IAEA Obstructed from Reporting Iran Violations

 Hey  you have a call holding on line 3.

IAEA: Iran Nuke Deal Limits Public Reporting on Possible Violations

FreeBeacon: The head of the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed Monday that certain agreements reached under the Iran nuclear deal limit inspectors from publicly reporting on potential violations by the Islamic Republic.

Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which is responsible for ensuring Iran complies with the agreement, told reporters that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal.

Amano’s remarks come on the heels of a February IAEA oversight report that omitted many details and figures related to Iran’s nuclear program. The report sparked questions from outside nuclear experts and accusations from critics that the IAEA was not being transparent with its findings.

Amano disclosed in response to questions from reporters that the last report was intentionally vague because the nuclear agreement prohibits the IAEA from publishing critical data about Iran’s program that had been disclosed by the agency in the past.

“The misunderstanding is that the basis of reporting is different,” Amano said. “In the previous reports, the bases were the previous [United Nations] Security Council Resolutions and Board of Governors. But now they are terminated. They are gone.”

Most U.N. measures pertaining to Iran—including its military buildup and illicit work on nuclear technology—were removed following the nuclear agreement, which essentially rewrote the organization’s overall approach to the country.

The IAEA, which operates under the U.N. umbrella, must now follow the new resolutions governing the implementation of the nuclear pact, Amano said.

“These two resolutions and the other resolutions of the Security Council and Board are very different,” he said. “And as the basis is different, the consequences are different.”

Amano said that going forward, the agency would only release reports that are consistent with the most recent Security Council resolutions on Iran, meaning that future reports are likely to impact the international community’s ability to determine if Iran is fully complying with its end of the agreement.

Last month’s report was viewed as particularly significant because it allowed the nuclear agreement to proceed to its implementation stage. However, the dearth of information in it has angered some experts.

The latest report “provides insufficient details on important verification and monitoring issues,” Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former deputy director general, stated in a policy brief.

“The report does not list inventories of nuclear materials and equipment or the status of key sites and facilities,” Heinonen said in his analysis, which was published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Without detailed reporting, the international community cannot be sure that Iran is upholding its commitments under the nuclear deal.”

The IAEA’s latest report also failed to disclose information about Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, which is supposed to be significantly reduced as part of the nuclear deal.

Additional information about Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, the machines responsible for enriching uranium, also was withheld by the IAEA.

Other critics accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress during negotiations over the deal. White House officials maintained at the time that the agreement would provide increased transparency into Iran’s nuclear endeavors.

“When nuclear negotiations began in late 2013, the administration asked Congress to stand down on pressuring the Iranians, and promised to force the Iranians to dismantle significant parts of their nuclear program if Congress gave negotiators space,” Omri Ceren, an official with The Israel Project, which works with Congress on the Iran issue, wrote in an analysis sent to reporters on Monday.

“U.S. negotiators eventually caved on any demands that would have required the destruction of Iran’s uranium infrastructure, and instead went all-in on verification and transparency: Yes, the Iranians would get to keep what they’d built, and yes, their program would eventually be fully legal, but the international community would have full transparency into everything from uranium mining to centrifuge production to enriched stockpiles,” Ceren explained.

However, “now Amano has revealed that the nuclear deal gutted the ability of journalists and the public to have insight into Iran’s nuclear activities,” he said. “In critical areas, it’s not even clear that the IAEA has been granted the promised access.”

****

What else does Kerry know about Iran and their history?

Fresh evidence emerging of Iran’s deadly nuclear and terror ties to Argentina

Amb. Noriega: Last week, an Argentine intelligence official testified that Iran sought nuclear technology from that South American country and that a prosecutor investigating suspected Hezbollah bombings in Buenos Aires had been murdered for attempting to expose Tehran’s dangerous plot.

This fresh testimony supports reports I published in July 2011 regarding suspicious nuclear diplomacy in 2007 and a massive cash transfer in 2010 involving then Iranian and Argentine leaders, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nestor Kirchner, respectively. Despite congressional inquiries and mounting evidence, the State Department has chosen to ignore this blind spot in strategy for containing Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

According to the Argentine daily newspaper, Clarin, a former Argentine senior intelligence official, Antonio Stiuso, confirmed in two days of testimony before a judge that the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, interceded with Nestor Kirchner to resume nuclear cooperation with Iran, which had been suspended in 1991. Also, according to Stiuso’s testimony, Ahmadinejad was interested in using Argentina’s technology to produce plutonium bombs, which he characterized as more sophisticated than the ones Iran was trying to make with enriched uranium.

Stiuso noted that Venezuela did not possess the technical knowledge to make use of the nuclear technology sought by Chávez from Argentina. Instead, because Iran’s nuclear plans were designed by Argentines in the 1960s, Stiuso’s theory is that Tehran was the ultimate beneficiary of such nuclear cooperation.

 

Stiuso also testified that the former prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was murdered for refusing an order from former president Cristina Kirchner to cease investigating Iran’s role in the 1992 and 1994 bombings and its corrupt dealings with Argentine officials. In a draft criminal complaint discovered after the prosecutor was found dead last year in an apparently staged suicide, Nisman accused Cristina Kirchner of covering up the involvement of five Iranians who have been charged with planning the 1994 terrorist attack against the Jewish Community Center in the heart of Argentina’s capital city.

In a separate development, last Thursday, Nisman’s family disclosed a written statement by a prosecutor from Argentina’s federal appeals court saying that scientific tests failed to find evidence that he fired the pistol found near his body. This is the first formal statement by a government official confirming suspicions that Nisman was the victim of a homicide.

From the US side, the Obama State Department has systematically neglected the dangerous liaisons among Venezuela, Argentina, and Iran. As dramatic evidence of Iran’s deadly provocations in our own neighborhood continues to come to light, it is fair to ask whether its cluelessness was by accident or design. … Much more here.

 

Trump Indebted to Spooky Dude?

Big names back Trump tower

Soros, Deutsche Bank said to be in on 90-story building

October 28, 2004|By Thomas A. Corfman, Tribune staff reporter.

ChicagoTribune: Donald Trump has lined up three New York hedge funds, including money from billionaire George Soros, to invest $160 million in his Chicago skyscraper, a key piece in perhaps the largest construction financing in the city’s history, according to sources and public documents.

Despite reports about the project’s record-breaking sales, most of them from Trump himself, many Chicago real estate developers and lenders have expressed doubts about whether the 90-story tower would ever be built.

“It is such a huge project, and the prices he said he was getting were so outside the norm,” said Robert Glickman, president and chief executive of Chicago-based Corus Bank.

“It was reasonable to say, `Is this real?'” he said.

Much of the skepticism springs from Trump’s own hype. “Chicago developers are much less flamboyant,” said Glickman.

The massive financing, which sources say also will include a $650 million construction loan from Deutsche Bank, should quell those doubts.

Trump flies to Chicago Thursday morning for a ceremonial demolition of the former home of the Chicago Sun-Times, 401 N. Wabash Ave., which will be replaced by his 2.5 million-square-foot tower. The demolition is expected to begin for real in January.

On Wednesday Trump declined to comment on the financing, emphasizing instead the luxury project’s record-breaking sales.

The chief executive of New York-based Trump Organization said he has agreements to sell three-fourths of the 461 condominiums and 227 hotel-condo units for a combined $515 million.

“Nobody to my knowledge anywhere in the United States has ever sold more than $500 million worth of apartments prior to construction,” he said. “It’s a great tribute to Chicago, to the location and to a great design.

“And, I guess, to Trump, when you think of it,” he added.

The investor trio is led by Fortress Investment Group LLC, according to a financing statement filed Oct. 19 with the Cook County recorder’s office.

Fortress, which manages more than $10 billion in investments, is familiar with the downtown Chicago condominium market after providing a key $26 million loan on the River East mixed-use development last year.

The document does not identify the other participants, but a key member is Grove Capital LLP, according to sources familiar with the transaction.

The firm manages most of the multibillion-dollar real estate portfolio of the $13 billion Soros Fund Management, from which Grove Capital was spun off last month.

The third investor is Blackacre Institutional Capital Management LLC, the real estate arm of hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management LP, which manages assets totaling $14 billion.

Executives with the three hedge funds could not be reached for comment.

The $160 million investment is in the form of a mezzanine loan, a kind of second mortgage that typically charges a much higher interest rate than a first-mortgage construction loan.

Unlike the mezzanine loan, which has closed, terms of the $650 million construction loan have not yet been finalized, sources said.

Frankfurt, Germany-based Deutsche Bank, an active commercial real estate lender in the U.S., is expected to split up the loan with other banks.

Chicago developer Steven Fifield admits he was a “total skeptic” about the project, which initially included a large portion of office space.

But the elimination of the office space and the steadily climbing condo sales helped change Fifield’s view about Trump’s chances to get financing.

“I thought it was a given with the number of presales he had,” said Fifield, president of Fifield Cos.

After 13 months of marketing, condo prices at Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago have exceeded $900 a square foot, while hotel-condo units cost nearly $1,100 a square foot, according to an analysis of 53 units by Appraisal Research Counselors, a residential consulting firm.

Trump’s marketing firm recently put those units, including six hotel-condo units, on the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois.

Almost two weeks ago Trump completed a buyout of his former joint venture partner in the project, Hollinger International Inc., the troubled parent of the Sun-Times.

Although lining up the financing was a big step for Trump, he still has hurdles to overcome, including avoiding construction delays and cost overruns.

Still, he expressed no concern about the doubts harbored by some local real estate executives.

“It’s a very expensive building to build because of the quality we are putting into it,” he said. “So people of course would say, `Gee, that’s a lot of money to raise.’

“But for me, it’s not a lot of money. You understand,” he said.

*** Not the first rodeo for Trump and it bears repeating:

Trump picked stock fraud felon as senior adviser

2015: WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump knew a man he named as a senior business adviser in 2010 had been convicted in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Trump had worked with Felix Sater previously during the man’s stint as an executive at Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate development firm that partnered with Trump on numerous projects after renting office space from the Trump Organization. But Sater’s past was not widely known at the time because he was working as a government cooperator on mob cases and the judge overseeing Sater’s own case kept the proceedings secret. After Sater’s criminal history and past ties to organized crime came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

Less than three years later, however, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role that came with the title of senior adviser to Donald Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

Trump said during an AP interview on Wednesday that he recalled only bare details of Sater.

“Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump said, referring questions about Sater to his staff. “I’m not that familiar with him.”

According to Trump lawyer Alan Garten, Sater’s role was to prospect for high-end real estate deals for the Trump Organization. The arrangement lasted six months, Garten said.

The revelation about Sater’s role is significant because of its timing and directness, and marks the first time the Trump Organization has acknowledged publicly that Sater worked for Trump after the disclosures of Sater’s criminal background. Trump has said that among his secrets of success is that he surrounds himself with the “best and most serious people” and with “people you can trust.”

Sater never had an employment agreement or formal contract with the Trump Organization and did not close any deals for Trump, Garten said.

“He was trying to restart his life,” Garten said. “I believe he was regretful of things that happened in the past.”

Trump did not know the details of Sater’s cooperation with the government when Sater came in-house in 2010, Garten said. But Garten noted that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch praised Sater’s cooperation with the federal government, when senators asked about him during her confirmation hearings early this year. She said Sater cooperated against his Mafia stock fraud co-defendants and assisted the government on unspecified national security matters.

“If Mr. Sater was good enough for the government to work with, I see no reason why he wasn’t good enough for Mr. Trump,” Garten said.

He pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records. Prosecutors called the operation a pump-and-dump scheme, in which insiders manipulate the price of obscure stocks and then sell them to hapless investors at inflated prices. Five years earlier, a New York State court had sentenced Sater to more than a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass.

Sater declined to discuss his work with Trump.

“Obviously a Donald-and-the-bad-guy piece is not interesting for me to participate in,” Sater wrote in an email to AP. His lawyer, Robert Wolf, said information about Sater in public records and lawsuits obtained by the AP was defamatory. He credited Sater’s stint as a government cooperator with potentially saving American military lives, although he did not provide details. Wolf told the AP to write about Sater’s past “at your own risk” but did not cite specific concerns.

After his 1998 racketeering conviction, Sater spent more than a decade as an informant on the Mafia and on national security-related matters. Federal prosecutors kept even the existence of Sater’s racketeering case out of publicly available court records for 14 years.

During that time, Sater launched a luxury real estate development career. Sealed court records prevented potential customers or partners from learning about his past association with organized crime. Sater altered his name, to Satter, and became a top executive in Bayrock, a development firm that partnered with Trump on the Trump Soho high-rise hotel in Manhattan and other branded luxury real estate deals.

Civil lawsuits — including a sealed case filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York that was obtained by the AP — have alleged that Bayrock engaged in a pattern of misconduct during Sater’s tenure, sometimes involving potential Trump projects. The AP obtained a copy of the sealed lawsuit, which was refiled last month, when the original complaint was included as part of a lawsuit Sater filed in an Israeli court. Bayrock’s attorney told AP that the firm did not mislead anyone about Sater’s past and denied any misconduct. The firm has not yet responded to a version of the complaint refiled in U.S. court last month.

Trump’s lawyer, Garten, said Trump had no knowledge of alleged improprieties at Bayrock or reason to believe that Sater was a major stakeholder in Bayrock’s projects. Trump only learned of Sater’s troubled past when The New York Times reported details in December 2007. In the article, Trump distanced himself from Sater, saying: “I didn’t really know him very well.”

Garten said Trump had no further interactions with Sater at Bayrock following the revelations of his criminal history. But a new relationship was formed in 2010 when Trump offered Sater office space and a chance to round up new business possibilities for the Trump Organization.

“The guy’s been in business a long time, he’s got a lot of contacts,” Garten said of Sater.

 Dubai  

 Istanbul

 

 

Carlos the Jackal, the PLO and Switzerland

JPost: ZURICH – Carlos the Jackal, the Marxist guerrilla who became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism, has told a newspaper that he moved freely through Switzerland in the 1970s under a “non-aggression pact” between the government and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

He felt so safe that he flew to Zurich rather than Vienna airport on his way to neighboring Austria for his most spectacular coup: the kidnapping of oil ministers at OPEC headquarters in 1975, he told the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) in a telephone interview from his prison in France.

His comments, published on Monday, seem sure to inflame a debate about whether Swiss authorities secretly agreed to turn a blind eye to PLO activity in the 1970s and give it diplomatic support in exchange for an end to attacks on Swiss targets.

The NZZ said it had made contact with the 66-year-old Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, through his lawyer. Ramirez is serving life sentences in France for a series of attacks.

He told the paper it had been common knowledge among PLO militants that they would not be arrested in Switzerland, on condition was that they refrained from making trouble. “Of course we stuck to that,” he said.

He recalled seeing a wanted poster with his picture on it in the guard’s booth as he stood in line for passport checks after flying into Zurich from Beirut on his way to Vienna, only to be waved through with his fake South American passport.

Ramirez sealed his notoriety by taking OPEC’s oil ministers hostage in the name of the Palestinian struggle, in an attack in which three people were killed, and went on to be an international gun-for-hire with Soviet bloc protectors.

But the revolutionary mystique he once enjoyed – helped by a Che Guevara beret, leather jacket and dark glasses – wore thin after he was captured in Khartoum in 1994 by French special forces.

Switzerland last month began looking into whether a former government minister, now dead, had struck a covert deal with the PLO.

The allegation emerged this year in a book by Swiss journalist Marcel Gyr, who conducted the NZZ interview. The book, “Swiss Terror Years”, has also raised questions about whether such a pact interfered with an investigation into the bombing of a Swissair plane in 1970 that killed 47 people, for which no one was ever charged.

*** Plausible? Seems so…..

 

Named “Ilich” as a paeon to Lenin (whose full name was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin) by his Marxist father, Ramirez was later known as Carlos the Jackal. His nickname came in part from the novel, The Day of the Jackal, a thriller once found by authorities among his belongings.

Background:

Born in 1949 in Caracas, Venezuela, where he was raised. He was also schooled in England, and attended university in Moscow. After his expulsion from the university in 1970, he joined the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a pan-Arab leftist group then based in Amman, Jordan.

Claim to Notoriety:

Ramirez’ most famous terrorist move was the takeover of OPEC headquarters in Vienna at a 1975 Conference, where he also took 11 members hostage. The hostages were eventually transported to Algiers and freed. Although later debunked, assumptions that Ramirez had a hand in killing two of the Israeli athletes taken hostage at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich added to his reputation as a ruthless and effective terrorist.

Indeed, many of Ramirez’ feats had murky origins and unclear goals and sponsors—which also gave the self-proclaimed terrorist a mysterious glamour.

A 1994 review of David Yallop’s Tracking the Jackal: The Search for Carlos, the World’s Most Wanted Man suggests that the OPEC kidnappings may have been sponsored by Saddam Hussein, rather than by the PFLP, as has been suggested, or by Libyan leader Muammar Al Qaddafi:

Although it has long been thought that the armed attack on a Vienna meeting of the oil cartel and the kidnapping of 11 of the oil ministers were conceived and paid for by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the book makes a persuasive case that behind it was actually Saddam Hussein, seeking an increase in the price of oil to finance his impending war with Iran.

Mr. Hussein intended Carlos to use the kidnapping as a pretext to assassinate the Saudi opponents of a price rise, Mr. Yallop says, but the unreliable Carlos sold out his employer, as he so often did, and instead took a $20 million ransom from the Saudi Government (the hostages were in fact released).

Where He Is Now:

The Jackal was arrested by the French in 1994, in Sudan where he was living. He was convicted for several murders in 1997 and as of 2006 is still in prison.

Cross-Links:

Ramirez has expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden from prison, and more broadly for Revolutionary Islam, which is the title of a 2003 book he published from prison. In it, the jailed terrorist showed shades of his lifelong affiliation with leftist secular groups whose vision of conflict is shaped by class differences describing Islam as the sole “transnational force capable of standing up the ‘enslavement of nations.”

Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Scam

Thank you Michelle, I hope those dedicated researchers that did all that grand work on Obama, too late in the game, don’t do it a second time….

Malkin: Ugh: Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Green Card Racket

By: Michelle Malkin

CR: Whelp. It appears that one of Donald Trump’s projects helped make America great… by soliciting an estimated $50 million from Chinese investors using the fraud-riddled EB-5 green card program for politically connected cronies.

This is the same racket exploited by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lobbied for by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas, and embraced by South Dakota Republican officials. It’s a scam I’ve reported on for years.

Bloomberg News has the new story on how EB-5 funded a Trump-branded tower in New Jersey. In a nutshell:

Trump Bay Street is a 50-story luxury rental apartment building being built by Kushner Companies, whose chief executive officer, Jared Kushner, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It will have an outdoor pool, indoor golf simulator and sweeping views of Lower Manhattan; it adjoins an existing high rise condo, Trump Plaza Residence. The firm that was hired to seek investors, US Immigration Fund, is run by Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, who announced a partnership last year with a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida.

The visa program is known as EB-5. In exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a project promising to create jobs, foreigners receive a two-year visa with a good chance of obtaining permanent residency for them and their families. In 2014, the most recent year for which records are available, the U.S. issued 10,692 of these visas — 85% to people from China.

The Jersey City project has raised $50 million, about a quarter of its funding, from loans obtained through EB-5, according to a slide presentation by US Immigration Fund. Mark Giresi, general counsel of US Immigration Fund, said he believed nearly all of the EB-5 investors in the Trump project were from China.

A Trump spokesperson said the presidential candidate was not a partner in the financing deal. A Kushner flack told Bloomberg News the project was “entirely legal and creating jobs.”

But in my longtime investigations and in Sold Out, my book with John Miano, the evidence is clear: EB-5’s job creation claims are as phony and manufactured as fuzzy porkulus math, H-1B lobbyists’ math, and corporate welfare/economic development subsidies math.

Since 2001, I’ve warned about the systemic and bipartisan corruption of America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The program puts America up for sale to the most politically connected bidders.

Created under an obscure section of the expansionist Immigration Act of 1990, EB-5 promised bountiful economic development for the U.S. in exchange for granting permanent residency (and eventual American citizenship) to foreign investors. The law allows 10,000 alien entrepreneurs a year to obtain green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses, and their children can receive “conditional permanent resident” status for two years and a gateway to permanent U.S. citizenship.

Originally, the law required individual investments in commercial enterprises to directly generate at least 10 new full-time jobs. Investors were expected to manage the businesses themselves and dedicate some of the newly-created jobs to exports. Failure would mean loss of their money and their business. In 1992, Congress created the “Immigrant Investor Pilot Program” and established government-approved EB-5 “regional centers” — specially selected business groups and corporate entities designated to administer EB-5 investments and oversee a much more relaxed definition of job creation.

The idea was to pool investor funds in a defined industry and targeted region to promote economic growth. Under this loan model, the regional center would recruit and collect funding from a group of foreign investors, then turn around and lend the money to selected projects at a low interest rate. The project would then pay off the loan over an agreed period of time. In targeted areas of high unemployment, the threshold for investment was lowered.

There are currently 614 such regional centers approved by the feds. Participation in the program has risen from 5,748 visa winners in 2008 to 22,444 in 2014. EB-5 participants in these joint ventures can fulfill job-creation requirements if they “create or preserve” either direct jobs or “indirect” jobs shown to be “created collaterally or as a result of capital invested in a commercial enterprise affiliated with a regional center by an EB-5 investor.” The five-year “pilot program,” which has been reauthorized routinely since its inception, was extended last year until September 2016.

As John and I reported, early EB-5 boosters used various theoretical multipliers to hype the program’s benefits, predicting that “4 million millionaire investors along with family members, would sign up, bringing in $4 billion in new investments and creating 40,000 jobs [annually].” In 2011, President Obama’s Council on Job Competitiveness regurgitated the same, old figures in its call to “radically expand” the program:

If the EB-5 program reaches maximum capacity, it could result annually in the creation of approximately 4,000 new businesses, $2 billion to $4 billion of foreign investment capital, and create 40,000 jobs.

But in practice, like so many of the Beltway’s immigration programs, EB-5’s ever-evolving regulations are Byzantine and arbitrary. Fraud and abuse are rampant. Unsurprisingly, the purported economic benefits of EB-5 are woefully dubious. One sensible journalist, Charles Lane, put the EB-5 promoters’ claims in proper perspective:

“Sounds impressive,” he explained, “until you realize that foreign investment in the United States totals $2.5 trillion and that the program’s fuzzy job-creation count includes jobs ‘indirectly’ attributable to the investment. EB-5 would be dubious policy even if it could claim five times that impact. Simply put, it is corporate welfare — yet another attempt to subsidize the flow of capital into politically favored channels.”

Center for Immigration Studies analyst David North adds that “foreign investment comes to the United States routinely, in large volume, with minuscule help from EB-5.” In 2010, he observed, total foreign investment in the United States increased by $1.9 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Based on the investors’ green card applications filed two years after the first investment, North estimated that “EB-5 investment that year was about $191 million, and that was a well above-average year for the program. So, for every $100 of increased foreign investment that year, the EB-5 program contributed about one penny [emphasis added].”

Beltway cronyism was embedded in EB-5’s DNA from the get-go. The original Democratic House sponsor and his spokesman went on to establish for-profit companies that marketed the program and provided consulting services. Former federal immigration officials from the George H.W. Bush administration formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access and EB-5 expertise.

Key supporters of the original immigrant investor visa program included Democrat Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Paul Simon, D-Ill. Big Government Republicans embraced it, too. Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s uncle, was on the board of American Immigration Services, one of the leading EB-5 visa vendors. So was former President Bush’s Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, Gene McNeary. GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell worked closely with the woman who was instrumental in drafting the EB-5 law: Maria Hsia.

That final name should ring a bell. Hsia was a Simon and McConnell donor identified by the House Governmental Affairs Committee as “an agent of the Chinese government.” In 2000, she was found guilty by a federal jury of laundering more than $100,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee through the infamous Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California. At the time, Funny Money Honey Hsia was working for McConnell and others on the 1990 immigration bill, she also worked for a campaign fund-raising group called the Pacific Leadership Council. Hsia co-founded the PLC with Lippo Bank officials John Huang and James Riady, the chief figures in the Clinton-Gore Donorgate scandal convicted of campaign-finance crimes. At least six Lippo Bank officials reportedly benefited from the EB-5 law. Hsia partnered with former Democratic Rep. Bruce A. Morrison of Connecticut, an immigration lawyer, author of the 1990 Immigration Act in the House, and main sponsor of EB-5. After leaving Congress to run (unsuccessfully) for governor in Connecticut, Morrison formed a business to market the investor visa program.

An entire side industry of economic book-cookers has arisen to supply analyses of the “job creation” benefits of EB-5 projects and to gerrymander Census employment data to fit the program’s definition of “targeted employment areas” in order to qualify for lower investment thresholds (as was done in New York City’s Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park EB-5 deal).

Think Solyndra and federal stimulus math on steroids.

How does Trump respond to the debunking of the bogus job-creation math upon which the entire cash-for-citizenship swindle rests? Have any other Trump projects been subsidized by EB-5 China money? Where are the other GOP candidates on the issue and will they join Capitol Hill calls to kill the program?

If the RNC-organized, corporate media-controlled GOP debates weren’t such clown shows, maybe American voters could get some answers.

 

 

 

Nancy Reagan and Gorbachev

 

Nancy has found her way back to Ronnie, to be reunited again. Sadly for America, we lost a lady, a lady full of grace, inspiration, loyalty and inspiration. Nancy it has been told was a real true partner in marriage and for sure in politics. It has been said since her death that she actually planted the seed with Ronnie to reach out to Mikhail Gorbachev to nurture a relationship and to eventually tear down the wall.

 

So it is fitting the Gorbachev files be presented here on this website. History is important to know such that the successes and high points are repeated while the failures are learning moments.

Blessings to you Nancy, welcome home.

The Gorbachev File

British and CIA Assessments, Presidential Letters and Summit Conversations Illuminate Perestroika and the End of the Cold War

First and Last President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev Turns 85 Today

 

Washington, D.C., March 2, 2016 – Marking the 85th birthday of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org) today posted a series of previously classified British and American documents containing Western assessments of Gorbachev starting before he took office in March 1985, and continuing through the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The documents show that conservative British politicians were ahead of the curve predicting great things for rising Soviet star Gorbachev in 1984 and 1985, but the CIA soon caught on, describing the new Soviet leader only three months into his tenure as “the new broom,” while Ronald Reagan greeted Gorbachev’s ascension with an immediate invitation for a summit. The documents posted today include positive early assessments by Margaret Thatcher and MP John Browne, CIA intelligence reports that bookend Gorbachev’s tenure from 1985 to 1991, the first letters exchanged by Reagan and Gorbachev, the American versions of key conversations with Gorbachev at the Geneva, Reykjavik and Malta summits, German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s credit to Gorbachev in 1989 for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, and the U.S. transcript of the G-7 summit in 1990 that turned down Gorbachev’s request for financial aid.

The Archive gathered the Gorbachev documentation for two books, the Link-Kuehl-Award-winning “Masterpieces of History”: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe 1989 (Central European University Press, 2010), and the forthcoming Last Superpower Summits: Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush (CEU Press, 2016). The sources include the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, and Freedom of Information and Mandatory Declassification Review requests to the CIA and the State Department.

Leading today’s Gorbachev briefing book is British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “discovery” of Gorbachev in December 1984 during his trip to Britain as head of a Soviet parliamentary delegation. In contrast to his elderly and infirm predecessors who slowly read dry notes prepared for them, Gorbachev launched into animated free discussion and left an indelible impression on Lady Thatcher. The Prime Minister, charmed by the Soviet leader, quickly shared her impressions with her closest ally and friend, Ronald Reagan. She commented famously, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.”


Alexander Yakovlev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Eduard Shevardnadze walking in the Kremlin, 1989 (personal archive of Anatoly Chernyaev)

Soon after Gorbachev became the Soviet General Secretary, a Conservative member of the British parliament, John Browne, who observed Gorbachev during his visit to Britain and then followed information on Gorbachev’s every early step, compared him to “Kennedy in the Kremlin” in terms of his charisma. By June 1985, the CIA told senior U.S. officials in a classified assessment that Gorbachev was “the new broom” that was attempting to clean up the years of debris that accumulated in the Soviet Union during the era of stagnation.

But Reagan had to see for himself. For four years before Gorbachev, as the American president complained in his diary, he had been trying to meet with a Soviet leader face to face, but “they keep dying on me.” In his first letter to Gorbachev, which Vice President George H.W. Bush carried to Moscow for the funeral of Gorbachev’s predecessor, Reagan invited Gorbachev to meet. Gorbachev and Reagan became pen-pals who wrote long letters – sometimes personally dictated, even handwritten – explaining their positions on arms control, strategic defenses, and the need for nuclear abolition.

Their first meeting took place in Geneva in November 1985, where in an informal atmosphere of “fireside chats” they began realizing that the other was not a warmonger but a human being with a very similar dream—to rid the world of nuclear weapons. That dream came very close to a breakthrough during Gorbachev and Reagan’s summit in Reykjavik; but Reagan’s stubborn insistence on SDI and Gorbachev’s stubborn unwillingness to take Reagan at his word on technology sharing prevented them from reaching their common goal.

Through a series of unprecedented superpower summits, Gorbachev made Reagan and Bush understand that the Soviet leader was serious about transforming his country not to threaten others, but to help its own citizens live fuller and happier lives, and to be fully integrated into the “family of nations.” Gorbachev also learned from his foreign counterparts, establishing a kind of peer group with France’s Mitterrand, Germany’s Kohl, Britain’s Thatcher, and Spain’s Gonzalez, which developed his reformist positions further and further. By the time George H.W. Bush as president finally met Gorbachev in Malta, the Soviet Union was having free elections, freedom of speech was blossoming, velvet revolutions had brought reformers to power in Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall had fallen to cheers of citizens but severe anxieties in other world capitals.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wrote in his letter to Bush at the end of November 1989: “Regarding the reform process in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the CSSR [Czechoslovakia], and not least the GDR [East Germany], we have General Secretary Gorbachev’s policies to thank. His perestroika has let loose, made easier, or accelerated these reforms. He pushed governments unwilling to make reforms toward openness and toward acceptance of the people’s wishes; and he accepted developments that in some instances far surpassed the Soviet Union’s own standards.”

In 1989, the dream of what Gorbachev called “the common European home” was in the air and Gorbachev was the most popular politician in the world. When he was faced with discontent and opposition in his country, he refused to use force, like his Chinese neighbors did at Tiananmen Square. And yet, the West consistently applied harsher standards to Gorbachev’s Soviet Union than to China, resulting in feet dragging on financial aid, credits, and trade. As Francois Mitterrand pointed out during the G-7 summit in Houston in 1990: “the argument put forth for helping China is just the reverse when we are dealing with the USSR. We are too timid […] regarding aid to the USSR. […].”

What Gorbachev started in March 1985 made his country and the world better. In cooperation with Reagan and Bush, he ended the Cold War, pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, helped resolve local conflicts around the globe, and gave Russia the hope and the opportunity to develop as a normal democratic country. As with many great reformers, he did not achieve everything he was striving for – he certainly never intended for the Soviet Union to collapse – but his glasnost, his non-violence, and his “new thinking” for an interdependent world created a legacy that few statesmen or women can match. Happy birthday, Mikhail Sergeyevich!

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Memorandum of Conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher. December 16, 1984, Chequers.

This face-to-face encounter between British Prime Minister and the leader of a Soviet parliamentary delegation produced a conversation that both Thatcher and Gorbachev would refer to many times in the future. Gorbachev engaged Thatcher on all the issues that she raised, did not duck hard questions, but did not appear combative. He spoke about the low point then evident in East-West relations and the need to stop the arms race before it was too late. He especially expressed himself strongly against the Strategic Defense Initiative promoted by the Reagan administration. Soon after this conversation Thatcher flew to Washington to share her enthusiastic assessment with Gorbachev with Reagan and encourage him to engage the Soviet leader in trying to lower the East-West tensions. She told her friend and ally what she had told the BBC, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together” – and described him to Reagan as an “unusual Russian…. [m]uch less constrained, more charming,” and not defensive in the usual Soviet way about human rights.

Document 2: Letter from Reagan to Gorbachev. March 11, 1985

Vice President George H.W. Bush hand delivered this first letter from President Reagan to the new leader of the Soviet Union, after the state funeral for Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985 (“you die, I fly” as Bush memorably remarked about his job as the ceremonial U.S. mourner for world leaders). The letter contains two especially noteworthy passages, one inviting Mikhail Gorbachev to come to Washington for a summit, and the second expressing Reagan’s hope that arms control negotiations “provide us with a genuine chance to make progress toward our common ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.” Reagan is reaching for a pen-pal, just as he did as early as 1981, when he hand-wrote a heartfelt letter during his recovery from an assassination attempt, to then-General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev suggesting face-to-face meetings and referring to the existential danger of nuclear weapons – only to get a formalistic reply. Subsequent letters between Reagan and the whole series of Soviet leaders (“they keep dying on me,” Reagan complained) contain extensive language on many of the themes – such as the ultimate threat of nuclear annihilation – that would come up over and over again when Reagan finally found a partner on the Soviet side in Gorbachev. Even Chernenko had received a hand-written add-on by Reagan appreciating Soviet losses in World War II and crediting Moscow with a consequent aversion to war.

Document 3: Gorbachev Letter to Reagan, March 24, 1985

This lengthy first letter from the new Soviet General Secretary to the U.S. President displays Gorbachev’s characteristic verbal style with an emphasis on persuasion. The Soviet leader eagerly takes on the new mode of communication proposed by Reagan in his March 11 letter, and plunges into a voluminous and wide-ranging correspondence between the two leaders – often quite formal and stiff, occasionally very personal and expressive, and always designed for effect, such as when Reagan would laboriously copy out by hand his official texts. Here Gorbachev emphasizes the need to improve relations between the two countries on the basis of peaceful competition and respect for each other’s economic and social choices. He notes the responsibility of the two superpowers for world peace, and their common interest “not to let things come to the outbreak of nuclear war, which would inevitably have catastrophic consequences for both sides.” Underscoring the importance of building trust, the Soviet leader accepts Reagan’s invitation in the March 11 letter to visit at the highest level and proposes that such a visit should “not necessarily be concluded by signing some major documents.” Rather, “it should be a meeting to search for mutual understanding.”

Document 4: Reagan Letter to Gorbachev. April 30, 1985

Perhaps as a reflection of the internal debates in Washington (and even in Reagan’s own head), it would take more than a month for the administration to produce a detailed response to Gorbachev’s March 24 letter. The first two pages rehash the issues around the tragic killing of American Major Arthur Nicholson by a Soviet guard, before moving to the sore subject of Afghanistan. Reagan vows, “I am prepared to work with you to move the region toward peace, if you desire”; at the same time, U.S. and Saudi aid to the mujahedin fighting the Soviets was rapidly expanding. Reagan objects to Gorbachev’s unilateral April 7 announcement of a moratorium on deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, since the Soviet deployment was largely complete while NATO’s was still underway. The heart of the letter addresses Gorbachev’s objections to SDI, and Reagan mentions that he was struck by Gorbachev’s characterization of SDI as having “an offensive purpose for an attack on the Soviet Union. I can assure you that you are profoundly mistaken on this point.” Interestingly, the Reagan letter tries to reassure Gorbachev by citing the necessity of “some years of further research” and “further years” before deployment (Reagan could not have suspected decades rather than years). This back-and-forth on SDI would be a constant in the two leaders’ correspondence and conversations at the summits to come, but the consistency of Reagan’s position on this (in contrast to that of Pentagon advocates of “space dominance”), not only to Gorbachev but to Thatcher and to his own staff, suggests some room for Gorbachev to take up the President on his assurances – which never happened.

Document 5: “Mr. Gorbachev—a Kennedy in the Kremlin?” By John Browne (Member of Parliament from Winchester, England). Impressions of the Man, His Style and his Likely Impact Upon East West Relations. May 20, 1985.

British MP John Browne, member of the Conservative party, was part of the Receiving Committee for Gorbachev’s visit to London in December 1984 and spend considerable time with him during his trips (including to the Lenin museum). This long essay, sent to President Reagan, and summarized for him by his National Security Adviser, describes Gorbachev as an unusual Soviet politician—“intelligent, alert and inquisitive.” Browne notes “that Gorbachev’s charisma was so striking that, if permitted by the Communist Party system, Mr. and Mrs. Gorbachev could well become the Soviet equivalent of the Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy team.” On the basis of his observations in 1984 and after Gorbachev was elected General Secretary, Browne concludes that politicians of Western democracies are likely to face an increasingly sophisticated political challenge from Mr. Gorbachev both at home and abroad.

Document 6: CIA Intelligence Assessment, “Gorbachev – The New Broom”

This eloquent report from the key analytical office at the CIA impressively captures the Andropovian rhetoric and energy of Gorbachev’s first 100 days (March 11, 1985 to June), but mistakenly argues that the “new broom” will only apply to domestic and economic affairs, and thus misses the way in which the same process might come home to change Soviet foreign policy. The analysis positions Gorbachev as a “tough” hard-liner who would play “hard to get” on a summit with Reagan. Of course, some key indicators at the time support this analysis, such as the Soviet “surge” in Afghanistan that had started in 1984 and continued in Gorbachev’s first year. But within a week of this paper, Gorbachev would kick upstairs the venerable Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, to the increasingly ceremonial role as chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (what the CIA mistakenly calls the “Presidency” – it was not actually equivalent to the American position). The whole section of this CIA paper speculating that timing of a summit is tied up in Soviet leadership politics is redacted by CIA. But later the paper does say “an early move by Moscow to arrange a summit cannot be ruled out”; and points to declining Gromyko influence. Ironically, the U.S. side agrees to Geneva as the location for a November summit on July 1, the same day that Gromyko finds out at the Soviet Politburo meeting that he won’t be succeeded at the Foreign Ministry by his chosen deputy, Giorgy Kornienko, but by Gorbachev’s surprise choice, the Georgian party secretary Eduard Shevardnadze, a foreign policy rookie. So this CIA analysis is twice wrong, first that it would be a “setback” for Gorbachev if he does not become the “President,” and second, that Gorbachev’s focus is on economics and domestic policy, not foreign, exactly at the moment that Gorbachev takes control of Soviet foreign policy.

Document 7: Letter from Gorbachev to Reagan. June 10, 1985

In this long and wide-ranging response to Reagan’s letter of April 30, the Soviet leader makes a real push for improvement of relations on numerous issues. The date June 10 is significant because on this day in Washington Reagan finally took the action (deactivating a Poseidon submarine) necessary to keep the U.S. in compliance with the unratified (but observed by both sides) SALT II treaty. Here Gorbachev raises the issue of equality and reciprocity in U.S.-Soviet relations, noting that it is the Soviet Union that is “surrounded by American military bases stuffed also by nuclear weapons, rather than the U.S. – by Soviet bases.” He suggests that all previous important treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union were possible on the assumption of parity, and that Reagan’s recent focus on SDI threatens to destabilize the strategic balance – yet again demonstrating Gorbachev’s deep apprehension about Reagan’s position on strategic defenses. The Soviet leader believes that the development of ABM systems would lead to a radical destabilization of the situation and the militarization of space. At the heart of the Soviet visceral rejection of SDI is the image of “attack space weapons capable of performing purely offensive missions.” Gorbachev proposes energizing negotiations on conventional weapons in Europe, chemical weapons, the nuclear test ban, and regional issues, especially Afghanistan. He calls for a moratorium on nuclear tests “as soon as possible” – the Soviets would end up doing this unilaterally, never understanding that the issue is a non-starter in Reagan’s eyes. Here, the Soviet leader also welcomes horizontal exchanges between government ministers and even members of legislatures. However, Gorbachev’s position on human rights remains quite rigid—“we do not intend and will not conduct any negotiations relating to human rights in the Soviet Union.” That would change.

Document 8: Dinner Hosted by the Gorbachevs in Geneva. November 19, 1985.

In their first face-to-face meeting at Geneva, which both of them anticipated eagerly, Reagan and Gorbachev both spoke about the mistrust and suspicions of the past and of the need to begin a new stage in U.S.-Soviet relations. Gorbachev described his view of the international situation to Reagan, stressing the need to end the arms race. Reagan expressed his concern with Soviet activity in the third world–helping the socialist revolutions in the developing countries. They both spoke about their aversion to nuclear weapons. During this first dinner of the Geneva summit, Gorbachev used a quote from the Bible that there was a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones which have been cast in the past to indicate that now the President and he should move to resolve their practical disagreements in the last day of meetings remaining. In response, Reagan remarked that “if the people of the world were to find out that there was some alien life form that was going to attack the Earth approaching on Halley’s Comet, then that knowledge would unite all peoples of the world.” The aliens had landed, in Reagan’s view, in the form of nuclear weapons; and Gorbachev would remember this phrase, quoting it directly in his famous “new thinking” speech at the 27th Party Congress in February 1986.

Document 9: Last Session of the Reykjavik Summit. October 12, 1986.

The last session at Reykjavik is the one that inspires Gorbachev’s comment in his memoirs about “Shakespearean passions.” The transcript shows lots of confusion between just proposals on reducing ballistic missiles versus those reducing all nuclear weapons, but finally Reagan says, as he always wanted, nuclear abolition. “We can do that. Let’s eliminate them,” says Gorbachev, and Secretary of State George Shultz reinforces, “Let’s do it.” But then they circle back around to SDI and the ABM Treaty issue, and Gorbachev insists on the word “laboratory” as in testing confined there, and Reagan, already hostile to the ABM Treaty, keeps seeing that as giving up SDI. Gorbachev says he cannot go back to Moscow to say he let testing go on outside the lab, which could lead to a functioning system in the future. The transcript shows Reagan asking Gorbachev for agreement as a personal favor, and Gorbachev saying well if that was about agriculture, maybe, but this is fundamental national security. Finally at around 6:30 p.m. Reagan closes his briefing book and stands up. The American and the Russian transcripts differ on the last words, the Russian version has more detail [see the forthcoming book, Last Superpower Summits], but the sense is the same. Their faces reflect the disappointment, Gorbachev had helped Reagan to say nyet, but Gorbachev probably lost more from the failure.

Document 10: Letter to Reagan from Thatcher About Her Meetings with Gorbachev in Moscow. April 1, 1987

Again, Margaret Thatcher informs her ally Reagan about her conversations with Gorbachev. The cover note from National Security Advisor Carlucci (prepared by NSC staffer Fritz Ermarth) states that “she has been greatly impressed by Gorbachev personally.” Thatcher describes Gorbachev as “fully in charge,” “determined to press ahead with his internal reform,” and “talk[ing] about his aims with almost messianic fervor.” She believes in the seriousness of his reformist thinking and wants to support him. However, they differ on one most crucial issue, which actually unites Gorbachev and Reagan—nuclear abolition. Thatcher writes, “[h]is aim is patently the denuclearization of Europe. I left him with no doubt that I would never accept that.”

Document 11: Letter to Bush from Chancellor Helmut Kohl. November 28, 1989.

This remarkable letter arrives at the White House at the very moment when Kohl is presenting his “10 points” speech to the Bundestag about future German unification, much to the surprise of the White House, the Kremlin, and even Kohl’s own coalition partners in Germany (such as his foreign minister). Here, just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German leader encourages Bush to engage with Gorbachev across the board and to contribute to peaceful change in Europe. Kohl points that Gorbachev “wants to continue his policies resolutely, consistently and dynamically, but is meeting internal resistance and is dependent on external support.” He hopes Bush’s upcoming meeting with Gorbachev in Malta will “give strong stimulus to the arms control negotiations.” Kohl also reminds Bush that “regarding the reform process in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the CSSR [Czechoslovakia], and not least the GDR [East Germany], we have General Secretary Gorbachev’s policies to thank. His perestroika has let loose, made easier, or accelerated these reforms. He pushed governments unwilling to make reforms toward openness and toward acceptance of the people’s wishes; and he accepted developments that in some instances far surpassed the Soviet Union’s own standards.”

Document 12: Malta First Expanded Bilateral with George Bush. December 2, 1989.

Being rocked by the waves on the Soviet ship Maxim Gorky, President Bush greets his Russian counterpart for the first time as President. A lot has changed in the world since they last saw each other on Governor’s Island in December 1988—elections had been held in the Soviet Union and in Poland, where a non-communist government came to power, and the Iron Curtain fell together with the Berlin Wall. After Bush’s initial presentation from notes, Gorbachev remarks almost bemusedly that now he sees the American administration has made up its mind (finally) what to do, and that includes “specific steps” or at least “plans for such steps” to support perestroika, not to doubt it. Gorbachev compliments Bush for not sharing the old Cold War thinking that “The only thing the U.S. needs to do is to keep its baskets ready to gather the fruit” from the changes in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Bush responds, “I have been called cautious or timid. I am cautious, but not timid. But I have conducted myself in ways not to complicate your life. That’s why I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall.” Gorbachev says, “Yes, we have seen that, and appreciate that.” The Soviet leader goes on to welcome Bush’s economic and trade points as a “signal of a new U.S. policy” that U.S. business was waiting for. Gorbachev responds positively to each of Bush’s overtures on arms control, chemical weapons, conventional forces, next summits and so forth, but pushes back on Bush’s Cuba and Central America obsessions.

Document 13: First Main Plenary of the G-7 Summit in Houston. July 10, 1990.

The bulk of discussion at this first session of the summit of the industrialized nations is devoted to the issue of how the club of the rich countries should react to the events unfolding in the Soviet Union and how much aid and investment could be directed to the support of perestroika. The summit is taking place at the time when Gorbachev is engaged in an increasingly desperate search for scenarios for radical economic reform, and fast political democratization, but he needs external financial support and integration into global financial institutions in order to succeed – or even to survive, as the events of August 1991 would show. Just before this 1990 G-7, Gorbachev wrote in a letter to George Bush that he needs “long-term credit assistance, attraction of foreign capital, transfer of managerial experience and personnel training” to create a competitive economy. Yet, the U.S. president throws only a bone or two, like “step up the pace of our negotiations with the Soviets on the Tsarist and Kerensky debts [!] to the U.S. government” (instead of forgiving or at least restructuring the debt), and “expand our existing technical cooperation.” Bush concludes his speech by stating flatly “It is impossible for the U.S. to loan money to the USSR at this time. I know, however, that others won’t agree.” The leaders who do not agree are Helmut Kohl (in the middle of providing billions of deutschmarks to the USSR to lubricate German unification) and Francois Mitterrand. The latter decries the double standards being applied to the Soviet Union and China, even after the Tiananmen massacre. Mitterrand criticizes the proposed political declaration of the G-7 as “timid” and “hesitant,” imposing “harsh political conditions as a preliminary to extending aid.” He believes the EC countries are in favor of contributing aid to the USSR but that other members, like the U.S. and Japan, have effectively vetoed such assistance.

Document 14: CIA Memorandum, The Gorbachev Succession. April 1991.

On April 10, 1991, the National Security Council staff asked the CIA for an analysis of the Gorbachev succession, who the main actors would be, and the likely scenarios.

The assessment opens quite drastically: “The Gorbachev era is effectively over.” The scenarios offered have an eerie resemblance to the actual coup that would come in August 1991. This might be the most prescient of all the CIA analyses of the perestroika years. The report finds that Gorbachev is likely to be replaced either by the reformers or the hard-liners, with the latter being more likely. The authors point out that “there is no love between Gorbachev and his current allies and they could well move to try to dump him.” They then list possible conspirators for such a move– Vice President Yanaev, KGB Chief Kryuchkov, and Defense Minister Yazov, among others, all of whom whom participate in the August coup. The report predicts that the “traditionalists” are likely to find a “legal veneer” for removing Gorbachev: “most likely they would present Gorbachev with an ultimatum to comply or face arrest or death.” If he agreed, Yanaev would step in as president, the conspirators would declare a state of emergency and install “some kind of a National Salvation Committee.” However, the memo concludes that “time is working against the traditionalists.” This turned out to be both prescient and correct – the August coup followed the process outlined in this document and the plot foundered because the security forces themselves were fractured and the democratic movements were gaining strength. But indeed, the coup, the resurgence of Boris Yeltsin as leader of the Russian republic, and the secession of Russia from the Soviet Union during the fall of 1991 did mark the end of the Gorbachev era.