Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, has been the president of “Palestine” since he was first elected in 2005. He was supposed to serve a four-year term, but somehow the 2009 election got postponed indefinitely, and he has been president of the Palestinian Authority ever since.
Ever since the death of the photogenic Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas has been the go-to guy for the international media whenever they need a nice white-haired gentleman in a suit to say the expected words about justice for the Palestinians and the misdeeds of the Israelis.
On Monday the unusual announcement was made that President Vladimir Putin had offered to broker talks between Abu Mazen and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow. The very next day the story broke that Mr. Abbas had been a KGB agent — not just an informant, but a full agent — back in the 1980s.
The timing of those two news stories seemed more than coincidental to a seasoned old paranoiac such as myself. However, it’s hard to figure out who is playing whom in this shadowy game, and why.
Many thanks to D@rLin|{ for translating this Israeli TV report, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Transcript:
| 00:00 | Good evening to you, and greetings We already knew quite a lot about Mahmoud Abbas, | |
| 00:04 | but today we are bringing you the scoop: Many years ago, when still young, he was a KGB agent. | |
| 00:09 | This fact comes from documents smuggled out of the former USSR, | |
| 00:13 | and according to them young Abbas served the Soviets in Damascus in the ’80s. | |
| 00:17 | Our correspondent is here with the details. | |
| 00:20 | Vasyli Mitrokhin, the KGB’s senior archive manager, | |
| 00:24 | who opposed the Russian regime, defected to the West. | |
| 00:30 | For ten years before he fled, he photographed and copied many documents, | |
| 00:36 | which he kept safe at his summer house. When he defected — first to a Baltic country, | |
| 00:39 | and from there to London — he took the documents with him. | |
| 00:43 | The documents contain names and clues about approximately 1,000 spies and other details. | |
| 00:48 | A few months ago this archive was opened to researchers. | |
| 00:52 | Among them were the Truman Research Center’s employees Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez. | |
| 00:56 | From the documents they received it is apparent that Mahmoud Abbas is named by the KGB as an agent. | |
| 01:02 | Not a collaborator or an informant — a KGB agent. | |
| 01:08 | Let’s see the reportage. | |
| 01:11 | In the video before you there is not just one KGB agent, but two. | |
| 01:15 | Not just Vladimir Putin, who was stationed in Dresden in the ’80s, | |
| 01:19 | but also Mahmoud Abbas — who was at the same time a KBG agent in Damascus. | |
| 01:25 | Dr. Isabella Ginor — According to the document you have here, | |
| 01:29 | Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was at some point in his life a KGB agent. | |
| 01:35 | Yes, in 1983 he is defined as such by KGB and his handle is “Krotov,” which is derived | |
| 01:45 | from the Russian word for mole. *”Krotov” — Mahmoud Abbas, born in 1935 in Palestine. | |
| 01:54 | Member of FATAH and the PLO in Damascus. KGB Agent* | |
| 02:00 | This is his description from an archive, gathered by a silent Russian dissident, | |
| 02:03 | who was a KGB archive manager — Vasyli Mitrokhin. | |
| 02:06 | This is the most important source of information we ever had on the scary organization, | |
| 02:09 | which spied all over the world. He defected to the West when the USSR disintegrated. | |
| 02:14 | Americans did not believe him, but the British understood what a treasure he brought over. | |
| 02:18 | Thanks to these documents, many hidden weapons caches | |
| 02:21 | were discovered all over the West, including Israel. | |
| 02:24 | These caches were there in case WW3 would ever broke out. | |
| 02:27 | Many spies were apprehended. What’s unclear is why Mahmoud Abbas’s name, | |
| 02:30 | not an unknown entity, emerged only now. | |
| 02:33 | Gideon Remez, researcher — The full Mitrokhin archive, | |
| 02:37 | all the records he kept, became public only last year. | |
| 02:42 | We ordered the full Middle East archive N24. | |
| 02:49 | Cambridge University was the one that sent the archive to us and we read it all, every line. | |
| 02:55 | A lot of it is about Soviet activity, mainly in the ’70s and ’80s, | |
| 02:58 | among the Palestinians in the Middle East. | |
| 03:01 | Wait a second, we are talking about the KGB — how authentic is this document? | |
| 03:05 | There’s a very high probability this is authentic. | |
| 03:08 | Of course we don’t know all the details. Mitrokhin copied the documents; | |
| 03:12 | it is possible he took only highlights from the KGB’s archive, | |
| 03:16 | and then he came to the West, to Britain, with these records. | |
| 03:20 | It is important to say that according to the documents, Abbas was KGB agent in 1983, | |
| 03:24 | but we don’t know if he was an agent before or after this date. | |
| 03:27 | It would be reasonable to assume that he was recruited while studying in Moscow in 1982, | |
| 03:31 | where he wrote his thesis about the Holocaust. As an interesting tidbit for the curious: | |
| 03:35 | Abbas, who is now pressing on our Prime Minister | |
| 03:38 | Benjamin Netanyahu to meet in Moscow of all places, served the KGB in Damascus | |
| 03:42 | at exactly at the same time as Nikolay Bogdanov, | |
| 03:46 | a Middle East expert, an Ambassador to Israel at one time, | |
| 03:49 | and now Putin’s special envoy to the Middle East. | |
| 03:53 | It is a coincidence, obviously, but still… | |
| 03:56 | There are trusted persons, there are collaborators, there are informants. | |
| 04:02 | Abu Mazen is defined as an agent. | |
| 04:08 | Dr. Isabella Ginor and Dr. Gideon Remez are doing research in the Truman Center | |
| 04:14 | into Russian-Middle East relations, specifically with Israel. | |
| 04:19 | Their first book was “Foxbats over Dimona” | |
| 04:25 | Now they are working hard on their second book about Russian-Israeli wars between 1967 and 1973. | |
| 04:30 | That’s why they ordered the Mitrokhin archive. | |
| 04:35 | The Mitrokhin archive is an inspiration for spies, researchers, movie and theater directors | |
| 04:38 | and producers. Lubyanka’s long-term moles were the basis for the TV series “Americans”. | |
| 04:47 | That raises an additional question — what about Russian moles in Israel? | |
| 04:51 | How many of them were flushed out? | |
| 04:55 | Professor Marcus Klingberg is the most famous one. In Mitrokhin’s documents | |
| 04:59 | there are clues, agents’ handles, information about the places where spies are working in Israel. | |
| 05:03 | Those who were fired, blackmailed or chose for the ideological reasons to spy for Kremlin. | |
| 05:08 | Some of them were discovered. Researchers, academics and the Mossad are working on finding the rest | |
| 05:14 | in order to assess the damage these spies may have caused and possibly are still causing. | |
| 05:21 | So we have an informational gold mine which still needs to be worked on? | |
| 05:29 | The intelligence officers have been working on it for years. | |
| 05:32 | I talked just now to one of the highest ranking Mossad officers. | |
| 05:35 | He told me that the Americans and the British had a disagreement over the authenticity of this archive | |
| 05:39 | years ago, but now it is an accepted fact that the archive is authentic. |
This is fascinating. Not just from the Israeli/Palestinian PoV, but in the sense that we may now guess that many similar situations exist worldwide.
The weird leftist/islamist affinity may date from Soviet machinations, for example.
The Soviet Union is gone, but the “soft” damage that it was causing hasn’t stopped.
I’m sure that Putin does his best to recuperate as many of these old networks for his own purposes, too.
A new documentary on the sad state of American internal security is coming out next week, produced by well known national security researcher/journalist Trevor Loudon. Information about it can be found at http://www.EnemiesWithinMovie.com. I mention it because one of its timely themes is about the interwoven relationships of the Soviets/KGB with the Arab and Moslem world since early last century, which definitely applies to Abbas and what is in the Mitrokhin papers.
It has manifested itself in the hidden role of the KGB in training, funding, and supporting the PLO and possibly the PFLP and PFLP-ML terrorist groups, both at the Patrice Lumumba University (and related sites) in Moscow since the 1960’s, and at Soviet bloc training camps in East Germany, Cuba, Romania, and other “fraternal” communist countries. Think of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, Japanese Red Army, and the first aircraft hijacker by Leila Khalid (PLO) and Patrick Arguello (Sandinista), as some well known examples of Communist/Moslem aerial/airport terrorism.
Both internal security specialists/agents and international security operatives are featured in this film and what they have to say on many issues will help back up what is written in this article as well as to show where our internal security defenses have been undermined by the White House and within the Dept. of Homeland Security, the FBI and even the Department of Defense.
There has been no limit to the willing self-blindness of some of America’s top security leaders, which led to 9/11 (If you saw the FRONTLINE documentary the other night about FBI Agent John O’Neill, their top man on Al Qaeda and how he was betrayed from within the FBI’s leadership from doing his job, then you know what I mean.
An off-the-cuff addition of the number of years of experience in both international affairs/security and internal security matter of those featured in the film runs into the hundreds of years, perhaps even a thousand or so, with each individual having, perhaps an average of 25 years to 40+ years experience, or more.
The Mitrokhin Archives and what was found in the Soviet COMINTERN archives (not necessary the KGB archives) are only a partial view into the century old communist efforts to penetrate, subvert, and destroy not only the Western democracies, but also the non-communist governments of the countries of every continent on earth.
There is much more to be found out about Soviet, Cuban, Red Chinese and former Soviet Block subversion of the West, and based on just some public documents I have been looking at, the “Extent of Subversion” by the communists is far greater and much more deeper that we ever thought, including inside the White House itself (think Harry Hopkins, Laughlin Currie, Alger Hiss and others yet uncovered).
As I like to say (hattip to Walt Disney), “Welcome to the Wonder World of Subversion”.
Max,
Thank you for the reference to the Frontline production on John O’Neill, “The Man Who Knew”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtVklkVOF-k
It was an extremely informative and enlightening video. In spite of its virtues, I noted that it never mentioned “Islam” at all, although it focused on al qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
You mention his betrayal at the upper levels of the FBI. He was undoubtedly betrayed, although it seemed a combination of FBI and State Department bureaucratic infighting. What is worse than evil is just plain blind stupidity and rigidity, and you can’t discount the possibility that what really sabotaged O’Neill was simply ossified bureaucrats at the FBI and the US ambassador to Yemen, Boudin.
I will make the one small quibble that Harry Hopkins was never shown directly to be a Soviet agent. Every decision he made directly benefited the USSR, even at the expense of the US, but no intelligence connection has ever been shown. You can look at Diana West’s Rebuttal to see the details.
https://smile.amazon.com/Rebuttal-Defending-American-Betrayal-Book-Burners-ebook/dp/B00FNVUJDO/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473616714&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=dianne+west+rebuttal
Yasser Arafat was recruited as a KGB agent before he left his home country of Egypt.
Assad in Syria and Putin, old KGB buddies?
The former head of the communist Romanian security service (branch plant of the KGB), Lieutenant-General Ion Mihai Pacepa in his book “Disinformation”, has revealed that Yassar Arafat, Abbas’s predecessor, was a full fledged KGB agent planted into Middle East politics. He noted in his book that Arafat, contrary to popular mythology was not even a Palestinian, but an Egyptian. Arafat’s PLO was created and run out of Moscow under the Soviet KGB.
According to General Pacepa, it was Moscow that decided to transform the Arafat and his PLO terrorist group into a “Palestinian government in waiting.” That Abbas was also a Soviet Russian agent is not at all surprising. It would be a wonder if he wasn’t. FATAH/PLO was a creature of the Soviet Union. The reference to Netanyahu being a KGB man smells of Soviet style disinformation to me. I’d want further corroboration.
Putin, the KGB general, now runs the Russian thug state with the assistance of his KGB cronies. The intel network survives.
“was not even a Palestinian, but an Egyptian.”
Actually the same is true of most who claim “Palestinian” ancestry.
There’s an amusing video of a interview with a Hamas leader on Egyptian TV (it’s on Jihadwatch archives) where he rants to the Egyptian about Egypt cutting off oil supplies, saying “Who are the Palestinians? We are Egyptians!”
America has chosen a “community organizer ” (twice), Russia has chosen a former intelligence officer. It is a novice checkers player against a master chess player, the results are obvious.
You’re assuming Obama wants to win the game.
Incidentally, did you catch his anemic, mechanical speech at the 9-11 ceremonies today? I’m sure he had more passion in his voice when he was apologizing for the US on his Middle East tour.