[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]
So this guy Felix Sater was the Intelligence asset working from inside the Trump organization. He has been mentioned before as a FBI asset in Wall Street financial dealings, mob corruption and work for the US Government. Who was his handler? From his statement before the Senate Intelligence committee, he can be seen as the “Deep Throat” working all sides: Russia – Washington – Tel Aviv. I would be not surprised if he liasoned between IC of London – Moscow – Herzliya, the Mossad. He started work for the DIA under the Bill Clinton administration – Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Mujahideen, Pakistan’s ISI, Stinger missiles – thinking the Operation Infinite Reach of 1998 and the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich in 2000 – also a Mossad asset. See also the Russia links between Rosneft and Glencore.
In Afghanistan, working for British intelligence and also becme an CIA asset, was our right-wing “friend” Radek Sikorski. Another excellent relationship with Poland, Ukraine and a strong anti-Russian sentiment, dare I say hatred?
○ Radek Sikorski Returns to Ukraine’s Headlines: Putin’s Coup
○ U.S. Citizens Continue to Infiltrate Eastern European Governments
How Felix Sater Worked The Trump Moscow Deal During The Campaign | BuzzFeed – 6 days ago |
The first attempt to build a signature tower in the Russian capital was in 1987, when he visited the Soviet Union to scout locations. In 1996, his company announced another “exploratory trip” that came to nothing. In 2005, he set his sights on an abandoned pencil factory before that deal flickered and failed. In 2013, after hosting the Miss Universe pageant there, Trump tweeted, “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”
Cintinued below the fold …
○ “I’m not familiar with him”, Trump replied.
Sater first met the former intelligence officer in 1997 in Moscow, and the officer in turn introduced him to Milton Blane, an American arms dealer who held contracts with the US Defense Intelligence Agency. Blane, who died last year, recruited Sater to work as a confidential source for the US government. Code-named the Quarterback, Sater served for decades as a source for US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and he continues to do so.
Negotiations for Cohen to visit Russia began to heat up. On Dec. 13, Sater emailed that he had an old friend on the phone with him right then, who was trying to arrange the trip. This friend is a former member of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence unit that the US intelligence community believes interfered during the 2016 election.
Sater had known the spy for decades. He was one of Sater’s most reliable contacts during the two decades he worked as a confidential source for US law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The man, who is not being named because CIA officials say his life could be in jeopardy, delivered to Sater Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone numbers in 1998 and, later, handed over photographs of a North Korean official seeking nuclear weapons.
The man is no longer formally associated with the GRU, but Sater told Senate investigators he understands that “there is no such thing as a former Russian spy.” The former spy declined to comment.
On Dec. 17, Cohen forwarded a Google alert to Sater. Putin had described Trump as “talented” and “a very colorful man.” Cohen wrote: “Now is the time. Call me.”
Two days later, Sater told Cohen that their invitations and visas were being arranged by VTB Bank, and that Kostin, the bank’s powerful president and chairman, would meet Cohen in Moscow. Key to getting VTB on board was the former GRU spy; Sater told congressional and special counsel investigators that the former spy said he had a source at VTB Bank who would support the deal.
“Kostin will be at all meetings with Putin so that it is a business meeting not political,” Sater wrote to Cohen. “We will be invited to the Russian consulate this week to receive invite and have visa issued.”
But the Russians still needed Cohen’s passport. That afternoon, Cohen sent iPhone photographs of his passport, including the first page with his passport number, photograph, and other identifying details. The pages match those shared with BuzzFeed News last May. Sater told BuzzFeed News that he sent them to the former GRU spy.
Felix Sater House Intelligence Committee Statement December 2017
My name is Felix Sater. I am 51 years of age. I was born in 1966 in Moscow, Soviet Union with the words Jew stamped in my passport under nationality – not Russian as has been reported about me. I am an American citizen living in this country since the age of seven. My family and I at aged 6, escaped political persecution and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. We were political refugees who left for Israel and then onto America. We settled in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn where I grew up, went to public schools from elementary through high school, and then attended Pace University where I studied accounting. I worked my way through school and college supporting myself and my family in a variety of jobs. I then began my professional career on Wall Street at Bear Stearns. After approximately 7 years on Wall Street, regrettably I got into a drunken altercation at a bar which resulted in not only my incarceration but also the loss of my license and thus my ability to continue working on Wall Street. This was a life altering event for me.
…
Understanding the gravity of my actions, for the better part of the next 20 years, I provided extraordinary assistance to our government involving serious matters of National Security, posing tremendous risks to my safety and the safety of my family. My cooperation extended to the highest levels of government and implicated some of our nation’s greatest enemies, whose terrorism threatened our way of life. I provided crucial intelligence information and assistance to numerous U.S. national security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies regarding well-known terrorists and their organizations, including Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda several years before and after the September 11, 2001 attacks. This assistance significantly enhanced and potentially saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of military personnel before and during military operations carried out in hostile countries.
I also provided extensive assistance in preventing attacks on U.S. Financial Institutions and U.S. Financial Systems, which was entirely unrelated to any of the Wall Street activities alleged in my mid-1990’s case. I also provided significant intelligence with respect to nuclear weapons in North Korea, a country openly hostile to the United States. This is just a partial and generalized description of the massive amount of assistance I provided over two decades in defense of our country.
Specifically, my cooperation with the U.S. Government began when I met a gentleman named Milton C Blaine [misspelled, should be Blane – Oui], who disclosed to me that he worked for the Defense intelligence Agency of the United States. [DOD Contracts awarded to Blane International Group Inc., Cumming, Georgia] He told me that my country needed me and he proceeded to recruit me in support of American intelligence efforts. Thus at the age of 31, I was given the opportunity to serve and protect our country, which I enthusiastically embraced. For the next 20-plus years, up to and including the present, I have continued to wholeheartedly work withvarious US government agencies.
Some examples of my work with the United States government and its intelligence agencies include:
- Establishing a network of contacts of ranking intelligence, military operatives & military research facilities in various countries.
- Providing Information regarding a sophisticated KH anti-radar missile system that could be used to knock out United States missile and aircraft defense systems.
- Under a Presidential Directive, providing information regarding the location of high-risk Stinger missiles initially issued to the Mujahideen prior to their pending acquisition by Al-Qaeda.
- Providing intelligence on the location of hidden Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps, including information regarding the location of Osama bin Laden and elements of his command structure.
- Information I provided, including the personal satellite telephone numbers of Osama bin Laden, was relevant to the bombing of Al Quaida training camps in 1998 by President Clinton.
- Assembling a team of mercenaries comprised of ex-Spetznaz and Afghanistan Northern Alliance fighters in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden in one of his terrorist training camps.
[continue the read]
Trump and Bayrock Group, a Shadowy Business Partnership | Bloomberg – June 2017 |
Sater made the front page of The New York Times in February for his role in a failed effort — along with Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen — to lobby former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on a Ukrainian peace proposal.
Comey was still Trump’s FBI director when he testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March about Russian interference in the 2016 election. During that hearing, Comey was asked if he was “aware of” Felix Sater, his criminal history and his business dealings with the Trump Organization. Comey declined to comment.
It’s unclear whether Sater and Bayrock are part of Mueller’s investigation. But Mueller has populated his investigative team with veteran prosecutors expert in white-collar fraud and Russian-organized-crime probes. One of them, Andrew Weissmann, once led an FBI team that examined financial fraud leading to the demise of Enron. Before that, Weissmann was a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and part of a team that prosecuted Sater and mob associates for investment scams in the late 1990s.
Merkel, Putin & Obama: The changing balance of power
Poland’s FM Radek Sikorski will be on CNN’s GPS Fareed Zakaria for an interview about rigorous sanctions on Putin’s Russia in accordance with neocon policy.
○ Radosław Sikorski in Hardtalk BBC-Polish foreign minister – Part 1 (April 2008)
Radek Sikorski in BBC Hard Talk part III said: “I was a political refugee once, escaping the gulag.” Wasn’t Sikorski part of British mercenaries fighting in Angola, in a job as roving reporter carrying arms? Seems more likely the argument he got British protection and later citizenship. Just doing a friend a favor …
Several American presidents have given Savimbi support in the form of covert aid, state-of-the-art weaponry, and millions of dollars in hard currency. As reported in the Washington Post, President Ronald Reagan praised Savimbi as a “freedom fighter” who was seeking to expel Soviet and Cuban mercenaries from Angola and overthrow a dictatorial Marxist regime. Savimbi found many friends on the American right wing who considered him a noble soldier trying to save his nation from communist-inspired ruin.
“UNITA says it aspires to nothing less than making Angola the first democratic, free-market country on the [African] continent,” wrote Radek Sikorski in the National Review. “Savimbi has been feted in Washington as Africa’s premier freedom-fighter–the pictures of his meeting with Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Shultz in January 1986 adorn every hut in Unitaland. It is largely thanks to [the] U.S. … that UNITA is such a formidable force.”
…
Even Sikorski admitted that Savimbi “has ended up by believing his own propaganda and accepting the cult he has nurtured as a confirmation of his messianic mission…. Ideology is something Savimbi can choose like the fashion of his soldiers’ uniforms–patterned to please whoever provides the cloth.”See also my earlier diary linking many CIA assets to the coup d’état in Kiev of February 2014.
○ Ukraine: Extremists Reject EU Deal, Demand Violent Overthrow
○ Chris Steele, Ukraine and Vicky Nuland
○ Globalisation: Katsyv links Moscow – London – NY – Tel AvivI’ve linked to this diary before as creve coeur @dKos, a good read …
○ How Come Some People Understand What’s Happening And Others Don’t by Ray Pensador @dKos on July 2, 2013
I would estimate marduk and nalbar were still in diapers 🙂
