C.I.A. Informant Extracted From Russia (in 2017) Had Sent Secrets to U.S. for Decades

By artappraiser on Mon, 09/09/2019 - 10:22pm |

“... former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.” https://t.co/UOULLOjcWu
— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) September 10, 2019

URL:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/politics/cia-informant-russia.htm

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New tonight: Given NYT has now made details on Russian spy public, I can now report additional info we had withheld. Asset had direct access to Vladimir Putin, including the remarkable ability to take photos of presidential documents, and had served US for more than a decade. 1/ https://t.co/gyk8hA79k1
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) September 10, 2019

by artappraiser on Mon, 09/09/2019 - 11:24pm

A shocking CNN scoop confirms: Officials are defending our country from Trump

Op-ed by Paul Waldman @ WashingtonPost.com, Sept. 9

[....] according to this extraordinary CNN story, from early in his presidency, the intelligence community felt it had no choice but to make decisions based on the likelihood that the person with almost unlimited access to American secrets probably couldn’t keep his mouth shut — especially when it came to Russia:

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

In all the ongoing horrors emanating from the White House, you may have forgotten the story of that Oval Office meeting, but it was truly shocking. It concerned a spy Israel had succeeded in placing near the center of the Islamic State, a piece of information so sensitive that we hadn’t even shared it with many of our key allies. And then Trump, in an apparent attempt to impress the Russians, just told them all about it.

Then Trump defended himself by saying “I have the absolute right” to give incredibly sensitive secrets to our adversaries. This is technically true — as president, he can decide what’s classified and what isn’t, and reveal pretty much whatever he wants, no matter how pathetic or nefarious his motives.

If you were an American intelligence official and you just watched that happen, what would you do? Your obvious response would be to ask, “What else is he going to tell the Russians? What’s he going to tell Vladimir Putin the next time he sees him? What other intelligence assets is he going to burn?”

You’d have to assume the worst, which is apparently what they did [....]

by artappraiser on Tue, 09/10/2019 - 12:08am

U.S. Spy Evacuated From Russia Was Possibly a Senior Kremlin Official’s Aide – Kommersant

@ The Moscow Times, Sep. 10, 2019

A top U.S. spy who was reportedly evacuated from Russia could have been a senior Kremlin official’s aide who now lives in the Washington, D.C., area, the Kommersant business daily has reported.

The United States had allegedly extracted one of its highest-level moles in the Russian government in 2017 over fears he could be caught, CNN reported Monday [....] The New York Times later reported that the alleged CIA informant had been spirited away after helping the U.S. intelligence community’s [....]

The alleged U.S. spy could be Oleg Smolenkov, an official with President Vladimir Putin’s administration, Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing anonymous social media channels and past media coverage.

Smolenkov had been a longtime trusted assistant of Yury Ushakov — a senior foreign policy aide to Putin — dating back to Ushakov's years as Russian ambassador to the U.S., Kommersant cited several unnamed sources as saying.

“This is serious,” one of the unnamed officials told Kommersant regarding the level of access he could have had to secret information.

The New York Times reported that the unnamed Russian spy had been recruited and cultivated “decades” ago.

Smolenkov was reported to have disappeared with his family while on vacation in Montenegro in June 2017. Russian investigators had initially probed Smolenkov’s disappearance as a murder case, but Kommersant reported the Federal Security Service (FSB) later found he was alive and living abroad [....]

Putin’s Coffee Boy?
“What Spy? Kremlin Mocks Aide Recruited by C.I.A. as a Boozy Nobody” https://t.co/iso0ggiOkX
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) September 11, 2019

by artappraiser on Thu, 09/12/2019 - 3:50am

C.I.A. Informant Extracted From Russia (in 2017) Had Sent Secrets to U.S. for Decades

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