cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25921559
Link above goes to the Daily Kos post that discovered the scrubbing. Here’s the text of the original article:
Former Intelligence Officer Claims KGB Recruited Trump
Isabel Van Brugen – The Daily Beast – 21 February 2025
A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”
Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”
Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.”
He reiterated that the department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.
“I hope I’ll survive a third assassination attempt,” he said in a comment below his post.
He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates.”
Mussayev’s allegations, while unfounded, add to ongoing speculation about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump’s first visit to Moscow as a real estate developer in 1987 drew intense scrutiny and speculation that the trip was arranged by the KGB for dubious reasons.
According to Politico, in 1985, the KGB updated a secret personality questionnaire distributed among the agency, advising case officers what to look for in a successful recruitment operation.
The document instructed agents to target “prominent figures in the West” with the goal of drawing them “into some form of collaboration with us… as an agent, or confidential or special or unofficial contact.”
Trump has denied any improper ties to Moscow or collusion with President Vladimir Putin.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment.
U.S. officials have also expressed concerns about Trump’s relationship with Putin.
Anthony Scaramucci who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, said during an episode of “The Rest Is Politics: US” podcast with co-host Katty Kay on Friday that he thinks there is a mysterious “hold” on the president.
Scaramucci did not elaborate on what he believes that “hold” might be, adding only: “I don’t know why it’s like this. [H.R.] McMaster couldn’t figure it out, [James] Mattis couldn’t figure it out, [John] Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”
Are VPNs still good at getting around government restrictions of blocking sites? Only a matter of time now…
There are only a few VPNs that actually don’t keep logs and thus can’t be subpoenaed by governments for info.
All the popular ones you commonly see advertised or written about in ‘best of’ type reviews… they’ll protect you from a man in the middle attack (which almost no one does or falls victim to), and allow you to bypass region restrictions… but all a government has to do is say nope, thats illegal now, as is already the case in many more restrictive countries.
Oh, you’re paying for your VPN with your debit card? Credit card? Oh cool, now we know which VPN company to get your data from.
This is one of the few legit use cases for crypto, monero anyway (all the others can be de-anonymized fairly easily by someone who knows how), paying covertly for a VPN.
Mullvad is probably the best actually safe VPN to use.
I might also suggeat you look into I2P, which functionally turns all your internet traffic into an anonymized, decentralized shared torrent protocol.
Its quite slow compared to high powered VPNs, but basically, because everyone in the system is their only little miniature routing hub for everyone else, and everyones data is mixed together in shared, but partitioned and encrypted packets, its quite hard to definitively nail down exactly what any particular user is doing.
https://i2pd.website/
It is a bit more conplicated to set up, in general, than most modern VPNs which usually just have an app that ‘just works’.
The technology of VPN works great for circumventing censorship. VPN can be blocked, but it’s a game of whack a mole between the state and private actors. The main vulnerability in hosted VPN is that the provider has the ability to sell you out if law enforcement comes knocking. Picking a trusted provider is key. Alternatively, there’s TOR but that isn’t perfect either, as anyone may participate in the network.
I use Mullvad which isn’t based in the US. They claim no logs and that nothing is retained. It’s about $5.75 a month, pretty good for what you get
NordVPN is based in Panama (and its parent company is a Lithuanian), also claims no logs, and often has very cheap deals. People get irritated with their adverts but the service itself seems good. Of course, you can’t know for sure who is trustworthy but Nord looks OK.
Though if Trump invades Panama it might be time to look for another VPN provider.