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Craig Unger
164 quotes
“s are intended to lead toward prosecution; are not. Instead, they... thwart... espionage, or ... Even though... not... about breaking the law... counterintelligence... may... involve issues... far more serious. In this case... Russian interference in... elections. From .... disinformation... Russian assets... groomed for... perhaps decades, and were... in place to... damage... vital American institutions.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he Mueller Report... part... dealing with was one... paragraph, saying... the FBI "embedded personnel... did not work on the Special Counsel’s investigation, but... sen[t]... summaries of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence... to FBIHQ and... Field Offices. Those communications and other... not all... contained in this Volume." ...there was no counterintelligence investigation.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he Mueller probe... regarding criminal activities... led to.. indictment of thirty-four individuals and three companies. Ten men pleaded guilty or were convicted... including... Trump associates... Paul Manafort... Rick Gates... Michael Flynn... George Nader... Roger Stone.... , and... Michael Cohen.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A serious counterintelligence investigation... would presumably have asked... whether Trump had been compromised... by Russia. ...[H]ow deeply Trump was indebted to the ...laundering millions of dollars... Was he a Russian asset? ...How much did he make laundering ..?”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... described... to me in great detail... the most successful intelligence operation in history... ending... with a Russian asset in the ...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kislin... and his partner, ... set up... Joy-Lud Electronics... ultimately controlled by the ... always filled with KGB agents and high-level Soviet dignitaries. ..."The KGB was... paranoid about... bugging...” said Shvets. But since Kislin was... with the KGB, Soviet dignitaries had no such concerns.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sapir told magazine, his customers included the former Soviet minister of s, who granted Sapir rights to distribute tens of thousands of tons of fertilizer and tens of millions of barrels of oil, while pocketing fees... [S]elling oil was impossible without approval.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Matthew Swibel, "The Boomerang Effect" Forbes (Mar 31, 2006)
“[A]ccording to Shvets, Kislin... spotted Donald Trump, who... became a special unofficial contact—a rare variation of trusted contact that was applied to high-level intelligence assets, like... and... Robert Maxwell.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... based in ... [with] ties to the , came up with a... business model to franchise Trump condos after he'd lost billions... which made the perpetually bankrupt... Trump rich again and would lead to a... ... America... injected with... oligarchy... with Donald Trump in the .”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yuri helped Litvinenko assemble and analyze a dossier linking senior officials, including... Putin, to the Tambov organized crime group, which laundered money and facilitated drug trafficking for the Colombian cartel.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Luke Harding, "A very different world - inside the Czech spying operation on Trump" (Oct 29, 2018)
“In 1995, Shvets published Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America, his memoir...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shvets... had a front-row seat at the birth of post-Soviet Russia as a Mafia state and on the waves of kleptocrats and oligarchs... sweeping into the West, along with authoritarian right-wing populist politicians.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump... had a personality that was ideal for a potential asset—vain, narcissistic, highly susceptible to flattery, and greedy.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump was a dream for officers looking to develop an asset," Shvets told me. "...with Trump it wasn't just weakness. Everything was excessive. His vanity ...Narcissism ...Greed ...Ignorance, excessive.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[V]ast sums from the 's various s had to be laundered. So in 1984, David Bogatin, a Russian mobster who had scored millions in the Red Daisy gas scam with Balagula, went shopping... at... ... closing, with Donald Trump... in attendance... five condominiums ...$6 million... cash, the equivalent of... $15 million in 2020. According to the New York State attorney general’s office... the Russian Mafia had just laundered money...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kislin... came to Trump’s aid after his massive bankruptcies in Atlantic City in the nineties by issuing mortgages for condos in Trump World Tower...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Caleb Melby, Keri Geiger, "Behind Trump’s Russia Romance, There’s a Tower Full of Oligarchs. Down on his luck, the mogul found help from émigrés from the old Soviet empire." (Mar 16, 2017)
“, who lived in until his death... helped bail out Trump by funding... Trump SoHo...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]fter... residence in the , people asked... what the Russians had on Trump. ..[I]t’s... simple: They owned him.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shvets would find himself asking how... a comically incompetent organization could have... installed a Russian asset as president of the United States.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In terms of his personality," Shvets added, "the guy is not a complicated cookie, his most important characteristics being low intellect coupled with hyperinflated vanity. This combination makes him a dream for an experienced recruiter.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had dozens... of hours with... ... a major in the in the 1980s... stationed in Washington D. C. and his colleagues in... New York... were recruiting Donald Trump as an asset...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ther people in the started reaching out to him and assessing whether it was worthwhile expending resources... to develop him. That... led... to his being invited by the KGB to the Soviet Union in 1987. ...You can see some of this develop in the newspaper clips during this time. ...In and in The New York Times, Trump is starting to present himself as an expert on nuclear weapons. He says that he should be running the nuclear arms limitations talk for Ronald Reagan...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to... ... [who] recruited spies... you see them pumping him full of talking points, saying "Wow, you have these wonderfully unorthodox views on foreign policy. You should... run for higher office. You should be president. You should make all these views public.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is invited to the Soviet Union and the... trip is overseen by the . ...Ivan Gromakov ...initiates the invitation. It goes through the Soviet ambassador ...to Trump and he's flown in by ...a subsidiary of the KGB ...It makes sure that you're fully monitored ...All the while, Trump, according to Yuri, is being force fed talking points by the , and that leads... to his exploratory run for the presidency... for the 1988 nomination.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]n September of 1987 Trump takes out a full-page add in , and ...full of wacky s about ...America's being taken to the cleaners ...we're being screwed over by NATO ...our allies like Japan are ...not worth it. ...No American politician was talking like this ...or any time since.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yuri... was in headquarters in September... 1987, and the KGB circulated an internal memo celebrating the acquisition of a new asset... and a successful active ...act of propaganda.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gorbachev has taken over by then, but it's before the real thaw... The Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. This is several years earlier and... Donald Trump has taken out a full-page add in three of the nation's most prestigious newspapers... putting forth s... and the KGB... circulate the... internal memo announcing that as a successful active measure... by their new asset, Donald Trump.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“David Bogatin comes in. He has 5 million dollars in cash... meets personally with Donald Trump and... says, "I'll take five condos." 5 million... back then is... about 15 million today. ...Trump doesn't ask ...questions. He takes the money ...The two predicates for are all cash transactions with an anonymous enterprise... Trump did this repeatedly... The State of New York attorney general... said this was money laundering... There were at least 1300 similar cases... Trump condos sold under similar conditions that could pass for money laundering. ...That's a pattern!”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It continues later... in Atlantic City and a company... Bayrock... opened in ... this was money... from enterprises tied to the Russian mob, and the and its successors in the Russian Federation.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I regard [Trump's] temperament as that of a mobster. ...Russian intelligence is very ...closely tied to Russian organized crime. ...Russian organized crime is part of intelligence. Trump will deal with anyone...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jimmy Carter's 100 years old and I think it's long past due... for history to be honest to him. He... lost his reelection campaign in 1980 and was... characterized as a weak president who allowed the United States to be humiliated... [W]hat I write about in Den of Spies is a run by the Republicans that sabotaged... Carter's attempts to bring home the hostages... [T]hey... hijacked American foreign policy and I believe it was a treasonous covert operation by the Reagan Bush campaign.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his was a critical moment in American history. It was... a watershed... the start of the so-called Reagan Revolution... the birth of American conservatism... [W]hat I show is, they got into office thanks to a treasonous, that d an American presidential election...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his is in a critical time in terms of American foreign policy. The Shah of Iran, long an American puppet, has just been overthrown, and when he was in charge... the entire West had access to Iranian oil reserves at very reasonable prices. So suddenly...Iran... went from being a very close ally and friend of both America and Israel to an enemy... as it became an Islamist theocracy.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Israel and Iran had been very close allies... [T]here's still an... oil pipeline between Israel and Iran, but both... had powerful militaries, and almost all their military equipment came from the United States. So when the Iranian Revolution happened, suddenly Iran... flipped from being an ally to becoming an adversary, but they were also about to be attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and they needed weapons... [B]oth Israel and the United States didn't want Iraq to win.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Iraq had... taken over Iran and all its oil... the combined oil resources... in one hostile country... would have been terrible for the entire West... So there were... national interests in both countries... wanting... Iran armed. Jimmy Carter... didn't want to give weapons to a hostile foreign power that had just ceased American hostages, and it was seen as being a horrible... thing to do. But Willian Casey, who was campaign manager of the Reagan Bush campaign, and Israel were far more cynical, and they put in motion a secret plan to do this.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One reason it was so explosive... Israel did not want it known that it was participating in a that would an American presidential election, especially because America is Israel's biggest patron.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]ith Trump you have a candidate who is very close to Vladimir Putin. He's close to Bibi Netanyahu, and he's close to MBS who gave $2 billion to his nephew... These are serious relationships and they're all players on the world stage, so... will it happen again? ...I don't know ...but ...does anyone think there will be an election with no malfeasance?”
Craig Unger (born 1949) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Rep. Garcia: Why Did Saudi Government Give Kushner $2 Billion? Congressman Robert Garcia (Sep 13, 2023)
“[W]hen Lyndon Johnson was president and signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in '64 and '65, the very next election was Nixon's, and it was known as the ... [I]f you look at the electoral map, the red and blue map... of almost every election (there are a couple of anomolies)... since 1968, the red states... sure look a lot like the Confederate States of America... After the Voting Rights Act, all the racist right wing Democrats joined the Republican party and that gave birth to what we have today.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]n 1968... Richard Nixon got... to intervene with the Paris Peace Talks. Lyndon Johnson was trying to end the Vietnam War with Peace Talks in Paris and Richard Nixon's gofer got the South Vietnamese to back out at the last minute and made the Democrats look ridiculous, and Nixon won in a squeaker.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nixon... believed all those conversations he had with LBJ were taped, and he was worried about what documents the democrats had, so he dispatched a group of burglars... to break into the Brookings Institute and Watergate Hotel, and... in 1972 you have Watergate.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1980 you have the October surprise... In 2000 you have the Brooks Brothers riots. In 2016 you have Trump-Russia. So you've had it again and again, and what the Republicans have done, is that they will stop at nothing. They will do s, align with hostile foreign powers, whether it's with Russia or Iran, and it's played a role in changing the outcome of quite a few elections.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My book... is not just about trying to uncover this conspiracy.... it's about the national conversation, about how the news we consume is shaped and what is repressed.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House (2024) by Craig Unger
“[T]his is a very dark chapter in American history and... we don't like coming to terms with the dark, dirty parts of our American history.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When things happen, that's news. When things don't happen, that's not news, and you don't keep reporting that it didn't happen.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]magine how difficult this is to be running a winning presidential campaign... and secretly doing a covert op to get millions of dollars worth of weapons to a hostile foreign power against which there's an embargo. So it's blatently illegal, and... you have to avoid being detected by opposing intelligence... [etc.]”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He's is a wonderful character... He was dazzling brilliant but he mumbled when he talked... His nickname was "mumbles." It was often said that of all the people in the CIA, most people needed scramblers on their phone, but not Bill Casey. ...[P]eople often ask... what did Ronald Reagan know about the October surprise, and Ronald Reagan's response is... "You know, I couldn't understand a work Bill Casey said... you can't ask three times. You just sound rude, so I would just nod.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not sure I've been discovered in this country. ...[T]he last few weeks, I have gotten a lot of attention from media overseas, in the UK... France... Austria, Poland, Germany, but... not so much in the United States. ...I wrote House Of Trump, House of Putin... seven years ago, and I got a fair amount of attention then, but now you can't say what I was saying back then.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[N]ow you can't say... that Donald Trump is a Russian asset, and I've done two books that... tell... step by step... how that happened... Overseas people started paying attention to it the minute Zelenskyy was in the with Trump... clearing siding with Vladimir Putin, and you could see in real time what it meant for him to be a Russian asset. So suddenly... I had enormous credibility, but now in the United States I don't think you can... say that in the main stream media... You could 5 years ago...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Donald Trump is carrying out Putin's policies. It's... as simple as that.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trump is sending Witkoff as an envoy to the two hottest spots in the world diplomatically, the Middle East and Moscow. He's had zero diplomatic experience. ...But he's friendly with the Russian mafia, or... friendly enough to give a recommendation for them. ...Witkoff has also been a golfing buddy of Trump for decades and that's all you need to know, is that he's going to be doing whatever Trump wants him to do, and Trump, in turn, is doing what Vladimir Putin wants him to do.”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source