The CIA’s Kremlin mole whose existence was revealed this week could have been a source for the now-notorious Christopher Steele dossier on Donald Trump, a Russian campaigner has claimed.
Oleg Smolenkov has been widely named in Russia as the CIA asset who was ‘exfiltrated’ last year by the agency amid fears he was in danger then lived outside Washington D.C. under his own name for a year before being outed.
He has been said to have been so close to Vladimir Putin that he could photograph secret documents on the Kremlin strongman’s desk, and provided key intelligence about Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
The Kremlin foreign minister has denied there was a mole and claimed the proof was that there was no election interference
Now leading Moscow anti-corruption campaigner Ilya Shumanov, deputy director general of Transparency International in Russia, has said that he believes Smolenkov could have been one of the sources for the dossier – although not of its most infamous claim.
The dossier contained unverified information that Trump was vulnerable to blackmail from Russia having ordered ‘golden showers’ with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.
It alleged the Russian government was holding a ‘kompromat’ sex tape and claimed Trump ordered the prostitutes to urinate on a Moscow hotel bed once slept on by Barack and Michelle Obama.
The dossier was drawn up by former British spy Christopher Steele, and is still the subject of a civil law suit.
The dossier had been seized upon by Trump’s detractors as evidence that Putin had interfered in the election – and by his supporters of proof of a political attack by Washington establishment forces backing Hillary Clinton
Dossier author: Former British spy Christopher Steele provided the controversial dossier of claims about Trump’s interactions with Russia. It was ultimately paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, although he denies knowing who funded it
Notorious claim: The Steele dossier alleges that Russia had a ‘kompromat’ tape of Trump ordering prostitutes to urinate on a bed in Moscow, taken at the same time as he was in the city of the 2013 Miss Universe gala
Center of the claims: The CIA is said to have had a mole at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin until May 2017
Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence to substantiate the outlandish claims in his exhaustive report but its contents and how they came to be used by the FBI and CIA remain under investigation, including by a U.S. attorney tasked specially by Attorney-General Bill Barr.
Shumanov, an anti-corruption campaigner, suggested in an online post that there were close parallels between how Steele describes ones of his sources for the golden showers dossier and what has been said in Moscow about Smolenkov.
He suggests Smolenkov was a source for a part of the dossier about Putin’s alleged plans to swing the election to Trump.
Smolenkov, 50, was an aide to Yuri Ushakov first at the Russian embassy in Washington D.C. in the early 2000s – Ushakov was Kremlin ambassador to the U.S. from 1999 to 2008 – and then in the Kremlin, where Ushakov was seen as Putin’s most powerful foreign affairs adviser.
In a part of the dossier dated September 14, 2016, it says that the Kremlin has ordered silence on claims which had first broken in the Washington Post on September 5 that U.S. intelligence and the FBI were looking at whether the Russians were interfering in the presidential election.
Steele writes: ‘Speaking on confidence to a trusted compatriot in mid-September 2016, a senior member of the Russian Presidential Administration (PA) commented on the political fallout from recent western media revelations about Moscow’s intervention, in favour of Donald TRUMP and against Hillary CLINTON, in the US presidential election.
‘The PA official reported that the issue had become incredibly sensitive and that President PUTIN had issued direct orders that Kremlin and government insiders should not discuss it in public or even in private.’
The official ‘confirmed from, from direct knowledge, that the gist of the allegations was true,’ Steele wrote, and said that had been a split among three ‘expert groups’ on the interference.
‘On one side had been the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei KISLYAK, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with an independent and informal network run by presidential foreign policy advisor, Yuri USHAKOV…’
Shumanov posted: ‘It is probably worth recalling that the name …Yuri Ushakov was mentioned once in the dossier about the alleged interference of Russia in the US election of former MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
Heart of the Kremlin: Oleg Smolenkov was an aide to Yuri Ushakov, first at the Russian embassy in Moscow, then in Moscow. Ushakov has been a foreign affairs adviser to Vladimir Putin for many years and they were seen side-by-side in 2013
Boast: Oleg Smolenkov carried this bound and embossed notebook labeled Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, a family member posted on social media
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov rubbished claims a CIA mole planted at a high-level inside the Russian government unearthed details of the Kremlin’s election meddling
‘The dossier said that Ushakov was an informal coordinator of one of the expert groups, along with Russian Ambassador to the United States Kislyak and the Russian Foreign Ministry.
‘Most importantly, Christopher Steele received this information in 2016 from “a senior official in the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation.”‘
The anti-corruption campaigner said: ‘A person familiar with the course of internal consultations should have been in one of the expert groups and worked in the Kremlin.
‘Only now, three years after those events, has it became clear that this person could well have been Oleg Smolenkov, who at that time was working in the office of the Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation in charge of foreign policy (Yuri Ushakov).
‘Before his disappearance he held the position of chief counselor in Ushakov’s office.’
Whether Shumanov is correct remains to be seen. His identity as the CIA’s mole has been widely reported in Moscow but not confirmed in Washington.
However the New York Times reported that the Kremlin source used by the CIA had been ‘instrumental’ in concluding that Putin ordered the disruption of the 2016 election and wanted Trump elected.
That would track closely with what Steele wrote about his source’s information.
There is little doubt Smolenkov was a key Kremlin figure; he was known to carry a gold-embossed notebook marked ‘Administration of the President of the Russian Federation.’
Vedomosti newspaper in Moscow reported Wednesday that ‘he had access to quite sensitive information,’ according to a source with secret services links.
This included ‘information of the intelligence services.’
He had the potential to inflict ‘quite significant damage’ to Russia, it was reported.
Smolenkov has not been seen at his $925,000 home in Stafford, VA, since CNN reported that there had been a CIA mole at the heart of the Putin regime.
It is not the first time he has vanished – he had previously gone missing in May 2017, a month after Trump hosted Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, in the Oval Office.
Smolenkov went to Montenegro with his family after obtaining permission from his management and registering his vacation with the secret services and other officials.
‘He did not return and switched off all means of communication’ including private phones and emails, said Vedomosti citing its sources.
‘But even then his acquaintances did not suppose that Smolenkov could be a CIA agent.
‘Practically everyone thought that something bad happened to him or an accident.’
Russia’s investigative committee filed a criminal lawsuit under article 105, ‘murder,’ into his disappearance.
The FSB and SVR intelligence agencies then began a major search for the official.
It was they who established his location in Washington, where he still lives under the protection of American intelligence services, says Vedomosti’s source.
Smolenkov and his second wife, Antonia, had not used false identities, and their neighbors knew that they and their three children were Russian.
Russian foreign affairs expert Vladimir Frolov said hiring Smolenkov as a young diplomat was a ‘classic of espionage’ and a ‘big success’ for the CIA.
It was clear to Russian intelligence in 2017 that he had been a CIA mole, but the usual step of accusing him of treason in his absence was not taken, he said.
‘There is no doubt that FSB’s counter-intelligence understood everything back in 2017 when the official “went missing in Montenegro” with his wife and three children,’ said Frolov.
‘The absence of a criminal lawsuit under ‘state treason’ indicates that conducting procedural actions (in this) case implied big inconveniences for some influential individuals.’
The house in Stafford, Virginia, of alleged spy, Oleg Smolenkov – an alleged high-level mole in the Russian government who had confirmed Vladimir Putin’s direct role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election
Dingy: The former home of the Smolenkov family is nine miles north of the Kremlin and a far cry from their Virginia six-bedroom spread
The backyard of the Virginia home is a far-cry from his home in a Moscow tower
The $925,000 property also comes with a home movie theater. The family vanished Monday
He appeared to be alluding to Smolenkov’s link to Ushakov who in turn is closely allied to Putin.
‘The fact that Smolenkov has been living in US under his own name is somewhat strange for the CIA,’ he said.
However Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov rubbished the claims that there was a mole – and that it was Smolenkov – as the ‘multiplication of slander about us’.
He told Interfax news agency: ‘He couldn’t have had any role in so-called [election] meddling because there was no meddling.’
There were also claims in Moscow that Smolenkov felt he was underpaid when he was a Russian diplomat.
A former Moscow colleague said of him: ‘I remember that in a conversation with me Oleg Borisovich [Smolenkov] once complained that he did not see any prospects.’
He saw his remuneration as ‘small’, said the colleague, according to a report in the Moscow media.
It is unclear when his alleged recruitment took place and nor is it known if money was a factor in persuading him to be a ‘double agent.’ A previous report in Russia had said he drank slightly more than the average.
CNN and the New York Times have said that the CIA had its asset close to Putin for a decade having recruited them even before that.