Latest news with #KGB
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Who was Robert Maxwell? Ghislaine Maxwell's father, who had alleged ties with KGB and Mossad
Ghislaine Maxwell, the notorious associate of Jeffrey Epstein, father, Robert Maxwell, influenced her world even though he had relationships with MI6, KGB, and Mossad. Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of late British publisher Robert Maxwell, reads a statement expressing her family's gratitude to Spanish authorities after the recovery of his body, Nov. 7, 1991, in Tenerife, Spain. (AP Photo/Dominique Mollard, File)(AFP) Who is Robert Maxwell? Maxwell was born into a poor Jewish family in Czechoslovakia and was lucky to avoid the horror of the Holocaust and later make it to Britain. He made an impressive niche in his writings and media world, and secondly in politics. His academic publishing house, Pergamon Press, became a staple in American schools, though critics noted its textbooks had a clear pro-Israel tilt. Reflection of Maxwell's Zionist beliefs? In 1984, he bought the Daily Mirror and turned it into one of Britain's leading tabloids. ALSO READ| South Park skewers Trump over Epstein files, puts him in bed with Satan in blistering premiere episode Maxwell controlled an empire that included Maxwell Communication Corporation, Macmillan, Pergamon, and numerous other publishing interests. Interestingly, he was photographed alongside Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher, and US Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump. However, British officials reportedly suspected him of being more than just a powerful media baron. Whispers within the UK Foreign Office linked Maxwell to MI6, the Soviet KGB, and Israel's Mossad, working as a triple agent. He was said to have moved seamlessly between Washington, Moscow, and Jerusalem, trading information and influence. Robert Maxwell linked to PROMIS spyware scandal The worst claims involve him in the PROMIS software scandal. Promis is originally a US Department of Justice tool that was reportedly backdoor implanted by Israeli intelligence and sold to the rest of the world so that foreign intelligence could monitor it on a large scale. Former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe claimed that 'Robert Maxwell' was the one who helped sell the doctored version of PROMIS to unsuspecting governments and corporations. Maxwell's power began to unravel in the early 1990s. It was discovered that he had raided £460 million from the Mirror Group's pension fund, money meant for his employees, to keep his collapsing empire afloat. The British public branded him 'Robber Bob.' His sons Ian and Kevin were later charged with fraud but were acquitted. ALSO READ| Epstein files row: Democrats win big amid Trump link reports; infamous logs could be out soon On 5 November 1991, Maxwell vanished from his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, off the Canary Islands. Hours later, his body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. Authorities ruled it a heart attack and accidental drowning. Ghislaine has maintained her belief that her father was murdered.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia's Putin joins mourners to pay respects to ex-classmate and top judge
Russia's Putin joins mourners to pay respects to ex-classmate and top judge MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin joined mourners on Thursday to say farewell to his former classmate Irina Podnosova, the head of Russia's Supreme Court, who died earlier this week aged 71. Putin looked sad and pensive as he sat alongside members of Podnosova's family in a Moscow hospital where her open casket was placed on display, flanked by an honour guard, for people to pay their final respects. Putin placed a bouquet of red flowers at the foot of her coffin, crossed himself, and bowed his head over the open casket before talking to her family. Putin, 72, and Podnosova were fellow law students in the 1970s in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, where the future president launched his career in the KGB security service. Podnosova was one of several trusted associates from that period who took on senior roles in politics and the judiciary after he became president. Podnosova had been chair of the Supreme Court for little more than a year. She died of cancer, Russian media reported. Solve the daily Crossword
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Most state secrets are nothing of the kind
As the double-decker chugged by Lambeth North Tube station, the conductor — this was in the 1970s — would announce the next stop with a chuckle: 'Century House, spies' corner!' The grimy office block housed MI6, which like all Britain's spy agencies then had no official existence. The journalist Duncan Campbell was prosecuted in 1978 for giving the barest outline of the work of GCHQ, Britain's signals intelligence outfit, though neither his scoop nor the bus conductor's joke would have surprised the KGB. During the Cold War it penetrated all our spy agencies. Secrecy is less obsessive now, though the rules — spectacularly breached over Afghan refugees and serving SAS officers — are still strict. The Cabinet Office publishes a helpful manual about definitions and handling of classified information. The DSMA (formerly D-Notice) website lists five topics, such as the storage and transport of nuclear weapons, where the media is asked, sensibly, to restrain its coverage. Real life is much messier. Deliberate leaks, active or merely passive, can serve a useful purpose. It is striking that the US C-17 military transport plane that flew from the US air force's main nuclear weapons storage facility in New Mexico to RAF Lakenheath last week kept its transponder switched on. Online plane-spotters gleefully publicised its flight path. Short of a Pentagon press release that the US was putting nuclear weapons back in Britain for the first time in 17 years, the message could have hardly been clearer. The ban-the-bomb lot may complain but an ostentatious sign that the Trump administration is boosting its commitment to our defence sends a useful warning to the Kremlin. Other leaks stem from shabbier motives. People in all walks of life like to boast. That is why a Grenadier Guards regimental newsletter proudly listed the names of officers now living their best lives with the SAS. Civil servants may be punctiliously tight-lipped but their political masters (and worse, their spin doctors) are easily tempted by the prospect of a favourable headline. Leaks get worse when information is shared between countries. Our American allies can be extraordinarily careless with our secrets, and vice versa. Contractors are even sloppier. The US-based Cyber Intel Systems lists on its website the exact colour shades used for Britain's classification labels: mischief-makers might find that handy. As I was leaving a meeting in spookdom, an official made me tear off the purple 'TOP SECRET' logo from a sheet of paper bearing something entirely innocuous, explaining 'we don't want to see that on the internet'. Even real secrets rarely matter for long. Today's troop movements are tomorrow's irrelevance. The most sizzling political intelligence ('Putin fell over again this morning') rapidly becomes stale: perhaps made redundant by subsequent events, or because it reaches the media. Much more important than the actual information is protecting sources and methods that may provide more nuggets in the future. Any clues to past activity may help enemies to work out current and future doings. Adversaries' ability to spot patterns and anomalies is the hottest topic in the world of secrets right now, and a top preoccupation for the incoming chief of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. The legal revolution of the 1990s, in which our spy agencies gained avowed status and oversight, and later websites and press offices, is dwarfed by the havoc wrought by the digital age on the staples of espionage: tradecraft and cover identities, which conceal secret activity in seemingly inconspicuous behaviour. • MoD hid Afghan leak from MPs For modern-day spies heading to work at our agencies' now far more imposing London headquarters, for example, the worry is not a jocular bus conductor but the CCTV on public transport. Coupled with face-recognition software, and with the other digital clues left in daily life (mobile phone use, electronic payments, credit ratings), and the unlimited availability of computer processing power and storage, this risks making even the most shadowy corners of government an open book. Our enemies can create and search databases to reveal and track our intelligence officers and their military counterparts, and those they work with. (Of course it helps if, as in the case of Afghans seeking refuge here, we create the database ourselves and distribute it by email.) Accountability is flimsy. Our best bet is parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), but past governments have starved it of clout and staff, with a budget frozen since 2013. The ISC issued a blistering protest in May, saying that it in effect had 'no oversight' of the £3 billion we spend annually on spookdom. Despite a judge's recommendation the government sidelined the ISC over the Afghan scandal (which may cost another billion pounds of public money). That was a scandalous breach of the rules: MI6 officers' names were leaked in the database. The ISC is now investigating that, and the government has promised more resources. It has even been able to meet the prime minister, for the first time, shockingly, in more than ten years. But to be truly effective, the ISC should oversee not only intelligence agencies, but other secret bits of government. The special forces, for example, escape regular scrutiny: too secret for parliament's defence committee, and never discussed publicly by ministers. Yet scandals, and self-serving memoirs, abound. Secrecy, like privacy, is essential to our society, economy, legal system and defence. But without proper scrutiny from judges and politicians it spares our decision-makers' blushes, not the victims of their blunders. We all lose out from that.
DW
3 days ago
- Politics
- DW
Anne Applebaum: 'If you want peace, you must arm Ukraine' – DW – 07/22/2025
Anne Applebaum is an award-winning historian, writer, and publicist. In an interview with DW, she shared her insights on Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals in Ukraine. She also explained what she thinks the West doesn't understand about Putin, and vice versa. This video is a short excerpt of a longer interview with Ann Applebaum. Below is a transcript from one of the questions. Anne Applebaum: People have been asking this question for a decade. There was a major investigation during Trump's first presidency into the sources of Russian influence on the Trump campaign. It showed that there was influence, but they were never able to prove that there was criminal involvement. We know that Trump has had Russian connections for more than 30 years. He's had Russian investment into his business. And this is not a conspiracy theory. This is all documented. We know that he has had positive thoughts about Russia. We know he's felt very negative about US alliances for a long time. It's in his books from more than a decade ago. All these instincts have been in place even before Putin came to power. Since he's in power, Trump is someone who's very impressed by people who operate without checks and balances, without restrictions, without courts, without journalists. He admires that kind of power. My guess is that he's positively disposed to the Russians anyway and that he's personally impressed with Putin. I don't know, obviously, what their personal interactions are like, but Putin is a trained KGB officer. He would know how to find somebody's weaknesses, and he would know how to find the way to manipulate someone and persuade them that he is his friend. Certainly, it's the case that Trump believes Putin to be his friend, and he has said that, he's used that word.
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Expert shares Trump's two-word nickname as he reveals Russia's honest opinion on president
US security services began investigating Donald Trump in 2015 as he was preparing to announce his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election as a new documentary has revealed what they really think In June 2015, shortly after Donald Trump declared his intention to run for the White House the following year, certain figures within America's intelligence apparatus started scrutinising the controversial business mogul's past. In the subsequent years, numerous allegations surfaced suggesting Trump had received financial backing, or at least substantial assistance, from the Russian state. Writers Craig Unger and Luke Harding have both published books claiming that Trump was groomed as a Kremlin operative following his marriage to Czech model Ivana Zelnickova. However, the reality of the situation is far more straightforward, and considerably harsher, according to former White House national security adviser John Bolton. Speaking in a new British documentary examining Trump, Bolton revealed: "Many alumni of the U.S. intelligence community have said to me that they think that Trump has been recruited by the Kremlin. I don't think so. I think he is a useful idiot." The phrase "useful idiot" became popular during the Cold War era, describing someone who naively advanced Soviet objectives without recognising they were being manipulated. Bolton, with a career spanning four US presidents, made a startling claim in the documentary Trump: Moscow's Man In The White House, suggesting that Vladimir Putin, a seasoned former intelligence operative, has Trump wrapped around his finger: "I think Putin can get him in the place he wants to," he said. "He's manipulable and, does the work that the Russians want without ever knowing it." He elaborated on why intelligence experts, who have successfully turned numerous Russian officials into informants, believe Trump is acting precisely as a Russian asset would. However, Bolton posits that Putin is exploiting Trump's ego for strategic gain rather than financial reward. Trump, for his part, has been less than complimentary about Bolton, his former 25th United States ambassador to the United Nations, branding him "a real dope" and "a nut job." Yuri Shvets, a former KGB agent reportedly consulted by Craig Unger for his book "American Kompromat," drew parallels between Trump and the infamous Cambridge Five – a quintet of idealistic upper-class British spies who passed secrets to the KGB over many years. Addressing claims that he has shown excessive favour towards Russian interests, including allegedly dismissing CIA intelligence on Russian espionage, Trump has consistently maintained that the Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, widely referred to as The Mueller Report, "completely exonerated" him. However, the report explicitly states that Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election was unlawful and took place "in sweeping and systematic fashion." The document also documented numerous connections between Trump's associates and Russian agents. The investigation detailed how a Russian "troll farm" established bogus social media profiles to saturate online platforms with pro-Trump and anti-Clinton material. Among those identified in the report was Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who later mounted a brief mutiny against Putin in 2023 before his death in suspicious circumstances. Mueller's findings led to criminal proceedings against 34 people and three organisations, resulting in eight guilty pleas and one trial conviction. The report stopped short of determining whether Trump had obstructed justice, in part because of Justice Department policy preventing federal prosecution of a serving president.
