'The perfect target': Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years -- ex-KGB spy (2021)
www.theguardian.com
... Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian. ...
Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.
Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians' radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia's intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.
Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet emigre who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.
According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called "spotter agent" who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.
Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics. ...
#167 $20 Billion, the rest is from private funds. And this is an investment that will be paid back. Clinton did the same and we made a good amount of money. " This wasn't the first time that the United States has directly intervened in a Latin American economy. In 1995 Pres. Bill Clinton responded to the sharp devaluation of the Mexican peso (an event informally known as the "Tequila Crisis") with a loan that helped stabilize the currency and halt capital flight. Clinton's intervention, which was backed with additional funds pledged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements, and the Bank of Canada, was an immediate success. Mexico's economy quickly turned around and went on to experience sustained growth. The government of Ernesto Zedillo repaid the $12.5 billion borrowed from the United States"with interest"three years early, and the United States ultimately made $580 million on the deal.
Here are a few factors driving the bailout talks: