Art of the deal

The basis of Trump’s cooperation with Russian has been alluded to in a 35-page report, known as the Trump Dossier, first reported by CNN and then published by BuzzFeed on January 11, 2017, which alleges that Russia has gathered damaging intelligence on Trump which it is using to blackmail him. The dossier was written by a former British MI6 intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, in the employ of a private American firm, which alleged a pattern of close interactions between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin—reporting which has continued to engender controversy. Steele went into hiding after the release of the dossier. The Dossier alleges that a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin claims that Russian authorities have been cultivating Trump for at least the last 5 years, an operation that was both supported and directed by Putin, with the overall aim of sowing discord between Western alliances.

In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger declares the Russian mission was “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history,” and traces Trump’s extensive ties and dealings, beginning with his rise to prominence in the early 1980s, with the Russian mafia.[1] Global Security has hypothesized that Trump may be a “Manchurian Candidate” planted by the Russian mafia in collusion with the Russian government.[2] Using a network of hackers and Internet trolls controlled by the Russian mob, the Russian government was able to influence the 2016 US Presidential election in favor of Trump.

According to Craig Unger, “Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia.”[3] In fact, a series of studies by the Financial Times has shown how after he suffered a string of six successive bankruptcies, Trump was bailed out by Russian crime lords. As eloquently described by Charles M. Blow in the New York Times:

The con Donald Trump committed on his voters is slowly coming undone. He is not honest. He is not a brilliant deal maker. He is not even competent.

His entire life, Trump has sold shimmer and called it silver. It was and is all an illusion, a brand built on selling banality with braggadocio. He shaped vapors into dreams and delivered them to those hungry for a taste of the showy, hollow form of the high life he came to represent. He was successful at exploiting those with an ostentatious appetite for the air of success. Trump’s life story is a pyramid scheme of ambitions.[4]

Under Ronald Reagan, the 1980s represented a stark departure from the bleak 1970s of the “Me” generation and stagflation. All the idealism of the 1960s had fully expired, to be replaced by a new era of hedonistic materialism. The rise of corporate greed was aptly portrayed in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. And no one exemplified the crassness of the era more than its effective icon, Donald J. Trump. Trump’s headquarters and the temple to his grandiose ego was the gaudy Trump Tower in New York City. In addition to real estate, Trump branched off into every possible venture that could lend him the aura of a stereotypical tycoon, plastering his name wherever he could, becoming a casino operator, buying the New Jersey Generals football team, and owning the Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants, and a failed airline he called Trump Shuttle. To complete his personally-manufactured illusion as a master businessman, Trump became the best-selling author of Trump: The Art of the Deal.

Donald Trump also attributed his financial success to the “positive thinking” of his pastor Norman Vincent Peale, who was a close associate of Reverend Fifield, a core member of Vereide’s Fellowship, and an associate of AFC founder Merwin K. Hart. Donald’s parents attended Sunday services at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, where Peale was head pastor. Donald and both his sisters were married there, and funeral services for both Fred and Mary took place in the main sanctuary. Trump said of Peale that he was “one of the greatest speakers” he’d ever seen. in a 2009 interview with Psychology Today he credited Peale for his survival through the turbulent years of his business career. Citing his father’s friendship with Peale and calling himself “a firm believer in the power of being positive,” he said, “what helped is I refused to give in to the negative circumstances and never lost faith in myself. I didn’t believe I was finished even when the newspapers were saying so.”[5]

Using a combination of his personal wealth and his celebrity as a reality TV star from his show The Apprentice, Trump exploited the illusion of him as a successful businessman and deal-maker to dupe many Americans, disgruntled with the status quo, that he was an anti-establishment president and the savior to their woes. However, the American intelligence community soon discovered that the Russians pursued a sophisticated campaign of using social media to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s chances in favor of Trump. After Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey, the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in its election interference. Trump has repeatedly denied either accusation, calling the investigation a “witch hunt” and insisting via Twitter, that “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

As reported by Luke Harding in Politico, the top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged Trump’s first visit to Moscow in July 1987, together with his wife Ivana with assistance from the KGB.[6] The purported purpose of the trip was to discuss the possible construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. As was typical of Trump’s several such attempts, nothing came of the trip. And yet, Trump returned to the United States with a new ambition. For the first time, he was giving serious indications that he was interested in running for President.[7]

Eastern Bloc security service records suggest a file on Trump had been opened as early as 1977, the year he married Ivana Zelnickova of Czechoslovakia.[8] According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech intelligence kept an eye on the couple in New York. Ivana’s father Milos Zelnicek was never an agent or asset, but he had a functional relationship with the Czech secret police, who would question him about his daughter. StB, the Czech secret service, routinely shared secrets with KGB colleagues and the, known as “the friends.”[9] According to StB records, Ivana, after giving birth to her first child, Donald Trump Jr., received "a reward" of a million dollars. And the same thing was said to be the second child.[10] In the summers before the divorce, Donald Jr. stayed at the Zelniceks’ home near Prague, and his grandfather taught him hunting and the Czech language.[11]

The StB’s work on Trump and Ivana intensified in the late 1980s, after Trump announced his interest in running for president.[12] A former StB official, Vlastimil Danek, stated, “We were focusing on him, we knew he was influential. We had information that he wanted to be president in future.”[13] Ivana was “not only a well-heeled US citizen” but moved in “very top political circles,” Sury said.[14] In 1988, on the eve of the American election, “Zelnicek said his daughter had assured him of G. Bush's victory, and it was taken as a clear matter in US leaders,” the StB wrote. The prediction came “from the highest echelons of power in the US.”[15] When the Guardian and the Czech magazine Respekt knocked on the door of an StB agent known as Jarda who was one of four who spied on the Trumps, he refused to open it. In an email, he said he was tired and wanted to be left in peace. He added: “You are trying to put me in the tomb.”[16]

In 1984, Trump met with Lois Romano of the Washington Post, and expressed his interest in wanting to lead negotiations between the Americans and the Soviets about the threat of nuclear war. He said his friend Roy Cohn, told him the interview was the perfect opportunity to start. “Some people have an ability to negotiate. It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't,” Trump boasted.[17] “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles… I think I know most of it anyway. You’re talking about just getting updated on a situation… You know who really wants me to do this? Roy … I’d do it in a second.”[18] Trump claimed he could learn all he needed to know about nuclear technology from his uncle John Trump, a nuclear scientist at MIT.[19]

In 1986, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Trump insisted on meeting Bernard Lown, a Boston cardiologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize with Yevgeny Chazov, the personal physician of Mikhail Gorbachev.[20] Trump met Lown at Trump Tower, and insisted he tell him everything he knew about Gorbachev. Trump was planning on asking his good friend “Ronnie” to make him ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Little Odessa

Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesperson, has consistently denied that Moscow had anything to do with Donald Trump’s victory, and instead attributed the conspiracy to “the Jews.” She will of course be denounced as an “anti-Semite,” but the truth is, as is the case in America with the shenanigans of the CIA, the criminality is not institutional, but perpetrated by rogue elements. As far as Russian interference is concerned, it was the result of criminal elements from the Russian mafia, most of whom were Jewish and held dual citizenship in Israel, and who maintained deep and extensive ties with Trump, his family, and his staff. Israel’s Newsru.co.il says Zakharova “began to speak with an exaggerated Jewish accent” the following: “if you want to know the future, don’t read the mainstream newspapers. Our people in Brighton Beach will tell you everything.”[21]

The investigative reporter Robert I. Friedman revealed in his book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America that the “Russian” mafia was in fact more Jewish than Russian. The leading figures in the Russian Mafia are often Jews, many of them operating with partners in the Russian-Jewish community of the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States expanded its immigration policies, allowing in Soviet Jews, with most settling in a southern Brooklyn area known as Brighton Beach (“Little Odessa”), after the Ukrainian city long infamous for its Jewish underworld.[22]

Brighton Beach’s leading gangsters arrived in the United States under the provisions of the Jackson–Vanik amendment, enacted as part of Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974, which prohibited any nations with a non-market economy that restricts the emigration of its people from achieving most-favored nation status with the United States. The amendment, named after its major co-sponsors Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson of Washington in the Senate and Charles A. Vanik of Ohio in the House of Representatives. Jackson has exercised an influence on a number of key figures associated with neoconservatism, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, both of whom previously served as aides to the Senator.[23] The Amendment was passed in the wake of the establishment of the USSR “diploma tax” that imposed excessive emigration fees on those who had studied in the USSR and were seeking to depart. It was designed to combat the “brain drain” of Soviet Jews leaving for Israel and the West.[24]

Brighton Beach has become the American base of the modern Odessa mafia, sometimes also called the Malina. In the mid-1970s, Brighton Beach, New York, became a popular place to settle for the Soviet immigrants, mostly Jews from Russia and Ukraine, and the base of the Russian mafia in the US. According to Oleg Kalugin, former head of counterintelligence for the KGB, the Russian mafia “is one of the branches of the Russian government today.”[25] The KGB had made certain that emigration to the US was not limited to innocent Jewish victims of anti-Semitism, but they also emptied their gulags of thousands of hardened criminals, many of whom then settled in Brighton Beach.[26] Kalugin claimed that at least two hundred Jews from St. Petersburg went to the US, where they continued to report back to the KGB. The goal of the KGB was to place them in sensitive positions in the American government or the military-industrial complex.[27]

“Like Russia,” explains Mark Galeotti in Foreign Policy, “Ukraine experienced a massive upsurge in organized crime in the 1990s, when new political and economic systems were being created at a time of catastrophically weak state control.”[28] The most infamous and well-known form of Ukrainian organized crime is the mafia of Odessa, an infamous smugglers’ haven and a key hub in post-Soviet global trafficking networks, including Afghan heroin on its way to Europe from the Caucasus. Even in Ukraine’s west, gangs are often closely involved in the lucrative trafficking of heroin, people, and counterfeit cigarettes into Europe, sometimes in cooperation with Russian mafia gangs.[29]

Ukraine is interpenetrated by criminal organizations closely linked to networks of corrupt officials and oligarchs. For example, Russia’s largest and most powerful mob, the Moscow-based Solntsevo network, has a long-standing relationship with the Donetsk clan in the eastern Ukrainian industrial city. This network was the heart of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s base of power. According to a 2006 cable from the American Embassy in Kiev to the National Security Council, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions became a “haven for Donetsk-based mobsters,”[30]

Many people from Odessa’s Jewish population migrated abroad, among them a significant number of the city’s most infamous career criminals. The reach of the Ukrainian criminal organizations has been reported from Central European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, where they are involved in prostitution, to North America and Israel, where they found a significant power base following the mass immigration of Ukrainian Jews.[31] Although the gang was born in the city of Odessa, it has since established most of its headquarters in cities such as New York City, Miami, Tel Aviv, Antwerp and Budapest with brigades composed of former Odessan or Odessa-connected criminals active in a large number of other cities.[32]

Born in Leningrad, Evsei Agron (1932 – 1985), called the "Godfather" of the Russian American mafia, immigrated to the United States under the Jackson–Vanik amendment in 1975. Agron soon gained control of criminal operations among the Soviet Jews in Brighton Beach, and organized a motor fuel racket that earned him millions, if not billions, through fuel tax fraud. Agron died after being shot twice in the head outside his Brooklyn apartment in 1985, and was succeeded as leader of the Russian mob in the United States by Marat Balagula (1943 – 2019). Balagula, who was born the Russian city of Orenburg, decided to move his family to the United States under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1977. Balagula developed close ties with Five Families, the five major Italian mafia families of New York City, which included the Maranzano, Profaci, Mangano, Luciano, and Gagliano families, which are now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese families. Boris Nayfeld, Agron’s former bodyguard, arrived in the United States in the late 1970s as a Soviet Jewish refugee under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and became Balagula’s enforcer. Together with Italo–Polish gangster Ricardo Fanchini, Nayfeld ran a heroin-smuggling operation that transported China White from Thailand to Brighton Beach, where it was sold partly to the Five Families.[33]

Before long, virtually every business in Brighton Beach was either connected to the Russian mafia or had to pay them off.[34] In the early 1990s, Boris Urov, former chief investigator of major crimes for the Russian attorney general, warned, “It’s wonderful that the Iron Curtain is gone, but it was a shield for the West. Now we’ve opened the gates, and this is very dangerous for the world. America is getting Russian criminals. Nobody will have the resources to stop them. You people in the West don’t know our Mafiya yet. You will, you will!”[35]

Chabad Lubavitch

In the 1930s, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad, and the son of the Rashab, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, moved the center of the movement from Russia to Poland. As discovered by Bryan Mark Rigg, author of Rescued from the Reich, following Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, with the intercession of the US Department of State and with the lobbying of many Jewish leaders, including Justice Louis Brandeis of the Supreme Court, the United States government used its diplomatic relations to convince the Nazis to rescue Schneersohn. The effort also received the support of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, who although a high-ranking Nazi official, often helped Jews.[36] Canaris recruited Major Ernst Bloch, a decorated German army officer of Jewish descent, who was put in command of a group of Mischlinge (“mixed-breeds”) officers, assigned to locate Schneersohn and escort him safely to freedom. They eventually rescued over a dozen Chabad Jews from the Rebbe’s family or who were associated with him.[37]

Schneersohn was finally granted diplomatic immunity and given safe passage to go via Berlin to Riga, Latvia and then on to New York City, where he arrived on 19 March 1940.[38] During the last decade of Schneersohn’s life, from 1940 to 1950, he settled in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in New York City. Working with the government and the contacts Schneersohn had with the US State Department, Chabad was able to save his son-in-law and the next Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902 –1994) from Vichy France in 1941 before the borders were closed down.[39]

Lubavitch messianism involves the hope that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known to many as “the Rebbe,” could himself be the Messiah. Schneerson was a Russian Empire-born, American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, and is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the twentieth century.[40] Rabbi David Berger, a highly popular figure in Modern Orthodox circles, wrote The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, criticizing Lubavitcher messianism as “precisely what Jews through the generations have seen as classic, Christian-style false messianism.” His views are shared and supported by many prominent Orthodox authorities. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, a leader of the strictly Orthodox Jews in Israel who wielded powerful influence over the country’s politics for more than two decades, waged a campaign against the Lubavitcher movement. The messianic claim, Rabbi Schach said, was “total heresy,” adding that those making it “will burn in hell.”[41]

Despite his broad reputation as a humanitarian, Michael Lesher writes in The Times of Israel that, “The Rebbe didn’t just tolerate Israeli oppression. He encouraged it.”[42] According to Lesher, “The mainstream reader seldom hears about any of this: much of what passes for commentary on the Rebbe’s work is mere propaganda.” Schneerson’s warmongering also drew on his fanatical insistence that the End Times were rapidly approaching, “We are now very near the approaching footsteps of Messiah, indeed, we are at the conclusion of this period,” he claimed in 1951.[43] During Israel’s slaughter of over 17,000 people in Lebanon in 1982, Schneerson repeatedly criticized the Israelis for being too timid. During the First Intifada, Schneerson preached against the easing of Israeli oppression, asserting that “[C]oncessions convince the Arabs of Israeli weakness” and “encourages terrorist activity.”[44] According to Schneerson, “every inch of territory in Israel,” including “the lands taken in the Six-Day War,” must be held by the use of Jewish military force, regardless of international law or the consequences for the non-Jewish population. Why? Because “the ordinary Arab in the street” seeks nothing less than “Arab dominion over the entire land of Palestine” and regards all Israelis with “deep-seated hatred.”[45]

Schneerson based his teaching on the traditional Hasidic text known as the Tanya, the main work of the Chabad philosophy and approach to Kabbalah, according to which only Jews are endowed with fully human souls.

…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews.

The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim.

The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.[46]

According to author Motti Inbari, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, who is regarded as one of Chabad’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism, “gives prominence to Halachic and Kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect.”[47] In his book Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Inbari, an Israeli academic who now teaches in the US, states, “[Ginsburg] claims that while the Jews are the Chosen People and were created in God’s image, the Gentiles do not have this status and are effectively considered subhuman.”[48] According to the chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council: “There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them…. A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”[49] Stephen Lendman writes, “Rabbi David Batsri called Arabs ‘a blight, a devil, a disaster…. donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all fours. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.’”[50]

Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion argued that while Islamic fundamentalism is vilified in the West, comparable Jewish extremism is largely ignored.[51] In 2009, Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, Manis Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature, “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).” [52] Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis. “I don’t believe in Western morality,” Friedman wrote. “Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”[53] “If we took this policy, no one would be killed — because there would be no war,” Friedman said. “The same is true of the United States.”[54] Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.[55] “When they say it, it’s genocide, not self-defense,” Friedman said. “With them, it’s a religious belief - they need to rid the area of us. We’re not saying that.”[56]

Schneerson transformed the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which almost came to an end with the Holocaust, into one of the most influential movements in world Jewry, with an international network of thousands of educational and social centers, known as Chabad Houses. Chabad’s goal, explains Sue Fishkoff, author of The Rebbe’s Army, is to reach every Jew in the world. Chabad seeks out the support of the rich, famous and powerful, including celebrities like Bob Dylan, Jon Voight, Whoopi Goldberg and Al Gore.[57] Schneerson’s grave attracts thousands of Jews and non-Jews for prayer.

Schneerson spoke of the position of the United States as a world superpower, and would praise its foundational values of “‘E pluribus unum’—from many one”, and “In God we trust.”[58] Schneerson was visited by presidents, prime ministers, governors, senators, congressmen and mayors. Notable among them are John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Jacob Javits, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins and Joe Lieberman.[59] In 1978, the US Congress asked President Carter to designate Schneerson’s birthday as the national Education Day USA. It has been since commemorated as Education and Sharing Day. In 1994, Schneerson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”[60] President Bill Clinton spoke these words at the ceremony:

The late Rebbe’s eminence as a moral leader for our country was recognized by every president since Richard Nixon. For over two decades, the Rabbi’s movement now has some 2000 institutions; educational, social, medical, all across the globe. We (the United States Government) recognize the profound role that Rabbi Schneerson had in the expansion of those institutions.

Schneerson took great interest in the affairs of the state of Israel, where he was a major political force, both in the Knesset and among the electorate.[61] Although he never visited Israel, many of Israel’s top leadership made it a point to visit him. Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to visit him before going to Washington to meet President Carter. Ariel Sharon had a close relationship with Schneerson, and Shahak and Mezvinsky report, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, “Ariel Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.”[62] Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu also visited and sought Schneerson’s advice. Benjamin Netanyahu said that while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1984, Schneerson told him: “you will be serving in a house of darkness, but remember, that even in the darkest place; the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide…” Netanyahu later retold this episode in a speech at the General Assembly, on September 23, 2011.[63]

Mafia State

Natan Sharansky, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency said that Chabad Lubavitch was an essential connector to Soviet Jewry during the Cold War.[64] Shimon Peres has stated that it’s to Schneerson’s credit that “Judaism in the Soviet Union has been preserved.”[65] These Russian Chabad-Lubavitcher Jews composed a substantial portion of the country’s notorious “oligarchs.” As James Henry indicated in The American Interest, “one of the most central facts about modern Russia: [is] its emergence since the 1990s as a world-class kleptocracy, second only to China as a source of illicit capital and criminal loot, with more than $1.3 trillion of net offshore ‘flight wealth’ as of 2016.” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state’s industry was privatized largely into the hands of a handful of well-connected buyers. Simultaneously, neoliberal “market reform” policies were introduced by Boris Yeltsin, and designed and financed by senior Clinton Administration officials, neoliberal economists, and USAID, World Bank, and IMF officials. According to Henry:

By the late 1990s the actual chaos that resulted from Yeltsin’s warped policies had laid the foundations for a strong counterrevolution, including the rise of ex-KGB officer Putin and a massive outpouring of oligarchic flight capital that has continued virtually up to the present. For ordinary Russians, as noted, this was disastrous. But for many banks, private bankers, hedge funds, law firms, and accounting firms, for leading oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP, as well as for needy borrowers like the Trump Organization, the opportunity to feed on post-Soviet spoils was a godsend. This was vulture capitalism at its worst.[66]

Yeltsin himself would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.”[67] Leading this great kleptocracy now is Yeltsin’s designated successor, Vladimir Putin. One of Putin’s first actions was to grant Yeltsin full immunity from criminal prosecution when accusations of corruption began intensifying about kickbacks from a Swiss construction company Mabetex, involved in Kremlin renovations. As revealed by Karen Dawisha in her highly acclaimed Putin’s Kleptocracy, during his time as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin was alleged to be involved with the local Mafia, ex-KGB apparatchiks and bureaucrats in schemes involving the diversion of municipal funds, illegal arms shipments, the food shortage scandal of 1991, the local gambling industry, and money laundering for the Cali drug cartel through the Real Estate Board of St. Petersburg.

Ultimately, according to William Browder—who founded and ran one of the largest investment firms in Russia, Hermitage Capital Management, from 1996-2005—Putin is the richest man in the world, with an assortment of assets worth what Browder estimates to be $200 billion at his disposal.[68] In 2000, when Putin assumed the presidency, under what he called “a vertical of power,” he consolidated competing power centers under his authority, including the media, business, local government, opposition parties and the Parliament. Today the top management of these enterprises are Putin’s allies, and many, like Putin himself, have worked in the security services, specifically in the KGB and its successor organization, the FSB. The Russian government owns the major television outlets and sets their agenda. The head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, is Igor Sechin, a former KGB and FSB security officer, who served as a top lieutenant to Putin. Gazprom, the state gas company, is run by Alexei Miller, another former St. Petersburg associate of Putin. With exclusive rights to export gas, Gazprom controls prices, pipelines and energy diplomacy in Russia. It also owns the country’s largest media holding company, Gazprom Media.

The deal Putin made with these companies, oligarchs and banks was that they would be free to operate with state help as long as Putin and his associates got their share, and the Kremlin and security forces were free to govern without interference. Failure to comply could lead to loss of one’s business, or worse—torture and death. The oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky challenged Putin on corruption in 2003 and was stripped of his company, charged with fraud and put in jail. There was widespread concern internationally that Khodorkovsky’s trials and sentencing were politically motivated. Numerous oligarchs once close to Putin have died under suspicious circumstances.[69]

This system now includes organized crime and cybercriminals. Mark Galeotti, a Russian organized crime expert and professor at New York University, asserted in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute that Putin’s Russia is “not so much a mafia state as a state with a nationalized mafia.”[70] According to a classified cable from the U.S. embassy that was published by Wikileaks, in 2010, José Grinda Gonzalez, Spain’s national court prosecutor, following a decade-long investigation, briefed U.S. officials in Madrid, informing them that the Kremlin used “organised crime groups to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government.”[71] Putin’s Kremlin has used organized crime to carry out arms smuggling, assassinations, raising funds for black ops, or fomenting subversion in the former Soviet regions. Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and the Donbas. Gonzalez said the mafia now exercises tremendous control over sectors of the global economy, and claimed the KGB and its SVR successor had deliberately created the Liberal Democratic party of Russia (LDPR), which worked hand in hand with mafia groups.[72]

Organized crime in Russia uses legal businesses as fronts for illegal activities and for setting up illegal product lines. The expansion of organized crime in Moscow, for example, occurred through buying real estate, and through gaining controlling shares in banks and other enterprises. Gonzalez’ 488-page petition to the Central Court in Madrid, filed on 29 May 2015, depicts links between the criminal enterprise and top law-enforcement officials and policy makers in Moscow, including some of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, such as Viktor Zubkov the chairman of gas exporter Gazprom who was prime minister and first deputy premier from 2007 to 2012, and Zubkov’s son-in-law, former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. Shortly after his rise to power, Putin exploited his influence over the Russian legislature to create Gazprom, which has exclusive rights to export natural gas from Russia.[73]

Gonzalez said he agreed with claims made by former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. “A significant part of Russian organized crime is organized directly from the offices of the Kremlin,” the International Business Times quoted Ben Emmerson—a prominent British attorney who represents the family of Litvinenko—as saying.[74] According to Litvinenko, Russia’s intelligence and security services control the country’s organized crime network, with Gonzalez citing the federal security service (FSB), foreign intelligence service (SVR) and military intelligence (GRU).[75] Litvinenko wrote two books, Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within and Lubyanka Criminal Group, in which he accused the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorist acts in an effort to bring Putin to power. On November 23, 2006, Litvinenko died from what was identified as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210.[76]

Shortly before his death, Litvinenko claimed that Simeon Mogilevich—believed to be the “boss of bosses” of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world—has allegedly had a “good relationship” with Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.[77] Born in Kiev, Mogilevich earned an undergraduate economics degree from Lviv University, and specializes in sophisticated, virtually undetectable financial frauds. A 1998 FBI report reportedly said Mogilevich’s organization had “approximately 250 members,” and was involved in trafficking nuclear materials, weapons, and more, as well as money laundering, and even has contacts with al Qaeda, to whom he sells weapons.[78]

In early 1990, Mogilevich and his top associates settled in Israel, where they received Israeli citizenship. Not long after his arrival, according to an Israeli intelligence report, Mogilevich “succeeded in building a bridgehead in Israel . . . [and] developing significant and influential [political and business] ties” by forging relationships with both Russian and Israeli criminals. That included, according to a classified FBI document, the “alleged purchase” of an unnamed Israeli bank, with branches in Moscow, Cyprus, and Tel Aviv, for “laundering money for Colombian and Russian Organized Crime groups.”[79]

In Europe and Russia, the “corruption of police and public officials has been part of the Semion Mogilevich Organization’s modus operandi,” says a classified FBI document.[80] The corruption apparently extends to the Russian security system. In 1998, the German national television network ZDF reported that the BND had entered into a secret contract with Mogilevich to provide information on the Russian mob. His reported ties to the BND and also to ex­police officers in Hungary, keep him informed of police efforts to penetrate his organization.[81] Mogilevich is one of the FBI’s top 10 most-wanted fugitives. Between 1993 and 1998, Mogilevich caught the FBI’s attention when he allegedly participated in a $150 million scheme to defraud thousands of investors in a Canadian company, YBM Magnex, based just outside Philadelphia, which supposedly made magnets. The Russian mafia is suspected of having a sizable investment in General Motors via its interest in Canadian auto parts maker Magna International.[82] Mogilevich is now a citizen of Israel, as well as Ukraine and Russia.

Alfa Bank

Close to 25 percent of the 200 richest people in Russia are Jewish, according to a report by Russian banking website lanta.ru. The report found that of the country’s 200 billionaires, 48 are Jews and own a combined net worth of $132.9 billion. Among the 48 Jews who made the list, 42 are Ashkenazi and together have a net worth of $122.3 billion, even though they comprise only 0.11% of the population. The wealthiest Ashkenazi is Mikhail Fridman, who has a net worth of $17.6 billion. The Ashkenazi billionaires include Viktor Vekselberg (net worth of $17.2 billion), Leonid Michelson (net worth of $15.6 billion), German Khan (net worth of $11.3 billion), Mikhail Prokhorov (net worth of $10.9 billion), and Roman Abramovich (net worth of $9.1 billion).[83]

A 2012 article in the Jerusalem Post titled “At Putin’s side, an army of Jewish billionaires” mentioned three Russian-Jewish billionaire oligarchs in particular who are close to Putin: Mikhail Fridman, Moshe Kantor and Lev Leviev.[84] Fridman is the founder of the Alfa Group, one of Russia’s largest privately owned investment groups. Fridman is the second wealthiest man in Russia according to Forbes, and the eighth wealthiest Jew in the world, according to the Jerusalem Post.[85] Fridman, who has been a member of the CFR, is also co-founder of the Russian Jewish Congress.[86]

As reported by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller, Alfa’s “roots are imbedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime funds, according to Russian and U.S. sources and documents.”[87] A former KGB major said that Alfa was founded with party and KGB funds, and soon attracted rogue agents who had served in anti-organized-crime units. Two reports, one by a former US intelligence officer and another by a Russian FSB officer, concluded that Alfa had been deeply involved in the early 1990s in the laundering of Russian and Colombian drug money and in trafficking drugs from the Far East to Europe.[88]

Since the 1990’s, according to a document prepared by Stratfor of August 2, 2007, released by Wikileaks, Fridman has maintained ties to the Solntsevskaya Bratva, the largest and most powerful crime syndicate of the Russian mafia, where Simeon Mogilevich has been a senior figure.[89] The report describes Solntsevskaya as one of Russia's largest and most powerful organized crime associations, through funding from Alfa. Solntsevskaya is a confederation of a half-dozen criminal groups often accused of drug-running, racketeering, money laundering and bribery. The organization is led by Sergei Mikhailov, widely considered to be one of the most dangerous and notorious gangsters in Russia. “Specifically, Alfa Group is now involved in transporting drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia into Europe, laundering money of Colombian drug cartels, and bribing organs of justice in Russia in order to keep the entire operation below law enforcement's radar.”[90]

Daniel Hopsicker reported that one of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta’s closest associates in Florida, Wolfgang Bohringer, was the personal pilot for Fridman’s business associate, Victor Kozeny, who was also purported to have Russian Mob connections.[91] An international warrant has been issued for Kozeny, who the media often calls “the pirate of Prague,” due to running one of the greatest scams of the post-Communist era, which at one time made him the Czech Republic’s richest man, at one point owning one-third of the Czech economy. Kozeny is a one-time ally of the Bush administration. Kozeny is accused of funneling money into Bush’s first election campaign, in order to keep him close to US deals with Azerbaijan, where he was also running embezzlement scams, and during Bush’s second campaign to prevent his extradition.[92] He also allegedly participated in an Alfa scheme to defraud US investors and companies.

Alfa Bank funds the Alfa Fellowship Program, administered by Cultural Vistas, formed in 1997 as a merger between the Association for International Practical Training (AIPT) and CDS International, which during the 1990’s sponsored Atta as a four-year “scholarship” student at an elite international exchange program in Germany, part of a “joint venture” between the US and German governments. The US-side of the program, CDS International, operated out of United Nations Plaza in New York. CDS stands for Carl Duisberg Society, named after Carl Duisberg, the founder of I.G. Farben. Nevertheless, CDS International was backed by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Clinton White House adviser Ira Magaziner. Kissinger lauded the program at a dinner celebration of the CDS International in 1987, congratulating it for its 20 years of service.[93]

Viktor Vekselberg and Sir Leonard “Len” Blavatnik formed the Renova investment vehicle, and then the two joined with Fridman’s Alfa Group to form the AAR venture.[94] Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, who was named Britain’s richest man in 2015, founded Access Industries which now owns Warner Music Group. [95] Blavatnik also sponsors Colel Chabad, the oldest continuously operating charity in Israel, founded in 1788 by the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi.[96] A source close to Blavatnik said, “He is very Zionistic.”[97]

Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in Oleg Deripaska’s RUSAL. According to Forbes magazine, Deripaska, who is considered by many to be a member of Putin’s inner circle, is Russia’s sixth-wealthiest man, with an estimated fortune of $13.3 billion.[98] Deripaska’s principle advisor is Nathaniel Rothschild, son of the current Baron of the family, Lord Jacob Rothschild. Nathaniel played a crucial role in 2000, when Deripaska and Roman Abramovich created a partnership and founded RUSAL, the largest aluminum company in the world.[99] In 2001, about a year after Putin signed a decree granting legal immunity to Yeltsin’s family, Deripaska married Yeltsin’s granddaughter, thereby cementing his own immunity and influence.[100] In 2010, the Financial Times published a story exploring Deripaska’s business relations with Sergei Popov and Anton Malevsky, alleged heads of Russian organized crime groups.[101] Deripaska has been denied entry into the United States due to alleged ties with organized crime.[102] Deripaska is reported to be so closely aligned to Putin that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lobbied the US in 2016 to reinstate his visa.[103]

In March 2015, Lord Browne of Madingley was appointed as Executive Chairman of L1 Energy, an energy investment vehicle co-owned by Fridman. Lord Brown is a British businessman best known for his role as the chief executive of BP between 1995 and 2007, a period described as the company’s “golden period of expansion and diversification.”[104] In 1998, Browne was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and in 2001 named by the House of Lords taking the title Baron Browne of Madingley. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. Lord Browne resigned from BP and resigned as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs in 2007. At the time, Browne faced allegations that he had supported a gay lover, Canadian Jeff Chevalier. Browne’s associates later acknowledged that he had actually met Chevalier via a website called Suited and Booted.[105]

Putin’s Rabbi 

As noted by Joshua Keating, “One of the more intriguing aspects of contemporary Russian Jewish life is the close relationship between the Kremlin and Chabad, also known as Lubavitch.”[106] Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide are Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich.[107] Leviev is an Uzbeki-born Israeli citizen and devout Lubavitcher. Known as the “King of Diamonds,” Leviev has come under scrutiny by the US government and international media for, among other things, both his partnership with a Chinese business group believed to have funded North Korea and his possible role in developing West Bank settlements.[108]

In the year he was murdered, Litvinenko was investigating suspicions that Roman Abramovich was involved in money-laundering and illegal land purchases.[109] The Jerusalem Post recently ranked Abramovich as the tenth wealthiest Jew in the world.[110] Abramovich is the primary owner of the private investment company, Millhouse LLC and is best known outside Russia as the owner of Chelsea Football Club, a Premier League football club. In 1996, he acquired the oil company Sibneft, for about $US100 million, and sold it to Gazprom for $US13 billion a decade later. His $5.6-billion legal dispute with a former business partner, Boris Berezovsky, nicknamed the “Godfather of the Kremlin,” uncovered evidence involving illicit activity including protection rackets, contract killings, arms dealings.[111] In their 2004 biography of Abramovich, the British journalists Chris Hutchins and Dominic Midgely describe the relationship between Putin and Abramovich as like that between a father and a favorite son. Hutchins and Midgely write, “When Putin needed a shadowy force to act against his enemies behind the scenes, it was Abramovich whom he could rely on to prove a willing co-conspirator.”[112] Abramovich was the first person to originally recommend to Yeltsin that Putin be his successor.[113]

Putin enlisted Leviev and Abramovich to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia in 1999 under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, known as “Putin’s rabbi.”[114] Lazar, an American citizen and a native of Milan, Italy, was quickly granted Russian citizenship and appointed chief rabbi of the new federation.[115] Lazar appears frequently at Putin’s side at public events.

At the 2006 International Conference of Shluchim, attended by Alan Dershowitz, Lazar told a story supposedly related to him by Putin, that when Putin was a young child he grew up in a very poor family. His next-door neighbours were Hasidic Jews who were extremely kind to him, and because of his profound respect for the Jewish people, thirty years later, as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, he granted the official permission for the creation of the first Jewish school in the city.[116] As reported by Julia Ioffe in the New Republic, Putin’s “closest childhood friends (now, coincidentally, billionaires on the U.S. Treasury sanctions list) are Jews. So was his judo coach and replacement father, Anatoly Rachlin. After Rachlin’s funeral, Putin took a dramatic and solitary walk through his hometown. He has been good to the Russian Jewish community.”[117] Lazar said Putin “paid great attention to the needs of our community and related to us with a deep respect.”[118]

Chabad members are a small fraction of Russia’s small Jewish community. Adolf Shayevech, a prominent figure in the Jewish community since the late Soviet period, was considered chief rabbi until 2000, and still claims the title. The Russian Jewish Congress (RJC), the country’s largest secular Jewish organization, also recognizes Shayevech. The RJC was founded by Russian billionaire and CFR member Mikhail Fridman. But Abramovich and Leviev installed Lazar as the head of the rival FEOR. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and ever since it has instead recognized Lazar as Russia’s chief rabbi, leaving the country with two rival claimants to the title. With government support, FEOR restored dozens of synagogues and built Jewish community centers throughout the country. “[In] Eighty percent of all synagogues, the rabbis are Chabad,” said Rabbi Alexander Boroda, the organization’s chief spokesman.[119]

[1] Craig Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 1.

[2] “Donald Trump - The Manchurian Candidate?” Global Security.

[3] Craig Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.” New Republic (July 13, 2017).

[4] Charles M. Blow. “Disciples of a False Prophet.” The New York Times (March 16, 2017).

[5] Gwenda Blair. “How Norman Vincent Peale Taught Donald Trump to Worship Himself.” Politico (October 06, 2015).

[6] Luke Harding. “The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow.” Politico (November 19, 2017).

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Luke Harding. “Czechoslovakia ramped up spying on Trump in late 1980s, seeking US intel.” The Guardian (October 29, 2018).

[10] “Za dítě milion: StB si o Trumpovi s manželkou vedla TAJNÉ SPISY!” (December 1, 2016). Retrieved from https://tn.nova.cz/clanek/stb-sledovala-trumpa-i-zelnickovou-dokazuji-to-odtajnene-spisy.html?fbclid=IwAR01-ulgH7CHRm2_LscOa7k3F_YfV1kphwaxES9-rry1WzQ9k1rdFstSxSE

[11] Laura M. Holson. “Donald Trump Jr. Is His Own Kind of Trump.” New York Times (March 18, 2017).

[12] Luke Harding. “'A very different world' - inside the Czech spying operation on Trump.” The Guardian (October 29, 2018).

[13] Luke Harding. “Czechoslovakia ramped up spying on Trump in late 1980s, seeking US intel.” The Guardian (October 29, 2018).

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Lois Romano. “Donald Trump, Holding All The Cards The Tower! The Team! The Money! The Future!” Washington Post (November 15, 1984).

[18] Ibid.

[19] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 44.

[20] Ibid., p. 44.

[21] Paul Globe. “Jews, Not Russians, Behind Trump’s Victory, Russian Foreign Minister Spokesperson Says.” The Interpreter (November 18, 2016).

[22] Stephen L. Mallory. Understanding Organized Crime (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2007), pp. 73-87.

[23] Oldham, Kit (August 19, 2003). “Jackson, Henry M. ‘Scoop’.” History Link. Retrieved from http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5516

[24] “The Jackson-Vanik Amendment and U.S.-Russian Relations.” Wilson Center (February 3, 2020). Retrieved from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-jackson-vanik-amendment-and-us-russian-relations

[25] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 18.

[26] Ibid., p. 27.

[27] Ibid., p. 28.

[28] Mark Galeotti. “Ukraine’s Mob War.” Foreign Policy (May 1, 2014).

[29] Mark Galeotti. “Ukraine’s Mob War.” Foreign Policy (May 1, 2014).

[30] Mark Galeotti. “Ukraine’s Mob War.” Foreign Policy (May 1, 2014).

[31] Phil Williams & John Picarelli. “Organized Crime in Ukraine: Challenge and Response,” Document number: 198321 (U.S. Department of Justice, December 2002).

[32] Rita James Simon. In the Golden Land (VNR AG, 1997).

[33] Robert I. Friedman. Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2000).

[34] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 30.

[35] Ibid., p. ix.

[36] Bryan Mark Rigg. Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Yale University Press 2006).

[37] Ibid.

[38] R. Altein, E. Zaklikofsky & I. Jacobson. “Out of the Inferno: The Efforts That Led to the Rescue of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch from War Torn Europe in 1939–40.” Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch. p. 160.

[39] Menachem Friedman & Samuel Heilman. The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton, 2010); Bryan Mark Rigg. The Rabbi Saved by Hitler’s Soldiers (Kansas, 2016).

[40] Bari Weiss. “Crowdsourcing the High Holy Days.” Wall Street Journal (October 2, 2014).

[41] Joel Greenberg. “Rabbi Eliezer Schach, 103; Leader of Orthodox in Israel.” New York Times (November, 2001).

[42] Michael Lesher. “The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s dark side.” The Times of Israel (April 14, 2017).

[43] Ibid.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Alison Weir. “Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?” CounterPunch (April 7, 2014).

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Nathaniel Popper. “Chabad Rabbi: Jews Should Kill Arab Men, Women and Children During War.” Haaretz (June 9, 2009).

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Fishkoff Sue. The Rebbe’s Army (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2003), p. 12.

[58] Menachem M. Schneerson. “The Difference Between Faith and Trust.” Chabad.org (January 15, 1981).

[59] “No One There, But This Place Is Far From Empty.” New York Times (January 14, 2009).

[60] “Public Law 103-457.” Thomas.loc.gov.

[61] Ari L. Goldman. “Rabbi Schneerson Led A Small Hasidic Sect To World Prominence.” New York Times (June 13, 1994).

[62] Alison Weir. “Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?”

[63] The Light of Truth at the UN, (video) Excerpt: Prime Minister Netanyahu at the General Assembly, Chabad.org (September 23, 2011). Retrieved from https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1632210/jewish/The-Light-of-Truth-at-the-UN.htm

[64] Mordechai Lightstone. “Natan Sharansky Praises Work of Chabad at Federation General Assembly.” Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.

[65] Joseph Telushkin. Rebbe (HarperCollins, 2014), p. 566.

[66] James S. Henry. “The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections.” The American Interest. Volume 12, Number 4 (December 19, 2016).

[67] Craig Unger. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat.” New Republic (July 13, 2017).

[68] Miles Parks. “Businessman Paints Terrifying And Complex Picture Of Putin’s Russia.” NPR (July 28, 2017).

[69] Evelyn N. Farkas. “Jared Kushner’s Not-So-Secret Channel to Putin.” New York Times (June 8, 2017).

[70] Brian Whitmore. “Putinfellas.” Global Security (May 03, 2016).

[71] Ibid.

[72] “US embassy cables: Russia is virtual ‘mafia state’, says Spanish investigator.” The Guardian (February 8, 2010).

[73] Brandon Martinez. “Putin, Oligarchy and Alt-Media Delusion.” Non-Aligned Media (April 1, 2016); “Duma approves Gazprom export bill.” BBC News (July 5, 2006).

[74] Brian Whitmore. “Putinfellas.” Global Security (May 03, 2016).

[75] Mark Galeotti. “Putin Welcomes the Return of the Russian Mafia.” Newsweek (July 28, 2016).

[76] Lyndsey Telford, Edward Malnick and Claire Newell. “Listen: Alexander Litvinenko’s apparent warning before his death.” Telegraph (January 23, 2015).

[77] Ibid.

[78] Ibid.

[79] Unger. House of Trump, House of Putin, p. 62.

[80] Robert I. Friedman. “The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World.” Village Voice (May 26, 1998).

[81] Ibid.

[82] “Russian Organized Crime.” Global Security (accessed March 20, 2017).

[83] Itamar Eichner. “Jewish World.” Ynet (February 11, 2014).

[84] Gil Stern & Stern Shefler. “At Putin’s side, an army of Jewish billionaires” Jerusalem Post (June 26, 2012).

[85] “Mikhail Fridman Forbes Profile.” Forbes (April 1 2017); The World’s 50 Richest Jews. Jerusalem Post (September 7, 2010).

[86] “Membership - Council on Foreign Relations.” Council on Foreign Relations (August 18, 2015).

[87] Knut Royce & Nathaniel Heller. “Cheney led Halliburton to feast at federal trough.” The Center for Public Integrity (August 2, 2000).

[88] Ibid.

[89] Tony Thompson & Paul Farrelly. “Russian mafia target the City.” The Guardian (August 22, 1999).

[90] Mikhail Fridman: Background Investigation (Stratfor, August 2, 2007); “The Global Intelligence Files.” 175991_Mikhail Fridman - Background Investigation.pdf (Wikileaks, 2012-09-13).

[91] Daniel Hopsicker. “Russian Mob Link to 9/11 Hijackers.” Mad Cow Morning News (October 25, 2006).

[92] Mikhail Fridman: Background Investigation.

[93] Uri Dowbenko. Mind Control Slavery and the New World Order. Reformatted by Kidd November, 2000 < http://j_kidd.tripod.com/b/104.html>

[94] Shamil Yenikeyeff. “BP, Russian billionaires, and the Kremlin: a Power Triangle that never was.” Oxford Energy Comment (November 23, 2011).

[95] “Music boss Len Blavatnik named as Britain’s richest man”. BBC News (April 26, 2015).

[96] “Colel Chabad profile.” colelchabad.org (accessed February 23, 2015).

[97] Gil Hoffman. “Sources: Netanyahu falsely invoked billionaire’s name.” Jerusalem Post (August 13, 2017).

[98] “Deripaska, Mogilevich Hired Top U.S. Lobbyists, WSJ Says.” Moscow Times (April 18, 2007).

[99] Landon Thomas. “The Man Who May Become the Richest Rothschild.” New York Times (March 9, 2007).

[100] Mark Ames & Ari Berman. “McCain’s Kremlin Ties.” The Nation (October 1, 2008).

[101] Catherine Belton. “Rusal: A lingering heat.” Financial Times (January 25, 2010)

[102] Jim Wolf. “U.S. revoked Deripaska visa – State Dep’t official.” Reuters (May 11, 2007).

[103] Tara Palmeri. “Russian billionaire tangled in Mueller probe throws lavish bash in Davos.” ABC News (January 28, 2018).

[104] Clive Cookson. “John Browne: A man of science.” FT.com (April 26, 2013). Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9ce25e98-ac7b-11e2-9e7f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2gxwVSoBz

[105] Ian Cobain. “BP’s Browne quits over lie to court about private life.” The Guardian (May 2, 2007).

[106] Joshua Keating. “Putin’s Chosen People.” Slate (November 28, 2014).

[107] Ben Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.” Politico (April 09, 2017).

[108] Massed Hayoon. “Trump and His Advisors Are Connected to a Self-Professed Friend of Putin.” Pacific Standard (January 21, 2017).

[109] Luke Harding. “Litvinenko investigating Abramovich money-laundering claims, court told.” The Guardian (March 16, 2015).

[110] “The World’s 50 Richest Jews.” Jerusalem Post (September 7, 2010).

[111] Martin Fricker. “Roman Abramovich revealed: The dangerous world of Roman and Russia’s oligarchs.” Mirror (November 5, 2011); Peter Pomerantsev. “The Hidden Author of Putinism.” The Atlantic (November 7, 2014).

[112] Ben Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.”

[113] Richard Sakwa. The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2011). p. 135.

[114] Ben Schreckinger. “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.”

[115] Konstanty Gebert. “Putin’s Jews.” Moment (November/December, 2015).

[116] Insider Daily. “Rabbi Berel Lazar about Putin.” YouTube (September 23, 2014).

[117] Julia Ioffe. “Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise in Russia—and the Kremlin's TV Network Is in on It.” New Republic (May 14, 2014).

[118] Lev Krichevksy. “In Putin’s return, Russian Jews see stability.” The Jerusalem Post (October 10, 2011).

[119] Joshua Keating. “Putin’s Chosen People.” Slate (November 28, 2014).

Volume Six

1. Culture Wars

2. Red Mafia

3. From Russia With Love

4. #MeToo

5. Conservative Media

6. Atl-Reich

7. Multipolar World Order

8. Katehon

9. Collusion

10. Russia House

11. Techno-Libertarianism

12. Military-Digital Complex

13. Fake News

14. Memetic Warfare

15. Big Data

16. Make America White Again!

17. In Trump We Trust

18. Israel First