U.S. Hires Company With K.G.B. Link to Guard Moscow Embassy

[Hortensis]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by DonViejo (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Ny Times today

MOSCOW — When President Vladimir V. Putin in July ordered American diplomatic missions in Russia to slash their staff by 755 employees, the State Department said it would need time to assess the “impact of such a limitation and how we will respond to it.”

Part of that response has now become clear: To make up for the loss of security guards axed in the Russian-mandated staff cuts, Washington has hired a private Russian company that grew out of a security business co-founded by Mr. Putin’s former K.G.B. boss, an 82-year-old veteran spy who spent 25 years planting agents in Western security services and hunting down their operatives.

Under a $2.8 million no-bid contract awarded by the Office of Acquisitions in Washington, security guards at the American Embassy in Moscow and at consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok will be provided by Elite Security Holdings, a company closely linked to the former top K.G.B. figure, Viktor G. Budanov, a retired general who rose through the ranks to become head of Soviet counterintelligence. ...

Marines will continue to guard American diplomatic missions, but tasks previously handled by local guards hired directly by the embassy in Moscow, like screening visitors, will be taken over Elite Security employees. Hiring guards directly allowed closer monitoring of their backgrounds, but any Russian working for an American diplomatic mission, no matter how closely screened, is vulnerable to pressure from Russia’s state security apparatus. ...

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/europe/embassy-moscow-kgb.html?_r=0

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This comes right after a high-ranking State Department official issued a letter questioning the dismantling of our diplomatic powers around the planet. The title is "Time to Ask Why."

[Achilleaze]

1. Why don't the republicans just give the russians the keys to the Lincoln bedroom?

Freaking republicans just pissing all over American security. Sick bastards.

[Ilsa]

2. Here are some replies from the Daily Beast article posting:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029831617

This action is ridiculous and outrageous. Putinknows that the new maximum personnel numbers allowed in country will necessitate the embassy being left unguarded or under-manned unless we hire their local goons.

Trump is exceedingly happy to hand over the money, too.

[Hortensis]

3. Ilsa, here's my reply from DU: Treason strongly suspected.

[Ilsa]

9. It's shocking, sad, and rage-inducing, isn't it?

Pundits on MoJo were discussing children of presidents and candidates and senators who served in the military, died in the line of duty, etc, true patriots. But this is what we've got.

[iluvtennis]

6. But then Trump and his GOPThugs don't want to fund healthcare. SICKENING

[Hortensis]

7. This is NOT about money. No nation would ever hire a Kremlin-linked

company to guard any embassy on the planet. It simply does not happen.

Our nation is fabulously wealthy, but it is happening to our Moscow embassy.

[iluvtennis]

10. I think this act is putting our security at risk as well as lining the pockets of Putin/his comrades

[Hortensis]

12. Putin loves to humiliate us, and no doubt that's a little

part of this. He's so wealthy that I'm guessing the pennies earned wouldn't matter in the least, though the humor of being paid by us to infiltrate and spy on our embassy won't be escaping him.

About now our Marines who will also be guarding the embassy must be wondering if this could be how they might somehow die, under attack from within and without.

Young people won't remember, but we once built an embassy in Moscow that turned out to be saturated with KGB spy devices. It was so bad that we had to abandon it and rebuild, with no Russians allowed anywhere on site.

[rockfordfile]

4. American tax payers are funding because of Trumpf

Trump like other republicans are traitors.

[saidsimplesimon]

5. A no-bid contract from the State Dept.?

Nice work if you can get it. Is it like the Whitefish Puerto Rico deal, a no bid cost plus plus, rape the taxpayers' plan?

It is indeed "time to ask why". Democrats in Congress are asking. Republicans give them a pass, sigh.

[Hortensis]

13. I sorta doubt ALL Republicans in congress are just sighing.

Even these Republicans voted nearly unanimously to increase sanctions on Russia.

THIS could not happen without Tillerson's involvement, or at very least tacit acceptance of a Trump-Putin deal, and the dismantling of our foreign service so that nations are forced to turn to each other and bypass us is being done under Tillerson's direction.

Think treason, because, believe me, experts around the planet are. There is simply no functional, rational reason to do these things, abandoning our power, ceding it other nations, and even ceding our power to protect our own embassy.

[ancianita]

8. So this is Tillerson. Dude is asking for Mueller time.

[Hortensis]

14. Love it, and boy do I hope so.

[benld74]

11. THIS is beyond stupppids

This is pressing lips to the dark nether-regions of Putin's backside


AND


PAYING TO DO IT!!!!!


GOP!!!!!!! Effin do something you useless dweebs!!!

[former9thward]

15. This story was posted in LBN four days ago.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141911530

Don't know why it is being posted here again since we have a 24 hour rule for LBN. That aside, these people are not in areas where there are secrets. They are in areas where anyone walking off the street to go into the embassy could go. U.S. Marines guard areas where there are secrets. As the BBC reported at the earlier link the State Department attempted to get U.S. security firms for this work. None wanted it. So they went local. If you go to U.S. embassies around the world you will find that locals doing this type of work is common.

[Hortensis]

17. The NYT does not think this is a nothing burger, neither do

Foreign Policy Journal or Foreign Affairs. I missed the BBC article post four days ago, and posted current NYT coverage published today.

I don't know why you apparently believe the silly nonsense about how no American firms wanted this job so that we had no choice to hire a Moscow firm with links to Russian intelligence (and thus with something like one degree of separation from Putin). Why do you?

[heaven05]

16. the old

fox guarding the chicken house ploy, ...what dummies we have guarding our country and our people here and worldwide.

[DonViejo]

18. Locking....

Duplicate of https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141911530