British intel caught FBI spy chief McGonigal secretly meeting a Russian in London

[Kid Berwyn]

British intel caught FBI spy chief secretly meeting a Russian in London

* An FBI spy chief's secret meeting with a Russian contact was detected by UK officials.

* Charles McGonigal, the ex-FBI official, is charged with taking money from Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

* McGonigal should have realized that the London meeting would be noticed, one source said.

Mattathias Schwartz
Insider, Feb 16, 2023, 5:00 AM

In 2018, Charles McGonigal, the FBI's former New York spy chief, traveled to London where he met with a Russian contact who was under surveillance by British authorities, two US intelligence sources told Insider.

The British were alarmed enough by the meeting to alert the FBI's legal attaché, who was stationed at the US Embassy. The FBI then used the surreptitious meeting as part of their basis to open an investigation into McGonigal, one of the two sources said.

The two sources, both former officials in the US intelligence community, did not specify the identity of the Russian who McGonigal met with.

McGonigal, the former head of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York, stands accused of taking money from Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, in violation of US sanctions, in exchange for investigating one of Deripaska's Russian rivals. McGonigal "traveled to meet Deripaska and others at Deripaska's residence in London, and in Vienna," according to one of the federal indictments lodged last month. The indictments do not say precisely when those alleged meetings took place, or how prosecutors came to believe they occurred.

Continues…

https://www.businessinsider.com/british-uk-london-deripaska-charles-mcgonigal-fbi-meeting-russia-surveillance-2023-2



McGonigal may also be the guy who “cleared” Trump of dealing with the Russians in 2016. If so, wow, was he wrong. Or maybe it was the money.

[gab13by13]

1. Was covered extensively on Deadline Whitehouse.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Thanks for the heads-up!

The slick former DoJ guy Nicolle interviews seems to be making excuses for his former colleague.

Just past the 31: minute mark.

[The Magistrate]

2. Pretty Well Establishes He Turned Long Before That, Sir

Given his position, stupidity can be ruled out. Which means he'd been meeting contacts and such without any apparent problem long enough to get sloppy at it

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Sir, DoJ seems to have monitored McGonigal after his visit to Albania.

And yet, a pro’s pro suddenly goes stupid may be a case where the corrupt spy catcher thought he wouldn’t get caught or he thought his bosses wouldn’t mind. Who the bosses are is the question.

How could such a turncoat gain the benefit of the doubt? Perhaps those at FBI in NYC who preferred to work for Trump over Ms. Clinton can answer.

[2naSalit]

5. That's my thinking...

He was seriously deep into the conspiracy to take over the US government by fascists. He sold us out and had been for some time.

[republianmushroom]

6. strong suggestion McGonigal don't get near high rise windows and stay off balconies or patios.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. Putin's usin' an armored private train.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a42930300/putin-russian-bulletproof-train/

And with what McGonigal knows, he would merit a window. This traitor has the aisle and the middle:



Did the FBI’s Charles McGonigal Help Throw the 2016 Election to Trump?

The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.

By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023

In the course of writing two books on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didn’t seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why weren’t they doing anything with it?

Specifically, I knew that:

* Starting in 1980, an alleged “spotter agent” for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.

* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trump’s real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.

* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.

* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.

Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew that’s where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trump’s casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.

Snip…

As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.

Continues…

https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election

Unger has been on to the BFEE gangsters since they were in business with the bin Laden clan.

[malthaussen]

7. 2018? it takes five years for an "investigation" to turn up red flags?

That does not make one feel secure about our nation's intelligence services.

-- Mal

[Kid Berwyn]

11. That must be to ensure their own futures in the private sector.

Real lucrative futures.

Frank Figliuzzi on his former co-worker...

Fourth, as disturbing as the McGonigal indictments are, there is some solace in the fact that they don’t contain a charge of espionage. That means, as far as we know, McGonigal didn’t do what Robert Hanssen did: share classified national defense information with foreign powers. McGonigal held a much higher, and even more sensitive, position than Hanssen did. If McGonigal had sold secrets to adversaries, the damage could be almost insurmountable. If there’s anything to be thankful for here, it’s that maybe — just maybe — FBI New York’s top spy catcher had a line that even he would not cross.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/arrest-fbi-agent-linked-russian-oligarch-major-blow-rcna67060

[uponit7771]

12. right ?!

[flying_wahini]

8. And he was released on bail.

And I want to know WHY?!?!!

[uponit7771]

13. +1, maybe he was safer out of jail than inside ... these fuckers are a mess

[Kid Berwyn]

15. Great question, "Why?" And another is "Who?"

Ex-FBI agent charged with aiding Russian oligarch walks free on $500K bond: Prosecutors say he also took $225k in bribes from Albanian spy and had secret meeting with country's PM

* Ex-FBI agent Charles McGonigal, 54, was freed on a $500,00 bond on Monday

* He played in Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's purported ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other high-profile investigations

* Prosecutors say he took payments to help a Russian oligarch evade sanctions

By KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 00:30 EST, 24 January 2023 | UPDATED: 08:32 EST, 24 January 2023

Th e former FBI counterintelligence agent charged with helping a Russian oligarch evade US sanctions has been freed on bail.

Charles McGonigal, 54, walked free from Manhattan federal court on Monday on a $500,000 personal recognizance bond, following his arrest Saturday on charges laid out in two newly unsealed indictments.

One of the indictments, filed in Manhattan, accused McGonigal of violating US sanctions laws by working for Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire crony of Vladimir Putin, following his 2018 retirement from the FBI.

The indictment states that McGonigal was accompanied by the unnamed ex-spy when he secretly met with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in September 2017, where he gave Rama 'FBI paraphernalia' and offered advice on lucrative oil drilling licenses, the indictment states.

McGonigal was freed on a signature bond, meaning the money did not actually have to be posted up front, which was signed by himself and two other unidentified people.

Continues…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11669301/Ex-FBI-agent-charged-aiding-Russian-oligarch-walks-free-500K-bail.html

[FakeNoose]

10. McGonigal left the FBI in 2018 to work in private enterprise

So I guess this story checks out. Maybe he was really fired, or asked to quit?

There's still a lot to be learned about this guy.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. Rolling Stone (thanks, Nevilledog!) has a great article...

Who Corrupted a Top FBI Spyhunter?

Depending on who you believe, Evgeny Fokin was a corporate publicist — or a veteran Russian spy.

BY SETH HETTENA
Rolling Stone, February 17, 2023

IN THE FINAL days of the Cold War, a young diplomat arrived at the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. Agents in the FBI’s San Francisco field office kept a close eye on the personnel coming and going from the consulate. The six-story building in one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods long served as a hub of espionage activity. The newly-arrived Soviet diplomat in his twenties, Evgeny Fokin, soon raised suspicions that he was a KGB officer operating under diplomatic cover on his first overseas posting. “I do remember he was an intelligence officer. He was KGB at the time,” says Rick Smith, a retired veteran of the FBI’s counterintelligence squad in San Francisco.

Three decades later, that young diplomat is now at the center of another spy story. This one involves Charles McGonigal, a former senior FBI counterintelligence officer who was indicted last month for taking money illegally from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services. Fokin was the mysterious “Agent-1” described in court papers, an executive working for Deripaska who slowly corrupted the veteran FBI agent over a three-year period, according to sources and documents reviewed by Rolling Stone.

Arrested last month, McGonigal faces federal charges in New York of violating federal sanctions laws that prohibited him from taking money from Deripaska and laundering those ill-gotten gains. He is also accused in a separate case filed in Washington, D.C., of accepting nearly a quarter of a million dollars in secret payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, including $80,000 that was handed over gangland-style in a car parked outside a New York City restaurant. “His arrest is a sorry day for the FBI,” a retired senior FBI official tells Rolling Stone. “The bureau has taken a beating the last few years with Trump and others attacking it. His arrest is all we need.”

The damage to the bureau may go deeper than previously understood. In 2020, McGonigal took part in an Atlantic Council panel discussion titled “How Did Russia’s Security Services Capture the Kremlin?” A better question might be: Did Russia’s security services compromise a top FBI counterintelligence agent, here in America? How was one of the FBI’s top spyhunters so easily ensnared? “And how exposed is the FBI, given that it was Fokin, a suspected Russian spy, who snared him?”

Continues…

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/fbi-spyhunter-charles-mcgonigal-evgeny-fokin-oleg-deripaska-1234681760/

No pay wall source:

https://archive.is/T1c4Q

DU is a truth machine.

[bahboo]

14. I'm woozy from the stench...

good christ....

[Kid Berwyn]

17. A cesspool of treason.

The success of which was made plain in the Oval Office in photos taken by Russian news agency TASS. Co-conspirators are all-smiles as President Trump gestures to Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, while the President of the United States tells the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 10, 2017.

“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.”



"I'm not under investigation," he added.

Photo: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Getty Images

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5



TASS photojournalist Alexandr Scherbak,

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/russian-journalist-responsible-for-the-trump-lavrov-photo-speaks-out-117051200242_1.html