CIA Reportedly Had Asset So Close To Putin That Spy Could Photograph Secret Documents

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Huffington Post

09/09/2019 11:31 pm ET

The U.S. agency waged a mission to extract the informant from Russia in 2017 after Trump’s election, multiple media outlets reported.

By Nick Visser

The CIA spent decades cultivating an informant who became so close to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the individual could photograph documents on his desk and send them back to U.S. intelligence officials, according to a series of shocking reports published by CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post on Monday.

The unnamed source quickly became one of the CIA’s most important assets as the informant rose through the ranks of Russian politics, providing essential information for decades, including intelligence about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. But the spy agency became worried about the informant’s safety shortly after Trump was elected and ultimately waged a secret mission in 2017 to extract the source from Russia, CNN’s Jim Sciutto first reported on Monday.

Link to tweet

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cia-russia-informant-putin-extracted_n_5d76f3b5e4b0fde50c2bbc9b

[RockRaven]

1. That's not the headline. The headline is: "TRUMP BLEW THIS SPY, TO RUSSIANS, IN THE OVAL OFFICE!"

GODDAMNED FUCKING TRAITOR

[RDANGELO]

2. Either that or a monumental idiot.

[PSPS]

3. They had to get him out after this...

Donald Trump allegedly revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting last week.

This was on May 5, 2017

[tblue37]

17. The info revealed during that meeting was about a spy, probably Israeli, embedded in ISIS in Syria.

And Trump spilled the beans just to brag about how he gets the "best" intelligence, like a 5-year-old bragging that he knows a big secret.

[PSPS]

18. But it displayed how trump can't be trusted

[tblue37]

20. For sure. nt

[Judi Lynn]

4. US removed covert source in Russia due to safety concerns under Trump - report

CNN says decision made shortly after 2017 Oval Office meeting
US officials alarmed by Trump’s private meeting with Putin

Martin Pengelly in New York, Luke Harding in London and Shaun Walker in Budapest
Mon 9 Sep 2019 12.00 EDT

The US extracted “one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government” in 2017, it was reported on Monday, in part because of concerns that mishandling of classified intelligence by Donald Trump and his administration could jeopardise the source’s safety.

CNN cited “multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge” of the matter and said “a person directly involved in the discussions” said the move was made because Trump and his officials could not be fully trusted.

The US extracted “one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government” in 2017, it was reported on Monday, in part because of concerns that mishandling of classified intelligence by Donald Trump and his administration could jeopardise the source’s safety.

CNN cited “multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge” of the matter and said “a person directly involved in the discussions” said the move was made because Trump and his officials could not be fully trusted.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/us-removed-covert-source-in-russia-due-to-safety-concerns-under-trump

[elias7]

5. Maybe he could shed light on the oranges of the investigation

[secondwind]

6. 😲😲😲

This gave me the willies!

[Ghost Dog]

7. Hmm. How to know what's true?

Mr. Sciutto's source is presumably a CIA official.

Tass has this to say this morning (quoting due to relevance):

MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. Oleg Smolenkov, a Russian national, whom media reports refer to as a possible CIA agent, has never worked for the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.

"He has never worked for the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation," Elena Krylova, Spokesperson for the head of the Russian Presidential Administrative Directorate, told TASS, commenting on reports alleging that Smolenkov was its employee prior to 2017...

...Some Russian media outlets reported citing anonymous sources that the individual in question could be someone named Oleg Smolenkov, who supposedly worked for the government. Some of them mentioned Smolenkov’s other places of employment.

https://tass.com/politics/1077450

And:

MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. The Kremlin is not conducting a search for a former employee of the presidential staff, Oleg Smolenkov, and has no evidence if he was a CIA agent, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media.

"No, I am unable to confirm this, because I do not know if he was an agent or not. I can merely confirm that there was such an employee of the presidential staff and that he was dismissed at a certain point," Peskov said, when asked if he could confirm Smolenkov was a CIA agent...

https://tass.com/politics/1077458

[NickB79]

13. Like the Russians would admit such things

It would make them look incompetent and weak.

[Nitram]

25. It is possible the CIA made the story up to rattle Kremlin counter-intelligence, that the story is

partly true but significant details changed for purposes of misdirection, or that the story is entirely true. We will probably never know. There are a lot of layers between perception and truth when it comes to intelligence games.

[Bradical79]

30. TASS is dedicated to misinformation and propaganda

It's state owned Russian mediia. It's even less independent from Putin than Fox is from Trump.

[AZ8theist]

24. TASS is the DEFINITION of misinformation...

[Fix The Stupid]

8. What if...

What if the headline were this?

"KGB had asset so close to US president he could photograph Secret Documents"

Would this place be in an uproar?

Why? Why not?

[NickB79]

12. I'd be pissed our CIA dropped the ball so badly

[LanternWaste]

16. I'd question the competence of the president.

Which I already do.




Are you in an uproar? Why? Why not?

[Flaleftist]

21. Putin has Trump. The President is a Russian asset.

And most of us here are in an uproar about it.

[Sapient Donkey]

22. Well...they kinda do :P

Umm, as someone said above I think most rational people would be outraged that we let it happen. By we, I mean the people who are supposed to prevent that from happening. I can also say I hold a similar view toward Russian activities toward our elections. My real frustrations are with our own people who didn't do a good enough job to stop it, or who in some cases even enabled it, and also with the American people (including myself) for allowing them to manipulate our minds the way they did and continue to try.

[Bradical79]

31. You just described Donald Trump

Also, not sure what your point is. Of course we'd be mad. We're members of an American political party. We want our spies keeping tabs on hostile foreign powers.

[Bayard]

9. How do you explain this to your spy?

Sorry dude, we have a traitorous moron in the White House now, so you have to leave your country before he gets you killed.

[mikeysnot]

10. puton is a gangster with nuclear weapons.

[NickB79]

11. "Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!"

[Judi Lynn]

14. Russia-US espionage: Details emerge of 'extracted spy'

31 minutes ago



CNN said President Trump's meeting with Russia's Sergei Lavrov in 2017 had spooked the CIA

More details have emerged of an alleged high-level spy the US reportedly extracted from Russia amid fears his cover was about to be blown.

Russian media named him as Oleg Smolenkov, who worked for a key aide to President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Smolenkov was not senior, had been fired years ago and the extraction reports were fiction, the Kremlin said.

A CNN report said the CIA had feared President Trump's "mishandling" of intelligence could put the spy at risk.

CNN said the extraction came after the president met senior Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in the White House in May 2017 and had unexpectedly shared classified US intelligence.

More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49651576

[lagomorph777]

19. Do we really need to report the guy's name? He's endangered by this.

[Ghost Dog]

23. Obviously intended, since original CNN's Mr. Sciutto's source has to be CIA.

Or similar. There's more:

Leonid Bershidsky (Bloomberg Opinion) ... After the U.S. reports came out, an anonymous, well-informed Russian Telegram channel, The Ruthless PR Guy, reported that the asset was Kremlin official Oleg Smolenkov. On Tuesday morning, the Moscow daily Kommersant published a story confirming that it was him based on anonymous sources and some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence.

Smolenkov, his wife and three children went on vacation to Montenegro on June 14, 2017, and disappeared without a trace. A murder investigation initiated in Moscow got nowhere. Kommersant found a notice in the Washington Post saying a couple named Oleg and Antonina Smolenkov (the wife has the same name as the missing official’s) bought a house in Stafford, Virginia, in June 2018. It also discovered a record of a deed on a Stafford property in Oleg Smolenkov’s name.

On Tuesday, an NBC correspondent apparently visited the property, although the resulting story didn’t mention Smolenkov’s name or the Stafford location. It did say that, once the reporter rang the doorbell, two young men came racing up in an SUV and started asking questions about the purpose of his visit, introducing themselves only as friends of the owner.

If indeed the CIA extracted Smolenkov from Russia, one might question why he continued to use his real name. But the timing of the Smolenkovs’ disappearance and their apparent re-emergence in Virginia, watched over by anonymous “friends,” suggest he could be the mole in question...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-prized-u-asset-kremlin-123449914.html

[brooklynite]

15. I'd sure hate to have been his/her carpool buddy...