Czechoslovakia ramped up spying on Trump in late 1980s, seeking US intel
Mon 29 Oct 2018 02.00 EDT
The communist intelligence service in Prague stepped up its spying campaign against Donald Trump in the late 1980s, targeting him to gain information about the upper echelons of the US government, archive files and testimony from former cold war spies reveal.
Czechoslovakias Státní bezpečnost (StB) carried out a long-term spying mission against Trump following his marriage in 1977 to his first wife, Ivana Zelníčková. The operation was run out of Zlín, the provincial town in south-west Czechoslovakia where Zelníčková was born and grew up.
Ivanas father, Milo Zelníček, gave regular information to the local StB office about his daughters visits from the US and on his celebrity son-in-laws career in New York. Zelníček was classified as a conspiratorial informer. His relationship with the StB lasted until the end of the communist regime.
New archive records obtained by the Guardian and the Czech magazine Respekt show the StBs growing interest in Trump after the 1988 US presidential election, won by George HW Bush. The StBs first directorate responsible for foreign espionage sought to deepen its Trump-related activity.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/trump-czechoslovakia-communism-spying