Putin’s prime minister is the right man to build a Xi Jinping-style techno-regime

by J Michael Waller / Center for Security Policy / January 21, 2020 Russia’s new prime minister is the ideal man to replicate China’s high-tech police state to keep Vladimir Putin in power for life. In purging his government, President Vladimir Putin has promoted Mikhail Mishustin as chief of government. Widely portrayed as a hockey … Read more

Operation Ghost Stories: How the FBI tracked Russian spies who targeted Hillary Clinton

by J Michael Waller / The Daily Caller / October 20, 2017 “New FBI information about corruption in a Clinton-approved uranium deal with Russia raises questions about Clinton’s actions after the FBI broke up a deep-cover Russian spy ring in 2010,” Dr Waller writes in a hard-hitting Daily Caller article that went viral through the … Read more

WikiLeaks game can turn Kremlin fortress into glass house

by J Michael Waller / Forbes / August 16, 2016. For the first time since the 1950s, Russian subversion of the American political process has become a presidential campaign issue. The Kremlin’s latest act of espionage-driven propaganda–document dump of Democratic National Committee emails via WikiLeaks–achieved its desired effect of immediate politicization. We should step back to learn two … Read more

Die-hard KGB men still plant forged documents to pollute our thinking

by J Michael Waller / Forbes / September 3, 2014. “A once-feared KGB general now sits on suicide watch in a Vienna jail, a tawdry end to terrible tale. His strange story is a case study of how the former KGB uses forged documents to influence Western reporters, diplomats and politicians.” That’s the lead of my piece in Forbes, … Read more

Against all odds: Why Putin is winning

Russia is using a not-so-secret weapon that has flipped Western notions of strength and weakness on their head. If trends continue, the U.S. could be faced with the terrible choice of losing its credibility as a conventional ally and a strategic nuclear power or overreacting in order to prevent such a loss. Kremlin strongman Vladimir … Read more

Celebrating 96 years of gangster government in Russia

by J Michael Waller / Investor’s Business Daily / December 21-23, 2013. The bloody birth of the most murderous secret police in history occurred 96 years ago and is being celebrated across Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Always feared, the KGB is now revered. “In the past, the services worked for the Communist Party and the party … Read more

Did Russian spies unwittingly kill arms control treaty?

by J. Michael Waller / Debut on BigPeace.com’s first week – An elaborately planned strategic influence effort went awry for the former KGB last month when the FBI busted 11 Russian agents after a decade-long investigation. Many of the Russian spies, who had spent years assuming American and other western identities, were emplaced to influence … Read more

International terrorism: The Communist connection revisited

By J. Michael Waller, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 2002. Twenty-five years ago, Stefan Possony posited the then-radical thesis that the Soviet Union was behind much of the world’s growing terrorist problem, and that otherwise independent terrorist organizations operated in international networks. Possony’s book, International Terrorism: The Communist Connection, published in 1978,[1] blazed a trail that other scholars, journalists, … Read more

Portrait of Putin’s past

by J Michael Waller, Perspective (Boston University), Vol. X, No. 3, February 25, 2000. Why is so little known about the KGB career of Russia’s acting President Vladimir Putin? Most reporting on both sides of the Atlantic is thinly sourced, if sourced at all, and often conflicting. Was Putin a professional foreign intelligence cadre officer whose … Read more