U.S. spies paid, then shied from deal with Russian

BERLIN — A shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Donald Trump, intelligence officials said.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to U.S. officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the NSA, and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several U.S. intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed that the information would link the president and his associates to Russia.

Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

The U.S. intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the U.S. government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.

Trump responded to the report Saturday in a tweet: “According to the [New York Times], a Russian sold phony secrets on ‘Trump’ to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is all now starting to come out - DRAIN THE SWAMP!”

The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the negotiations with the Russian seller. The NSA, which produced the bulk of the hacking tools that the Americans sought to recover, said only that “all NSA employees have a lifetime obligation to protect classified information.”

The negotiations in Europe last year were described by U.S. and European intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a clandestine operation, and the Russian. The U.S. officials worked through an intermediary — an American businessman based in Germany — to preserve deniability. The NSA even used its official Twitter account to send coded messages to the Russian nearly a dozen times. The episode ended with U.S. spies chasing the Russian out of Western Europe, warning him not to return if he valued his freedom, the American businessman said. The Trump material was left with the American, who has secured it in Europe.

The Russian claimed to have access to a staggering collection of secrets that included everything from the computer code for the cyberweapons stolen from the NSA and CIA to what he said was a video of Trump consorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, according to U.S. and European officials and the Russian, who agreed to be interviewed in Germany on the condition of anonymity. There remains no evidence that such a video exists.

The Russian was known to U.S. and European officials for his ties to Russian intelligence and cybercriminals — two groups suspected in the theft of the NSA and CIA hacking tools.

But his apparent eagerness to sell the Trump “kompromat” — a Russian term for information used to gain leverage over someone — to U.S. spies raised suspicions among officials that he was part of an operation to feed the information into U.S. intelligence agencies and pit them against Trump.

Early in the negotiations, for instance, he dropped his asking price from about $10 million to just over $1 million. Then, a few months later, he showed the American businessman a 15-second clip of a video showing a man in a room talking to two women.

No audio could be heard on the video, and there was no way to verify if the man was Trump, as the Russian claimed. But the choice of venue for showing the clip heightened U.S. suspicions of a Russian operation: The viewing took place at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, the businessman said.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia’s spy services see the deep political divisions in the United States as a fresh opportunity to inflame partisan tensions.

Russian hackers are targeting American voting databases ahead of the midterm election this year, they said, and using bot armies to promote partisan causes on social media.

The Russians are also particularly eager to cast doubt on the federal and congressional investigations into the Russian meddling, U.S. intelligence officials said.