FBI’s 37 secret pages of memos about Russia, Clintons and Uranium One

The Hill ^ | 10/01/18 | JOHN SOLOMON

[yesthatjallen]

Eight years after its informant uncovered criminal wrongdoing inside Russia’s nuclear industry, the FBI has identified 37 pages of documents that might reveal what agents told the Obama administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others about the controversial Uranium One deal.

There’s just one problem: The FBI claims it must keep the memos secret from the public.

Their excuses for the veil of nondisclosure range from protecting national security and law enforcement techniques to guarding the privacy of individual Americans and the ability of agencies to communicate with each other.

Sound familiar?

It’s a lot like the initial reasons the bureau was reluctant to turn over documents in the Russia collusion investigation, such as FBI official Peter Strzok’s “stop Trump” texts or the revelation that Clinton and the Democrats funded the Steele dossier.

The FBI’s declaration and list of withheld documents — entitled simply “Uranium One Transaction” — were posted recently inside its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) online vault.

The bureau actually released a handful of documents, but it wasn’t a big stretch of either freedom or information. It actually just released already-public letters from members of Congress demanding answers in the Uranium One case.

I was the reporter who first disclosed last fall that a globetrotting American businessman, William Douglas Campbell, managed to burrow his way inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear giant, Rosatom, in 2009 posing as a consultant while working as an FBI informant.

Campbell gathered extensive evidence for his FBI counterintelligence handlers by early 2010 that Rosatom’s main executive in the United States, Vadim Mikerin, orchestrated a racketeering plot involving kickbacks, bribes and extortion that corrupted the main uranium trucking company in the United States. That is a serious national security compromise by any measure.

The evidence was compiled as Secretary Clinton courted Russia for better relations, as her husband Bill Clinton collected a $500,000 speech payday in Moscow, and as the Obama administration approved the sale of a U.S. mining company, Uranium One, to Rosatom.

The sale — made famous years later by author Peter Schweizer and an epic New York Times expose in 2015 — turned over a large swath of America’s untapped uranium deposits to Russia.

Mikerin was charged and convicted, along with some American officials, but not until many years later. Ironically, the case was brought by none other than current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — a magnet for controversy, it turns out.

But the years-long delay in prosecution mean that no one in the public, or in Congress, was aware that the FBI knew through Campbell about the Russian bribery plot as early as 2009 — well before the Obama-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved Uranium One in fall 2010.

Since the emergence of Campbell’s undercover work, there has been one unanswered question of national importance.

Did the FBI notify President Obama, Secretary Clinton and other leaders on the CFIUS board about Rosatom’s dark deeds before the Uranium One sale was approved, or did the bureau drop the ball and fail to alert policymakers?

Neither outcome is particularly comforting. Either the United States, eyes wide open, approved giving uranium assets to a corrupt Russia, or the FBI failed to give the evidence of criminality to the policymakers before such a momentous decision.

Campbell tells me his FBI handlers assured him they had briefed Obama and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, now the Russia special prosecutor, on Rosatom’s criminal activities as part of the presidential daily briefing and that agents suggested to him that “politics” was the reason the sale was allowed to go through.

After I broke the Campbell story, a predictable pattern occurred. President Trump and the Republicans took note. On the flip side, Democrats attacked the credibility of the informer — despite evidence the FBI had given him a hefty $50,000 award of thanks after the case was finished.

And the Jeff Sessions-Rod Rosenstein Justice Department, likely feeling the heat of President Trump’s watchful eye, announced that a prosecutor from Utah was named to look into the matter.

Campbell was interviewed by the FBI, but that was 10 months ago. Since then, nothing has been made public to address the overriding public interest issue.

Perhaps the FBI’s unexpected “release” — and I use that word loosely, since they gave up no public information of importance — in the FOIA vault was a warning flare designed to remind America there might be evidence worth looking at.

One former U.S. official, who had access to the evidence shared with CFIUS during the Uranium One deal, said this to me: “There is definitely material that would be illuminating to the issues that have been raised. Somebody should fight to make it public.”

That somebody could be President Trump, who could add these 37 pages of now-secret documents to his declassification order he is considering in the Russia case.

Or, those Republicans leading the charge on exposing failures in the Russia probe could use their bully pulpits to pressure for the release.

From what we now know, either the CFIUS process was corrupted or broken, or the FBI dropped the ball.

Either outcome is a matter of national interest.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

[Brilliant]

Irrespective of the FBIs excuse Trump should demand that they turn it over to him. Let Trump decide whether it should be produced.

[arrogantsob]

Excruciating.

[grumpygresh]

“Their excuses for the veil of nondisclosure range from protecting national security and law enforcement techniques to guarding the privacy of individual Americans and the ability of agencies to communicate with each other.”

Why should law enforcement techniques EVER be considered secret, especially if used against a U.S. Citizen? How can a defendant find out if illegal or unconstitutional techniques were used to obtain evidence? This is exactly what is so very wrong with FBI, DOJ and Fed agencies in general. This is why didn’t worry about spying, framing suspects and lying to courts.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Actually you have been drinking the Kremlin koolaid. I don’t doubt that Soros and co try to take advantage of Ukraine but none of that justifies Russia’s inane behavior. And just look at this article above. Ping!

[Liz]

When Bill and Hillary made the uranium deals, all parties concerned----including Bill and Hillary----were sure
Hillary was going to be the president of the United States (with more power than anyone on the globe).

Feel the schadenfreud.

The global weeping and gnashing of teeth.....knowing that whatever the Clintons promised will not be forthcoming.

A huge paper trail exists......criminal evidence that is now in the control of Pres Donald Trump.

====================================

The report....“From Russia With Money — Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset and Cronyism”.....
raises serious questions about the cash connections between the Clintons and participants in Hillary's
State Department-era’s failed five-year effort to improve, or “reset,” US-Russia relations.

A Moscow-based Silicon Valley-styled developer of biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies called “Skolkovo” — allegedly poured tens of millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton was at the center of these efforts author Peter Schweizer argues. “Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or sponsored speeches by former President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The NY Post.

<><> Hillary presented the flawed "reset button" to Russia in 2009.

<><> Circa 2010--Ex-Pres Clinton has NO official US govt position---just a tax-exempt foundation----is in Moscow
having a laugh w/ Putin. Bill also got a $500,000 speaking fee in Moscow.

<><> A Jan 2014 document shows that Hillary's campaign chair, John Podesta, transferred more than 25,000 of 75,000 shares in a Russian company to Leonidio Holdings LLC, an address listed as his daughter Megan Rouse’s Shannon Court home in Dublin. Rouse operates Megan Rouse Financial Planning from that same address.

=========================================

Circa 2010--Ex-Pres Clinton in Moscow doing his hokey hillbilly act for Putin as strategic US uranium deposits
were sold off to Russia for Big Bucks facilitated by Obama and Secy Clinton. Bill globe-trotted to set up the deal.
NOTE: Bill had no official US govt duties---just a tax-exempt foundation.

"Hahahaha. Well, ah'll be ding donged. Aint that a pig in a poke, as they say in Arkansas."
"Obama and Hillary worried about US ntl security? Hahahaha. You gotta be kidding, Vlad."

[Liz]

Items from Clinton Foundation's Dealings with Russian Uranium
Independent Journal Review | April 2015 | Michael Hausum
FR Posted by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies

The New York Times April 2015 published an article about the Clinton Foundation, its receipt of millions of dollars from foreign governments and other interests, and the U.S. government's involvement in Russia's stated goal to expand its control of the world's uranium market.

All while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

The NY Times didn't reach a conclusion, but one question looms very large: As Secretary of State, did Hillary influence an international deal giving a Russian company 20% ownership of America's uranium production, in return for millions of dollars of cash donations to the Clinton Foundation?

Here is a list of 11 questionable items forming a chain of events:

1. September of 2005: Canadian Frank Giustra visits Kazakhstan with Bill Clinton. Days later, his company UrAsia wins a major uranium deal with the country.

2. 2006: Giustra donates $31 million to the Clinton Foundation.

3. February 2007: UrAsia merges with Uranium One and expands into the U.S..

4. June 2008: Russian atomic agency Rosatom begins talks to acquire Uranium One.

5. 2008 to 2010: Uranium One and UrAsia investors donate $8.65 million to Clinton Foundation.

6. June 2009: Rosatom acquires 17% of Uranium One.

7. 2010 to 2011: Millions more donated by Uranium One investors to Clinton Foundation.

8. June 2010: Rosatom requests Committee on Foreign Investment (of which the State Department is a member and its approval is needed) to approve a majority ownership in Uranium One, PROMISING NOT TO PURCHASE 100% of it, NOR TAKE IT PRIVATE.

9. June 2010: Bill Clinton receives $500,000 to speak at a conference held by the Russian investment bank involved in the Rosatom transactions.

10. October 2010: Committee APPROVES Rosatom's request to ACQUIRE A MAJORITY SHARE in Uranium One.

11. January 2013: Rosatom PURCHASES REMAINDER of Uranium One and takes it PRIVATE!.

=================================

The origins of the story were reported in the NY Times in 2008 by Jo Becker, a co-author of the recent NYT piece: Unlike established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton....

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom. The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. CLINTON'S charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 MILLION DONATION FROM MR. GUISTRA that had remained a SECRET until he acknowledged it last month. There are intricacies and subtleties to this story that aren't evident in the timeline.

For example, when Hillary assumed the job as Secretary of State, she assented to a limitation of the foundation's international activities and agreed to disclose contributors. It appears, at a minimum, there was incomplete follow-through upon these assurances. Furthermore, those involved in the transactions have denied that any special privileges were sought and that the donations were completely unrelated.

[Liz]

HILLARY'S STATE DEPT----AND THE OBAMA YEARS---UNRELENTING SCANDAL
By Ari Lieberman

EXCERPT The taxpayer financed-Skolkovo Scandal – While serving as secretary of state, Clinton oversaw a program meant to “reset” relations with Moscow and improve ties. The program centered around the Russian city of Skolkovo near Moscow with the stated aim of “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the American and Russian people.”

Hillary's State Dept program transformed Skolkovo into a technology hub akin to a Silicon Valley. Sensitive American technology was transferred to the Russians, substantially enhancing their military and cyber capabilities. The US Army and the FBI concluded that Russia had exploited the program for military applications. The FBI warned American technology companies doing business in Skolkovo that the Skolkovo project was a means by which the Russians would acquire dual use technologies and apply them for military ends. According to investigative author Peter Schweizer, Russian and American companies and individuals involved in the Skolkovo fiasco “had major financial ties to the Clintons.”

Moreover, during the Russian reset period, those entities provided the Clintons with “tens of millions of dollars” in the form of “contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties.” (hat tip frontpagemagazine.com)

[Liz]

Wyoming Senator: "Obama Admin. Misled About Uranium One"
TruNews ^ | Dec 12, 2017 | Rick Wiles
FR Posted by smileyface

In a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is demanding an explanation for how U.S. uranium left the country after the Uranium One deal.

The senator, who represents the home state of three of the company’s uranium recovery facilities, said he registered “strong concerns” about the 2010 deal with President Barack Obama. He said he now believes the response he received, and the “process” through which he received it, were “misleading.”

He notes that in March of 2011, then-NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko said that neither Uranium One nor the subsidiary of the Russian-government-owner Rosatom held the necessary export license to ship U.S. uranium out of the country. That assessment was repeated in the NRC’s recommendation to approve the Uranium One sale.

However, beginning in 2012, Uranium One was able to begin exporting uranium without an export license in a move called “piggy-backing,” where it was listed merely as a supplier on another company’s export license. However, that uranium that left the country was supposed to return for “future processing.”

Not only did that uranium leave the U.S., but it was eventually exported out of Canada........

[Liz]

This gambit by Bill Clinton (meddling in a foreign election) got the uranium scheme going. Bill's calculated handshake was a bonanza for the Kazahk president's re-election. Nazarbayev responded in kind and signed-off on the initial phase of the US uranium assets takeover.

Bill had no govt position at that time.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev greets former
president Clinton (L) in Almaty on September 6, 2005.

NOTE Kazakh is remembered as the last state to peel off from the USSR.

CIRCA 2015 A Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter claims that former President Bill Clinton falsely denied hosting a meeting with Kazakh officials when she tried to write a story that involved his foundation several years ago.

Jo Becker, who works on the newspaper's investigative desk, said Clinton only confirmed the meeting took place after she informed him there were photographs.

Clinton's role in a deal that involved Kazakhstan, the Russian government, and a man (Giustra) who donated millions to the president's charitable foundation were detailed in a story Becker published on Thursday.

That article revisited some of her earlier reporting and included information from the upcoming book "Clinton Cash," which is generating widespread headlines amid a flurry of reports suggesting it will raise serious questions about Clinton's family foundation.

The donor in question is Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra, a longtime friend of the former president who has given tens of millions to the Clinton Foundation in the past few years. (A couple of hours after the NYT story was published, Giustra issued a defiant statement. We've included that below.)

Becker initially wrote about the February 2007 meeting between Clinton, Giustra, and executives from the state-owned nuclear company Kazatomprom in 2008. The gathering took place at Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York.

"When I first contacted both the Clinton foundation — Mr. Clinton's spokesman — and Mr. Giustra, they denied any such meeting ever took place," Becker recalled in footage aired by Fox News on Thursday. However, Becker said Clinton and Giustra both changed their stories after she confronted them with evidence to the contrary.

"And then when we told them, 'Well we already talked to the head of Kazatomprom, who not only told us all about the meeting, but actually has a picture of him and Bill at the home in Chappaqua, and that he proudly displayed on his office wall.' They then acknowledged that yes, the meeting had taken place," Becker continued in the television interview.

The purpose of the meeting, then Kazatomprom President Moukhtar Dzhakishev told The Times, was to discuss Kazakhstan potentially buying a 10% stake in Westinghouse, a US nuclear company. Becker's 2008 story also noted one of Giustra's companies secured a deal to buy uranium deposits from Kazatomprom in 2005.

That agreement was made after Clinton accompanied Giustra on a trip to Kazakhstan. During the trip, Giustra and Clinton met with Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Clinton issued a public statement praising the Kazakh leader despite his questionable, antidemocratic record. The Times called the praise a "propaganda coup" for Nazarbayev. (he later "won reelection" w/ an unbelievable 90% of the vote)

"Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton's charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle," wrote Becker and another reporter, Don Van Natta.

A spokesperson for the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership told Business Insider they are "working on a formal statement" in response to a request for comment on Thursday. Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership is an initiative of the Clinton Foundation that was cofounded by Clinton and Giustra in 2007. A Clinton Foundation spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nyt-reporter-clinton-lied-about-meeting-2015-48/25

[KC Burke]

If the memos are declassified they don’t need redaction since they don’t reveal methods or sources.

They will more clearly illuminate the criminal conduct of the Clinton’s as a couple where she provides the influence and Bill takes the payoff.

[Cuttnhorse]

And just where is this “special prosecutor” from Utah these days, and why have we not heard a word from him in months...or ever???

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

“And just where is this “special prosecutor” from Utah these days, and why have we not heard a word from him in months...or ever???”

Ask the Qooks. Super secret eleventy-D chess game “Trust Sessions! Trust Huber!”

[minnesota_bound]

Plain as day that the clintons and obama committed treason.
Why won’t Trump have them arrested?

[lizma2]

BKMK (Thx Liz)

[Liz]

Now we all know MORE than the FBI knows.

[goldbux]

* * *

[george76]

Jeff Sessions-Rod Rosenstein announced that a prosecutor from Utah (another Obama holdover) was named to look into the matter. -> LOL.

[Jumper]

You are correct, Trump should tell the FBI he personally wants to see the entire case file on his desk with the Records Custodian and whoever else need be present with the documents. Then Trump reads them silently, highlights in yellow some passages and begins the declassification process.

[SunkenCiv]

Eight years after its informant uncovered criminal wrongdoing inside Russia’s nuclear industry, the FBI has identified 37 pages of documents that might reveal what agents told the Obama administration, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others about the controversial Uranium One deal. There’s just one problem: The FBI claims it must keep the memos secret from the public. Their excuses for the veil of nondisclosure range from protecting national security and law enforcement techniques to guarding the privacy of individual Americans and the ability of agencies to communicate with each other.