Billedet: Anna Chapman blev en kendis, da hun blev arresteret som russisk spion. Hun hed egentlig Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko, men ægtemanden Chapman nægtede at tro, at hun var spion. Det var en helt ny type spion og Anna nød rollen. Hun gav også Putin reklame ved at vise, at smarte, intelligente mennesker kunne være dedikerede spioner. Ingen lagde dengang vægt på, at hun blev sendt tilbage umiddelbart efter arrestationen. 

I 2010 blev en kvinde ved navn Anna Chapman pågrebet af FBI. Hun var en af flere unge russere, som havde levet undercover. I virkeligheden var de russiske spioner.

Nu viser frigivne FBI-dokumenter, at Chapman var del af et større netværk, som det var lykkedes at trænge ind i udenrigsminister Hillary Clintons cirkler. Arrestationerne kom meget ubelejligt for Clinton, som på samme tid var ved at sælge 20 procent af de amerikanske uran reserver til russerne. De unge spioner blev i al hast sendt tilbage til Rusland. Transaktionen gik sin gang.

For a decade, the FBI ran an operation called Ghost Stories to monitor and rip apart a deep-cover Russian agent network. Ghost Stories tracked a ring Russian spies who lived between Boston and Washington, D.C., under false identities. It was one of the FBI’s most elaborate and successful counterintelligence operations in history.

Men arrestationerne den 28. juni 2010 kom på et følsomt punkt for Clinton-parret:

The day the FBI arrested the Russian agents, on June 28, 2010, the day before the secretary of state’s husband, Bill Clinton, was to give a speech in Moscow. A Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital, paid the former president $500,000 for the hour-long appearance.

I alt blev ti spioner arresteret. Det er mange. Det var unge mennesker, som havde fået indgående oplæring, der satte dem i stand til at glide ind i det amerikanske samfund som helt almindelige borgere – uden at vække opmærksomhed. Et spionorgan som gør sig sådanne forberedelser, har sigte på at lave en investering i fremtiden. Nu havde FBI optrevlet ringen. Normalt ville de blive stillet for retten eller forsøgt hvervet.

Clinton sørgede for, at de blev sendt tilbage til Moskva med det samme, uden at være blevet stillet for en dommer  – en dårlig løsning for USA.

Arrestationerne var ubehagelig for hende på en anden måde: Det viste sig, at hun havde været et bevidst mål for infiltration.

Det var ikke FSB som stod bag operationen, men den udenlandske efterretningstjeneste, SVR.

Redacted evidence that the FBI submitted to a federal court shows that Russia’s External Intelligence Service (SVR), the former KGB First Chief Directorate, targeted Clinton in 2008 and tried to burrow into her inner circle the next year when she was secretary of state.

The SVR spy ring was no old “vestige” from Soviet times that was “still there.” It was a network of younger agents emplaced long after the Soviet collapse. The FBI considers it one of an unknown number of deep, expensive, thorough networks to penetrate and influence the United States government for generations.

Da FBI kom på sporet af ringen anså de den for så vigtig, at de gav den sit eget navn: Operation Ghost Stories. Spionerne havde boet og virket i USA i ti år allerede, da de blev taget.

Under the code name Operation Ghost Stories, the FBI had been working the ring for a decade. Its targets had burrowed in along the Acela Corridor between Boston, New York, and Washington DC. They lived normal daily lives as Americans to attend universities, run businesses, marry, and conceive and raise children to infiltrate society and subvert government institutions. One of the SVR agents had stolen the identity of a six week-old Canadian baby who had died in 1963. That prompted the Ghost Stories code name. The ring inspired the FX network’s television series, “The Americans.”

For SVR var de unge russere en uvurderlig kapital, som de håbede ville kaste meget af sig. Men de havde ikke samme immunitet som KGB-agenter med diplomatisk immunitet.  De unge var «illegale». De ville blive stillet for retten, hvis de blev taget, ikke udvist.

the SVR invests heavily in long-term human intelligence. The SVR’s crown jewel is its global network of deep-cover agents that it calls “illegals.” Illegals live under presumed identities, without official diplomatic status that would protect them from arrest.

J. Michael Waller skriver, at Clinton-parret havde udpeget sig som særligt interessante for påvirkning og infiltration. Parrets Clinton Foundation var ingen humanitær stiftelse, som medierne fremstillede det. Det var en ren pengemaskine for at tilfredsstille parrets ambitioner. Kun ca. seks procent blev brugt til de projekter, man pralede med. Hvis man ønskede indflydelse, skulle man betale. Det havde intet med humanitært arbejde at gøre. På den måde kompromitterede Clinton-parret uenlandske regeringer. Hvis de fulgte med i timen vidste de, at de blev del af en korruptionsring.

Denne grådighed og kynisme tiltrak russernes opmærksomhed.

She was a known quantity: predictable, vain and ruthless, and with an insatiable desire for cash to enrich her family, friends, and political machine. Blindly ambitious to become president of the world’s only superpower and swearing to come back after losing in 2008 to Barack Obama, she was the 21st century KGB’s perfect mark.

SVR satsede derfor på at infiltrere Hillarys omgivelser. Det var dygtige kandidater, som stod til disposition.

From New York, SVR agent Lidiya Guryeva had Clinton in her sights. Guryeva had a real-life job, under the assumed name Cynthia Murphy, as vice president of a high-end tax services company in lower Manhattan. Guryeva’s prime targets, FBI evidence and later news reports show, were Clinton and no fewer than five members of her inner circle.

De frigivne dokumenter er «redacted», hvilket betyder, at følsomme oplysninger er sløret, men beskrivelsen af «målet» efterlader ingen tvivl om, hvem det var:

While the FBI’s unclassified information is vague, it is clear that Guryeva’s target was an early Obama administration member from New York who handled foreign policy after having run for high-level public office. Clinton is the only person fitting that description.

Selv om personerne ikke identificeres, giver FBI-dokumenterne en detaljeret beskrivelse af «Cynthia Murphy»s operationer:

Clinton became secretary of state on January 21, 2009. Two weeks later, on February 3, Guryeva sent an encrypted message to the SVR’s Moscow Center. The agent reported “several work-related meetings” with a New York-based “financier” who was “prominent in politics,” an “active fundraiser” for a major political party whose name the FBI redacted, and “a personal friend” of an Obama cabinet official whom the FBI did not publicly identify. Guryeva told her bosses that she would seek to use that personal friend to “provide” inside information on American foreign policy and the White House, and invite her to major political events.

En russisk spion er i stand til at antage en ny identitet og rolle, som aktiv skatterådgiver, og det med en professionalisme, som gør, at hun får klienter i de bedste cirkler i New York. Det er ganske imponerende.

Politico first identified the financier as Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist who had been finance chairman of Clinton’s U.S. Senate campaign from New York, and co-chair of her 2008 presidential campaign. Guryeva’s tax services company had Patricof’s firm as a client. After the arrest, when faced with news reports that he was one of the spy targets, Patricof did what any innocent person would do: He immediately told the press his side of the story and said he had no idea that the person he knew as Cynthia Murphy was actually a Russian spy.

Guryevas mand var også SVR-agent. De drøftede, hvordan de skulle komme tættere på den nye administration. Guryeva var bange for, at ikke ville klare baggrundstesten, hvis hun søgte ind i State Department. Men der fandtes også mange andre muligheder i Washington DC.

Guryeva and her husband would sell their New Jersey house and follow Clinton to the nation’s capital. There, she could get a job with a Washington, DC-based company or policy shop. A tasking message dated October 18, 2009, from Moscow Center sought agents to seek out information “unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to State Department, Government, major think tanks.”

Clinton var centrum for russernes fremstød:

Moscow Center specifically asked Guryeva for intelligence concerning “approaches and ideas” of what the FBI called “four names of sub-cabinet United States foreign policy officials, omitted,” meaning that all four were deputies to Secretary Clinton whose identities had been redacted.

So we see the SVR target list developing: Clinton, four of her deputies, her former top fundraiser and presidential campaign co-chairman, and influential foreign policy people in Washington.

Clintons som mål var at sætte forholdet til Rusland på «reset». Noget af det første hun gjorde, var at invitere 28 amerikanske tech-selskaber og investorer med på besøg til russernes Silicon Valley: Men det fungerer på en lidt anden måde, end det amerikanske.

With Skolkovo, the SVR doesn’t need to steal when it can arrange legal purchases. The US military calls Skolkovo “an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.” The Skolkovo visit, which reportedly began as a Clinton Foundation initiative, occurred in May, 2010, a month before the arrests.

Her er der flere krydsende «linjer»; Obama var ikke korrupt som Clintons, men han lancerede tidligt målet om en atomfri verden. Det gjorde han ved en tale i Pragh. Det skabte løftede øjenbryn: Hvordan kunne supermagten gå ind for at afskaffe de våben, som verdensfreden bygger på? Men dette var en trossag for Obama. Hans planer for en atomaftale med Iran byggede på samme filosofi.

Russerne har spillet «mir» – fredskortet siden Bresjnevs dage. De behøvede ingen undervisning i, hvad de skulle sige til Obama. 24. juni mødte præsidenten Dmitrij Medvedev, som på det tidspunkt var Kremls frontmand. Putin havde trukket sig tilbage som statsminister.

Mens Obama satsede på nedrustning med Iran, var russerne igang med at købe 20 procent af den årlige amerikanske uran-produktion gennem det canadiske selskab Uranium One. Obama var idealisten, Hillary kynikeren. I hvilken grad var Obama klar over, hvad Clinton-parret havde gang i? Han havde erfaring med Clintons fra valgkampen og kendte godt Bills eventyr og løgne. Men hvor meget vidste han om Clinton Foundation? Hvor meget orkede han at forstå i det første år, han var præsident?

At the time, Obama was pushing a bilateral Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, which it argued would help stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. And, subject to Clinton’s approval, the Russians were in the process of taking control of Uranium One – and taking one-fifth of America’s annual uranium output.

Men her slår amerikansk accountability igennem: Obama var præsident, og han var meget bevidst om sin rolle. Bordet fanger.

The Government Accountability Institute’s Peter Schweizer discovered the Clinton connection to the Kremlin-connected investment bank and to the approval of US uranium to the agency that controls Russia’s nuclear warhead production. Stakeholders in Uranium One, Schweizer found, would pump $145 million into the Clinton foundation and its sponsored projects.

Det er utænkeligt, at den kvikke præsidenten ikke fandt ud af, at russerne fik lov at købe 20 prosent af den amerikanske uran-produktion. Chefen for Rosatom stod og pralede med det i Dumaen:

The Government Accountability Institute’s Peter Schweizer discovered the Clinton connection to the Kremlin-connected investment bank and to the approval of US uranium to the agency that controls Russia’s nuclear warhead production. Stakeholders in Uranium One, Schweizer found, would pump $145 million into the Clinton foundation and its sponsored projects.

Det er niveauet af Hillarys grådighed og den high-stakes poker Clinton-parret spillede, som Obama på en eller anden måde må have registreret. Valgte han at lukke ørerne? Selv da ti russiske spioner blev arresteret? Det er vanskeligt at tro.

So Hillary Clinton was mining Kremlin cash for her personal benefit while secretary of state, at the exact time Putin’s SVR spies were targeting her and penetrating her inner circle. She had every personal motivation to make the spy problem disappear and deny that she had been a target.

Obamas justitsminister, Eric Holder, må være en af de ringeste gennem tiderne. At han fik lov at beholde taburetten siger meget om Obama. Den begrundelsen han gav for arrestationerne passede ikke. Spionene vidste ikke, at de var ved at blive afsløret. Den virkelige grund var, at de varved at gennembryde Hillarys cirkler.

Once the FBI broke the ring on June 28, 2010, attorney general Eric Holder said that the sudden arrests were to prevent one of the spies from fleeing the United States. FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi later shared a different reason: “We were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

FBI sad på en dyrebar fangst. Spionerne kunne bruges som udvekslingsbrikker eller de kunne i det mindste blive afhørt og pumpet for information. Sådan noget sker normalt over lang tid. Men Hillary gjorde ingen af delene: Hun sendte dem tilbage til Moskva i ekspresfart.

Der havde ikke været nogen omfattende byttehandel siden Ronald Reagan i 1985. Den gang varede forberedelserne i flere år. Nu skete alt med lynets hast, og det amerikanerne måtte nøjes med i bytte var peanuts.

The State Department coordinated quickly with the Kremlin to return the spies in a lopsided swap over a busy Fourth of July weekend, when few in Washington were paying attention.

In return, the US accepted an SVR officer who had been an American double agent, an open-source researcher whom Amnesty International considered a political prisoner, a Russian military intelligence colonel who spied for the British, and an elderly ex-KGB man from Soviet times whom not even a Communist court convicted of treason.

Der er så mange mærkelige omstændigheder her, at man næsten går ud af sit gode skind. I en spionthriller ville man sige, at plottet var overdrevent og usandsynligt. Men faktum er, at FBI havde to efterforskninger på samme tid: Både spionringen og russisk infiltration af amerikansk atomindustri. Begge dele involverede bestikkelse, korruption, hvidvaskning og infiltration, forhold som normalt for alle alarmklokker til at bimle.

Men her blev spionerne sendt tilbage uden at blive stillet for en dommer:

She had the lopsided swap take place over a long summer weekend, before the FBI was finished with the spies, and before the spies could stand trial.

Mange må have kendt til det. Hvad sagde man internt i administrationen? Hvordan påvirkede det «samtalen»? Hvilke slutninger drog folk?

Mange må ha vidst besked.

While the FBI was separately investigating Russians involved with buying Uranium One, she approved the sale of American uranium to Russia’s nuclear weapons agency. Principals in the sale then plowed $145 million into her family foundation and projects.

Follow the money: 145 millioner dollars er mange penge. Ambitioner og grådighed løber sammen. Clinton-parret opførte sig som de potentater, vi normalt forbinder med Mellemøsten eller Rusland. Måske talte Bill og Hillary samme sprog? Måske forstod de hinanden?

Men hvad med alle embedsmændene hjemme i Washington? Hvad tænkte de?

Precisely what did the FBI know about Russia’s spy service targeting Hillary Clinton and her inner circle? Why did Clinton deny through spokespersons that she had been a Russian target? Why did she work so feverishly to get the spies out of the United States and back to Russia? Why has the FBI leadership not been more vocal in touting one of its greatest counterintelligence successes ever? And why did nobody in the FBI leadership raise this issue during the 2016 Russian election meddling controversy?

Særligt det sidste spørgsmål griber lige ind i dagens politik: Er jagten på og teorien om Trumps Russian collusion et hysterisk udslag af, at den amerikansk elite selv lod sig korrumpere under Obama? Det som nu er kommet frem, er fakta: Både købet af Uranium One, Clintons cash – foredrag i Moskva og de 145 millioner dollars, og nu spionringen. Hertil kommer Hillarys private server og titusindvis af slettede emails.

Manden som leder efterforskningen af Trump og russerne er Bob Mueller, som var chef for FBI, da spionerne blev sendt hjem og uran-beholdningerne blev solgt til russerne. Hans troværdighed er pludselig blevet meget mindre.

Hvad med efterfølgeren, James Comey, som af medierne blev fremstillet som den pletfrie FBI-chef. Han skrev et brev to måneder før efterforskningen af Hillarys emailserver overhovedet var kommet i gang, hvor han afslørede, at FBI ikke ville rejse tiltale.

Der tegner sig et mønster af korruption som ikke bare rammer Clintons, men også hendes chef.

Hillary Clinton’s Russian Ghost Storiesde