Free Republic

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was...

Despite threatening language, Vladimir Putin is not going to start a nuclear war, according to Yuri Shvets, who studied along with him at the KGB’s Andropov Institute. Putin’s only desire is to remain in power for life, he says, and he knows Russia’s nuclear weapon delivery systems aren’t accurate enough for a first strike that would not result in national suicide. “Do you seriously think, that a man who annually disappears from public view for seven to ten days in order to have a facelift and to fill himself up with Botox is capable of unleashing a nuclear war?”

Russian president Vladimir Putin and his long-time ally Victor Ivanov, who is currently head of Russia’s narcotics agency, have been implicated in helping run a drug smuggling and money laundering ring in St Petersburg in the 1990s. The allegations were made by ex-KGB officer Yuri Shvets who spoke at the inquiry into the death Alexander Litvinenko yesterday. Shvets testified in front of Ben Emmerson QC, expanding on a report he had compiled with fellow ex-Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, a few months prior to the latter’s death from polonium poisoning. According to Shvets’ sources, which include the late...

Tributes to Sasha Litvinenko, the sob story spy, are on all the tearstained pages of the UK tabloids today. Probably the Daily Mail drivels it best. ‘He was honest, courageous, loving husband . . . etc.’ Blimey. You would never know he was a devious little toe-nail puller from the KGB. Or that his patron, Boris Berezovsky - not mentioned by the Daily Mail - is a gangland legend, veteran of countless contract hits. Or that his closest associate is an even scarier Chechen terrorist, Ahmed Zakayev. Probably the nicest thing you can say about Alexander Litvinenko is that he...