Yeltsin, Boris

=<div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/hhs-official-who-manipulated-cdc-reports-on-19-has-deep-russian-ties-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/hhs-official-who-manipulated-cdc-reports-on-19-has-deep-russian-ties-report/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On September 11, Politico reported that Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reports on COVID-19 in order to make them conform to President Donald Trump’s claims about the pandemic. And Caputo, journalist Mary Papenfuss reports in HuffPost, is drawing scrutiny for another reason as well: his ties to the Kremlin.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Caputo, Papenfuss notes, lived in Russia for six years and served as an</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin from 1995-1999</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> before Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president. The HHS assistant secretary was an <b>adviser to a subsidiary of Gazprom</b>, an energy company owned by the Russian government — and Papenfuss points out that<b> Caputo “reportedly helped shore up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reputation.”</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Caputo’s Kremlin ties were so concerning that he became a target of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” Papenfuss explains. “He was questioned but was not charged with any offenses. He also testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no contact with Russians while serving on the Trump campaign.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Caputo, a long-time ally of veteran GOP operative Roger Stone, has promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that it was the Ukrainian government, not the Kremlin, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election — and that the interference was in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, not Trump.</b>Papenfuss notes that Caputo “has spread baseless accusations concerning activities in Ukraine by Joe and Hunter Biden. A key source of that Ukrainian smear, Andrii Derkach, turned out to be a Russian spy attempting to interfere in the current U.S. election, the Treasury Department revealed last week.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>During Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, Trump denounced the impeachment as “phony” — and he was also highly critical of the Russia investigation.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The Mueller report says of Caputo, “In the spring of 2016, Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky — who also went by the name Henry Greenberg — claimed to have information pertaining to Hilary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.”</span></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div>
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</div><div><a href="https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-six/">https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-six/</a></div><div>
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/war-zone-pollster/content?oid=35189">https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/war-zone-pollster/content?oid=35189</a></div><div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">...moore was born in Loma Linda in the late 1960s. His parents were students, not yet ready to have children. And so, the infant was given up for adoption at birth. For the next few years, Mr. and Mrs. Moore and their adopted child lived in Ontario in Southern California. Then, when he was 4 years old, the family moved to Oklahoma.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>When Steven Moore was 15 years old, his adoptive father died of lung cancer. Four years later, the adoption agency contacted Mrs. Moore to let her know that Steven’s biological mother was interested in making contact with him. It took Steven three years and a whole lot of soul-searching before he decided that he actually did want to meet her.</div><div>
</div><div>In the fall of 1989, Steven Moore’s mother flew out from California to Oklahoma and visited. That Christmas, Moore made the return trip west. His biological mother was still friends with his <b>father, George Gorton,</b> a conservative political consultant in Sacramento who counted Pete Wilson among those in his social circle, and during that trip Gorton and Moore became friends. “I call him George,” Moore explained. “It’d be really weird to call him Dad. We have a relationship more like brothers than like father-son.”</div><div>
</div><div>Gorton invited his son to return in the summer of 1990, after he’d graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree and a minor in English, to intern at Gorton’s consulting company. And it was that summer that Moore realized his love of political minutiae. “I licked the envelopes [like other interns],” he remembered. “And then, George and I would go to his house and look over poll results for fun. It was really good. I found out I really like polling. I really like public opinion.”</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps, after all, genetics really is destiny. From that summer, Moore was hooked. From then on, too, he was soured on Oklahoma. A moderate Republican—of the secular, Schwarzenegger strand of the party, rather than the fire-breathing, hell-and-damnation wing—the young man decided that the heartlands weren’t for him. “I looked at a map,” he recalled, smiling slightly, “and said, ‘Where would be the farthest place I could get to from Oklahoma?’” Moore moved to Australia and spent several months hitchhiking around Down Under.</div><div>
</div><div>For the next few years, he alternated between Sacramento, where he would work on political campaigns for an assortment of Republicans—including Pete Wilson, by then the governor of California—and traveling the world.</div><div>
</div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1996, a wealthy Russian banker surreptitiously hired Moore and several other American consultants to shore up then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s dismally creaky re-election campaign</span>.</b> They were brought in to teach spin, to set up focus groups and demonstrate polling techniques, and to work out a strategy to make the oft-drunken Yeltsin shine.</div><div>
</div><div>Moore moved to Moscow, to a place in which politicians and their henchmen routinely were targeted by assassins. The mayor of Moscow’s running mate was blown up in a car bomb; the mayor of St. Petersburg’s campaign manager had acid thrown in his face. The banker and his American consultants would drive around town in armored Mercedeses, a bevy of automatic-weapon-toting bodyguards in tow.</div><div>
</div><div>In secret meetings with Yeltsin’s daughter Tatiana, convened by the banker—meetings in which the mogul would pace the conference room, his jacket off and a pistol visible above his trousers—the team would issue advice on how to use American political strategies to give buoyancy to the leader, at a time when his approval ratings were as low as 6 percent. The focus groups that Moore and his colleagues conducted indicated huge numbers of Russians believed Yeltsin was either a tool of the CIA, was in league with the Chechens or was simply too stupid to govern. <b>Go negative, the Americans urged the Yeltsin people. Unless the Yeltsin camp could foster even worse perceptions of its opponents, in particular of the resurgent Communists, than existed of its own man, Yeltsin’s re-election prospects were poor.</b></div></div></div></div><div>=</div></div>