Gore's, Talbott's Red Russian roots (archive 2000

From an MOB RULE, Part 2: Gore's, Talbott's Red Russian roots: How they 'Hammer'-ed out Washington-Moscow policy of the link in the original post:

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Talbott and the KGB
As influential as Gore was in setting Russian policy, he was rarely involved with the country on a day-to-day basis like Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. A native of Cleveland who graduated from Yale, Talbott, with his parents’ encouragement, had devoted his life to Russian studies, culture and language. His friendship with Bill Clinton hails back to their days as Rhodes Scholars at Oxford. After college, Talbott joined Time as a rookie correspondent in the magazine’s Moscow bureau. His career took off after he met Victor Louis (a pseudonym), a smooth, seasoned KGB operative. Louis masqueraded as an independent Soviet journalist. However, according to

Insight reporter and Russia expert J. Michael Waller, Louis’s real job was planting disinformation, recruiting agents and providing tips to trusted foreign journalists.

The KGB operative brought Talbott a treasure trove — boxes of documents and reels of tape concerning the career of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Talbott was asked to translate the material and write Khrushchev’s biography. Louis informed Talbott’s editors in New York that without Talbott’s active participation there would be no biography. Time agreed and allegedly paid Louis $600,000. The book was a huge success, Talbott’s name was on the cover, and his star was in ascendancy within liberal Democratic and journalistic circles.

Appointed by Clinton as deputy secretary of state, Talbott, at his 1993 confirmation hearings told Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., that he had remained in close contact with Victor Louis until his death about 10 years ago. Louis had provided him with valuable information about arms control, said Talbott, supplying him with sources within the Soviet Union. When Helms tried to make the former Time reporter admit that he knew Victor Louis was a KGB officer, Talbott insisted Louis was only a newsman.

Mysteriously, that controversial portion of the hearing transcript was never released, although a copy was obtained by Insight’s Waller, who said it is damaging enough to prevent Talbott from ever holding office again.

In the past, Talbott was a vociferous defender of Boris Yeltsin.

“President Yeltsin is the personification of reform in Russia,” Talbott said. This, despite the fact that Yeltsin refused to sign legislation outlawing money laundering and other corrupt business practices within his country.

In 1997, a group of CIA analysts provided Talbott with a report concerning Yeltsin’s corruption as well as the criminal activities of other key Russian political figures. Talbott reportedly yelled at the analysts, ordering them to leave.

“If I were to believe half of what you said, I couldn’t have a personal relationship with these men. U.S.-Russian foreign policy is based on my personal relationships. Without my personal relationship with Boris Yeltsin and the other Russian officials, we wouldn’t have any foreign policy,” he said at the State Department meeting.

In 1998, shortly after the meltdown of the Russian ruble and recommendations by Gore and Talbott that the U.S. shore it up, two former CIA analysts, a highly respected husband-and-wife team, visited Moscow and compiled a report full of damning information about Yeltsin and his cohorts. The couple met with Talbott and showed him a final draft of their report. They later told associates that Talbott wasn’t pleased and summarily dismissed them.

During the winter of 1999, they traveled to Russia, where they were confronted by Russian internal security agents who had copies of their report and wanted to question them about their critical comments about Russian officials. They had previously been able to travel around the country, seeking information and asking questions without any interference from Russian security police. A former CIA station chief in one of the former Soviet republics, he told WND that he and his wife knew such access would never be possible again and that they were dismayed Talbott had burned them and their sources.

Talbott refused comment for this article. He also refused to cooperate with Rep. Chris Cox’s committee, provoking the ire of the California Republican.

‘Calm down, world!’
Gore and Talbott sought a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund payment during the summer of 1998 to help bail out the ruble. Many knowledgeable observers thought the money would go down a black hole, but the vice president and Talbott argued that the Russian economy was about to turn around and that without the IMF money democracy would end and the communists would win. In fact, federal law enforcement officials tell WorldNetDaily that less than 10 percent of the IMF money ever reached Russia.

Shortly after the Bank of New York scandal broke last summer, Talbott told Newsweek, “Calm down, world!” He attempted to downplay the seriousness of the money laundering at the Bank of New York. “We have been aware from the beginning that crime and corruption are a huge problem in Russia and a huge obstacle to Russian reform,” he said. He pointed out that Gore had been on top of the problem for years, conferring with former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and two other former Russian premiers. He neglected to say that all three of those former premiers had been accused of corruption.

Despite all the serious allegations, for the most part Gore is still allowed by the establishment media to get away with claiming Russia as a success story. No reporters have pressed him with questions about the Russian mob, a subject about which he knows a lot, or how he allowed Viktor Chernomyrdin, the co-chairman of his commission, to continue to enrich himself at the expense of Russia during the same time he served with Gore.

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Also see: Road to Moscow: Bill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow

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Late 1969: Clinton’s Roommates, the KGB, and the Road to Moscow

That December McSorley would again encounter Clinton in Oslo, Norway. Clinton, who had recently spent Thanksgiving vacation in Ireland with his fellow Moratorium protestor Tom Williamson, was now on his way to the Soviet Union, following in the footsteps of his new roommate Strobe Talbott.

Talbott was a Russian affairs scholar and intern journalist for TIME. He had begun visiting Moscow in 1968 and had developed contacts in the USSR. In summer 1969 he was in Moscow acting as a replacement for vacationing TIME Moscow bureau chief Jerrold Schecter. At this time he met Victor Louis (Vitali Yevgenyevich Lui), a KGB disinformation agent and talent spotter who specialized in influencing journalists and planting stories in the Western media.

For the past several years, under the control of KGB General Vyacheslav Kevorkov, Louis had been helping the KGB with damage control by acting as a sort of literary agent supervising the leaking of the memoirs of various former Soviet officials and celebrities, including Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, former Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and former Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In 1967, with approval from KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, Kevorkov and Louis began seeking a publisher for Khrushchev’s memoirs. Louis first approached Jess Gorkin, editor of Parade magazine, which had run an article on an NBC documentary on Khrushchev that Louis had arranged. Parade turned down the project because it seemed too expensive. Parade chief editor Lloyd “Skip” Shearer then suggested Louis approach Talbott, his future son-in-law. Louis approached Talbott through Schecter, whom he met at a party in Moscow in August 1968. In fall 1969, Louis broached the idea of TIME publishing Khrushchev’s memoirs to Schecter. Schecter secured approval from TIME-LIFE New York news service chief of correspondents Murray Gart, then contacted Talbott to offer him the job of translating Khrushchev’s memoirs. Talbott agreed on the condition that he could enlist the help of a Russian friend from Oxford, Yasha Zaguskin, a White Russian emigre who roomed with Boris Pasternak’s sister Lydia.

Talbott then began working on the project with Louis, launching a relationship that would last until 1992. However, it was not until 1999 that Schecter met Keyorkov at a CIA conference and learned that Louis had kept the KGB informed of the Khrushchev project the whole time.

In late 1969, after staying with Richard Stearns for a couple weeks in October, Clinton began rooming with Talbott and their friend Frank Aller. Aller, a draft dodger and China scholar, was doing academic work similar to Talbott’s, making trips to Switzerland to receive the unpublished notes of Edgar Snow, an academic advocate of the Chinese Communists who was linked to the old Institute of Pacific Relations network. (In 1971 the Chinese government would use Snow to mediate an invitation to Owen Lattimore, making sure there would be no Soviet objections if Lattimore visited China.) Clinton’s autobiography recalls how he often made Talbott and Aller breakfast while they were doing their work:

After more orthodox conservative forces removed him from power and installed Brezhnev and Kosygin, Khrushchev secretly recorded his memoirs on tape, and arranged, I think through friends in the KGB, to get them to Jerry Schecter, then Time magazine’s bureau chief in Moscow. Strobe was fluent in Russian and had worked for Time in Moscow the previous summer. He flew to Copenhagen to meet Schecter and get the tapes. When he got back to Oxford, he began the laborious process of typing Khrushchev’s words out in Russian, then translating and editing them. On many mornings, I would make breakfast for Frank and Strobe as they began their work.

Schecter similarly recalled meeting Clinton shortly after Talbott got the Khrushchev assignment:

Before leaving London, I also spent a day with Strobe at Oxford and met his long-haired, amiable housemate, Bill Clinton, who prepared omlets for our breakfast. I never asked Strobe how he told Bill about his new assignment.

Talbott was again in Moscow about the same time Clinton was there in 1970, though he insisted he did not travel there with Clinton, a Boston Herald article by Wayne Woodlief and Joe Battenfeld mentions. A dozen other Rhodes Scholars also followed up Talbott’s visit to Moscow by going there in 1969-1970, Maraniss’ article notes.

After Khrushchev’s memoirs were published, Khrushchev issued a nuanced denial of their authenticity, Soviet news agencies claimed Talbott was “a young sapling of the CIA”, and the Soviets refused to allow Talbott back in the country. Western Soviet expert Victor Zorza speculated that both the KGB and the CIA’s disinformation departments may have played tug-of-war over the memoirs.

When Clinton later nominated Talbott for Deputy Secretary of State, Talbott was questioned about his relationship with Louis. He initially claimed he met Louis in the 1970s, then under cross-examination he remembered that he had actually first met Louis in 1969.

(Talbott’s brother-in-law Derek Shearer later developed numerous Communist and IPS front associations and became one of Clinton’s closest advisors. Other Shearer family members also became part of the extended Clinton clan.)

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