Russian Lawmaker Describes CNN Report About US Spy In Russia's Government As 'Clear Fake'

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th September, 2019) The CNN report about a top US spy who allegedly served within the Russian government but was pulled by Washington from Moscow over fears that President Donald Trump could expose the covert source are nothing but a "fake" meant to discredit the US leader and boast of Washington's purported global intelligence network, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, CNN reported that the United States extracted one of its highest-level operatives from Russia in 2017 after Trump exposed highly classified intelligence about the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Senior US officials have already denied the CNN reports.

"Certainly, that is a clear fake, concocted in a quite clumsy manner. The era of Stierlitzes [a lead character in a popular Soviet novel and film about a Soviet spy] has irreversibly passed, if it ever existed at all, and there cannot be in principle any US informant who could work 'inside the Russian government,'" Frants Klintsevich, a member of the Russian upper house's defense and security committee, wrote on Facebook.

According to the Russian lawmaker, the report was a hit job article.

"First of all, in my opinion, we are witnessing another attempt to discredit US President Donald Trump by presenting him as a bungler capable of virtually destroying by his clumsy actions the entire US intelligence network," he noted.

On the other hand, the article aims to make it clear to the world that the United States is still keeping abreast of the situation, "having its ears and eyes" everywhere, according to the lawmaker.