I was CIA's top agent in Moscow - Putin has trained to manipulate men like Trump [View all]

[douglas9]

When Rob Dannenberg arrived in Moscow in the late 1990s to take on a senior role with the CIA, the Russian capital was a wild and dangerous place.

With the post-Soviet state crumbling under the drunken presidency of Boris Yeltsin, armed gangsters and Chechen terrorists posed deadly risks. So too did the unruly security services trying to tackle them. “There were roadblocks set up around town, where the street militia were quite capable of being violent if it suited them,” Dannenberg recalls.

Adding to the chaos were disgruntled Russian intelligence officers, upset at their beloved KGB being dissolved. Within its replacement, the FSB, certain elements “weren’t under complete control,” Dannenberg explains. They were “capable of undertaking actions” without seeking permission from the Kremlin.

“There were plenty of Russians who held a deep grudge, and still do to this day, about the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he says.

One of them, was Vladimir Putin.

Dannenberg remembers meeting the former KGB colonel during the first of his two stints in Moscow, in the mid-1990s. He shook hands with Putin, who was merely a government official at the time, during a reception at the US ambassador’s residence.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/i-was-cia-top-agent-moscow-putin-manipulate-men-trump-4132455