Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul cannot be trusted
WNBA star Brittney Griner has been held in Russia since February 2022 for possession of a cannabis derivative. I join Michael McFaul in calls for her release.
I do not support McFaul’s calls to “swap” her for Viktor Bout for her, however.
This is a dangerous period in history. Putin is challenging the “West” to fight him. America and the rest of the globalists leaders of the world continue to pursue policies that everyone in the world must die before Putin and Zelenskyy do. I don’t like how our diplomacy and sanctions hurt everyone except the people responsible for the war. I don’t like the way the United States is being represented in Georgia, where reports are emerging that the US is trying to drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war. I’d like to see Ambassador Kelly Degnan replaced. A closer look at McFaul leads me to believe that he is not someone that the United States should be listening to either.
McFaul, US Ambassador to Russia 2012-2014, has spent so much time in Russia that he jokes a lot about people calling him a Russian asset. It’s really not that funny to me though.
He says “In (sic) confess, I studied in the USSR in 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1990-1991.” McFaul said he arrived at Leningrad State University in the summer of 1983, at the age of 19. He provided this picture on Twitter.
1983 was a period of very high tensions between the US and the USSR. Supposedly a false radar signal almost prompted the USSR to launch nuclear missiles on September 26, 1983. The USSR shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1, claiming it was a spy plane that had flied over USSR airspace. After the US Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, the USSR became concerned that the US was mobilizing for an attack.
In this period, McFaul jokes, “Putin worked for KGB's Direct Chief Directorate in Leningrad in early 1980s, right? If so, maybe he was following me in 1983 at LGU!” Which is again, not really that funny. Because that’s exactly the type of thing that Putin did. In a bio of Putin, the Washington Post wrote "Vladimir Putin looked for East Germans who had a plausible reason to travel abroad, such as professors, journalists, scientists and technicians, for whom there were acceptable "legends," or cover stories."
That was when Putin was stationed in East Germany. He was stationed in East Germany around 1985 -1990, until after the Berlin Wall fell in November, 1989.
The Kremlin’s bio of Putin says he worked for the KGB since he graduated from Leningrad State in 1975, until he was sent to East Germany. It doesn’t say what Putin was doing for the KGB from 1975-1985 however. Thanks for the citation for Putin at Leningrad in the early 1980s, McFaul.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Putin then returned to Leningrad and took a position at Leningrad State University. The Soviet Union began to fall apart. Lithuania, Georgia, and the Baltics declared independence in the spring of 1990.
By December 1991 Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus, 3 of the 4 original members of the Soviet Union, signed papers dissolving the USSR.
In 1990 Putin “became an advisor to St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, and then deputy mayor and head of the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations (CFER). The function of the committee was to encourage, regulate, and license the establishment of foreign trade in and by St. Petersburg. Officials in Moscow granted Putin the authorization to issue licenses and contracts to conduct foreign trade.”
And this is where and when McFaul began publicly working with Vladimir Putin. “It was in the spring of 1991, and McFaul was escorting U.S. legislators to Russian cities to share ideas about preparing budgets. Putin was in charge of external affairs and served as McFaul's government liaison.”
In polite terms, it was a time for investment. More bluntly, Putin was heavily involved with organized crime. According to former KGB Alexander Litvinenko, Putin, while he was Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs of St Petersburg in the early 1990s, organized an Afghanistan heroin trafficking ring.
Maybe McFaul was naive in 1991; maybe he wasn’t. McFaul is not someone I want advising the President Biden on criminals from this era in the early 1990s, however. As McFaul said above:
I think he's (Viktor Bout) probably connected in intelligence circles given the kind of work he did before. And Vladimir Putin, a former (KGB) intelligence officer, wants to release one of his own, and I think that might be the only way to get Britney Griner out as soon as possible.
Interviewer: So Abassador McFaul let's put you on the spot. If you were advising the President would you recommend that he allow that trade?
I would.
The 2005 movie Lord of War with Nicolas Cage was based on Viktor Bout. Bout, known as the Merchant of Death, was finally arrested in Thailand in 2008 and extradited to the United States in 2010, where he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, everything was for sale, including their weapons. Viktor Bout began his arms running business in the early 1990s while Michael McFaul was helping the Vladimir Putin, the liason between the KGB and Russian organized crime, show Americans around Russia. Now McFaul recommends that the United States should let an arms dealer go who is connected to, in his own words more or less, Vladimir Putin. This after Russia invaded Ukraine and arrested a basketball player for hash oil in her luggage.
I realize that everyone has Russiaphobia backlash after Russiagate, and I do feel sorry for Brittney Griner, but anyone can see that McFaul is motivated by some unknown prior relationships developed in Russia, and what he is proposing is ridiculous.
Charles Wright