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Czechoslovakia spied on Trump to exploit ties to 'highest echelons of US power'
Source: The Guardian
Czechoslovakia spied on Trump to exploit ties to 'highest echelons of US power'
Exclusive: files reveal Trump was the target of an extensive spying operation in the late 1980s by the country’s intelligence service, with ‘friends’ from the KGB
Luke Harding in Prague
Mon 29 Oct 2018 06.00 GMT
The three visitors from the eastern bloc looked somewhat incongruous as they stood in front of Trump Tower. It was September 1989. Leading the delegation was František Čuba, a bulky and bespectacled figure, the chairman of Czechoslovakia’s showcase model farm. With him were his deputy Miroslav Kovařík and the farm’s communist party boss, Pavel Čmolík.
The trio walked into the gleaming lobby and took the lift up to the executive floor. Their meeting was with Donald J Trump. For the men from behind the Iron Curtain, Trump was a celebrity capitalist. He was also, we now know, the target of an extensive spying operation conducted by Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) intelligence service – together with “friends” from the KGB.
The StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, when he married a Czechoslovak-born woman, Ivana Zelníčková. News of the wedding reached the StB bureau in Zlín, the town in Moravia where Ivana grew up and where her parents lived. Ivana’s father Miloš regularly gave the StB information on his daughter’s visits from the US and his son-in-law’s burgeoning career.
The StB’s work on Donald and Ivana intensified in the late 1980s, after Trump let it be known he was thinking of running for president. The StB’s first foreign department sat up. Inside the Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia’s spies were reputed to be skilled professionals, competent and versatile English-speakers who were a match for the CIA and MI6.
-snip-
Exclusive: files reveal Trump was the target of an extensive spying operation in the late 1980s by the country’s intelligence service, with ‘friends’ from the KGB
Luke Harding in Prague
Mon 29 Oct 2018 06.00 GMT
The three visitors from the eastern bloc looked somewhat incongruous as they stood in front of Trump Tower. It was September 1989. Leading the delegation was František Čuba, a bulky and bespectacled figure, the chairman of Czechoslovakia’s showcase model farm. With him were his deputy Miroslav Kovařík and the farm’s communist party boss, Pavel Čmolík.
The trio walked into the gleaming lobby and took the lift up to the executive floor. Their meeting was with Donald J Trump. For the men from behind the Iron Curtain, Trump was a celebrity capitalist. He was also, we now know, the target of an extensive spying operation conducted by Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) intelligence service – together with “friends” from the KGB.
The StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, when he married a Czechoslovak-born woman, Ivana Zelníčková. News of the wedding reached the StB bureau in Zlín, the town in Moravia where Ivana grew up and where her parents lived. Ivana’s father Miloš regularly gave the StB information on his daughter’s visits from the US and his son-in-law’s burgeoning career.
The StB’s work on Donald and Ivana intensified in the late 1980s, after Trump let it be known he was thinking of running for president. The StB’s first foreign department sat up. Inside the Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia’s spies were reputed to be skilled professionals, competent and versatile English-speakers who were a match for the CIA and MI6.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/czechoslovakia-spied-on-trump-to-exploit-ties-to-highest-echelons-of-us-power
