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The New Yorker article. And a Seth Abramson comment.
The 27 Sept. 2020 issue of The New Yorker is out. And in there is an article about should-have-been-strangled-at-birth Republican icon, James Baker. Who thinks the orange, infantile, unspeakable disgrace™ is “nuts” - but he voted for him anyway. And will soon do so again. So eff that guy.
But it's down a bit in The New Yorker piece is this paragraph, one that caught Seth Abramson's attention:
"The next time (Baker) recalled hearing much about Trump was a couple of years later, when Baker was stepping down from the Cabinet to manage (George H.) Bush’s campaign for President, in 1988. Trump sent word through Bush’s campaign adviser Lee Atwater offering himself up as a Vice-Presidential running mate - a proposal that Bush dismissed as “strange and unbelievable,” an assessment Baker shared."
What? 1988? About which Seth Abramson wrote:
"So I don't care about hearing unprincipled tripe from a shameful Trump apologist like James Baker. What I am interested in in this article, is the revelation that less than 24 months after he returned from a KGB-sponsored trip to Moscow - Donald Trump tried to become Vice-President of the United States!
...after Trump returned from Moscow the KGB "stepped up its spying campaign against him...targeting him to gain information about the 'upper echelons of the U.S. government.'" And what was Trump doing? Trying to become Vice President of the United States!"
And I'm with Seth!! So I dug a bit deeper. From some other sources:
Still the Soviet Union, in 1984 General Kryuchkov, the head of the First Chief Directorate responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, was dissatisfied with the intelligence it was getting from the field, especially its lack of success recruiting US citizens. Toward that objective he directed KGB officers to “make bolder use of material incentives”, i.e., money. And use flattery, an important tool. (And guess who comes along and vulnerable to both...?)
OK. How do we know this? General Kryuchkov put his instructions to his KGB heads of station in a memo - dated February 1, 1984 - with instructions that it was to be destroyed right after reading.
Oops!!
The KGB head in Great Britain copied them and passed them to - British intelligence. And those memos were published in a book in 1991. You can buy it and read those memos yourself!
KGB HQ advised its field agents what to look for in a successful recruitment of “prominent figures in the West.” The directorate’s aim was to draw the target “into some form of collaboration with us.” Suggested first tactic? Invite a target to lunch. If the target is responsive, he would become a “subject of deep study," a file would be built up supplemented by official and covert material. (There were other questions, too: what was the likelihood that the “subject could come to power (occupy the post of president or prime minister?”)
Jesus.
In Trump's shitty book, The Art of the Deal, Trump describes a meeting with the Soviet ambassador to the U.N. At lunch, in New York in the fall of 1986. Gee? A lunch, you say? Three months later, The Art of the Deal:
“In January 1987, I got a letter from Yuri Dubinin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States... (who) had expressed interest in pursuing a joint venture to construct and manage a hotel in Moscow.”
"....draw the target “into some form of collaboration with us.” Bingo!
He was invited to Moscow to discuss this "collaboration". The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB.
Six months later (on the 4th of July of all days) Trump flew to Moscow. He was put up in Lenin’s suite at the National Hotel, a KGB hotel. With the cameras rolling...
(N.B.: 1987 is also the year Trump met and palled around with - Jeffrey Epstein. And the Russians definitely had a dossier on him! Probably the photos and videos being the leverage the Russians would have over Trump.)
Seth wrote that it was less than 24 months after Trump returned from Moscow in July of 1987 that he tried to become VP. In looking at the dates and the time Baker stepped down from Treasury, he was right that it was less than 24-months. It was 14.
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