Putin’s Deepest Mole

Recently I was thumbing through Pluto TV looking for something to watch while lying in bed and found this show on spies and moles in America. It’s actually called Secrets of War and according to IMDB.COM I was watching episodes 37-39. If you really care about America or make any claim what-so-ever to being a patriot, you should read this Time Magazine article about The Fourth Mole the CIA never found.

Yes, like any good American I’ve browsed the list of arrests under the Espionage Act. I think it is horribly out of date since it doesn’t include this husband and wife jailed for selling nuclear secrets to Russia. Yes, as a human and a writer I tend to like well done spy stories. It’s one of the reasons I posted a review of Smiley’s People and ordered a copy. It’s also why I liked Gregory Lamb’s A Dangerous Element. Spycraft and StuxNet, what’s not to like?

5 Most Notorious Moles

Not all that long ago Popular Mechanics ran an article covering the 5 Most Notorious Moles. What is interesting about that article is “how little money.” Aldrich Ames was paid $2.7 over the period 1985 to his arrest in 1994. They talk about him leading a “lavish lifestyle” but really, how “lavish” could it really have been to burn through $2.7 million in 9 years? That’s only $300K/year. A good income, yes. On top of your base salary it could let you take a few vacations, live rather comfortably, but . . . lavish? When most people hear about criminals living a “lavish lifestyle” they think Krisley family. In an odd tie-in, Savanna Krisley delivered a speech at the RNC nominating Donald Trump. Soon Donald Trump himself will know what it is like to be grousing for a pardon.

Robert Hansen is probably the name everyone remembers. In 2007 his story was the tale told in Breach. An excellent movie I really need to get reviewed on here. A 2002 movie Master Spy: The Robert Hansen Story is a pretty good one too. According to Popular Mechanics he only received $1.4 million. His working for the Russians started in 1985 and continued to his arrest in 2001. That’s not even $100K/year.

Everything you read about the mole Robert Hansen says he didn’t do it for the money. He did it because he was pissed at the lack of respect, promotion, etc. he was receiving at the FBI. He just walked into a known spy front and offered information. There was no Russian recruitment. He was the kind of guy who rubbed coworkers the wrong way so they avoided him. He got shuffled to a backwater post. It was a do little job that gave him time to search for secrets in the database.

Then Came Trump

In the land of moles, Trump has to be the ultimate Putin mole. How he ever got a security clearance after getting elected is beyond anything thinking individual. Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank is well documented. Loaned him $2bn after bankruptcies that made him the Pariah of Wall Street. For those who can’t read, there are even podcasts covering this relationship.

Until the 1990s, ­Deutsche Bank was a provincial German company with a limited presence outside Europe. Today it is a $1.5 trillion colossus, one of the world’s largest banks, with offices in 59 countries — and, thanks to its well­documented pattern of violating laws, an international symbol of greed, recklessness and hubris. Its rap sheet includes manipulating international currency markets; playing a central role in rigging a crucial benchmark interest rate known as Libor; whisking billions of dollars in and out of Iran, Syria, Myanmar and other countries in violation of sanctions; laundering billions of dollars on behalf of Russian oligarchs, among many others; and misleading customers, investors and American, German and British regulators.

New York Times

America’s two most notorious moles got less than $5 million combined for classified information. Trump got roughly $2bn from Russian Oligarchs to keep him afloat so he could run for president. That alone should have automatically disqualified him from any level of security clearance. An ordinary American citizen that had declared bankruptcy and got a loan from a Russian Oligarch to keep them afloat would never get a security clearance. That’s “has been turned” red flag #1.

Flight of Money From Russia

What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him.

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s MI6

When you read about how many billions of dollars Trump has taken from Russian and Georgian Oligarchs you have to wonder just how he wasn’t imprisoned for even trying to run for president. Is our clearance process so weak that all you need is one or two paper shell companies to handle your Russian money and you can take as much as you want in bribes? I guess the above listed moles should have tried that.

In the 1980s Ronald Reagan became a two term President. He was instrumental in at least marketing if not creating the Star Wars Defense System. This got Mikhail Gorbachev to sit down at the table and engage in the capitalist game of Who Can Spend The Most Money. As you all know by now, when it comes to technology, just keep throwing money at it and eventually something works.

Nay Sayers decried we would mortgage our grandchildren’s futures for a debacle that could never work. It is true that with the original IBM PC all the way through the 486 computer that this didn’t have a prayer. That was the mid-1980s. In 2007 China launched a ground based missile and actually hit the satellite they were aiming for. In 1991, after spending itself into global bankruptcy the Soviet Union dissolved. Ronnie was right.

Trump’s 6 Bankruptcies

Trump’s businesses have had 6 bankruptcies under his “leadership.” Three of the casino bankruptcies happened in the early 1990s, making him a pariah to American banks. Oligarchs began getting their money out of Russia shortly before the country fell. Hopefully you read the linked article to see how he transferred all his debts to his companies before they took bankruptcy.

As a result of Trump’s really bad business practices and bankruptcies no American bank would loan him money. Enter Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Group, where Oligarch funded whatever they wanted. No real rules, at least no real lending rules. If the Oligarchs wanted to make the loan it got made. The bank also engaged in Mirror Trades to launder Russian money.

Today, mirror trades are most closely associated with the $10 billion Deutsche Bank scandal, following which the bank agreed to pay nearly $630 million in fines to U.S. and U.K. authorities. Between 2011 and 2015, Deutsche Bank affiliates in Moscow and London bought and sold identical quantities of the same blue-chip stock through the bank’s Moscow equities desk. According to Ed Caesar, who wrote extensively on the topic for The New Yorker, “By this alchemy, rubles in Russia were transformed into dollars in London. The process bypassed tax officials, currency regulators, and anti-money laundering controls.” Central to the scheme were offshore shell companies, which have anonymized these transactions. Deutsche Bank representatives have reportedly commented that the ultimate purpose or destination of the mirror trades, which facilitated the funneling of billions of dollars out of Russia, was never uncovered.

americanprogress.org

Summer of 2000 – Oligarchs Become Mole Factories

Putin came to power and coopted Oligarch wealth. Oligarchs invest in startups and other businesses to gather intelligence and create moles for Putin. This keeps Kremlin fingerprints off the payments. They spin up antivirus software companies like Kasperskey. What better way to keep Russian viruses from being removed than to be the antivirus software on the system?

Their most successful long play for a mole has to be Donald Trump. Keeping him afloat when he should have been a vagrant on the street long ago. Interfering in the 2016 election helping Trump take office. Then Trump did his bidding.

Questions We Have to Ask

• How many Russian Oligarchs (or their employees) visited Mar-a-lago to get a look at those classified documents? Until the trial moves forward we can’t really know.
• How many classified secrets did Donald Trump blurt out trying to impress people? If you spent the right amount of money to stay at his resort he would apparently tell you nuclear sub secrets.
• Why do Russians spending nearly $100 million buying property in Trump branded luxury towers not bar you from getting a security clearance?
• Just how many layers do you have to launder bribe money through for it not to be a bribe?

Summary

It’s difficult to be a U.S. Citizen and not see that Donald Trump is Putin’s deepest and most blatant loyal mole. Let’s not forget this oligarch.