The big story CNN tried to float yesterday was that a highly placed spy in the entourage of Vladimir Putin was forced to be exfiltrated because senior CIA officials were deathly afraid that the source would be blown by President Trump while engaging in some unguarded moment (you know how he is, amirite?) or at the height of hyperbole (amirite?). The story made no sense in any way shape or form (see CNN Russian Spy Exfiltration Story Trips All the Bull**** Alarms On Two Continents) and today the New York Times effectively refuted the entire thesis of Sciutto’s NeverTrump fantasy (New York Times Says CNN’s Jim Sciutto’s Report Blaming Trump For The US Losing An Intel Source Is Pure Bunk).

Today, Fusion GPS’s mouthpiece who also works as an NBC correspondent, Ken Delanian, reports that this fearsome spy is living quite openly under his own name.

A former senior Russian official is living in the Washington area under U.S. government protection, current and former government officials tell NBC News. NBC News is withholding the man’s name and other key details at the request of U.S. officials, who say reporting the information could endanger his life. Yet the former Russian government official, who had a job with access to secrets, was living openly under his true name. An NBC News correspondent went to the man’s house in the Washington area and rang the doorbell. Five minutes later, two young men in an SUV came racing up the street and parked immediately adjacent to the correspondent’s car. The men, who identified themselves only as friends of the Russian, asked the correspondent what he was doing there. A former senior national security official said the men were likely U.S. government agents monitoring the Russian’s house.

In took me about five minutes to find the name of the Russian.

Oleg Smolenkov, a long-time Yuri Ushakov aide who left Russia in June 2017 and never returned, is rumored to be the CIA asset in today’s CNN report https://t.co/Gdxt8Od48O — п и г м а н о в и ч (@lincolnpigman) September 9, 2019

Russian newspaper Kommersant indicates US's highest level spy extracted from Russia 2017 may have been "Oleg Smolenkov", who worked for Yury Ushakov, a senior aide to Pres Putin

• Smolenkov was fired, vacationed in Montenegro, prior to turning up Virginiahttps://t.co/EzzUFxS0Eb — RBClouston (@rbclouston) September 10, 2019

The Russians are downplaying his importance and saying they don’t care where he is

Kremlin spox: In fact a low-level official named Oleg Smolenkov did work for Kremlin and was fired in 2016-17; I have no idea if he was a CIA agent; Kremlin not looking for him. https://t.co/9LhaJCAd0g — Lucian Kim (@Lucian_Kim) September 10, 2019

And they may be right. A couple with the same name as the alleged spy bought a house in Stafford County, Virginia, last year for $925,000.

Diplomatic list of Rus Embassy, Washington DC

Oleg Smolenkov listed as Second Secretary: https://t.co/OafckiuSl2 Oleg Smolenkov & Antonia Trustees property purchase: https://t.co/dDMTcoukCg All information publicly available. pic.twitter.com/LQ2KcPj1XC — Sam 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@SamScottish5) September 10, 2019

Kommersant reports that Oleg Smolenkov, who may have been the US spy extracted from Russia, bought this house in Stafford, Virginia in 2018 for about $925,000. pic.twitter.com/nyz6cDARDD — X Soviet (@XSovietNews) September 10, 2019

Given the extent to which Putin has shown himself willing to go to kill defectors and even critics abroad, keep in mind the use of nerve agent to kill Sergei Skripal, a GRU agent who had been recruited by British Intelligence, imprisoned, and swapped as part of an exchange of spies, one sort of has the right to ask why an agent who was as important as he’s portrayed by CNN and The New York Times and various other outlets was allowed to continue to use his own name. It sort of makes you think that there might be more to the story, no?

Russian writers are questioning his access to valuable intel. The real story is why the IC decided to out this "spy" to at this point in time. HT @blinova14 pic.twitter.com/GVUzUKm7E3 — Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 10, 2019

Here’s some food for thought

The silly extradition of the “spy” was a face-saving maneuver by U.S. intel operatives needing to pretend their bogus source was legit and by Kremlin disinformation operatives needing to pretend their guy wasn’t running a disinformation operation that snagged Brennan et. al. — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 10, 2019

The Russia hoaxsters are using the same playbook from last year when they outed Stefan Halper after Nunes started asking questions about him: 1) Claim the “spy” is in mortal danger, 2) blame the investigator for the “spy’s” peril, then 3) straight up out the endangered “spy.” — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 10, 2019

And the fact that the Russia hoaxsters are running the same media leak playbook against the exfiltrated “spy” as they ran against career dirty trickster Stefan Halper ought to tell you something about the potential relationship between those two individuals. — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 10, 2019

Perhaps the significance of the highlighted excerpt below is to get ahead of news that, as the NYT subtly downplays it, "inaccurate" information was relied on by Obama's intel chiefs to spin up the Russia hoax. https://t.co/DiV9DdEFOU — Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 10, 2019

Not airtight by any stretch of the imagination but it certainly doesn’t make any less sense than the stream of CIA leaks to the media on this guy that would have put the FSB at his doorstep in a matter of days if not hours, he resists exfiltration, and then when he’s exfiltrated he doesn’t go undercover and live in fear of a hit squad dispatched by Putin to make an example of what happens to traitors.

There is a helluva lot more to this than we’ve been told because refugees from Putin’s inner circle just don’t behave like this.

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