How #Czechoslovakia spied on Donald and Ivana #Trump during the Cold War, seeking access to 'highest echelons of US power' - my exclusive report with @RESPEKT_CZ, featuring new archive docs and previously unknown secret agents theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o…
Here's news story on how Prague's StB intelligence service spied on #Trump - in secret operation that was stepped up in 1988, when Trump said he would run for US president. Trump visited Soviet #Moscow the previous year theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o… with @RESPEKT_CZ
One Czechoslovak secret agent who spied on #Trump was Jaroslav Jansa - codenamed JARDA. Jansa reported on a meeting in autumn 1989 in Trump Tower between Trump and a delegation of collective farm bosses from Ivana's home town theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o…
Most StB documents were destroyed after Cold War. Unclear how closely KGB monitored Czechoslovak spying on #Trump. The KGB had a large liaison office in Prague, as well as agents embedded inside StB. And it arranged Trump's 1987 visit to #Moscow theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o…
Jaroslav Jansa was reluctant to discuss his Cold War activities. Other former StB intelligence officers, however, confirmed that the first directorate in Prague which dealt with foreign #espionage took a close interest in Trump, esp. after 1987 when he spoke of presidential run
Jansa's other targets during the 1980s included the US agricultural attache in Vienna. Jansa made several trips to west Germany and Heidelberg. Handlers told him to look out for US military convoys and - if asked - to deny being a spy theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o…
StB spied on a range of contacts in capitalist world. One business card collected by agent JARDA belonged to Gary Geipel, a US graduate researcher working on #DDR: “It was a different world. It’s hard to imagine the level of mutual distrust that existed” theguardian.com/us-news/2018/o…
