"US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017" - TTG

Washington (CNN) In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN. A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel. The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.  (CNN)

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In a CNN interview, Mike Rodgers stated it was a fear of Trump’s lack of discipline about intelligence matters after his meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov in the Oval Office spurred the decision to extract the source. It was not out of fear that Trump would ever wittingly out the source. I'm glad the extraction was done before Trump's one on one meeting with Putin in Helsinki. We have no idea what he might have blurted out in that meeting.

I’m sure this is not the only concern the IC had about the security and safety of their source. When the IC assessment about Russian activities during the 2016 election came out, I was astonished with the specificity in the key findings about Putin’s plans and intentions. I thought that was putting a key source, collection capability or both in jeopardy. When the NSA only expressed moderate confidence in one of the findings about Putin’s plans and intentions, I was more convinced that it was a human asset who provided that intelligence information rather than a technical capability. That had to weigh heavily in the decision to extract the source in 2017. I was just as shocked with the specificity of the information revealed in the indictments of the IRA and especially the GRU 12. That may also have cost us some collection capabilities.

Some intelligence officers talk rather cavalierly about the dangers their sources sometimes face. They are more concerned about what the loss of a source would do to their reputation. I despise that attitude. A source’s life and liberty is in the case officer’s hands. Such trust cannot be taken lightly and should weigh heavily in the training and tasking decisions made by the case officer. Your actions could lead to the imprisonment, torture and execution of a man or woman who willingly placed their lives in your hands. It better be damned well worth it and the take better be given the care and respect it deserves.

TTG

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics/russia-us-spy-extracted/index.html

Comments

[anon]

Most of trump and the 7 Russians is fake news.The fact is that the USA has sought Russian assistance in pressuring Israel.The rest is a smoke screen.The whole scenario is being carefully managed so as to not set off a middle east war.The outcome of this project coming at the tail end of the Arab spring will become clear after the election.

[turcopolier]

All

And then there is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention from someone or someones who remain(s) in place. The open purchase of a house in the outer suburbs of Washington by the extracted would seem to support the possibility that this is all a diversion. The narrative continues that "a former senior intelligence official" told Sciutto, an Obama man, at CNN of all this. Clapper is "a former senior intelligence official" and a CNN "contributor" (employee) is he not? He is dumb enough to have had this story planted on him.

[The Twisted Genius]

Mathias, absolutely not.

[The Twisted Genius]

b, if true this Oleg Smolenko lives in a nice small neighborhood with 4 acre lots and half million dollar homes. We're practically neighbors. Maybe we'll meet at our local brewery. Or this Oleg Smolenko is unfortunate enough to have the same name as an allegedly exfiltrated spy and will be the subject of a lot of unwanted attention for a few days. It's like Michael Bolton in "Office Space."

[Peter VE]

I'm sure Mr. Smolenko has been following the story of Sergei Skripal and wondering if perhaps he would have been better off going to prison in Russia....

[Rhondda]

Info-seeding operation: plausible 'Kremlin source' needed for bare-naked Steele dossier...?

[turcopolier]

TTG

You could belong to the Rotary club together under the category of retired spooks/spook handlers. For the unenlightened, a town Rotary Club chapter can only have two members from any given occupation. I wonder where they would meet for their chapter luncheons down there.

[turcopolier]

Rhondda

Say what?

[The Twisted Genius]

"The picture only confirmed that."

Exactly. Prior to this satellite imagery of less than 25cm resolution was illegal to release by commercial imagery companies. Now we all know that USA 224, one of our Keyhole satellites, has an optical resolution of at least 10cm. I agree this confirmation is not catastrophic given the theoretical resolution was already known.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/#31479a1a3d89

[Rhondda]

LOL Sorry. Too terse? It strikes me that this CNN assertion is useful -- to provide a fig-leaf, albeit lacy, for the wretched Steele dossier's 'Kremlin source'.

I'm always amazed how little it takes and how little there is there. I'm probably wrong, but that's what came to my mind.

[JP Billen]

A recent one was the Russian inspired conspiracy that US officials ordered rat poison in tap water. Or that the fire in Notre Dame Cathedral was arson done by Ukrainian nationals.

Earlier ones prior to Putin before the fall of the CCCP was that the US invented Aids. That both Presidents Reagan and Papa Bush endorsed Apartheid. That the US arranged and inspired the Ikhwan in their 1979 takeover of Mecca's Grand Mosque.

Those are just a few examples. It goes on ad infinitum, both currently and back in the old days.

It is no secret that we do the same, just not as effectively.

[The Twisted Genius]

We have an inexpensive Italian eatery down here that sometimes has an old Jewish gentleman playing his accordion. One evening he played "Moscow Nights" at my request. I should have looked around to see if anyone had a soulful tear in their eye. I could have played "Spot the Spy."

[Rhondda]

Ah no. Not quite right. Not the Steele dossier -- but rather John Brennan's foundational 'source' that set in motion the spying and unmasking and entrapment, etc.

This reads to me like preparing the info-battle space for a contention to come.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/possible-ex-russian-spy-cia-living-washington-area-n1051741

[..] The [New York] Times said the source was “the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders” from Putin, and was key to the CIA’s assessment that Putin favored Donald Trump’s candidacy and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

The Times previously reported that the source was considered so sensitive that then-CIA Director John Brennan had declined to refer to the person in the top secret Presidential Daily Brief during the final months of the Obama administration. Brennan sent reports from the source to the president and a small group of top national security aides in a separate, white envelope to assure its security, the Times reported.

[prawnik]

Seems that the CIA has debunked this story.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/09/pulp-fiction-media/

[jjc]

John Brennan authored a piece in the NY Times two years ago which claimed an extremely high-level sensitive Kremlin source was supplying real-time information throughout the election campaign of the late-summer/autumn of 2016. This information, Brennan suggested, was directly concerned with the alleged Kremlin plot to place Trump in the White House, and was so sensitive that each report was not included in the daily presidential briefing, but presented to Obama in a separate white envelope with the contents known only to a select few.

Earlier this year, in an admonishment, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov made a brief reference to some high-level information sharing program between the Kremlin and the White House. This leads to the suspicion that Brennan, and now CNN through anonymous sources, is and was peddling half-truths, and completely mis-representing an official back-door channel to provide a limited hangout or even seeking to conflate this with the dodgy Steele info. Either/or, the first public reference to an alleged high-level Kremlin spy was made by Brennan two years ago in NY Times.

[The Twisted Genius]

I'm jealous. I checked out the Smolenko homestead on Google maps and am mightily impressed. A nice looking 6 bedroom house with an expansive green front lawn valued at close to a million. I wonder if he rides his own zero turn mower.

There's a short path from the back of the local high school to his cul-de-sac. I wouldn't get too nosy for a while. Seems an NBC reporter was met by two ""friends" of Gospodin Smolenko when he rang the doorbell earlier today. The CIA will probably be keeping the paparazzi and others away until the excitement dies down. The most my former spooks could afford on what I paid them was a modest walk up flat in Gdansk and a nice, but modest, flat in Moscow. The CIA was always a lot looser with the money.

I've learned it's normal for resettled spies and defectors to insist on using their true names after resettlement. Think of Skirpal and Litvinenko as two rather famous examples, although I would think their fate would give Oleg pause. This is not the Witness Protection Program.

[Jim S]

I don't follow Twitter but I ran across a thread by Brian Cates (who writes for The Epoch Times) which follows the same lines you are developing:

https://twitter.com/drawandstrike/status/1171258411897491456

You may be more correct here, as the names Trebnikov and Surkov are well known by now and they don't fit this story.

"Battlefield prep" seems like the correct call.

[Procopius]

"When the IC assessment about Russian activities during the 2016 election came out, I was astonished with the specificity in the key findings about Putin’s plans and intentions.' I didn't save links, but my memory is that the "assessment" came out in January, 2017. So did Brennan's public announcement (in January 2017) that he had "evidence" that Putin was personally involved in directing the "attack." I thought at the time that statement from him burned the most important asset since the State Department broke the Japanese Purple (diplomatic) Code. I still do not understand why there was no outcry at the time, but of course that would have distracted from his story that RussiaRussiaRussia. It certainly was not treason (we are not at war with the Russian Federation), but surely he should have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Unless he was lying, of course, which is quite likely.

[Procopius]

If you take the Skripal story at face value, you should go through Craig Murray's archives. He's written a couple of critiques of the really absurd story the British government has put out. The chief nurse of the British Army, who could recognize the symptoms of Novichok poisoning just happened to pass by, with her daughter, and see the Skripals passed out on the park bench. Right. The poison was on the door handle, but they had to remove and destroy the roof of the house because it was contaminated. Right. Another, perhaps even better source is The Blogmire. He has dozens of lengthy posts describing the contradictions and implausibilities. There were a couple of kids in the park, and the Skripals gave them some pieces of bread to feed the ducks. The ducks died, but the kids were not affected. Right. And on and on.