Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win Read online

His relationship with the journal fizzled out when he wrote an opinion piece lavishly praising a pro-Russian candidate ahead of the U.S. presidential election—Donald Trump.

  And then something odd happened.

  In March 2016 candidate Trump met with the Washington Post’s editorial board. At this point it seemed likely that Trump would clinch the Republican nomination. Foreign affairs came up. Who were the candidate’s foreign policy advisers? Given Trump’s obvious lack of experience of world affairs, this was a pivotal job. Trump read off five names. The second was “Carter Page, Ph.D.”

  One former Eurasia Group colleague said he was stunned when he discovered Page had mysteriously become one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers. “I nearly dropped my coffee,” he told me. The colleague added: “We had wanted people who could engage in critical analysis of what’s going on. This is a guy who has no critical insight into the situation. He wasn’t a smart person.”

  Page’s real qualification for the role, it appeared, had little to do with his restless CV. What seemed to appeal to Trump was his boundless enthusiasm for Putin and his corresponding loathing of Obama and Clinton. Page’s view of the world was not unlike the Kremlin’s. Boiled down: the United States’ attempts to spread democracy had brought chaos and disaster.

  Podobnyy and Sporyshev approached their duties with a certain cynicism laced with boredom and a shot of homesickness. Page, by contrast, was the rarest of birds: an American who apparently believed that Putin was wise and virtuous and kind.

  By this point, the Russian spies had been spirited out of the United States. In 2015 their ring was broken up. As accredited diplomats, they were entitled to fly home. Buryakov was less fortunate. At the time that Page joined Trump’s campaign, Buryakov pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent. He got two and a half years in a U.S. jail.

  In July 2016 Page went back to Russia, on a trip approved by the Trump campaign. There was keen interest. Page was someone who might give sharper definition to the candidate’s views on future U.S.-Russian relations. Moscow sources suggest that certain people in the Russian government arranged Page’s visit. “We were told: ‘Can you bring this guy over?’” one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

  One of Russia’s top private universities, the New Economics School, invited Page to give a public lecture. This was no ordinary event but the prestigious commencement address to its class of graduating students. The venue was Moscow’s World Trade Center.

  Seven years earlier, in July 2009, I had watched President Obama give the end-of-year address at the NES. Obama had come to Moscow for talks with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president. Obama also breakfasted with Putin, at this point serving a term as prime minister.

  The venue for Obama’s lecture was Gostiny Dvor, an eighteenth-century trading arcade, now refurbished, not far from Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, and Red Square. I sat at the back. Obama began with a piece of politesse. “Michelle and I are so pleased to be in Moscow. And as somebody who was born in Hawaii, I’m glad to be here in July instead of January.”

  It was an accomplished speech. Obama began by praising Russia’s contribution to civilization—its great writers who had unraveled “eternal truths”; its scientists, painters, and composers. He paid tribute to the Russian immigrants who enriched America. He quoted Pushkin. He reminded his audience of American and Soviet sacrifices in World War II.

  Obama then went on to deliver a subtle rebuke. A year earlier, in 2008, Russian military forces had rolled into neighboring Georgia. Its president, Mikheil Saakashvili—an ally of President George W. Bush—made an unwise attempt to recapture the rebel province of South Ossetia. For Saakashvili, it was a brutal lesson in neighborhood geopolitics.

  “In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries,” Obama said. “The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over.” Obama rejected the doctrine that Russia has “privileged interests” in former Soviet countries, a key Putin idea. That evening I watched Russian state TV report on Obama’s speech. It fell to the bottom of the schedule.

  By contrast, Russia’s media hailed Page as a “celebrated American economist.” This, despite the fact that Page’s lecture was distinctly strange—a content-free ramble verging on the bizarre. Page, it seemed, was criticizing U.S.-led attempts at “regime change” in the former Soviet world. Nobody could be sure. His audience included students and local Trump fans, some of whom were visibly nodding off by the end.

  Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s Russia correspondent, had attended an event given by Page the previous evening. He described Page’s PowerPoint presentation as “really weird.” “It looked as if it had been done for a Kazakhstan gas conference,” Walker said. “He was talking about the United States’ attempts to spread democracy, and how disgraceful they were.”

  Page was Trump’s leading Russia expert. And yet in the question-and-answer session it emerged that Page couldn’t really understand or speak Russian. Those seeking answers on Trump’s view of sanctions were disappointed. “I’m not here at all talking about my work outside of my academic endeavor,” Page said. At the end, Walker said, Page was “spirited off.”

  Clearly, Page was reluctant to give any clues about a Trump administration’s Russia policy or how Trump might succeed in strengthening ties where Obama and George W. Bush had both failed.

  So what was he doing in Moscow?

  —

  According to the Steele dossier—and vehemently disputed by Page—the real purpose of Page’s trip was clandestine. He had come to meet with the Kremlin, and in particular with Igor Sechin. Sechin was a former spy and, more important, someone who commanded Putin’s absolute confidence. He was in effect Russia’s second-most-powerful official, its de facto deputy leader.

  By this point Sechin had been at Putin’s side for more than three decades. He had begun his career in the KGB and served as a military translator in Mozambique. In the 1990s he worked with Putin in the mayor’s office in St. Petersburg. Sechin functioned as Putin’s scowling gatekeeper. He carried the boss’s briefcase and lurked outside Putin’s ground-floor office in St. Petersburg’s city hall.

  His appearance was lugubrious. Sechin had a rubbery face, narrow-set eyes, and a boxer’s squishy nose. When Putin was elected president, Sechin became his deputy chief of staff and, from 2004, executive chairman of the Russian state oil firm Rosneft, the country’s biggest oil producer. A stint as deputy prime minister was not successful. “He’s clever, despite looking like a dummy. But he can’t speak or do public politics,” Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor of the liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said of Sechin.

  In private Sechin impressed. Chris Barter—the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Moscow—described him as an “extremely charming and smart guy, on top of his numbers operationally.”

  “He is someone who can manage both the economic side of the equation and the political agenda at the same time. He has significant power and independence from Putin,” Barter said.

  It was clear that Sechin had Russia’s entire security services at his disposal. He would be willing to personally reward anyone who advanced the objectives of the Russian state, Barter added.

  In 2014 Page had written a sycophantic piece that lauded Sechin for his “great accomplishments.” In a blog for Global Policy, Page wrote that Sechin had done more to advance U.S.-Russian relations than anybody in decades. Sechin was a wronged Russian statesman, in Page’s view, unfairly punished and sanctioned by the Obama White House.

  This was the backdrop to Page’s Moscow trip.

  Eleven days after Page flew back from Russia to New York, Chris Steele filed a memo to Fusion in Washington. Dated July 19, 2016, it was titled: “Russia: Secret Kremlin meetings attended by Trump advisor Carter Page in Moscow.”

  Steele’s information came from anonymous sources. In this case that was someone described as “close” to Sechin. Seemingly, there was a mole
deep inside Rosneft—a person who discussed sensitive matters with other Russians. The mole may have been unaware the information was being telegraphed to Steele.

  In Moscow, Page had held two secret meetings, Steele wrote. The first was with Sechin. It’s unclear where this meeting, if it happened, took place. The second was with Igor Diveykin, a senior official from Putin’s presidential administration and its internal political department.

  Based on his own Moscow experience, Barter said that meetings with Sechin came about at short notice. Typically, Sechin’s chief of staff would call up and offer a meeting forty minutes later. “It was always off the cuff, last minute. It was, boom: ‘Can you come now?’” Barter said. He personally met with Sechin six times, he added.

  Sometimes these meetings took place in the White House, the Russian seat of government. On other occasions they were in Rosneft’s tower HQ, overlooking the Moskva River. Of the Steele dossier, Barter told me: “Everything is believable.”

  According to Steele, Sechin raised with Page the Kremlin’s desire for the United States to lift sanctions on Russia. This was Moscow’s strategic priority. Sechin offered the outlines of a deal. If a future Trump administration dropped “Ukraine-related sanctions,” there could be an “associated move” in the area of “bilateral energy cooperation.” In other words, lucrative contracts for U.S. energy firms. Page’s reaction to this offer was positive, Steele wrote, adding that Page was “generally non-committal in response.”

  Sechin’s motives for a deal were personal and political. U.S. sanctions had hurt the Russian economy and poleaxed Rosneft. A joint project between Rosneft and Exxon to explore the Russian Arctic had been put on hold. Sechin was banned from the United States. And the EU had sanctioned Rosneft. Sechin no longer joined his second wife, Olga, on their luxury yacht. When she visited Sardinia and Corsica, her favorite places, she did so without him.

  It was rumored that Sechin had a significant personal stake in Rosneft. If it existed, this, too, had suffered. Some observers said that Sechin had enriched himself relatively late, only once he exited government and devoted himself to Rosneft. As the senior journalist Sokolov put it: “Igor is anxious to get rid of sanctions.”

  Moreover, sanctions made the economy worse at a time when domestic problems already weighed heavily. There wasn’t enough money for the state to execute its obligations. These included support for Crimea and rebel parts of Ukraine; new north and south gas pipelines to Europe; and the construction of soccer stadiums ahead of Russia’s 2018 World Cup. Plus the bridge being built across the Kerch Strait, linking annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland.

  What terrified Russia’s leadership was the prospect that a depressed economy could lead to hunger and discontent. This might spread among Putin’s conservative base and spark into something bigger and less containable. The specter was mass revolt.

  Steele obtained further information from his high-placed source, which said that the Sechin meeting had taken place on either July 7 or 8—the same day as or the day after Page’s graduate lecture.

  According to an “associate,” Sechin was so keen to lift personal and corporate Western sanctions that he offered Page an unusual bribe. This was “the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return.” In other words, a chunk of Rosneft was being sold off.

  No sums were mentioned. But a privatization on this scale would be the biggest in Russia in years. Any brokerage fee would be substantial, in the region of tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars. At this point nobody outside the top of Rosneft knew the privatization plan existed. Page “expressed interest” and confirmed that were Trump to become U.S. president, “then sanctions on Russia would be lifted,” Steele wrote.

  Sechin’s offer was the carrot.

  There was also a stick.

  The stick was flourished during Page’s alleged second meeting, with Diveykin. The official reportedly told Page that the Kremlin had assembled a dossier of compromising material on Clinton and might possibly give it to Trump’s campaign. However, according to Steele, Diveykin also delivered an ominous warning. He hinted—or even “indicated more strongly”—that the Russian leadership had damaging material on Trump, too. Trump “should bear this in mind” in his dealings with Moscow, Diveykin said.

  This was blackmail, clear and simple.

  Page was the go-between meant to relay this blunt message to Trump. Page was part of a chain of cultivation and conspiracy that stretched from Moscow to Fifth Avenue. Allegedly, that is. Over the coming months, Page would vehemently deny any wrongdoing. Or having taken the meetings. He would assert that he was a victim.

  Page’s problem was that he had an unfortunate habit of seeking out Russian spies—ones in their twenties like Podobnyy and older ones like Sechin. And Russian ambassadors.

  —

  Sergey Kislyak was someone who knew America well. He had lived much of his adult life in the United States. In the 1980s, he spent four years in New York at the Soviet mission to the UN, and this was followed by a similar stint at the Soviet embassy in Washington. When the USSR broke up, Kislyak continued his career with the Russian Federation. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow he was in charge of science and technology.

  Kislyak was a likable individual. One British diplomat who worked opposite him, Sir Brian Donnelly, described him as “amiable, down-to-earth, matter-of-fact and easy to rub along with.” Donnelly knew him in the first half of the 1990s, when the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia were working on a nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Kislyak was unlike older Soviet envoys who tended to be brusque, prickly, and opinionated, Donnelly said.

  “I always found him constructive, cooperative, and reliable. He was the first Russian diplomat that I came across who seemed comfortable working in the post-Soviet, post-communist world,” Donnelly told me. “He was comfortable working in English, which he spoke well with an accent.”

  Kislyak returned to the United States in 2008, after serving as ambassador to Belgium and NATO, and as a deputy minister of foreign affairs. By this point in late middle age he was a large figure with snow-white hair, his frame filling out his jackets.

  One senior Obama official who dealt with him “quite a bit” described him to me as a “tough interlocutor” and an unremitting exponent of Kremlin politics. He was “a pain in the ass.” But, the former official said, “a professional diplomat” who didn’t deserve his later “vilification.” He was knowledgeable about U.S. affairs, smart, and demanding of his subordinates. Andrei Kovalev, a former Russian and Soviet diplomat who worked on the same nonproliferation brief and knew Kislyak from Brussels, said he was—by repute—“very creative.”

  Was he also a spy? The answer was, probably not. At the same time, Kislyak would likely have been fully cognizant of the Kremlin’s efforts to help Trump in 2016, and he would have been aware of the KGB’s activities in the United States in the 1980s, from a generation earlier. As James Clapper put it, Kislyak oversaw “a very aggressive intelligence operation.” Russia had more U.S.-based spies than any other country. “To suggest that he is somehow separate or oblivious to that is a bit much,” he added.

  Clapper’s remarks were prescient: Kislyak came from a celebrated KGB family. His father, Ivan Petrovich Kislyak, was a highly regarded KGB officer who finished his career as a major general.

  The Kislyaks were Ukrainian. Ivan Petrovich was born in the village of Terny, in the Poltava region of Soviet central Ukraine. He came from humble origins. Ivan’s father worked in the local sugar factory. The family lived in a modest wooden house on Sovietskaya Ulitsa (Soviet Street).

  In the 1940s, Ivan Petrovich took part in operations against Ukrainian nationalists fighting the Red Army. After the war, he joined the MGB, the forerunner to the KGB. In 1949 he was assigned to the personal bodyguard of Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s brutal and depraved security chief. Sergey Kislyak was born in Moscow a year later.

  According to ex-KGB sources, t
he elder Kislyak gained a reputation inside the service for extraordinary good fortune. He was moved to other duties two years before Beria was arrested in the summer of 1953, secretly tried, and shot. The KGB sent Kislyak to western and southern Europe: to Greece, Portugal, France, and Spain. His code name was Maisky. He specialized in secret operations: sniffing out, on Moscow’s instructions, a new generation of agents from inside the Greek Communist Party, for example. (They had to possess “charm” and be “totally reliable ideologically,” Kislyak said, according to the KGB’s foreign archive.)

  Kislyak’s career was subterranean. But in many respects it anticipated his son Sergey’s later, more public role in influencing and shaping U.S. politics. Between 1972 and 1977, Ivan Petrovich served as the KGB’s station chief in Paris. He presided over a large number of secret agents—including a cipher clerk working deep inside the French foreign ministry. He coordinated “active measures” to ramp up U.S.-French tensions. His KGB residency claimed to have directed the editorial pages of Le Monde.

  Did Kislyak work for the KGB in America? Maybe. In August 1982, Kislyak went back to Terny to attend a school reunion, taking Sergey—his diplomat son—with him. Local historian and resident Anatoly Lesnoy met both Kislyaks there. Ivan refused to take part in the reunion photo—“pictures were forbidden,” he said—but a blurry snap of him exists. Lesnoy told me that Ivan spoke perfect English, as well as Ukrainian and Russian. He had flown in together with his son from New York. “He was a very pleasant person. We are proud of him,” Lesnoy said of the older Kislyak. The Kislyaks’ house was demolished in the early 1990s, he added. A fir tree in the garden is the only thing left.

  —

  Ivan Petrovich Kislyak was a loyal servant of Moscow. So, it seemed, was Sergey Kislyak, who in 2016 attended several Republican campaign events. Privately, however, it appeared he had doubts about his government’s brazen strategy. According to the Steele dossier, Kislyak was part of a cautious Kremlin faction that warned of “the potential negative impact on Russia” from the operation to aid Trump. Those of a similar conservative mind included Yuri Ushakov, Kislyak’s predecessor in Washington and a presidential adviser, and the ministry of foreign affairs, the dossier said.