The Trump government has just awarded a $2.83 million contract for security at its Russian installations including the US embassy in Moscow and its consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.
The US embassy in Moscow is to be guarded by a company owned by a former head of KGB counter-intelligence who worked with British double agent Kim Philby and young Vladimir Putin, after cuts to US staff demanded by Russia.
Elite Security, a private company and the oldest part of the eponymous holding, was founded in 1997 by Viktor Budanov and his son Dmitry, according to a Russian business registry.
A 2002 article posted on the site of Russia's foreign intelligence service identified Mr Budanov as a major general in the agency who became a Soviet spy in 1966 and retired a year after the collapse of the USSR.
His long work in Soviet and Russian intelligence could raise questions about whether the guard services contract poses a security or intelligence risk to the US mission.
The Telegraph's request for comments went unanswered by Tillerson's State Department.
11 comments:
I'm just surprised the contract didn't go to Whitefish.
Shhh, don't give them ideas.
This sure won't square with all those Cold Warriors so prevalent in the US. John Foster Dulles and Barry Goldwater must be fussing in their graves.
.. I will be re-reading Animal Farm
to see how this insane farce plays out..
and probably Lord of the Flies as well
Is Trump insane.. or just fabulously inane
and does it really matter.. ?
The saddest aspect of this is you just can't make this stuff up. Is this almost a kind of meta-fiction without the fiction?
It is. It's just surreal.
Did you see the NYT yesterday?
Judicial appointments at all levels (left empty during last two years of Obama) are proceeding at an 'unprecedented pace'. America is very likely moving to permanent failed-state-status making the kleptocrats very happy.
The real, very successful work of the tRump presidency proceeds apace while most folks are focused on twitter insults, wag the (N. Korean) dog and of course 'the ruskies are coming'.
"Left empty" implies that Obama made no effort to appoint judges to fill vacancies. It would be more accurate to say "blocked by Senate Republicans." Gorsuch, for example, owes his seat on tbe Supreme Court to Republicans refusing for almost a year to hold hearings to confirm Garland.
Cap
Correct Cap. I should have said 'blocked' ... poor choice of words ... but the point is that America may never recover from this judicial coup. It is more important than the (potential) tax cut debacle or all the regulatory reversals.
Here at home, Harper was doing the same thing ... much more quietly at the lower levels and learned his Nadon lesson as exemplified by the obscure right-wing UoA blogger he managed to smuggled on the Supreme court at the last minute.
(After Layton's betrayal and neo-liberal Mulcair's obvious lust for power, most right minded Canadians voted Lib (like me). In my case the judicial appointment issue was the one that motivated me to vote for the predictably disappointing Libs rather than help with a vote-splitting orange vote or a vanity-Green vote.)
Back to the tRump phenomenon. Thomas Frank weighs in via the Guardian:
"But the parade of the aghast is also sharply limited. In the race to depict Trump in the worst possible light, the parade of the aghast conceives his iniquity to be a thing unique and unprecedented."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/12/aghast-donald-trump-thomas-frank
Hey I just went back to the NYT article:
"Republicans are systematically filling appellate seats they held open during President Barack Obama’s final two years in office with a particularly conservative group of judges with life tenure."
"held open" rather than "blocked" - and I lazily echoed their slant.
MSM is breeding willful ignorance and it is most dangerous when practiced by so-called liberal or centrist orgs like the NYT, G&M, CBC etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/us/politics/trump-judiciary-appeals-courts-conservatives.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
PS: I had to dig today (in my own browser history) to find this front page piece from yesterday - not one of the ton-ten emailed or viewed articles (Ya think the gossipy Russian distractions etc. are working?)
"Held open?" Really? That makes it sound as though what McConnell did was a legitimate exercise of power! After whitewashing GOP abuses like that is it any wonder that we got Trump? No wonder Trump likes the paper so much when it does so much to normalize GOP actions.
Cap
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