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The Senate Judiciary Committee released a declassified transcript of FBI source Stefan Halper’s conversation in September 2016 with George Papadopoulos. The transcript shows that Halper name-checked several former Russian intelligence officials who he has met throughout his storied career. The former Cambridge professor plied Papadopoulos with questions about the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and WikiLeaks. It wasn’t long into his conversation with George Papadopoulos at a prestigious social club in London weeks before the 2016 election that FBI confidential informant Stefan Halper mentioned his links to several retired Russian spies. “I have a lot of friends in Russia,”...

The relations between Russia and the Shiite's religious leadership in Lebanon started to develop in the beginning of the seventies. The spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community, Imam Moussa Al-Sadr, visited Moscow in 1972 and asked Soviet authorities to issue humanitarian aid to his people. At the same time cooperation between the Marxist factions of the PLO that were active in Lebanon and Soviet military intelligence – GRU, intensified greatly. Several soviet officers (speaking fluent Arabic) even visited Palestinian terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon between 1972-1975. Using their connections in PLO they managed to establish...

According to Russian daily newspaper Kommersant, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to perpetuate the memory of Yevgeny Primakov, according to which the first ship of the future Project 23560 "Leader Class" destroyer under development for the Russian Navy will be named after the academician. According to the document published by Vladimir Putin: "taking into account the contribution of Primakov in the formation of Russian statehood and economic reforms, it recommended that the government consider installing a memorial plaque on the house where he lived, and requested the establishment of a scholarship. One vessel built for the Russian Navy will...

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Russian intelligence agents are holding daily meetings with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, and may be interested in gaining control of Iraqi secret service archives if Saddam Hussein's regime falls, the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Friday. The newspaper said the archives could be highly valuable to Russia in three major areas: in protecting Russian interests that remain in a postwar Iraq; in determining to what extent the Saddam regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries. ...The report speculated that the archives were a key topic...

"Margelov also tried to explain a secretive recent mission to Baghdad by former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Primakov's trip was meant to apply pressure on Saddam to comply with international inspectors, Margelov said." Russian Official:Country Will Back Second U.N. Resolution While Moscow has said it wants more time for inspections to work in Iraq, a Russian lawmaker visiting Capitol Hill Wednesday said that doesn't mean the country would object to a U.S.-backed resolution authorizing force. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian Parliament's upper house, defended the need to give weapons inspectors more time, a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The veteran Kremlin envoy pleaded with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to step down only three days before the U.S. big guns opened up on Baghdad. The Iraqi strongman heard Yevgeny Primakov out, patted him on the shoulder...and then walked out of the room without another word. Saddam's defiant answer to Russia's last-minute top-secret mission to stave off the U.S.-led offensive against Iraq emerged late on Friday from Primakov, a former Russian prime minister and old friend of Iraq who had known Saddam for years. Primakov, 73, said President Vladimir Putin sent him on the make-or-break mission on...

Saddam turned down last-minute Russian call to go By Clara Ferreira-Marques MOSCOW, April 11 (Reuters) - The veteran Kremlin envoy pleaded with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to step down only three days before the U.S. big guns opened up on Baghdad. The Iraqi strongman heard Yevgeny Primakov out, patted him on the shoulder...and then walked out of the room without another word. Saddam's defiant answer to Russia's last-minute top-secret mission to stave off the U.S.-led offensive against Iraq emerged late on Friday from Primakov, a former Russian prime minister and old friend of Iraq who had known Saddam for years....