How Deep Does Vladimir Putin's FSB Have Their Hooks Into Hillary Clinton?

Caricature by DonkeyHotey flic.kr/p/Ct4G4K

Earlier in the month I posted on the subject of who will be the guaranteed winner in November. That winner, I concluded, is Vladimir Putin:

As incredible as it seems, the United States is now in the position of having three of its four presidential candidates thoroughly compromised by Russia. This is the stuff of a Cold War spy novel.

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As it turns out, I am not alone.

Former intelligence officer, John Schindler, has a great op-ed in The Observer that details the extent to which Hillary Clinton is also deeply compromised by Russian intelligence. Keep in mind as you proceed that Schindler loathes Donald Trump.

However, recent revelations indicate that Hillary’s dubious Kremlin ties go far deeper. A new report by Peter Schweizer, who’s spent years investigating the dubious and convoluted finances of Clinton, Inc., raises troubling questions about just how deep Hillary’s Moscow’s ties are—and whom exactly they’re with.

Schweizer shows that John Podesta sat on the board of a Dutch-registered company that took $35 million from the Kremlin. The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated—and for what—is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law.

Even worse is how Clinton, Inc. profited from the Russian “reset” that was one of the big achievements of Hillary’s tenure at Foggy Bottom. Never mind that the reset was a disaster, culminating in Kremlin aggression against Ukraine. Hillary’s signature program at the State Department ended in unambiguous failure. Yet Clinton, Inc. did very well out of the temporary warming of relations with Moscow.

As part of the reset, Hillary encouraged and enabled American and European investment in Russia, particularly in high-tech firms. A key role was played by the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a sprawling complex in Moscow’s western suburbs that was established in 2009 as Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley. With encouragement from the State Department, American companies jumped aboard. Cisco pledged $1 billion of investment in Skolkovo in 2010, and Google and Intel quickly joined the bandwagon. All three “just happened” to be major investors in the Clinton Foundation too.

This was the consistent pattern. As Schweizer explained, “Of the 28 U.S., European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or had hired former President Clinton to give speeches. How much money these Skolkovo benefactors gave to Clinton, Inc. cannot yet be determined, but Schweizer concluded that it’s somewhere between $6.5 million and $23.5 million, with the proviso that since the Clinton Foundation has yet to reveal all its donors, the true figure could be much higher.

Then there’s the matter of what Skolkovo actually is. In truth, it’s nothing like Silicon Valley except in outward appearance. It’s a fully state-driven enterprise—funded largely by the Kremlin and acting on its orders. It does the bidding of the Russian government, and President Putin has taken intense interest in his high-tech complex, understanding its value to the country’s defense and security sector.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that Western intelligence considers Skolkovo to be an extension of Russia’s military-industrial complex—and its intelligence services. A July 2013 unclassified study by U.S. European Command that surveyed Skolkovo activities suggested, in delicate language, that Russia’s Silicon Valley is “an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.” Stealing the West’s hi-tech secrets has long been a Kremlin forte, and Skolkovo is merely the newest effort to purloin our advanced technology.

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In fact, in some ways Schindler is too kind to Clinton. If anything, Hillary Clinton’s ties to Russia, and to entities that are basically subsidiaries of the FSB, are deeper than those of Donald Trump and they are much less transparent. We know, for instance, as she prepared to give a Russian state-owned company control of all US uranium mining, she was warned by US and European diplomats that it was a bad idea:

State Department officials in Fall 2009 — a year before the United States approved the deal — obtained an internal strategy document from Russia’s nuclear energy firm, Rosatom, that warned about Moscow’s intentions as it “flexes muscles” in uranium markets.

In one cable sent to Clinton, U.S. officials in Brussels warned Russia was about to strong-arm U.S. ally Ukraine into a deal for “long-term supply of nuclear fuel” that could “shut” the U.S. company Westinghouse out of the market and extend Moscow’s influence over Europe.
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“The strategy paper reflects concerns raised by industry reps and Ukrainian diplomats the past few months and is consistent with Russia’s efforts to dominate the gas supply market in Europe,” the cable from U.S. representatives in the European Union’s capital city warned.

Greater control over nuclear power plant fuel in European markets could make European nations more reliant on natural gas exports at the heart of Russia’s economy, the career diplomats worried.

And if Rosatom succeeded, the American nuclear company Westinghouse might not be able to expand as it hoped in Eastern Europe, they added.

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Despite warnings that this purchase would not only hurt a US company but it would increase Russian leverage over Europe — none of which, I hasten to add, further US foreign policy goals —  Clinton’s State Department gave its approval. I’m sure there is nothing wrong here but this is the timeline:

  1. September of 2005: Canadian Frank Giustra visits Kazakhstan with Bill Clinton. Days later, his company UrAsia wins a major uranium deal with the country.
  2. 2006: Giustra donates $31 million to the Clinton Foundation.
  3. February 2007: UrAsia merges with Uranium One and expands into the U.S..
  4. June 2008: Russian atomic agency Rosatom begins talks to acquire Uranium One.
  5. 2008 to 2010: Uranium One and UrAsia investors donate $8.65 million to Clinton Foundation.
  6. June 2009: Rosatom acquires 17% of Uranium One.
  7. 2010 to 2011: Millions more donated by Uranium One investors to Clinton Foundation.
  8. June 2010: Rosatom requests Committee on Foreign Investment (of which the State Department is a member and its approval is needed) to approve a majority ownership in Uranium One, promising not to purchase 100% of it nor take it private.
  9. June 2010: Bill Clinton receives $500,000 to speak at a conference held by the Russian investment bank involved in the Rosatom transactions.
  10. October 2010: Committee approves Rosatom’s request to acquire a majority share in Uranium One.
  11. January 2013: Rosatom purchases remainder of Uranium One and takes it private.

One thing you can bet on with mathematical certainty is that the Russian FSB has compromised Hillary Clinton and her inner circle to such an extent that you can bet that US policy will be subordinated to the Kremlin’s strategy.

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If fact, if you take a cynical view of the hack of the DNC, and take into consideration how little damaging information was released from that cesspool of corruption, one has to wonder if the leak wasn’t calculated to help Clinton by making Trump look suspect rather than hurt her.

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