The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

DONALD TRUMP HAS LONG SOUGHT to establish real estate relationships with Russia’s wealthy elite. In 2013 he got his chance. He was invited by one of the richest families in Russia to co-host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow.

It would not be Trump’s first visit to Russia. His Trump’s interest in Russia predated the fall of the Soviet Union. Long before the pageant, in 1987 Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin convinced Trump to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg to develop a Trump Tower for Russia. Trump went on an exploratory trip but the business and construction conditions were not optimal for him to take advantage of the Soviets or make a profit. He returned home without any projects in hand.¹

Trump didn’t have to wait long for conditions to change. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to an extreme concentration of wealth in Russia. With Putin at its helm, the money went straight to his cronies and the oligarchy developed—a premier class made up of Putin loyalists. Russian oligarchs must have very deep, personal ties to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to get anything accomplished or even to hold onto their wealth. Having a “Roof” over one’s head—a Russian euphemism for sponsorship by the politically powerful—is a tradition as old as Russia itself.

Twenty years after Trump’s initial visit, there was a huge demand for more luxury and higher quality brands in Russia. Trump’s son Donald Jr. visited Moscow in 2008, looking to expand the Trump real estate brand beyond America to Europe and the Middle East. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Trump had considered aiding the reconstruction of the city’s Moskva and Rossiya hotels.²

But it wasn’t hotels or the golden Trump name that won Russians over. It was his popularity as a finger-pointing, quick-firing boss in the NBC television show The Apprentice. His fame on that show brought him into contact with the wealthy Agalarov family. Their money, lavishness, and flattery won Trump over. Aras Agalarov, a billionaire Russian real estate mogul, and his son Emin, the rich pop singer, were big fans of his—Emin even had Trump appear in one of his music videos “In Another Life,” to “fire” Emin at the end of the video as he daydreamed about luxury houses filled with hot women. Emin has been called the Donald Trump of Russia due to popularity, wealth, and his personal relations with Vladimir Putin.^-72

Aras was born in Azerbaijan in 1956. His Forbes-estimated net worth is roughly $1.3 billion in real estate development. His company, Crocus Group, received Kremlin contracts for two World Cup 2018 stadiums. Putin even gave Aras a medal of honor in 2013. As with all things Putin, the medal itself wasn’t important or even valuable—it was Putin’s imprimatur in front of the nation that sealed Aras’s stature as a personal benefactor to the President.

“I have always been interested in building in Russia,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post after returning from Moscow in 2013. He was also proud that “almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.”^-72

Trump negotiated the deal that brought the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow with the blessing and support of the Agalarovs. “We just had a meeting… we all seemed to like each other, shook hands and signed our contract within a week’s time,” Emin said in his Forbes interview, adding that the pageant would cost $20 million to host. Trump first announced Moscow winning the bid in June 2013. “Moscow right now in the world is a very, very important place. We wanted Moscow all the way.”³

After being turned away by American banks due to bankruptcies, Trump has been getting considerable investments from Russian sources, including many with known criminal ties. At one point he even turned to Muammar Gaddafi, the terrorism loving Libyan dictator that blew up American soldiers at a discotech in Germany, funded the Irish Republican Army, destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and the French UTA Flight 772 over the Sahara. Those airline attacks alone killed 413 total passengers and crew.⁴

Trump certainly must have been thrilled to be in the presence of the super Nouveau-riche of Moscow, a city where Mercedes Benz was selling more cars than anywhere else in the world. Even Putin’s personal counter-assault teams from the KGB rode in armored stretch Mercedes G-Wagons. The money was spilling from Russia and Trump was now associating himself with some of the most powerful people in the eastern hemisphere.

The beauty pageant would be held in the Crocus City Hall, a 7,500-seat concert hall just four years old. Trump was dazzled, and desired the attention of the only oligarch who mattered, Vladimir Putin. He tweeted with gleeful apprehension, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?”⁵

When Trump met with the Agalarovs in November 2013, Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen were also in attendance. The Russian developers helped construct the Trump Soho hotel and condominium project in Manhattan.^-72 Sapir’s father was alleged to have had close ties to ex-KGB officers. This should hardly be surprising as the KGB, now FSB, is a deeply-entrenched part of the new Russia, where ex-KGB hands reach out to make deals and take advantage wherever they can to the benefit of Putin’s regime.

Sapir told New York’s Real Estate Weekly that Russian visitors to the Trump Soho “have been telling us they wish there was something modern and hip like it in Moscow…. A lot of people from the oil and gas businesses have come to us asking to be partners in building a product like Trump Soho there.” Russian money would be enough for Trump. “The Russian market is attracted to me,” Trump said. Upon returning to the United States Trump gave his experience in Russia glowing reviews. “I just got back from Russia—learned lots & lots,” Trump tweeted upon his return to the U.S. “Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place! U.S. MUST BE VERY SMART AND VERY STRATEGIC.”⁶

Trump did not say whether or not he met Putin, but was fond of his reputation in the country. Putin “has a tremendous popularity in Russia,” Trump told Fox News. “They love what he’s doing. They love what he represents.”⁷

The pageant experience left Trump with a newfound “understanding” of Russian society. Trump explained in an interview with Fox News May 6, 2016, “I know Russia well,” Trump said. “I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event.” Asked whether he had met with Putin there, Trump declined to say, though he added: “I got to meet a lot of people.” “And you know what?” he continued. “They want to be friendly with the United States. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with somebody?”⁸

The man Trump so enamored, whom Trump was so desperate to meet and impress was not just the ruler of Russia. He was a man steeped in the most dangerous of experiences—he was a master of espionage and an expert at manipulation and exploitation. He could do to Donald Trump what he did to the oligarchy of Russia; make him or break him with a single sentence of approval or insult. Trump, knowing he was culling favor with a powerful man—he had nuclear weapons and beautiful women—responded with obsequiousness that must have pleased such a spy king. Putin must have recognized this showman as a target who could be developed into a political asset friendly to Russia.

Putin’s Candidate Development Strategy

If Putin were to consult the spy-handling experts at the FSB or recall his lessons from the Yuri Andropov School of Intelligence, he would not be hard pressed to find a more suitable candidate that shared his values and could “Make America Great Again.”

Putin has successfully manipulated people from when he was a junior spy, parlaying his ascent to the premiership of Russia. The new FSB methods are exactly the same as the old KGB methods he learned, but harness technology to speed up operational timelines. Not only has Putin used human intelligence and espionage asset management to great effect, but he has also led the way in using the computer information systems technology he was tasked to steal in the 1980s. The creation of new perceptions through propaganda to secure the state has always been a mainstay of the Soviet systems, now it just protects the assets and standing of the oligarchy. Russia fully understood the potential of the internet age to mold perceptions and create its own reality, and information warfare is a central tenet of Russian political, diplomatic, and military operations. The internet age has just sped up the time that propaganda—both innocent and malicious—can infect the global information flow and corrupt whatever target Vladimir Putin desires.

A defector from the KGB, Yuri Bezmenov, gave a series of lectures on KGB recruitment strategies and precisely whom the organization targeted for recruitment by its officers. Bezmenov’s information was confirmed by other former Russian officers as standard fare for recruitment of spies worldwide, particularly in the West.

To some it may come as a surprise that the KGB considered extremist leftists, communists, and so forth, ill-suited to divulge the secrets the KGB wanted, or to gain the highest levels of government clearance. After the 1950s it was KGB policy to always try to recruit the highest level spies from circles that were unexpected; they specifically targeted Westerners from conservative ideological profiles. Bezmenov said:

If there were ever a candidate for recruitment by hostile intelligence agency then Trump would be moved to the head of the class. When he came onto the political scene, FSB officers must have surely remembered this lesson about recruiting the rich, the egomaniacs, and the liars. The record is patently clear that Donald Trump misleads and deceives with impunity. Trump’s methodology of denial, deception, misdirection, tacit victim-blaming, and outright fabrication has come to permeate every aspect of his campaign.

Trump has proven time and again he cannot keep the truth straight when it comes to claiming prestige and high level associates. During a planned trip to the USA by Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, Trump claimed he would be showing him a $19 million dollar apartment during a visit to Trump Tower. This was one in a long list of false stories that Trump seeded in the press. To add insult to injury, a Gorbachev impersonator was brought to the tower and shepherded around by Trump, who was completely fooled, despite later denials.¹⁰

At the end of the year the political fact-checking group POLITIFACT categorized virtually everything the Trump campaign said in 2015 as “Lie of the Year.” It was bold and audacious to just let lies, innuendo, and fabrications be the main thrust in seizing a nomination, but it was a strategy the spies of the Kremlin could appreciate. To them, Trump would not only fit the bill of a potential asset, but he seemed to have adopted—or learned through guile—the fundamental tenets of Russian psychological and information warfare’s “active measures”: Deny, Deceive, and Defeat.

Play and Manipulate the Subject’s Ego

In discussions with confidential sources, I have learned that the FSB still maintains the policies and techniques that have worked for over a century in recruiting agents to be unwitting suppliers of information. They will either find a willing asset who voluntarily works with them for personal, financial, or ideological reasons, or they will find a suitable candidate and “develop” him or her into a useful asset, whether that asset discovers his or her role. This is called an “unwitting” asset or agent.

When recruiting spies or other types of useful propaganda assets (which could include apologists, sympathizers, and even opponents) the officer is trained to observe and hone in on the personal and psychological flaw or flaws that make the asset vulnerable: Flatter the vain, cash to the indebted gambler, adventure for the thrill junkie, sex for the hideous; it is the officer’s job to size up the potential subject and make him or her eager to work for the officer.

The skilled intelligence officer would have applied one of the universal agent recruitment evaluating tools on a potential recruit like Trump. The U.S. government uses a system called MICE. It is an acronym used by the CIA which stands for Money, Ideology, Coercion (or Compromise), and Ego or Excitement.¹¹ Although a more in-depth alternative to this system called RASCLS (Reciprocation, Authority, Scarcity, Commitment/Consistency, Liking, Social proof) exists, we shall use MICE for this assessment.

The FSB’s chief spy-recruiting officers assigned to the SVR—the foreign intelligence collection directorate (or the GRU if it was military intelligence operation)—are trained to play to the desires of their potential assets. They watch carefully before ever making the approach. If the subject wants to feel important, then importance is stressed in all discussions.

Money is an incredible inducement for a potential recruit. If the subject wants to be impressed by promises of wealth and opportunity, then the oligarchs will be rolled out to make him feel as if he is or could be one of them. In Trump’s case, he may in fact have been unwittingly steered into positions sympathetic to Russia, such that he now thinks they are deeply-held beliefs, due to the flattering conversations with his Russian supporting friends and staffers concerning his heart’s desire: To be an oligarch playing on the global playfield on par with Putin.

The ideology of the individual can be a self-driving motivator for those who may offer their services to a foreign power, or who find their fortunes have great similarities. The FSB’s SVR recruiters will always attempt to enhance the subject’s prestige if that’s what it takes to keep him personally motivated. The craft of nudging a person to espouse a political position that is against the interests of the person’s birth nation requires the officer to be able to read the subject’s ideological belief system, and subtly maneuver them into agreement, or to at least be neutral to another, less-palatable belief system that just happens to be the path to treason.

Compromise (or coercion) is generally not a desired process, but where it is clear that a potential recruit has a secret that can be used against them, such as secretly embezzling government money, or sexual liaisons of an illicit nature, it can be useful for the purpose of blackmail. Compromise in these terms would be photographs or videos of “honeypots”—sexual traps laid by the hostile intelligence service—and then coercing the individual to begrudgingly betray their country. No one has ever publically accused Donald Trump of being susceptible to coercion, but there is the possibility of being personally compromised or finding oneself in a compromising position at, let’s say, a beauty pageant, in a nation where the intelligence service routinely uses beautiful women as sexual traps. Retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once famously said “In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. There’s very little difference. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lie down.”

Ego or Excitement (or both) is the last of the categories of basic recruitment. Bezmenov emphasized that there is an archetype of potential asset in the West that the service desired most of all—Egocentric narcissists, like Trump.

“Egocentric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.”¹²

If Putin so chose to develop him, only the highest-level state agents would be involved in a potential cultivation of Trump as an exponent of Russian interests. Putin himself, under advisement of the FSB management and SVR’s top human intelligence experts, would have to assess the suitability of the candidate and his potential to assist Russia, whether the candidate knew it or not. In Trump’s case, it would be very easy. At almost every turn, his “bromance” with Putin would potentially stand on a foundation of his desire for their riches, and to be universally recognized as a man of substance and stature. It would cost Russia nothing to entertain his desires while furthering their own.

A skilled autocrat such as Putin would easily understand how to play and manipulate Donald Trump’s ego. Putin would want Trump to feel as if he is truly qualified to be President, over the opposition of his American detractors who ridicule Trump as not being remotely qualified. Putin would know this from his intelligence collection apparatus that Trump would need strategically-timed compliments in an effort to foster his image and massage his easily-bruised ego.

Putin’s strategically-placed endorsement of December 2015 is a classic example of a “hands-off but actually hands-on” supporting statement to make the asset feel special. On Trump, Putin said: “[Trump] wants to move to another level of relations, a closer, deeper level of relations with Russia…How can we not welcome this? Of course we welcome this.”¹³

“He is a bright and talented person without any doubt. He is the absolute leader of the presidential race…”¹⁴

This statement and many others, as well as the largesse of attention and support from even average Russian citizens would make Trump feel indebted to Putin. Such indebtedness could even have contributed to Trump’s mistrust of the American system of government. The sentiment that Putin’s kind words were somewhat responsible for validating Trump on a world stage could explain Trump’s gushing admiration for Russia almost every time he speaks on the subject, much to the consternation of Trump’s staff. In his own mind, Trump may feel he received more support from Moscow than he did from the Republican Party, when Putin paid the compliment. For an unwitting asset “my friends [Putin] likes me,” this may be more than enough to maintain the bond between an active-measure handler and an unwitting asset.

The Kremlin Crew

A group of Russian-backed associates orbit Trump and have become known in some circles as “The Kremlin Crew.” It is not a problem for Trump to commune with money; the problem is his associates’ many disturbing connections to the Russian oligarchy and officers of the KGB/FSB. A wise businessman may seek out cash in the nouveau riche parts of the world. But add Russian oligarchy cash managed by FSB spies, and it adds up to the kind of relationships the FBI counterintelligence division routinely arrested people for during the Cold War—as espionage assets.

The Bayrock Group

One of Trump’s most troubling intelligence connections was to the Bayrock Group. Trump first aligned with them to build a hotel in Moscow in 2005. When that didn’t happen, he partnered with them to build the Trump SoHo. Bayrock was chaired by Tevfik Arif, originally a Soviet Union commerce apparatchik from Kazakhstan, who worked to introduce Trump to Russian investors. Trump saw it as a chance to open Trump Hotels and Towers in Moscow, Kiev, Warsaw, and Istanbul.¹⁵

Felix Satter also worked for Bayrock. He has been implicated in ties with Russian Mafia. Satter is also known for “using mob-like tactics to achieve his goals,” and was convicted of a stock fraud scheme. Satter made arrangements with Trump to develop projects in Russia and the U.S. He bragged in 2008 testimony, “I can build a Trump Tower, because of my relationship with Trump.”¹⁶ Trump denies knowing Satter. However, the relationship was significant enough that condo buyers in Trump International Hotel and Tower mentioned it in a lawsuit filed over construction.¹⁷ Trump sought to disassociate himself from the project, claiming he simply lent his name and denied knowing Satter. During his depositions, Trump said he knew neither Arif nor Satter.¹⁸

Satter is described as having threatened Bayrock employees with violence. Even after he left Bayrock, Satter kept a relationship with Trump including an office. AP reported that Satter used business cards that claimed he was a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.”¹⁹

Donald Trump announced his plans for Trump SoHo, a 46-story condominium-hotel in New York, on a 2006 episode of The Apprentice. For the project, Trump partnered with development companies the Sapir Organization and the Bayrock Group. The Sapir Organization was founded by the late Tamir Sapir, an émigré from the former Soviet republic of Georgia who quickly made millions on New York real estate in the 1990s. In 2006 his son Alex assumed the reins of the company. Of the elder Sapir, Charles Bagli wrote in The New York Times:

Tamir Sapir’s son-in-law, Rotem Rosen, was also involved in the SoHo project. Ben Schreckinger wrote in Politico:

From the start, Trump SoHo had a hard time attracting buyers, in part because zoning laws restricted owners to living in the units 120 days of the year. When the owners weren’t there, units would be used as hotel rooms and owners would share part of the profit. It was soon revealed, however, that potential buyers were told inflated estimates of the number of units sold. Within months of the opening, a group of condo buyers filed a lawsuit alleging fraud against Trump, the Bayrock Group, and the Sapir Organization. According to Reuters:

The complaint said the defendants in sales pitches and to the media during the first eighteen months of marketing advertised that the building was “30, 40, 50, 60 percent or more sold.” Instead, when the offering plan went effective, buyers learned that just 62 of the 391 units, or 16 percent, had been sold, the complaint said. A minimum of 15 percent was needed for the plan to be effective.²² Then, in November 2011, Trump agreed to a settlement, without admitting wrongdoing. The buyers received 90 percent of their deposits. Mike McIntire of The New York Times writes:

The property was foreclosed on and put up for sale in 2014.²⁴

The Americans in the Pocket

Once Trump took on the Presidential campaign he also managed to acquire the most controversial of all the Putin-associated characters: Paul Manafort.

Before becoming Trump’s campaign manager, Manafort was known as the leader of the “Torturer’s lobby” while working for the law firm of Black, Manafort Stone & Kelly.²⁵ They represented some of the worst dictators in the world including Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, The Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos, and the brutal Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi. Manafort has also been an advisor to the Trump kingdom since the mid-1980s.

Manafort’s shadowy dealmaking could best be described in a bribery caper in France known as “The Karachi Affair.” Manafort was hired to advise Edouard Balladur, a mentor to former French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, with payments from a Lebanese arms dealer, Abdul Rahman al-Assir, chairman of Interstate Engineering.²⁶

The case was part of the failed 1995 French presidential campaign.²⁷ Al-Assir paid Manafort to advise Balladur in the campaign. At the core of the controversy was the sale of three French Agosta 90 class submarines, which Al-Assir helped to sell to Pakistan for $950 million. A French probe speculated that Balladur’s campaign was being funded in part by bribes from those weapon sales. He also received a $250,000 loan from a Middle East arms dealer.²⁸ This was a pretty typical deal for Manafort; seemingly unscrupulous but legal.

Manafort took on the unenviable task of replacing Corey Lewandowsky. Initially it was smooth sailing for Manafort before he was removed as the chief advisor. Then the revelations about the Ukraine deals surfaced. Manafort was coming under fire for his work with past clients in Ukraine, including work for Viktor Yanukovych in a 2010 campaign.²⁹ Manafort’s efforts with Yanukovych included getting him to stop speaking Russian in public statements. Manafort worked for Serhiy Lyovochkin, former chief of staff to Yanukovych. Also part of the focus on Manafort relates to his involvement with shell companies that he has profited from.

In 2005, Manafort was working for mining tycoon Rinat Akhemetov along with Manafort partner Rick Gates, Konstantin Kilimnik, and the “International Republican Institute” of Moscow.³⁰ Manafort represented Dmytro Firtash, a gas “tycoon” who is wanted by the U.S. Manafort was also named as a defendant in a civil racketeering case with Firtash filed by Yulia Tymoschenko, the golden-haired leader of the Orange Revolution. According to U.S. Ambassador William Taylor, in cables released by Wikileaks, Firtash admitted having ties to Seymon Mogilevich, an organized crime boss in Russia.^{31, 32}

Manafort was sued in a Cayman Island court over abusing his investment money. The plaintiff was the president of the largest aluminum company in the world, Oleg Deripaska, who said Manafort has not accounted for the use of the funds or returned them.³³ Russian investors filed a petition that claimed they invested $26 million into buying a Ukrainian cable company. Surf Horizons was trying to reclaim its investment from Pericles. Manafort was ordered to be deposed in that case in 2015.³⁴ The U.S. government revoked Deripaska’s U.S. visa in July 2006, and he sought to have it restored. In 2007, Manafort and Deripaska sought to establish “Pericles Emerging Market Investors,” investing in Russia and Ukraine. Manafort helped to arrange meetings between Senator John McCain and Deripaska.

Manafort was a close paid advisor to Trump. On August 14, 2016, The New York Times published a story “Secret Ledger in Ukraine lists cash for Donald Trump’s campaign chief,” which detailed Manafort’s relationships with Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president of the Ukraine and close Putin loyalist. Before his abrupt departure and exile in Russia, Yanukovych was a master manipulator of Ukrainian politics. He hired Manafort to help with some of that manipulation. When he escaped a popular uprising against him it was a severe blow to Russia, as the people had been agitating to get closer to the Europe and NATO.

Manafort’s dilemma following the disclosure of the ledgers, numbering around four hundred pages, was that he claimed to have never worked for either the Russian or Ukrainian governments. The handwritten ledgers reflect large projects including sales of a Ukrainian cable company under the Pericles banner.³⁵ They show cash payments for Manafort over a period ranging from 2007 to 2012. The article also claims that Manafort never registered his work as a “foreign agent” as required with the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to investigators, Manafort’s name appears twenty-two times. He was allegedly paid $12.7 million in cash or untraceable instruments over a span of five years. The investigator did note that there is nothing in the ledger that indicates Manafort ever received payments, just that they were issued.³⁶

All of these were drops in the bucket that could easily have been overlooked, but on August 17, 2016 the London Times released a bombshell report from Ukrainian prosecutors that Manafort had been paid by pro-Russian parties in the Ukraine to organize anti-NATO protests in Crimea, leading to the withdrawal of forces for a planned NATO exercise. The prosecutors wrote,

Two years later Crimea would be invaded and seized by Russia.

Howard Lorber is the Trump campaign’s economic advisor. Vector Group President Howard Lorber is a Trump campaign donor and investor in Russia.³⁸ He’s given $100,000 to the “Trump Victory fund.” When Trump went to Moscow in 1996 to consider branding projects, Lorber worked to help Trump open a building in Moscow, but the venture failed. Visits with Lorber include one in November 1996. The trip focused on a project under development in Moscow like Ducat Place.

Carter Page joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016. In July 2016, Page went to Moscow and delivered a series of speeches on establishing a better relationship with Russia. His recommendations included easing of economic sanctions imposed after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. As the Trump campaign talks about ending TPP and other trade deals, the unelected candidate’s spokespeople are out inviting business with Russian partners especially in industries that are known to have crime bosses and Russian mafia ties.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were staunch advocates of arming the government of Ukraine in their fight with Russian separatists and Putin. During the Republican National Convention, the party platform committee proposed language to the effect that Ukraine needed U.S. weapons and NATO support to defend itself, in support of a long-held Republican position. Carter Page, now on the Trump campaign team, used to work in the Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office, has personal investments in Gazprom, a Russian state oil conglomerate. He told Bloomberg that his investments have been hurt by the sanctions policy against Russia over Ukraine.³⁹ He has characterized the U.S. policy toward Russia as chattel slavery.⁴⁰

Page was the Trump campaign’s representative to the party platform committee. Trump wanted a more Russian-friendly platform, and his team, led by Page, insisted on removing any language that would demand the arming of the Ukraine. Shortly after Page’s visit to the committee, the platform was modified to do just that—all language to support arming Ukraine was removed. RNC officials told the Huffington Post that it was the “only major revision the campaign demanded”⁴¹

Richard Burt was the former U.S. ambassador to Germany under President Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. Mr. Burt is the Chair of the advisory council for The National Interest. He joined the Trump campaign at the request of Paul Manafort. Burt sits on the board of the largest commercial bank in Russia, Alfa-Bank. He also has a role in an investment fund that controls Gazprom, the same company where Carter Page has deep investments. He has been a vocal critic of the need for NATO and has written position papers on the future of Russia-Ukraine relations.42 The Nation speculated that Richard Burt wrote Trump’s April 27, 2016 Russia-friendly speech on foreign policy.⁴³

Dmitri Konstantinovich Simes was born in Moscow in October 1947. He moved to the U.S. in 1973. He’s the former director of Soviet studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former chair of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’s Center for Russian and Eurasian Programs. He is the publisher of The National Interest, a renowned foreign policy publication.⁴⁴

The Center for the National Interest is close allies with the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, a Russian-funded organization led by Adranik Migranyan. It was revealed in State Department documents leaked via WikiLeaks that Migranyan was given the position by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.⁴⁵ Migranyan has called Russian president Putin “Russia’s Reagan” and has advocated for an ease of sanctions on Russia.

Michael Caputo lived in Russia in the post Soviet 1990s. Caputo worked for Gazprom Media, and has done work under contract to improve Vladimir Putin’s image. He took on the role of Trump’s adviser for the New York primary in 2016.

Trump’s Spy, Putin’s Ally?

General Michal Flynn. In 2015, retired Army General and former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, attended a Russia Today (RT) anniversary gala, where he sat at a table with Vladimir Putin. Since retiring from the Pentagon, Flynn has become a regular contributor for RT, the state-sponsored and Kremlin-controlled news outlet. Flynn has been critical in recent years of President Obama’s foreign policy, especially during Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State. He was forced to retire after clashes within the intelligence community over his vision for the DIA.

Most surprisingly, Flynn has also expressed desires to develop a stronger relationship with Russia and has been an adviser to Donald Trump and his 2016 Presidential campaign on matters of national security. Flynn accompanied Trump on his CIA intelligence briefings before the election.

According to Flynn’s writings, Russia is a potential ally against an “Enemy Alliance,” whose members include Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and… ISIS. Nowhere in his writings does he identify Russia for facilitating the destabilization of Syrian civil war or meddling elsewhere. In fact, General Flynn is proud of his associations with Russia. In an Interview with the Washington Post’s national security writer Dana Priest, he bragged about being the only U.S. officer allowed into the headquarters of Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU.

Flynn does not see the relationship with Russia as adversarial, but necessary to fight Islamic extremism. When asked him about that:

When the subject of a former Director of military intelligence being a paid pundit on Russian state TV, he took a hands-off approach; it wasn’t his fault, it was his agent’s.

Priest asked him about why he went on Russian Television, which is a propaganda mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

The most disturbing optics for Flynn is how he was invited to the Russian Television tenth anniversary gala in Moscow. Flynn was seated at the right hand of Vladimir Putin. When asked how he felt being sat next to Putin himself, in a position of favor he said he didn’t have any problem sitting next to the world’s nuclear armed autocrat—it was all about him getting paid.

Flynn’s acceptance of money from RT, speaking his mind in forums he feels are less state controlled than “MSNBC” and “CNN” and visual association (certainly in the eyes of the Russian leadership and people) raised the eyebrows of not just the national security elite of the United States, but practitioners in the U.S. intelligence community. Some wondered if Flynn was not adopting the same method of speaking out the way that Edward Snowden did, by using the national platform of a former communist autocrat as his shield from criticism.

Some members in counterintelligence said that twenty years ago this would have resulted in an extensive investigation to see if his “tail was dirty,” a euphemism indicating that he was being handled without his knowledge, due to cash inducements. One could easily apply the MICE recruitment principle to his behaviors when added with his complete distain for President Obama and admiration for Putin, and come up with an interesting profile that might make the GRU want to do more for him than serve coffee.

Though Flynn said he was standing up for the principles of the United States, to the Russian public, having the Director of Defense Intelligence seated at the right hand of the most powerful ex-Director of the KGB implied that the old spymaster had him under Putin’s “Roof”… in America it would translate to “He’s my bitch.”

Putin’s Strategy to Compromise an American Election

The revelations of the Kremlin Crew’s proximity to Putin and Moscow are stunning in their depth. They reveal how easily some Americans will accept money to work against their own national interest whether in business, government, or propaganda. Precisely as the KGB had discerned over seventy years ago. They also show how easily money and business relations are now the new currency of former and current Russian intelligence officers. Such riches would surely be issued with invisible strings, allowing the FSB to gain access to the highest level players in a new American administration.

These pro-Russian players apparently were so close to Trump that they could literally be chosen as his campaign manager and placed at essentially at arm’s length to a potential President. At best their ties are tenuous and ill-advised, at worst they could be the grounds for an FBI espionage investigation. That remains to be seen.

If Trump’s acolytes did have real ties to Russia’s center of power, and if they were successful in electing Trump, they would be in a position to handle a potential President’s most intimate secrets. They would also be able to advance Russia’s objectives, desires, and activities—fully in-line with their own personal fortunes—above America’s interests, with the full force of the Oval Office.

In the framework of the conflict between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin, angered by U.S. intrusion in his wars in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, the military seizure of Crimea, and pressures on NATO allies Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, Putin may be unleashing Trump’s challenge as a way to exact revenge on the United States. Putin Biographer Masha Gessen, author of Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin told CNN, “There’s a really aggressive posture to both men. Putin respects fighters and he respects aggression and he doesn’t respect sort of calm and deliberation… He wants a manly adversary. He wants somebody he can understand.”⁴⁹ Putin would also want a President of the United States who would work with Putin to attain Russia’s goals above all. Trump’s bluster and bravado is breezily transparent. He is exactly as they taught in KGB school: An egoist, a liar, but talented –he knows the mind of the wrestling loving, under educated, authoritarian admiring white male populous. This is raw material Vladimir could use. Trump would just need to be coddled, supported, flattered, and indirectly tasked by the oligarchy and the conservative Americans who see Russia as a model for American authoritarianism. It would not be hard to believe that Trump could be convinced he could reestablish U.S.–Russian relations. In Putin’s favor, of course. Trump wants money and Russia has money, prestige, and the kind of women Trump likes. Trump’s worldview on subjects are dear to Russia’s heart, including a hands-off policy on the former occupied nations of Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania; as well as tough talk about not supporting NATO. These would all be hallmarks of Trump’s campaign, almost as if Putin himself had written these goals. Needless to say Putin did not have to—everyone who works for him and who desires Russian cash understands that these are the political minimums to even start to discuss any arrangement with the East.

Putin could not do this with just smiles and comments. He would need to create an operational organization that would manage the U.S. elections. It could be based on the same Information Warfare Campaigns that degraded the Baltic States using the new Russian strategy of Hybrid political warfare. Hybrid war is an ever-shifting mélange of media propaganda, cyberwarfare, and touches of military adventurism that could help elect Trump and lead to the break-up of the European Union and NATO. Putin’s vision would be to use the sycophant Trump as President to subordinate America to the role of junior partner to a rising Russia.

How to make him the political frontrunner? No problem. Russia has quite a bit of experience in this field.

Master Class in “Kompromat”

In 1948, American diplomat George Kennan wrote a paper called “On Organizing Political Warfare,” where he defined Political Warfare as:

His writings were taken very seriously by many in defense and academia but not so seriously as the Soviet Union’s KGB. The KGB was so adept at political warfare that Russians used a word for exploiting situations where blackmail can be applied, embarrassment can stifle activism, and words or images can defame those in power and limit their ability to respond to threats or even warfare. That word is Kompromat—which translates as “compromising material.” This can include both real and fabricated information, but it is always applied judiciously and maliciously. When hit with Kompromat, you have entered the big leagues of Putin’s animosity.

The Kremlin has harnessed the power of this tool to defeat its enemies both domestically and abroad. Amanda Taub wrote a brilliant primer on the subject in The New York Times. She explained the simple processes that can have a huge impact:

Taub writes that after the DNC email leak—if Russia is indeed responsible—“we may be seeing one of the most sordid tools of its domestic politics deployed as a hostile weapon in foreign policy.”⁵² She argues correctly the same position held by the U.S. intelligence community: That the DNC hack is materially different from other hacks the U.S. has experienced. She wrote, “Rather than using the information seized for intelligence purposes, the hackers selected damaging excerpts from the cache of stolen data, and then leaked them at a pivotal moment in the presidential election.”⁵³ In other words, a classic case of Kompromat.

Collecting and exploiting information in political warfare is so common among Russian politicians that there is a series of websites dedicated to tracking the incidents, such as kompromat.ru. This site is run by a Russian blogger who sells salacious stories gathered from the steamy political underbelly of Russians who use it to their own advantage on a local scale.

David Remnick, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, writes that whether or not Russia was responsible for the DNC hack and subsequent leak to WikiLeaks, “what’s undisputed is that the gathering of Kompromat—compromising material—is a familiar tactic in Putin’s arsenal… For years, the Russian intelligence services have filmed political enemies in stages of sexual and/or narcotic indulgence, and have distributed the grainy images online.”⁵⁴

In a previous article for The New Yorker, Remnick described one infamous case of Kompromat:

Franklin Foer writes in Slate, “There’s a clear pattern: Putin runs stealth efforts on behalf of politicians who rail against the European Union and want to push away from NATO.”⁵⁶ In an interview on Slate’s podcast “Trumpcast,” Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum also mentioned Russia’s “pattern” of interfering in elections of Western democracies, citing as one example Russia’s funding of Marine Le Pen, president of France’s National Front, a far right political party.⁵⁷ Computer hacking adds another dimension to Kompromat. Applebaum said that the events unfolding in the 2016 presidential election seem to follow a pattern that other European countries have experienced when Russia has exerted its influence:

Paul Roderick Gregory argues in an opinion piece in Forbes that a former KGB officer like Putin could capitalize on Clinton’s use of a private email address and server while secretary of state to either blackmail her into dropping out of the presidential race, or leak information that “would weaken the United States’ hand in world affairs throughout a Clinton presidency.”⁵⁹ Furthermore, he notes the Kremlin doesn’t even need to have hacked or be in possession of Clinton’s emails to exert this influence, writing, “Those who follow Kremlin propaganda understand that it is not necessary for Putin to have Clinton’s e-mails to cause serious damage to a Clinton presidency. All he needs is that many believe he has Hillary’s e-mails.”⁶⁰ He continues:

Professional Assessments of Putin’s Recruitment

The Putin Strategic Kompromat & Recruit strategy is so scripted and so clearly a FSB/KGB styled political warfare operation that members of U.S. intelligence quickly saw through it. The current members, including the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Director of the CIA John Brennan, danced around the subject on the DNC hacks, as they are sworn to secrecy about the origins and sources.

Former acting Director and former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell has served six presidents—three from each party—and has voted for both Democrats and Republicans. He has kept his politics to himself throughout his thirty-three year intelligence career, until now. He takes a dim view of the entire Russian constellation of “coincidences” that surrounds Donald Trump. We may recall the U.S. intelligence community’s observation that “coincidences take a lot of planning.” The Trump coincidences seemed to bear the hallmarks of the sword and the shield of the FSB.

In August 2016 Morell wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he explained why he will no longer remain politically silent during this election. It had little to do with Trump and more to do with his professional intelligence assessment of the threat to the United States: