Free Republic

Top FSB general is 'moved to high-security Moscow jail' as Putin steps up purge of spies who 'told him Ukrainians would welcome invasion' Sergei Beseda, head of the 5th Service of the FSB, was earlier under house arrest He has now been placed in pre-trial detention in notorious Lefortovo Prison The move will be seen as a warning to other senior aides of Vladimir Putin A top FSB intelligence official has been moved to a high security jail in Moscow as Vladimir Putin purges his secret services over the botched Ukraine invasion, say reports. Col-General Sergei Beseda, 68, head of...

Last week, Andrey Soldatov, a respected author on the Russian secret services, said sources inside the FSB told him that Sergey Beseda, 68, head of the agency's foreign service, had been placed under arrest on Putin's orders. Also arrested was Anatoly Bolyukh, Beseda's deputy, according to Soldatov, who said Putin is 'truly unhappy' with the agency - which he ran before becoming president. Putin is said to blame the agency for intelligence which assured him ahead of the invasion that Russian forces would face only token resistance from the Ukrainian army and that Ukrainians themselves were eager to be rid...

As the 30th anniversary of Watergate nears, student investigators at the University of Illinois have concluded that Deep Throat, the White House source who helped journalists unravel the greatest political scandal in American history, was most likely conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Since 1999, journalism professor William Gaines and his students have set about unmasking the elusive informant. Building on the work of their predecessors—and examining information ranging from thousands of pages of FBI records to interviews with members of the Nixon administration—this year's class unanimously fingered Buchanan, a White House speechwriter during the Watergate era. Gaines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former...