Russian
attempts to get inside WH
Russian
spies seek a White House source
By BRIAN ROSS, MATTHEW MOSK and JAMES
GORDON MEEK 2 hours ago
It’s every Russian spy’s
dream: to recruit a source inside the White House – or any place of power in
Washington.
According to U.S.
intelligence officials, there’s no dispute that the Russians are indeed making
great efforts to get close to President Donald Trump and the people around him, whether those targeted know it or not.
“They always targeted
political figures,” David Major, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent
explained to ABC News. “They want to know who is a mover and shaker in our
society, who affects it.”
And today as questions
continue to mount over what contacts Trump campaign aides may have had with
Russian intelligence operatives, the White House continues to dispute media
reports that any of the president’s associates had such contact while on the
campaign trail.
U.S. intelligence
officials say that the Russians are engaged in a massive campaign to infiltrate
and disrupt American politics. It has gone on for decades, originally with the
Cold War goal of placing a mole inside the White House, a retired KGB officer
who once ran spy operations in Washington told ABC News.
A senior intelligence
official told ABC News last night that no evidence gathered by the FBI so far
suggests Trump associates knew they were talking to Russian intelligence
officers. Those contacts being scrutinized by the FBI were first reported by
the New York Times on Wednesday.
"These are not all
sophisticated people but they should have assumed or considered their Russian
contacts might be spy service agents too," the official briefed on the
investigation said.
Russia has repeatedly
denied making contact with Trump aides during the campaign. The embassy
declined requests for an interview this week. But in media reports, Kremlin
press secretary Dmitry Peskov has called the allegations
"ridiculous."
The current version of
Russia's espionage and political influence program has likely included so-called
“cut outs” and front men – people and organizations that can extract prized
intelligence, gain influence or create upheaval without the targeted American
ever knowing who they’re really dealing with.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA),
the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC News: “This is
a theory of war, a 21st Century theory of war that includes false information,
that includes cyber hacking, that includes, you know, in effect, sowing chaos.”
His committee is
currently investigating Russian efforts to meddle in the recent election, and –
as part of that bipartisan investigation – whether anyone in the Trump campaign
was involved.
“I think this
investigation is maybe the most serious thing that I’ll take on in my public
career,” Warner said. “To me what the Russians did in terms of their blatant
interference in our election is unprecedented.”
The White House remains
under fire over the ouster of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was seen in a video in Moscow in December
2015 seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a celebration for a Russian propaganda
station. At the time, Flynn was about to become the senior foreign policy
adviser for Trump, and was paid to attend the event.
On Monday, Flynn was
fired by Trump after media reports suggested the top security advisor had
likely had inappropriate conversations with the Russian ambassador over
U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia before he was appointed to his official
government role. Some officials said Flynn almost certainly won't face criminal
charges for anything, though he may not have been completely forthcoming in an
FBI counterintelligence interview, two officials said.
The Defense Intelligence
Agency, which Flynn once led before former President Obama had him dismissed
over management issues, suspended the retired three-star Army general's
security clearance yesterday. The DIA held his Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented
Information clearance and it is not uncommon for a clearance to be temporarily
suspended during an investigation.
Flynn did not respond to
a message left for him on Wednesday.
Now the question for
Senate investigators and the FBI is why the Russians may have been courting
Flynn going back as far as 2015 after his retirement, and how he reacted to
that effort.
“If by his actions,
implied or implicit, there was an effort to undermine American foreign policy,
that bothers me a great deal,” Warner said.
But Flynn isn’t the only
one who is being examined.
Carter Page, a former Trump
campaign foreign policy advisor, is also under the investigator's magnifying
glass.
Page, claims he’s done
major business deals in Russia and defends its leaders – moves that raise the
eyebrows of American intelligence officials.
Asked by ABC News’ Brian
Ross whether he agreed that Putin was a “thug,” Page said that he “thoroughly”
disagreed.
Page is named as a central
figure in the now-infamous dossier that makes unsubstantiated allegations that
the Trump campaign and the Russians were in cahoots.
In an interview with ABC
News in January, Page called allegations that he was meeting with Kremlin
officials on behalf of the campaign to coordinate the release of damaging
information on Trump’s opponents, “so ridiculous that it’s completely false and
laughable.”
And then there is Paul
Manafort, a former Trump campaign manager, who once worked for pro-Russian
politicians in Ukraine.
He too denies knowingly
talking with anyone in Russian intelligence during the campaign, telling ABC
News, “How am I supposed to know who is a Russian spy?”
The intrigue heightened
late Wednesday when the Wall Street Journal picked up claims that U.S.
intelligence officers were withholding intelligence from the 45th president
over eroded trust because of his associates' Russian contacts and the FBI
scrutiny of the White House.
But numerous officials
said that was absurd.
“Any suggestion that the
U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and is not providing the
best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is
not true," the director of national intelligence’s public affairs office
said in a statement.
ABC News’ Randy Kreider,
Paul Blake, Alex Hosenball and Cho Park contributed to this story.
As of this date, 04 March 2017, six associates of
President Trump – General Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Monafort, Jared Kushner,
then Senator Jeff Sessions, and Donald J. Trump JR. had contact with Russians
during the campaign.
