What Do "The Americans" and the Trump White House Have in Common? You Guessed It: Russian Spies
I once worked under cover. False names. Pin ball travel itineraries to cover my tracks. Dealing through front companies. Cash only transactions. I didn't take to it. After all, I was a diplomat, not a spy. It wasn't what I signed up for. But I was asked to do it for a short time. My country, do or die. Not yet married, I nonetheless had to lie to my parents and friends about my long, unexplained absences. I wasn't doing intel work, but worked on a highly sensitive program under White House auspices which required maximum secrecy. To relieve the pressure of this double life, I transitioned to the warm and fuzzy task of making life hell for Russia in Afghanistan. It was the Cold War. That's what we feds did.
I've been alternately watching The Americans and Homeland. The former is time travel back to the '80s. The latter takes us to the post-9/11 years. Fear and paranoia reigned in both eras. The drama, plotting and acting in both series are top notch and keep me glued to the screen. But they also put me mentally back into the shoes of a cold warrior. After a quarter of a century serving in, or working on, such America-loving bastions as Cuba, Afghanistan and Vietnam, it's hard to transition to Norman Rockwell America, even after many years (see: Confessions of a Sleeper Agent). The old warped takes on things, quotidien as well as geopolitical, kick back in. Oh, yes. Renee is clearly a Soviet deep cover agent. She's just too squirrelly. Burov vs Gen. Kovtun squaring off as members of contending factions inside the KGB - of course! S.O.P. in my in my local chamber of commerce. The pro-Gorbachev KGB faction asks Philip to spy on Elizabeth, his wife. Naturally. After all, you can't trust just anybody. I couldn't even date my future (foreign-born) wife till Diplomatic Security cleared her after a background investigation. This is normal, after all. Isn't it? Or, is it my addled brain?
So, fast-forward to today. Apply my Cold War-honed analytical skills, since marinated in a rich sauce of modern spy fiction that I've written as well as consumed, onto Donald Trump's White House. What do I see?
Flynn. Manafort. Gates. Papadopoulos. Sessions. Page. Kushner. Cohen. Don, Jr.
Kislyak. Kilimnik. Deripaska. Torshin. Veselnitskaya. Podobny.
Mysterious removal of an anti-Russia plank from the GOP campaign platform.
Roger Stone and Julian Assange and "Guccifer 2.0" aka a GRU officer.
Don, Jr. to Putin factotums re "dirt on Clinton": “If it’s what you say, I love it.”
"Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."
Jared Kushner seeks to establish a "back channel" to Putin via the Russian embassy.
Federal court indictment: "Flynn falsely stated that he did not ask Russia's ambassador to the United States to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia."
Federal court indictment: a Russian intel cutout told Papadopoulos, "they (the Russians) have dirt on her"; "the Russians had emails of Clinton"; "they have thousands of emails."
Federal court filing on Gates: "Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU." Person A: GRU officer Konstatin Kilimnik.
President Trump's criticism of Vladimir Putin: 0
Presidential mandated measures to protect our democracy in preparation for the November elections: 0
Sanctions against Russia for meddling in the 2016 election: few and late.
Trump's statements on Russia's assassination attempt on a former spy and his daughter in the UK: 0
The U.S.-sanctioned chiefs of three Russian spy agencies visit Washington for secret meetings with administration officials.
Trump invites Putin for a summit meeting at the White House, blindsiding his advisors.
Former acting CIA director Mike Morell: "We would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
Former CIA director John Brennan: "The Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump, and may have things that they could expose."
Retired four star General Barry McCaffrey: "President Trump is a serious threat to U.S. national security. He is refusing to protect vital U.S. interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr. Putin."
God knows what we don't know. But Bob Mueller certainly does. In his recent statement before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, former FBI counterintelligence agent Clint Watts said, "Soviet Active Measures strategy and tactics have been reborn and updated for the modern Russian regime and the digital age. Today, Russia seeks to win the second Cold War through 'the force of politics as opposed to the politics of force.'”
A year ago, I wrote in Washington Monthly - Tinker. Tailor. Mogul. Spy? - "Whether therefore Trump is a witting or unwitting asset of the Russian Federation, the bottom line is this: by turning away intelligence briefings, by inexplicably attacking his country’s intelligence agencies and by his open bromance with Putin, the President-elect is putting the nation’s national security at grave risk." I quoted Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police – the Cheka, “The fact that you are free is not your achievement, but rather a failure on our side.”
Is it my addled Cold War brain, or does the accumulating evidence reveal a cabal of American quislings colluding with our chief foreign adversary?
KGB officer Victor Zhukov, in The Americans, put it aptly, "The American people have elected a madman as their president."
Madman? Or, Siberian Candidate?