CIA Reportedly Had Asset So Close To Putin That Spy Could Photograph Secret Documents

Donald Trump allegedly revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting last week.

MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. Oleg Smolenkov, a Russian national, whom media reports refer to as a possible CIA agent, has never worked for the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation.

"He has never worked for the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation," Elena Krylova, Spokesperson for the head of the Russian Presidential Administrative Directorate, told TASS, commenting on reports alleging that Smolenkov was its employee prior to 2017...

...Some Russian media outlets reported citing anonymous sources that the individual in question could be someone named Oleg Smolenkov, who supposedly worked for the government. Some of them mentioned Smolenkov’s other places of employment.

https://tass.com/politics/1077450

MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. The Kremlin is not conducting a search for a former employee of the presidential staff, Oleg Smolenkov, and has no evidence if he was a CIA agent, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media.

"No, I am unable to confirm this, because I do not know if he was an agent or not. I can merely confirm that there was such an employee of the presidential staff and that he was dismissed at a certain point," Peskov said, when asked if he could confirm Smolenkov was a CIA agent...

https://tass.com/politics/1077458

Leonid Bershidsky (Bloomberg Opinion) ... After the U.S. reports came out, an anonymous, well-informed Russian Telegram channel, The Ruthless PR Guy, reported that the asset was Kremlin official Oleg Smolenkov. On Tuesday morning, the Moscow daily Kommersant published a story confirming that it was him based on anonymous sources and some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence.

Smolenkov, his wife and three children went on vacation to Montenegro on June 14, 2017, and disappeared without a trace. A murder investigation initiated in Moscow got nowhere. Kommersant found a notice in the Washington Post saying a couple named Oleg and Antonina Smolenkov (the wife has the same name as the missing official’s) bought a house in Stafford, Virginia, in June 2018. It also discovered a record of a deed on a Stafford property in Oleg Smolenkov’s name.

On Tuesday, an NBC correspondent apparently visited the property, although the resulting story didn’t mention Smolenkov’s name or the Stafford location. It did say that, once the reporter rang the doorbell, two young men came racing up in an SUV and started asking questions about the purpose of his visit, introducing themselves only as friends of the owner.

If indeed the CIA extracted Smolenkov from Russia, one might question why he continued to use his real name. But the timing of the Smolenkovs’ disappearance and their apparent re-emergence in Virginia, watched over by anonymous “friends,” suggest he could be the mole in question...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/man-prized-u-asset-kremlin-123449914.html