Former top CIA officials are wary of a charge by a former KGB official saying Trump was officially recruited in 1987, but Trump's pro-Moscow tilt makes it irrelevant now anyway, they say.
Trump, seen here with Putin at a Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017, was recruited and code-named ‘Krasnov’ by the KGB in 1987, according to a Facebook post by a former Kasakh and KGB intelligence official (Evan Vucci/Associated Press photo)
The long-bubbling suspicion that Donald Trump has long been in the pocket of Russian President Valdimir Putin received a fresh supply of ammunition last month when Alnur Mussayev, a former Soviet/Kazakh intelligence chief, alleged on Facebook that the KGB recruited Trump during his Moscow visit in 1987 and gave him the codename “Krasnov.”
The allegation, which has not been specifically corroborated, has caught fire on social media, with tens of millions of hits, but remains untouched by skeptical mainstream media outlets.
We, too, were skeptical when Mussayev—or somebody calling himself Mussayev— posted a startling claim on Facebook that the KGB’s Sixth Directorate, whose task was to target businessmen from capitalist countries, successfully recruited Trump 38 years ago.
“How come such an explosive allegation is popping up just now, nearly a decade after such allegations reached a fever pitch during Trump’s first term?” weasked. “Could it be that the Facebook ‘Mussayev’ is a fake, a sophisticated disinfo op? And why use Facebook, a playground for fake personas and foreign disinformation, to air such a charge (instead of a carefully arranged press conference with documents and the backing of experts)? And to what end?” we asked.
“One possibility,” we mused, “is that it was designed by enemies of Trump — pick a name, any name — to boost anti-Trump fury while he’s on a roll in Washington,” slashing federal agencies with the aid of billionaire Elon Musk’s budget-cutting DOGE teams. “Another, far more devious ploy, but much in the Russian disinfo DNA,” was that the Mussayev post “was actually designed by Moscow to be unmasked in order to embarrass and discredit the legions of people who believe that Valdimir Putin has some sort of direct leverage over Trump.”
A former senior CIA Russia hand advised us that that was indeed possible.
Susan Miller, a recently retired former CIA official who led the intelligence community’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said in an interview Tuesday that she didn’t think much of Mussayev’s allegation. Like us, she thought it could possibly be a Russian disinformation ploy. Despite the Kremlin’s obvious approval of Trump, it’s always looking for ways to sow chaos in American politics.
Then there’s the most banal of all explanations: Drunk posting. According to Miller and Mike Sellers, another former CIA Russia hand we talked with, there’s a small universe of ex-KGB guys who sit around at night tugging on the vodka bottle and shit-posting mischievous stuff.