It would be difficult to find a more stellar resume within the US national security community than that of Rolf Mowatt-Larssen. A US Army veteran and 23-year CIA stalwart, Mowatt-Larssen is a sort of Forrest Gump with regard to some of this country’s most critical intelligence operations since 9/11. Present at the creation of America’s response to the fall of the Twin Towers, Mowatt-Larssen personifies the non-partisan prototype of a career spy, focused on results, not politics.
Now a fellow at Harvard, Mowatt-Larssen surely owns culpability for the ugly overreach Dick Cheney’s 1% Doctrine necessitated. Indeed, he had a hand in the foundations of black site torture and wholesale round ups of innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet and still, nobody can question Mowatt-Larssen’s bona fides as a top intelligence professional and patriot. In fact, his mantle is resplendent with a wide array of prestigious national service awards, and his insights are much in demand within academic circles, his expertise unquestioned. When it comes to espionage, the career spy has keenly developed senses…. and these days he smells fire.
Mowatt-Larssen knows a sap ripe for compromise by Russian Intelligence when he sees one. To the trained eye it’s like a drunk stumbling through a crowd, hard to miss. Back in June, while clear he was making no specific claims, the former CIA operative pegged our President as a classic example of an individual the Kremlin would seek to groom as an asset. Trump checked off all the boxes, practically announcing his vulnerability. Persona non grata in America for the worst of business practices, most notably a despicable habit of stiffing vendors and creditors, Trump was busy blowing close to half a billion dollars of his father’s money entering the 90s. Notorious for bad faith and no integrity, Trump walked away from one costly failure after another. Add to this recipe for utter calamity a billionaire’s lifestyle, and the smell of desperation for any influx of liquidity would be hard to miss.
Over the years Putin has harnessed Russia’s oligarchy to create a potent one-two punch for espionage. Start with a robust state intelligence service anchored by Soviet holdovers, who honed their craft during the Cold War, add a fleet of kleptocratic Putin cronies, enriched from the state of nature Russia became in the chaos of communism’s fall, and the result is a formidable extra-governmental outreach in service of geopolitical objectives. It’s clear to any lucid analyst that, after coming within a whisker of total ruin in the early 90s, Trump stumbled into Russian crosshairs while canvassing European lenders for liquidity Americans no longer would extend. Sketchy Duetche Bank connections pointed him toward Russian oligarchs, and while few were paying attention then to a complete jerk getting his just desserts as he frantically sought to stay afloat, it’s now the critical start of a chronology that ended up in the White House, a genuine Manchurian Candidate.
The criteria for targeting and pursuing an asset follows an established progression, according to Mowatt-Larssen. But the critical cruxt of the issue is always the same… will they turn? On this Mowatt-Larssen is succinct:
“The key questions in this tradecraft are to determine if and how the target can be turned to serve another nation’s interests, rather than the interests of their own country. Espionage is a loyalty test, in the final analysis. Better put, a litmus test for loyalty and betrayal.
In the case of considering businessman Donald Trump as a potential target, as with any high priority target, the Russians would test the waters to avoid taking any undue risks. They typically begin by initiating mutually beneficial activity to test receptiveness to a deepening relationship. In the established business circles Trump and his associates run in, it would have been logical to test interest in lining one another’s pockets for mutual gain.”
Trump’s needs were clear and easy to address. Establishing opportunities for new revenue that no longer existed in the US, it seems obvious, could get the “big fish” on the hook. Initially, this being decades ago, it is reasonable to assume Trump could serve basic needs of the kleptocrats responsible for reeling him in… such as laundering millions through various schemes the Trump Organization was willing to pursue.
Viewed against this backdrop, top dollar sales of Trump condos to Russian billionaires, and illogical Trump Organization all cash $100 million buying sprees of failing golf properties raises a host of red flags. Add to that a steadily evolving cast of peripheral characters, most notably Carter Page, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, up to their ears in Russo-Eastern European intrigue, and the dots get easier and easier to connect. No doubt Mueller’s team is doing just that, it’s painstaking and highly detailed work, which explains why the investigation still hasn’t wrapped up. For his part Mowatt-Larssen, though careful not to get out ahead of the facts, makes clear the numbers add up. There is nothing farfetched about the notion Donald Trump is a Russian asset. Let that sink in.
On the same day Trump falsely exclaimed on Twitter the Senate Intelligence Committee has declared him innocent of collusion, a federal judge was making former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s gloomy future darker still . Manafort had breached his cooperation agreement with prosecutors, the judge found, lying about his dealings with Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik. Already facing a significant sentence even with full government good will, Manafort is now looking at serious hard time. Even so, it seems something else has him more scared than the rest of his life in federal prison. Moscow doesn’t play. So his last hope would be a pardon from the big grouper, himself. But that’s crazy…. right?! Nothing could be more incriminating; it would be the act of one just as desperate as Manafort. Don’t be too hasty ruling it out. Optics don’t mean much to wretched men. BC