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Oleg Smolenkov

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Old 10th Sep 2019, 21:08
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Oleg Smolenkov

His name will and reputation will, perhaps, exceed that of Penkovsky.....

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...desk-h22t5pdvj

Top CIA Kremlin spy ‘had access to papers crossing Putin’s desk’

A CIA super-spy at the heart of the Kremlin was identified today as a staffer in President Putin’s administration who fled to the US via the Balkans.

Oleg Smolenkov, thought to be about 45, went missing in June 2017 when he, his wife Antonina and three children disappeared without trace after travelling to Montenegro, ostensibly for a holiday. He is said to have had access to papers on the Russian president’s desk and to have been instrumental in confirming to American intelligence that Vladimir Putin personally ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

US media reported yesterday that an unnamed CIA informant in the Russian government was “exfiltrated” to the US in 2017 over fears the source could be exposed. The mole was Mr Smolenkov, whose disappearance at the time prompted a murder investigation, said Russia’s Kommersant newspaper today, citing a US state department source. The daily also noted a property listing in The Washington Post showing that an Oleg Smokenkov [sic] and Antonina Smolenkov bought a six-bedroom house in Stafford, Virginia, in June 2018.

NBC News earlier reported that the informant was living in the Washington DC area under his true name. When a correspondent from the channel went to the man’s house and rang the doorbell, two young men, possibly government agents, raced up in an SUV and asked what the reporter was doing.

CNN, which initially reported that the US had successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, said the removal of the Russian was driven in part by concerns that President Trump mishandled classified intelligence and could expose the covert source as a spy. This was denied by the CIA.

The New York Times said the source was “one of the CIA’s most important — and highly protected — assets” and had been removed after US media picked up on details about the agency’s Kremlin sources. Present and former intelligence officials told the paper that, in the light of the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the Wiltshire city of Salisbury last year, the mole’s life remains in danger.

A Russian website reported in 2017 that the Smolenkovs and three children had travelled to Montenegro in June that year and disappeared, prompting a murder investigation to be opened in September. Mr Smolenkov had worked in the Russian embassy in Washington and with Yury Ushakov, one of Mr Putin’s top foreign policy advisers. His wife was also a state employee.

A source “informed about the case” speculated to Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper today that Mr Smolenkov and his family may have been taken across the border from Montenegro to Kosovo and then flown to the US from the American Camp Bondsteel army base.

The Russian presidential administration said that nobody by the name of Oleg Smolenkov had worked there.

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Old 10th Sep 2019, 22:56
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Originally Posted by ORAC
His name will and reputation will, perhaps, exceed that of Penkovsky.....

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...desk-h22t5pdvj

Top CIA Kremlin spy ‘had access to papers crossing Putin’s desk’

A CIA super-spy at the heart of the Kremlin was identified today as a staffer in President Putin’s administration who fled to the US via the Balkans.

Oleg Smolenkov, thought to be about 45, went missing in June 2017 when he, his wife Antonina and three children disappeared without trace after travelling to Montenegro, ostensibly for a holiday. He is said to have had access to papers on the Russian president’s desk and to have been instrumental in confirming to American intelligence that Vladimir Putin personally ordered interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

US media reported yesterday that an unnamed CIA informant in the Russian government was “exfiltrated” to the US in 2017 over fears the source could be exposed. The mole was Mr Smolenkov, whose disappearance at the time prompted a murder investigation, said Russia’s Kommersant newspaper today, citing a US state department source. The daily also noted a property listing in The Washington Post showing that an Oleg Smokenkov [sic] and Antonina Smolenkov bought a six-bedroom house in Stafford, Virginia, in June 2018.

NBC News earlier reported that the informant was living in the Washington DC area under his true name. When a correspondent from the channel went to the man’s house and rang the doorbell, two young men, possibly government agents, raced up in an SUV and asked what the reporter was doing.

CNN, which initially reported that the US had successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, said the removal of the Russian was driven in part by concerns that President Trump mishandled classified intelligence and could expose the covert source as a spy. This was denied by the CIA.

The New York Times said the source was “one of the CIA’s most important — and highly protected — assets” and had been removed after US media picked up on details about the agency’s Kremlin sources. Present and former intelligence officials told the paper that, in the light of the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the Wiltshire city of Salisbury last year, the mole’s life remains in danger.

A Russian website reported in 2017 that the Smolenkovs and three children had travelled to Montenegro in June that year and disappeared, prompting a murder investigation to be opened in September. Mr Smolenkov had worked in the Russian embassy in Washington and with Yury Ushakov, one of Mr Putin’s top foreign policy advisers. His wife was also a state employee.

A source “informed about the case” speculated to Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper today that Mr Smolenkov and his family may have been taken across the border from Montenegro to Kosovo and then flown to the US from the American Camp Bondsteel army base.

The Russian presidential administration said that nobody by the name of Oleg Smolenkov had worked there.

Sounds to be as brave a man as Gordievsky was for MI6.
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Old 11th Sep 2019, 11:14
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Damnski! I knew we shouldn't have thrown the spare Novichok in the bushes!

CG
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Old 11th Sep 2019, 16:04
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Strangely enough just finished Ben Macintyre's book on Oleg Gordievsky, The Spy and the Traitor. Very brave man too. His exfiltration from the Soviet Union after he was betrayed is the stuff of spy fiction, not real life.
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Old 11th Sep 2019, 16:58
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Do we believe that assistant to a nations ambassador abroad, could come home and just wander around the office of the head of state and that there would be papers lying openly stating do something ?.

Security would notice anything suspicious or question why someone who hasn't a right to be there could just go wandering about.

It requires a view that somehow the security services guarding the Head of State are letting people wander around offices.

It appears there is a lot more added to somehow make person credible where proof isn't required.
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Old 12th Sep 2019, 09:26
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I'm never that convinced about Spies on either side

the number of significant, truly game changing, contributions is rare Stalin never believed Sorge, the Cambridge Spies undoubtedly shortened Russian A bomb development but they'd have got there in the end etc etc
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