Quite the story here on Felix Sater

[MelissaB]

How A Player In The Trump-Russia Scandal Led A Double Life As An American Spy

Felix Sater has been cast as a Russian mafioso, a career criminal, and a key business associate of President Donald Trump — but he spent more than two decades as an intelligence asset who helped the US government track terrorists and mobsters. “Greed is my go-to weapon.”

In the sprawling Trump-Russia investigation, one name constantly pops up: Felix Sater. In story after story, Sater is described as Donald Trump’s former business partner, a convicted stock swindler who was born in the Soviet Union, worked in Russia, tried to win Trump a deal in Moscow, and even helped broker a Ukrainian peace plan that Vladimir Putin would have loved.

Basically, he’s portrayed as something just short of a Russian spy.

Effectively, he has been a spy — but for the United States. For the first time, BuzzFeed News has verified the surprising sweep of Sater’s undercover work and many of his specific exploits. He worked as an asset for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (or DIA) and tracked Osama bin Laden. Then he worked for more than a decade for the FBI, providing intel on everything from the mob to North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons. He still operates as a source for the bureau, according to two current FBI agents.

... snip

Now BuzzFeed News has obtained the statement Sater gave under oath to House Intelligence Committee investigators at his attorney’s office in December, interviewed him extensively, and corroborated many details of his spy-thriller account through legal documents, emails, letters, and interviews with 10 current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with his undercover work.

More: https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/felix-sater-trump-russia-undercover-us-spy?utm_term=.kma8lRxYJ#.odJBW9Jyg

Link to tweet

[MelissaB]

1. Specific exploits confirmed by BuzzFeed News include:

Specific exploits confirmed by BuzzFeed News include:

*He obtained five of the personal satellite telephone numbers for Osama bin Laden before 9/11 and he helped flip the personal secretary to Mullah Omar, then the head of the Taliban and an ally of bin Laden, into a source who provided the location of al-Qaeda training camps and weapons caches.

*In 2004, he persuaded a source in Russia’s foreign military intelligence to hand over the name and photographs of a North Korean military operative who was purchasing equipment to build the country’s nuclear arsenal.

*Sater provided US intelligence with details about possible assassination threats against former president George W. Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell. Sater reported that jihadists were hiding in a hut outside Bagram Air Base and planned to shoot down Powell’s plane during a January 2002 visit. He later told his handlers that two female al-Qaeda members were trying to recruit an Afghan woman working in the Senate barbershop to poison President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

*He went undercover in Cyprus and Istanbul to catch Russian and Ukrainian cybercriminals around 2005. After the FBI set him up with a fake name and background, Sater posed as a money launderer to help nab the suspects for washing funds stolen from US financial institutions.

[OnDoutside]

2. It reads like Reilly Ace of Spies. One thing doesn't fit for me....

We've been led to believe the FBI started looking into the Rusher Thing on foot of what Papadopoulos said to the Australian official, but surely Sayer would have informed US intel long before that ?

[Rainbow Droid]

3. I haven't read it all yet, but this is absolutely huge, and will inspire panic immediately.

Trump will be truly scared after today.

[poboy2]

4. r'd

[Squinch]

5. Ooooh. That doesn't look good for the republican pseudo-president, does it???

Great article.