to return Russia to great power
status.
In 1998, Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Putin director of
the FSB. Since coming to power himself, Putin has deployed his
country’s spies in Chechnya, Georgia, the Crimea, eastern Ukraine,
and Syria in a bid to reassert Moscow’s global influence.
narcissist. He is an unrelenting liar and a two-bit white identity
demagogue. Lest anyone forget these things, he goes out of his way
each day to remind us of them.
At the end of the day, he is certain to be left in the dustbin of
history, alongside Father Coughlin and Gen. Edwin Walker. (Exactly
– you don’t remember them, either.)
What more can I add?
Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
in modern history.
Which brings me to the only question about Donald Trump that I
find really interesting: Is he a traitor?
Did he gain the presidency through collusion with Russian
President Vladimir Putin?
One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the
president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power.
Just step back and think about that for a moment.
The fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House
is the greatest threat to U.S. national security in modern
history.
His 2016 campaign is the subject of an ongoing federal inquiry
that could determine whether Trump or people around him worked
with Moscow to take control of the U.S. government. Americans must
now live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether the president
has the best interests of the United States or those of the
Russian Federation at heart.
Most pundits in Washington now recoil at any suggestion that the
Trump-Russia story is really about treason. They all want to say
it’s about something else – what, they aren’t quite sure. They are
afraid to use serious words. They are in the business of breaking
down the Trump-Russia narrative into a long series of bite-sized,
incremental stories in which the gravity of the overall case often
gets lost. They seem to think that treason is too much of a
conversation-stopper, that it interrupts the flow of cable
television and Twitter. God forbid you might upset the right wing!
(And the left wing, for that matter.)
But if a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work
with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the
United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election,
that is almost a textbook definition of treason.
In Article 3, Section 3, the U.S. Constitution states that
“treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying
War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid
and Comfort.”
Based on that provision in the Constitution, U.S. law – 18 U.S.
Code § 2381 – states that “[w]hoever, owing allegiance to the
United States, levies war against them or adheres to their
enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or
elsewhere” is guilty of treason. Those found guilty of this high
crime “shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than
five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000;
and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United
States.”
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 31: FBI Director Robert Mueller, right,
arrives on Capitol Hill to testify before a Senate (Select)
Intelligence Committee hearing in Hart Building entitled "World
Wide Threats." (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call
via AP Images)
FBI Director Robert Mueller, right, arrives on Capitol Hill to
testify before a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on
Jan. 31, 2012. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Now look at the mandate given to former FBI Director Robert
Mueller when he was appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein, who was acting in place of Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself because of his role
in the Trump campaign and the controversy surrounding his own
meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
On May 17, 2017, Rosenstein issued a letter stating that he was
appointing a special counsel to “ensure a full and thorough
investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in
the 2016 presidential election.” He added that Mueller’s mandate
was to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the
Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of
President Donald Trump; and any matters that arose or may arise
directly from the investigation.” Rosenstein noted that “[i]f the
Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the
Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising
from the investigation of these matters.”
How closely aligned is Mueller’s mandate with the legal definition
of treason? That boils down to the rhetorical differences between
giving “aid and comfort, in the United States or elsewhere” to
“enemies” of the United States and “any links and/or coordination”
between the Russian government and Trump campaign aides related to
“the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016
presidential election.”
Sounds similar to me.
As a practical matter, the special counsel is highly unlikely to
pursue treason charges against Trump or his associates. Treason is
vaguely defined in the law and very difficult to prove. To the
extent that it is defined – as providing aid and comfort to an
“enemy” of the United States – the question might come down to
whether Russia is legally considered America’s “enemy.”
Russia may not meet the legal definition of an “enemy,” but it is
certainly an adversary of the United States. It would make perfect
sense for Russian President and de facto dictator Vladimir Putin
to use his security services to conduct a covert operation to
influence American politics to Moscow’s advantage. Such a program
would fall well within the acceptable norms of great power
behavior. After all, it is the kind of covert intelligence program
the United States has conducted regularly against other nations –
including Russia.
Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB were constantly
engaged in such secret intelligence battles. The KGB had a
nickname for the CIA: glavnyy vrag or “the main enemy.” In 2003, I
co-authored a book called “The Main Enemy” with Milt Bearden, a
retired CIA officer who had been chief of the CIA’s Soviet/Eastern
European division when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union
collapsed. The book was about the intelligence wars between the
CIA and the KGB.
Today’s cyber-spy wars are just the latest version of “The Great
Game,” the wonderfully romantic name for the secret intelligence
battles between the Russian and British empires for control of
Central Asia in the 19th century. Russia, the United States, and
other nations engage in such covert intelligence games all the
time – whether they are “enemies” or simply rivals.
In fact, evidence of the connections between Trump’s bid for the
White House and Russian ambitions to manipulate the 2016 U.S.
election keeps piling up. Throughout late 2016 and early 2017, a
series of reports from the U.S. intelligence community and other
government agencies underlined and reinforced nearly every element
of the Russian hacking narrative, including the Russian preference
for Trump. The reports were notable in part because their findings
exposed the agencies to criticism from Trump and his supporters
and put them at odds with Trump’s public dismissals of reported
Russian attempts to help him get elected, which he has called
“fake news.”
In addition, a series of details has emerged through unofficial
channels that seems to corroborate these authorized assessments. A
classified NSA document obtained by The Intercept last year states
that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, played a role
in the Russian hack of the 2016 American election. In August, a
Russian hacker confessed to hacking the Democratic National
Committee under the supervision of an officer in Russia’s Federal
Security Service, or FSB, who has separately been accused of
spying for the U.S. And Dutch intelligence service AIVD has
reportedly given the FBI significant inside information about the
Russian hack of the Democratic Party.
On February 16, just hours after this column was published, the
special counsel announced indictments of 13 Russians and three
Russian entities for meddling in the U.S. election. The special
counsel accused them of intervening to help Trump and damage the
campaign of Hillary Clinton. The indictments mark the first time
Mueller has brought charges against any Russians in his ongoing
probe.
Given all this, it seems increasingly likely that the Russians
have pulled off the most consequential covert action operation
since Germany put Lenin on a train back to Petrograd in 1917.
TOKYO, Japan - The former KGB headquarters in Moscow is
photographed in October 2011. The Russian government has been
linked to cyber attacks on Asian, American and European companies
for alleged economic gains, according to a report released in
January 2014 by CrowdStrike Inc., a U.S. cybersecurity firm. An
expert said persons connected to the Soviet KGB are suspected to
be involved in cyber crimes. (Kyodo) The former KGB headquarters
in Moscow, photographed in October 2011. Photo: Kyodo/AP
THERE ARE FOUR important tracks to follow in the Trump-Russia
story. First, we must determine whether there is credible evidence
for the underlying premise that Russia intervened in the 2016
election to help Trump win. Second, we must figure out whether
Trump or people around him worked with the Russians to try to win
the election. Next, we must scrutinize the evidence to understand
whether Trump and his associates have sought to obstruct justice
by impeding a federal investigation into whether Trump and Russia
colluded. A fourth track concerns whether Republican leaders are
now engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice through
their intense and ongoing efforts to discredit Mueller’s probe.
This, my first column for The Intercept, will focus on the first
track of the Trump-Russia narrative. I will devote separate
columns to each of the other tracks in turn.
The evidence that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump
win is already compelling, and it grows stronger by the day.
There can be little doubt now that Russian intelligence officials
were behind an effort to hack the DNC’s computers and steal emails
and other information from aides to Hillary Clinton as a means of
damaging her presidential campaign. Once they stole the
correspondence, Russian intelligence officials used cutouts and
fronts to launder the emails and get them into the bloodstream of
the U.S. press. Russian intelligence also used fake social media
accounts and other tools to create a global echo chamber both for
stories about the emails and for anti-Clinton lies dressed up to
look like news.
To their disgrace, editors and reporters at American news
organizations greatly enhanced the Russian echo chamber, eagerly
writing stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party based on
the emails, while showing almost no interest during the
presidential campaign in exactly how those emails came to be
disclosed and distributed. The Intercept itself has faced such
accusations. The hack was a much more important story than the
content of the emails themselves, but that story was largely
ignored because it was so easy for journalists to write about
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.
The attack on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party looks
like the contemporary cyber-descendant of countless analog KGB
propaganda efforts.
To anyone who has studied the history of the KGB, particularly
during the Cold War, the attack on the Clinton campaign and the
Democratic Party during the 2016 U.S. election looks like the
contemporary cyber-descendant of countless analog KGB propaganda
efforts. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the KGB frequently engaged
in ambitious disinformation campaigns that were designed to sow
suspicion of the United States in the developing world. The KGB’s
so-called “active measures” programs would use international front
organizations, cutouts, and sometimes unwitting enablers in the
press to disseminate their anti-American propaganda.
The most infamous and dangerously effective KGB disinformation
campaign of the Cold War was known as Operation Infektion. It was
a secret effort to convince people in developing countries that
the United States had created the HIV/AIDS virus.
In 1983, a newspaper in India printed what purported to be a
letter from an American scientist saying the virus had been
developed by the Pentagon. The letter went on to suggest that the
U.S. was moving its experiments to Pakistan, India’s archenemy.
Meanwhile, the KGB got an East German scientist to spread
misinformation supporting the Moscow-backed conspiracy theory that
the U.S. was behind the virus.
While these lies never penetrated the U.S. mainstream, they
nonetheless spread insidiously through much of the world.
Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer during the 1980s when the KGB was
conducting this disinformation campaign. He was stationed in East
Germany in the late 1980s, and there is a good chance he knew
about the East German component of Operation Infektion.
President Boris Yeltsin shakes hands with Vladimir Putin, the head
of the Federal Security Service, at a country residence near
Moscow, Friday, November 20, 1998. The Kremlin waffled Friday on
whether Boris Yeltsin will visit India next month, two days after
reviving speculation about his ailing health by saying he had
canceled the trip. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS) President Boris Yeltsin
shakes hands with Vladimir Putin, then head of the Federal
Security Service, or FSB, at a country residence near Moscow in
1998. Photo: Itar-tass/AP
AFTER THE FALL of the Soviet Union in 1991, the KGB was broken up
and its successor agencies renamed. But the KGB never really went
away. Instead, it underwent an extensive rebranding that did
little to change its culture and traditions.
The KGB’s First Chief Directorate, its foreign intelligence
service, was renamed the SVR. Like its predecessor agency, it was
still housed in the First Chief Directorate’s headquarters in the
Yasenevo District of Moscow, which was known as the “Russian
Langley” for its similarities to CIA headquarters. In the late
1990s and early 2000s, I met many former KGB officials in Moscow,
including Leonid Shebarshin, the last leader of the First Chief
Directorate, who was running the agency in 1991 when communist
hardliners launched a coup against Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev. By the time I met Shebarshin, he was retired and
running an “economic intelligence” firm out of an office in
Moscow’s old Dynamo Stadium, the home of the KGB’s soccer team. A
mural on his office wall depicted scenes from the Battle of
Stalingrad and the Bolshevik Revolution, signaling his immersion
in the Soviet era.
After the Soviet collapse, the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate,
which handled spy-hunting and counterintelligence, along with
other directorates that handled the KGB’s internal police state
functions, were bundled into a new organization known as the FSB,
the Federal Security Service. I conducted extensive interviews
with one of the most legendary spy-hunters of the Second Chief
Directorate, Rem Krassilnikov, a man whose personal history showed
how entwined Russian intelligence still was with its Soviet past.
His first name, Rem, was an acronym for Revolutsky Mir – the
“World Revolution” Soviet leaders had longed to bring about. His
father had been a general in the NKVD, the Stalinist predecessor
to the KGB, and whenever I talked to him, Krassilnikov made it
clear that he still considered the United States his adversary. He
proudly took me on a tour of sites around Moscow where he had
arrested American spies.
No one even bothered to rename the GRU, Russia’s military
intelligence agency. During the Cold War, the KGB considered the
GRU a lower-class cousin, much as the CIA has always looked down
upon the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. Today, the GRU
has added cyber and hacking capabilities like those of the
National Security Agency. The GRU was involved in the Russian hack
of the 2016 American election, according to a classified NSA
document obtained by The Intercept, yet it still operates in the
shadows of the more influential FSB and SVR.
Russian intelligence was briefly weakened following the collapse
of the Soviet Union, but under Putin – the first KGB man to run
the country since Yuri Andropov died in 1984 – it has come roaring
back. During his KGB career, Putin served in both the First and
Second Chief Directorates. One of his key formative experiences
occurred in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was stationed
in East Germany at the time, and his biographers have written that
the personal humiliation he felt watching the Soviet empire
collapse helps explain his drive to return Russia to great power
status.
In 1998, Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Putin director of
the FSB. Since coming to power himself, Putin has deployed his
country’s spies in Chechnya, Georgia, the Crimea, eastern Ukraine,
and Syria in a bid to reassert Moscow’s global influence.
Gunner Asch
May 24, 2018, 1:17:12 AM5/24/18
to
On Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC), Vincent
<vin...@trumpite.ru> wrote:
>Path: not-for-mail
>From: Vincent <vin...@trumpite.ru>
>Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,rec.arts.tv,rec.crafts.metalworking,alt.survival,alt.global-warming,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
>Subject: Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election? Are His Online Supporters Russian Moles?
>Followup-To: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
>Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
>Organization: vincent
>Lines: 328
>Message-ID: <XnsA8EBDF...@178.63.61.175>
>X-Trace: news.albasani.net OUGcd+Ir71ev7SxV5wRJuv4HovU815nJE8ncSGOD9F7GZRj41SsdxaOuC43v8ipkQ9X6W0uB1qMiMN0KkwUxHFWM8jitIz6b+KLFuUn9MIBg09K/hPyiMoMXQXHhynO9
>NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
>Injection-Info: news.albasani.net; logging-data="ZC5aRA/YdkvtOIgSCxFl9XopL2OzihkJ6FfPVo+H1dbbHmGm1HzZm41IQ+SQcmTcr8moC2CIzu6Po8R8dUNyW/ZNoJCKfia9mX1zwiTi/QD91gPcZashudULLsiSsc83"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@albasani.net"
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>X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 180523-2, 05/23/2018), Inbound message
>X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
Snicker...widdle Vincent really has issues. He cant get a real email
account with anybody except spammer and troll central types
Poor bastard...he is trying hard..but its not...working.
---
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<vin...@trumpite.ru> wrote:
>Path: not-for-mail
>From: Vincent <vin...@trumpite.ru>
>Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,rec.arts.tv,rec.crafts.metalworking,alt.survival,alt.global-warming,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
>Subject: Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election? Are His Online Supporters Russian Moles?
>Followup-To: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
>Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
>Organization: vincent
>Lines: 328
>Message-ID: <XnsA8EBDF...@178.63.61.175>
>X-Trace: news.albasani.net OUGcd+Ir71ev7SxV5wRJuv4HovU815nJE8ncSGOD9F7GZRj41SsdxaOuC43v8ipkQ9X6W0uB1qMiMN0KkwUxHFWM8jitIz6b+KLFuUn9MIBg09K/hPyiMoMXQXHhynO9
>NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
>Injection-Info: news.albasani.net; logging-data="ZC5aRA/YdkvtOIgSCxFl9XopL2OzihkJ6FfPVo+H1dbbHmGm1HzZm41IQ+SQcmTcr8moC2CIzu6Po8R8dUNyW/ZNoJCKfia9mX1zwiTi/QD91gPcZashudULLsiSsc83"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@albasani.net"
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>X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
>
>He is a low-rent racist, a
Lets see...he has a Russian email address and is using albasani
>He is a low-rent racist, a
Snicker...widdle Vincent really has issues. He cant get a real email
account with anybody except spammer and troll central types
Poor bastard...he is trying hard..but its not...working.
---
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John Doe
May 24, 2018, 10:27:30 AM5/24/18
to
Yes, of course, those of us who support our duly elected president
are a bunch of "Russia bots". We are "traitors" for demanding our
FBI and CIA not be political operatives of our executive branch.
The cannibal left suck at logic.
Most "Russia bot" accusers are foreigners. Too many anonymous
foreigners complaining about foreign influence on our country.
Notice the chronic nym-shifting America-bashing slimeball foreigner
changed the follow-up groups...
--
Vincent <vincent trumpite.ru> wrote:
> Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.albasani.net!.POSTED!not-for-mail
> From: Vincent <vincent trumpite.ru>
> Code õ 2381 - states that "[w]hoever, owing allegiance to the
> extent that it is defined - as providing aid and comfort to an
> "enemy" of the United States - the question might come down to
> His first name, Rem, was an acronym for Revolutsky Mir - the
> the country since Yuri Andropov died in 1984 - it has come roaring
are a bunch of "Russia bots". We are "traitors" for demanding our
FBI and CIA not be political operatives of our executive branch.
The cannibal left suck at logic.
Most "Russia bot" accusers are foreigners. Too many anonymous
foreigners complaining about foreign influence on our country.
Notice the chronic nym-shifting America-bashing slimeball foreigner
changed the follow-up groups...
--
Vincent <vincent trumpite.ru> wrote:
> Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.albasani.net!.POSTED!not-for-mail
> From: Vincent <vincent trumpite.ru>
> Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,rec.arts.tv,rec.crafts.metalworking,alt.survival,alt.global-warming,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
> Subject: Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election? Are His Online Supporters Russian Moles?
> Followup-To: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
> Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
> Organization: vincent
> Lines: 328
> Message-ID: <XnsA8EBDF431F76Ada 178.63.61.175>
> Subject: Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election? Are His Online Supporters Russian Moles?
> Followup-To: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show
> Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
> Organization: vincent
> Lines: 328
> X-Trace: news.albasani.net OUGcd+Ir71ev7SxV5wRJuv4HovU815nJE8ncSGOD9F7GZRj41SsdxaOuC43v8ipkQ9X6W0uB1qMiMN0KkwUxHFWM8jitIz6b+KLFuUn9MIBg09K/hPyiMoMXQXHhynO9
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 01:57:46 +0000 (UTC)
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> Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org alt.fan.rush-limbaugh:2183290 rec.arts.tv:1283953 rec.crafts.metalworking:517768 alt.survival:275182 alt.global-warming:660225 alt.fan.rush-limbaugh.tv-show:1335
> Cancel-Lock: sha1:wQSImvoFPIcu2R1TwXHHhqruJ3s=
>
> He is a low-rent racist, a shameless misogynist, and an unbalanced
> narcissist. He is an unrelenting liar and a two-bit white identity
> demagogue. Lest anyone forget these things, he goes out of his way
> each day to remind us of them.
>
> At the end of the day, he is certain to be left in the dustbin of
> history, alongside Father Coughlin and Gen. Edwin Walker. (Exactly
> - you don't remember them, either.)
> He is a low-rent racist, a shameless misogynist, and an unbalanced
> narcissist. He is an unrelenting liar and a two-bit white identity
> demagogue. Lest anyone forget these things, he goes out of his way
> each day to remind us of them.
>
> At the end of the day, he is certain to be left in the dustbin of
> history, alongside Father Coughlin and Gen. Edwin Walker. (Exactly
>
> What more can I add?
>
> Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
> fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
> the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
> in modern history.
>
> Which brings me to the only question about Donald Trump that I
> find really interesting: Is he a traitor?
>
> Did he gain the presidency through collusion with Russian
> President Vladimir Putin?
>
> One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the
> president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power.
> Just step back and think about that for a moment.
>
> The fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House
> is the greatest threat to U.S. national security in modern
> history.
> His 2016 campaign is the subject of an ongoing federal inquiry
> that could determine whether Trump or people around him worked
> with Moscow to take control of the U.S. government. Americans must
> now live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether the president
> has the best interests of the United States or those of the
> Russian Federation at heart.
>
> Most pundits in Washington now recoil at any suggestion that the
> Trump-Russia story is really about treason. They all want to say
> it's about something else - what, they aren't quite sure. They are
> What more can I add?
>
> Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
> fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
> the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
> in modern history.
>
> Which brings me to the only question about Donald Trump that I
> find really interesting: Is he a traitor?
>
> Did he gain the presidency through collusion with Russian
> President Vladimir Putin?
>
> One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the
> president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power.
> Just step back and think about that for a moment.
>
> The fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House
> is the greatest threat to U.S. national security in modern
> history.
> His 2016 campaign is the subject of an ongoing federal inquiry
> that could determine whether Trump or people around him worked
> with Moscow to take control of the U.S. government. Americans must
> now live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether the president
> has the best interests of the United States or those of the
> Russian Federation at heart.
>
> Most pundits in Washington now recoil at any suggestion that the
> Trump-Russia story is really about treason. They all want to say
> afraid to use serious words. They are in the business of breaking
> down the Trump-Russia narrative into a long series of bite-sized,
> incremental stories in which the gravity of the overall case often
> gets lost. They seem to think that treason is too much of a
> conversation-stopper, that it interrupts the flow of cable
> television and Twitter. God forbid you might upset the right wing!
> (And the left wing, for that matter.)
>
> But if a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work
> with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the
> United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election,
> that is almost a textbook definition of treason.
>
> In Article 3, Section 3, the U.S. Constitution states that
> "treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying
> War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid
> and Comfort."
>
> Based on that provision in the Constitution, U.S. law - 18 U.S.
> down the Trump-Russia narrative into a long series of bite-sized,
> incremental stories in which the gravity of the overall case often
> gets lost. They seem to think that treason is too much of a
> conversation-stopper, that it interrupts the flow of cable
> television and Twitter. God forbid you might upset the right wing!
> (And the left wing, for that matter.)
>
> But if a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work
> with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the
> United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election,
> that is almost a textbook definition of treason.
>
> In Article 3, Section 3, the U.S. Constitution states that
> "treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying
> War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid
> and Comfort."
>
> Code õ 2381 - states that "[w]hoever, owing allegiance to the
> "enemy" of the United States - the question might come down to
> whether Russia is legally considered America's "enemy."
>
> Russia may not meet the legal definition of an "enemy," but it is
> certainly an adversary of the United States. It would make perfect
> sense for Russian President and de facto dictator Vladimir Putin
> to use his security services to conduct a covert operation to
> influence American politics to Moscow's advantage. Such a program
> would fall well within the acceptable norms of great power
> behavior. After all, it is the kind of covert intelligence program
> the United States has conducted regularly against other nations -
>
> Russia may not meet the legal definition of an "enemy," but it is
> certainly an adversary of the United States. It would make perfect
> sense for Russian President and de facto dictator Vladimir Putin
> to use his security services to conduct a covert operation to
> influence American politics to Moscow's advantage. Such a program
> would fall well within the acceptable norms of great power
> behavior. After all, it is the kind of covert intelligence program
> including Russia.
>
> Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB were constantly
> engaged in such secret intelligence battles. The KGB had a
> nickname for the CIA: glavnyy vrag or "the main enemy." In 2003, I
> co-authored a book called "The Main Enemy" with Milt Bearden, a
> retired CIA officer who had been chief of the CIA's Soviet/Eastern
> European division when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union
> collapsed. The book was about the intelligence wars between the
> CIA and the KGB.
>
> Today's cyber-spy wars are just the latest version of "The Great
> Game," the wonderfully romantic name for the secret intelligence
> battles between the Russian and British empires for control of
> Central Asia in the 19th century. Russia, the United States, and
> other nations engage in such covert intelligence games all the
> time - whether they are "enemies" or simply rivals.
>
> Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB were constantly
> engaged in such secret intelligence battles. The KGB had a
> nickname for the CIA: glavnyy vrag or "the main enemy." In 2003, I
> co-authored a book called "The Main Enemy" with Milt Bearden, a
> retired CIA officer who had been chief of the CIA's Soviet/Eastern
> European division when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union
> collapsed. The book was about the intelligence wars between the
> CIA and the KGB.
>
> Today's cyber-spy wars are just the latest version of "The Great
> Game," the wonderfully romantic name for the secret intelligence
> battles between the Russian and British empires for control of
> Central Asia in the 19th century. Russia, the United States, and
> other nations engage in such covert intelligence games all the
> "World Revolution" Soviet leaders had longed to bring about. His
> father had been a general in the NKVD, the Stalinist predecessor
> to the KGB, and whenever I talked to him, Krassilnikov made it
> clear that he still considered the United States his adversary. He
> proudly took me on a tour of sites around Moscow where he had
> arrested American spies.
>
> No one even bothered to rename the GRU, Russia's military
> intelligence agency. During the Cold War, the KGB considered the
> GRU a lower-class cousin, much as the CIA has always looked down
> upon the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Today, the GRU
> has added cyber and hacking capabilities like those of the
> National Security Agency. The GRU was involved in the Russian hack
> of the 2016 American election, according to a classified NSA
> document obtained by The Intercept, yet it still operates in the
> shadows of the more influential FSB and SVR.
>
> Russian intelligence was briefly weakened following the collapse
> of the Soviet Union, but under Putin - the first KGB man to run
> father had been a general in the NKVD, the Stalinist predecessor
> to the KGB, and whenever I talked to him, Krassilnikov made it
> clear that he still considered the United States his adversary. He
> proudly took me on a tour of sites around Moscow where he had
> arrested American spies.
>
> No one even bothered to rename the GRU, Russia's military
> intelligence agency. During the Cold War, the KGB considered the
> GRU a lower-class cousin, much as the CIA has always looked down
> upon the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Today, the GRU
> has added cyber and hacking capabilities like those of the
> National Security Agency. The GRU was involved in the Russian hack
> of the 2016 American election, according to a classified NSA
> document obtained by The Intercept, yet it still operates in the
> shadows of the more influential FSB and SVR.
>
> Russian intelligence was briefly weakened following the collapse
> the country since Yuri Andropov died in 1984 - it has come roaring
#BeamMeUpScotty
May 24, 2018, 10:42:43 AM5/24/18
to
hardly compare the two since Obama never did anything positive for
America. Obama always had some duplicitous plan that helped the badf
actors on the planet.
--
That's Karma
mog...@hotmail.com
May 24, 2018, 12:13:41 PM5/24/18
to
> Is Donald Trump A Traitor? Did He Steal The Election?
No. James Comey stole it and gave it to Trump.
FPP
May 24, 2018, 6:44:04 PM5/24/18
to
So... how many indictment and guilty pleas did the Obama administration
have?
How many special counsels and criminal investigations?
--
"I'm all the way down now. I can see all the way to the bottom.
They said there were two fathers, one above, one below.
They lied. There was only ever the Devil.
When you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection, laughing
back down at you." -James Delos (Westworld 5-12-18)
N4ohb⚛← ╬ 𝑴𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒚 𝑾𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒂𝒃𝒆 ╬ →⚛N4oh
May 24, 2018, 7:10:30 PM5/24/18
to
I want to hear Trump say "I am not a crook" so I can compare.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZO0caaRTrc>
Gunner Asch
May 27, 2018, 1:46:45 AM5/27/18
to
Not a particularly sterling record of law breaking, oath breaking and
criminality on the part of the Democrats. .....But..given that is part
and parcel of being a Demo...I'm surprised it wasn't more.
Klaus Schadenfreude
May 27, 2018, 10:48:15 AM5/27/18
to
pyotr filipivich
May 27, 2018, 11:40:07 AM5/27/18
to
Gunner Asch <gunne...@gmail.com> on Sat, 26 May 2018 22:46:32 -0700
typed in alt.survival the following:
indictments announced over the next few months -and a lot of Names are
going to be looking for criminal lawyers. And a lot are going to be
willing to make a deal, and name people further up the chain of
command.
Will it lead to an indictment against the top echelon? Who knows.
But even Republicans know that Nixon was guilty of high crimes and
misdemeanors involving Federal Agencies.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
typed in alt.survival the following:
>
>>>>> Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
>>>>> fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
>>>>> the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
>>>>> in modern history.
>>>
>>> Your History is short, Obama was worse than Trump. In fact you can
>>> hardly compare the two since Obama never did anything positive for
>>> America. Obama always had some duplicitous plan that helped the badf
>>> actors on the planet.
>>
>>Good one, Scotty! You really had me going there!
>>So... how many indictment and guilty pleas did the Obama administration
>>have?
>>How many special counsels and criminal investigations?
>
>3,783 that I could find.
>
>Not a particularly sterling record of law breaking, oath breaking and
>criminality on the part of the Democrats. .....But..given that is part
>and parcel of being a Demo...I'm surprised it wasn't more.
I am of the opinion, that there are going to be a lot of
>>>>> Unfortunately, another word also describes him: president. The
>>>>> fact that such an unstable egomaniac occupies the White House is
>>>>> the greatest threat to the national security of the United States
>>>>> in modern history.
>>>
>>> Your History is short, Obama was worse than Trump. In fact you can
>>> hardly compare the two since Obama never did anything positive for
>>> America. Obama always had some duplicitous plan that helped the badf
>>> actors on the planet.
>>
>>Good one, Scotty! You really had me going there!
>>So... how many indictment and guilty pleas did the Obama administration
>>have?
>>How many special counsels and criminal investigations?
>
>3,783 that I could find.
>
>Not a particularly sterling record of law breaking, oath breaking and
>criminality on the part of the Democrats. .....But..given that is part
>and parcel of being a Demo...I'm surprised it wasn't more.
indictments announced over the next few months -and a lot of Names are
going to be looking for criminal lawyers. And a lot are going to be
willing to make a deal, and name people further up the chain of
command.
Will it lead to an indictment against the top echelon? Who knows.
But even Republicans know that Nixon was guilty of high crimes and
misdemeanors involving Federal Agencies.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?
0 new messages