There is this real-life, present-day espionage story reported by Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, The Insider, and La Repubblica: Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy 08/25/2022. It's helpful sometimes to see how this stuff works in the real world.
And there's this (Lloyd Green, The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago affidavit paints an unsettling portrait of Trump Guardian 08/26/2022)
As the affidavit [on the search warrent for Mar-a-Lago] hit the docket, reports emerged of a woman posing as a member of the Rothschild family playing golf with Trump and Lindsey Graham while ingratiating herself with Trump’s supporters. Talk about synchronicity.I haven't seen any report that more definitively suggests this person is an actual spy.
The incidents are under active investigation in the US and Canada. Her alleged real identity is Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine.
This latest episode stands as a cross between Maria Butina and Inventing Anna. Life imitates life. History can be repetitive. One thing is clear, security is not a primary concern for Trump.
On the other hand, this is Inna Yashchyshyn with Trump and Graham (from Trump and the NEW Inventing Anna Mail Online 08/28/2022. If you wanted to insinuate an agent into Trump's orbit, this might be one sort of person you would like to use for that purpose:
Chris Hayes interviews Post-Gazette's Michael Solom in Report: Woman Posed As Heiress To Infiltrate Mar-a-Lago, Trump Inner Circle 08/27/2022.
Espionage and intelligence-gathering is something countries do. It's not new.
It always requires caution, critical processing of news reports, and attention to sources for people to get some kind of reasonable grasp of what is documented, what is strongly indicated by good evidence, what is speculation, and what is some loony theory that someone like Alex Jones just pulled out of his butt.
Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site has been doing excellent coverage and analysis of intelligence-related stories since the Valerie Plame case. She managed to keep her focus during the "Russiagate" hype, concentrating on the actual evidence as opposed to Rachel Maddow carelessly snarking about how Trump was doing whatever Putin wanted.
Marcy has been following the story of the Trump investigation, e.g., Six Days: Trump's Second Whack Filing Is Too Late 08/272022.
It's certainly looking likely that the Justice Department will be bringing some serous charges against Trump. The Republicans are already performatively losing their minds. (For many of them that state of mind has long since become chronic.) But we can at least reasonably hope that Trump's own espionage-related activities will be publicly documented to a large degree.
We can also hope that both Democrats and the part of the press that hasn't been Murdoch-ized will resist the "Russiagate" temptation to get carried away with speculation about the role Russian spy craft plays in Trump's misdeeds. It's worth remembering that manipulation is also something countries do. And the results can be very serious without being espionage, like the situations investigated by Craig Unger. (David Smith, ‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy Guardian 01/29/2022). Steve O'Keefe at the left website Counterpunch (Fool Us Twice? Book Review: American Kompromat 03/12/2021) sketches briefly the case Unger makes.
Everybody loves a good spy story. But it's always important to pay attention to the actual evidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment