Top Soros Adviser and Confidant Strobe Talbott Identified as Russian Dupe

Former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official  Strobe Talbott, and adviser to George Soros, was a dupe of the Russian  intelligence service.

Comrade  J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former  Washington Post reporter and author Pete Earley, includes these sensational  allegations.

Comrade J is about a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, who  defected to the United States because he was disgusted with the Russian/Soviet  system and wanted to start a new and better life with his family in America. He  identifies former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, an adviser  to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as having been a trusted contact of  the Russian intelligence service.

Back in 2000, when Talbott was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of  Globalization, he was described as “a key architect of U.S. foreign policy” during the Clinton years. He now heads the Brookings Institution, a liberal  Washington, D.C. think tank. But Tretyakov has some impressive credentials  of his own. He wasn’t just a low-level official. He is described as the highest  ranking Russian intelligence official ever to defect while stationed in the U.S.  and handled all Russian intelligence operations against the U.S. He served under  cover from 1995-2000 at Russia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations but was  secretly working for the FBI for at least three years.

Talbott denies the charges, calling them “erroneous and/or misleading,” and  his denials are featured on page 184 of the book. He says that he always  promoted U.S. foreign policy goals and that the close relationship that he had  with a top Russian official by the name of Georgi Mamedov did not involve any  manipulation or deception.

This is not the first time that Talbott has come under scrutiny for his  alleged contacts with agents of a foreign intelligence service. In 1994, when he  was being considered for his State Department post in the Clinton  Administration, he was grilled by Senator Jesse Helms, a member of the Senate  Foreign Relations Committee, about his relationship with Victor Louis, a Soviet “journalist” who was actually a Soviet KGB intelligence agent. Talbott had been  a young correspondent for Time magazine in Moscow.

As reported by Herbert Romerstein in Human Events newspaper, Talbott admitted  knowing Louis from 1969 until his death in 1992 but that he was not aware of his “organizational affiliations.” Pressed further, Talbott acknowledged that he was  aware of assertions or speculation to that effect about Louis. Helms then  confronted Talbott with a 1986 State Department publication revealing that Louis  had been identified as a KGB agent by KGB defectors and had been used by the  Soviets to spread disinformation. Talbott said he still didn’t know for sure  that Louis was a KGB agent.

Romerstein’s Human Events article accused Talbott of writing articles  following the Soviet line. However, Talbott had powerful friends, including  Senator and fellow Rhodes Scholar Richard Lugar, who supported his nomination.  Lugar continues to call Talbott a “good friend” and “source of sound counsel” who “continues to provide outstanding national and international leadership.”   Romerstein, a retired government expert on anti-American and communist  propaganda activities, said the Earley book is valuable because it documents  that the Russian intelligence service picked up where the KGB left off, and that  operations against the U.S. continued after the end of the Cold War.

But he said the information about Talbott needs further explanation from  Talbott himself. “Talbott really has to explain more than he did to Pete Earley  what his relationship was to Mamedov, and he should tell us about his  relationship with Victor Louis,” Romerstein said.

While the accusations against Talbott are sensational and raise serious  questions about security and procedures at the Department of State, Tretyakov  also aims heavy fire at the institution where he was based-the U.N. He calls the  world body “a nest of spies and scoundrels,” says a major figure in the U.N.’s  International Atomic Energy Agency is a Russian spy, names several U.N.  ambassadors as Russian spies, and describes how a Russian spy infiltrated the  U.N.’s oil-for-food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in order to help loot  it.

Earley said that while the timing of the release of the book could have been  better, coming during a time of frenetic presidential campaign activity, the  information deserves more attention than it is getting. He says the three major  broadcasting networks, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post,  have shown no interest in treating the information in the book as a major news  story. He says he is also disappointed that conservative talk radio has failed to cover the book.

Unfortunately, Tretyakov concluded his interviews about the book and went  into hiding, fearing retaliation from the Russian government.  He “died  unexpectedly,” according to Early, on June 13, 2009.

The book, however, speaks for itself. And the allegations about Strobe  Talbott could prove damaging to the Clinton machine and the Democratic Party in  general.  A close personal friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Talbott is  described in the book as having been “a special unofficial contact” of the  Russian intelligence agency, the SVR, when he was Deputy Secretary of State in  the Clinton Administration. Talbott had been in charge of Russian affairs.

“Inside the SVR, that term was used only to identify a top-level intelligence  source who had high social and/or political status and whose identity needed to  be carefully guarded,” the book says. On the same level of interest was Fidel  Castro’s brother Raul, a communist “recruited by the KGB during the  Khrushchev era” who continued to work for the Russians after the Soviet collapse, the  book says. He, too, was a “special unofficial contact.”

Talbott’s Russian Friend

Talbott was allegedly manipulated and deceived by Russia’s then Deputy  Minister of Foreign Affairs, Georgi Mamedov, who was “secretly working” for  Russian intelligence, the book alleges. The book, however, does not make the  specific charge that Talbott was recruited as a Russian spy or was a conscious  agent of the Russian regime.

The book cites Talbott as an “example of how a skilled intelligence agency  could manipulate a situation and a diplomatic source to its advantage without  the target realizing he was being used for intelligence-gathering purposes.” It  says Mamedov was “instructed” by the SVR to ask specific questions to get  information about certain matters.

Tretyakov

“The point is that there are many ways to get intelligence,” Earley  explained. “And one of the best ways is not by stealing secrets but by becoming  friends, getting people to let their guard down, massaging egos, and getting  them to tell you helpful information.”

However, the book says that Talbott was so compromised by his relationship  with Mamedov that the FBI asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright not to  share information with Talbott about an espionage investigation at the State  Department because Mamedov might learn about it and tip off Russian  intelligence.

Earley says he confirmed this account but that Albright has refused to  discuss the incident.

The book cites a House of Representatives report, released  in September 2000, which found that the Clinton Administration and Talbott in  particular had excused the actions of the Russian government and had failed to  promote democracy and free enterprise there.

Earley’s book itself discusses how, during the mid 1990s, Talbott, State  Department spokesman Mike McCurry, and President Clinton himself echoed Russian  propaganda that justified Russian attacks on Chechnya. This “delighted the  propagandists inside the SVR,” which “claimed credit” for what the U.S.  officials had said, the book says.

It seems that Talbott has a tendency, which continues to the present day, of  whitewashing the Russian regime.

In congressional testimony on U.S.-Russian relations, Talbott  attacked the Bush Administration for withdrawing from the ABM treaty, urged  Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, and advocated more  negotiations and agreements with Russia over nuclear arms. The U.S. has “set a  bad example” for the Russians in foreign affairs, Talbott said.

Talbott Promotes the U.N.

Ironically, Talbott has been about town promoting his own book, The  Great Experiment, about the need for “global governance” and expanding the  power of the U.N. in foreign affairs. His book ignores the role of Soviet spy  ALGER HISS IN FOUNDING THE U.N. but thanks George Soros and Walter Isaacson,  formerly of Time but now with the Aspen Institute, for their input on his  manuscript.

Talbott also gives thanks to convicted document thief Sandy Berger, Bill  Clinton’s national security adviser; Soros associate Morton Halperin, formerly  of the ACLU; Javier Solana of the European Union; and Bill Clinton, “for helping  me better to understand several aspects of his view of the world and America’s  role in it.”

With all of these high-powered connections, the story about Talbott being  used by the Russians seems to be a story worth reporting or commenting on.  However, if the media examine the charges against Talbott, they might have to  deal with other evidence and information in the book about how spies for the  Soviet intelligence service manipulated the U.S. media.

Talbott

The book, for instance, explains how the Soviet KGB peddled charges that  deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to Europe in the 1980s might lead to their  use and a “nuclear winter” or climate crisis for the world. The book says the  story was cooked up by the KGB and fed to the Western world by anti-nuclear  activists such as Carl Sagan, who penned an article on the topic for the Council  on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs. The book notes that Sagan later  appeared on the ABC television network to talk about the subject.

Tretyakov said he discovered “dozens of case studies” of the KGB using “propaganda and disinformation to influence public opinion” in the West.

His Time at Time

A prominent journalist himself at one time, Talbott achieved notoriety for  writing a July 20, 1992, Time column, “The Birth of the Global Nation,” saying  that in the next century “nationhood as we know it will be obsolete,” that we  will all some day become world citizens, and that wars and human rights  violations in the 20th century had clinched “the case for world government.” This reflects the views of the pro-world government World Federalist  movement.

Talbott was identified as a World Federalist when he took over the Brookings  Institution. He has acknowledged that his parents were members of the World  Federalist movement, which collaborated with Soviet front groups such as the  Soviet Peace Committee during the Cold War and tried to avoid scrutiny from  anti-communist congressional committees after World War II. Talbott even says he had a dog  growing up known as “Freddie,” which was short for World Federalists.

Other prominent World Federalists have been Senator Alan Cranston and Rep.  John B. Anderson.

World Federalism

Talbott’s global left-wing vision was endorsed personally by President  Clinton, who had sent a June 22, 1993, letter to the World Federalist  Association (WFA) when it gave Talbott its Norman Cousins Global Governance  Award. In the letter, Clinton noted that Cousins, the WFA founder, had “worked  for world peace and world government” and that Talbott was a “worthy recipient” of the award. Talbott and Bill Clinton became friends when they were both Rhodes  Scholars.

Hillary Clinton, who has been friends with Talbott since their days together  at Yale University, gave a videotaped address to the WFA in 1999 on the occasion  of the group giving former anchorman of the CBS Evening News Walter Cronkite its  global governance award. She praised Cronkite’s work. For his part, Cronkite  declared that “we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a  world government” and America must “yield up some of our sovereignty.”

The WFA, which renamed itself Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), lobbies  for more power and authority for the U.N., including passage of the Law of the  Sea Treaty. It pours money into Congressional races for the House and Senate and  receives funding from major liberal foundations. One of their favorite  politicians has been Senator Richard Lugar, perhaps the most prominent Senate  proponent of the Law of the Sea Treaty, who joined Talbott at the Brookings  Institution to discuss U.S.-Russian relations. Lugar has accepted campaign cash  from the CGS political action committee.