Recently, in the world of American special services, details about Putin’s attempts to meet with Peter Thiel, one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, who later became an FBI informant, have appeared, the Italian press writes. Christian Angermeier, a German businessman known for his dealings with politicians around the world, who had close ties to the Kremlin, acted as a mediator and tried to arrange a conversation between them. These facts, according to the FBI, say a lot about Putin’s strategy in trying to penetrate the centers of power and Western special services.

First date: birthday in Vienna

During the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the German entrepreneur Angermeier, the first attempt to get closer between the latter and the American Peter Thiel took place. The party that took place on June 23, 2018, seemed like the perfect opportunity for a Kremlin operative who was trying to “hook” an important person in the American elite: a luxurious and extravagant party with hundreds of guests took place in the 19th-century Neuwaldegg Castle. A 17th-century palace on the outskirts of Vienna.

And while groups of models take selfies next to statues of Greek gods, and guests are entertained with champagne and acrobats hired for the party, top managers of tech companies chat with politicians.

Thiel’s companies were indispensable to the US national security establishment: the entrepreneur founded Palantir, an analytics company used by the Pentagon and the CIA. He served on the board of Facebook (now Meta) and was an early investor in major US Department of Defense startups, including SpaceX and Anduril.

It is easy to imagine that the Kremlin’s access to one of these companies could give it a strong advantage in American security networks and in Silicon Valley.

This fact was probably clear in the mind of another of Angermayer’s guests, a diplomat named Daniil Bislinger, who worked in Moscow in the Kremlin’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bislinger previously worked at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, sometimes working as a translator for Vladimir Putin.

According to what Thiel later told the FBI, it was Angermeier who introduced Bislinger to Thiel at the party. After a few minutes of conversation, Bieslinger made Thiel an offer: Thiel should travel to Russia to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which Angermeier himself attended in 2012. Blissinger told Thiel that if he agreed to attend, he would arrange a private meeting with Putin.

Angermeier’s lawyers later denied that he was present during that conversation. But from the point of view of counterintelligence, it was a categorically significant episode. “If true, these facts are potentially of significant counterintelligence interest,” said Frank Figluzzi, a former deputy director of the FBI. “Every time a Russian official invites someone to meet with Vladimir Putin, it has potential significance.”

Thiel refused to meet with Putin and participate in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, but Bislinger’s attempts to establish relations through the Kremlin did not end there.

Attempt in 2022

Bislinger contacted Thiel again more than three years later, in January 2022. He reached out to Thiel’s office with the same invitation: to attend a conference in St. Petersburg scheduled for next summer and meet with Putin.

At the time, Thiel, like the rest of the world, saw signs that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, and, he later explained, wondered if Bislinger’s invitation was part of a strategy to make it appear that the invasion was not going to happen, so that everything was normal He again declined the invitation.

What Bislinger didn’t know was that something had changed between the birthday celebrations in 2018 and 2022: Thiel had actually become a confidential source—that is, an informant—for the FBI under the code name “The Philosopher” and the identification number.

Thiel then talked about Bislinger’s two approaches to his leadership in the intelligence service, and named two other figures, a German and a Russian, who tried to work their way into his circle for the Kremlin.

Thiel’s information was important to American security agencies: a few months later, the US intelligence community released a classified report describing Bieslinger’s possible ability to arrange meetings with Putin, including his phone number and Bieslinger’s email address.

The German businessman denies ties to the Kremlin

After these facts were released to the media, Angermeier’s lawyers confirmed that Thiel had indeed met Bislinger at Angermeier’s birthday party. Bislinger, as they wrote, “worked in Berlin in the Russian embassy, ​​and before the war was a permanent part of Berlin’s diplomatic circles.” However, the lawyers said in the letter: “While Mr. Angermeier introduced Mr. Thiel and Mr. Bieslinger, Mr. Angermeyer is not — and cannot be — responsible for anything that Mr. Bieslinger and Mr. Thiel may have discussed.”

Bislinger and Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov did not respond to requests for comment, and Angermeier himself declined to respond directly.

In any case, it’s not hard to see why Putin might think Thiel would be interested in meeting. The two men did have several things in common: both had close ties to conservative politicians in Central Europe. Both favor CEO-style corporate governance, where power is concentrated in the hands of wise decision-makers, and both worked to make Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States: Thiel through his political donations, and Putin through a government operation with hacking and information leakage. .

The Kremlin’s attempt to reach out to the US through the German Angermeier is part of a larger picture: first, in the period after the invasion of Ukraine, Putin used Germany – historically a NATO power – with the least hostility towards Russia, as an outpost for profit. relationship elsewhere.

Putin also completed the construction of the second Nord Stream gas pipeline, which would have delivered inexpensive Russian natural gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. An investigation by German newspaper Der Spiegel, which had access to thousands of Bislinger’s emails, detailed how Bislinger cultivated pro-Russian sentiment both publicly and privately. Some of his biggest successes have been members of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. “Der Spiegel” called these politicians “Putin’s pawns.”

At the same time, Putin has already experienced for himself how using Russian oligarchs as pawns can contribute to bringing Russia’s interests closer to those of Western billionaires. It is not by chance, for example, that Elon Musk told his biographer about conversations with some Russian diplomats.

There is no evidence that Putin managed to develop a relationship with Thiel, but if he had, he would undoubtedly have managed to play a dangerously large role at Palantir, where Thiel has been chairman since 2003. The CIA and FBI have used its software, and Palantir recently won a $250 million contract to develop artificial intelligence for the Pentagon.

But there’s also the so-called “outsider” factor: even a handshake between someone like Thiel and Putin would have a huge impact in Western intelligence circles.

As for Angermeier, his rapprochement with Russia appears to have ended after Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. On X, he repeatedly urged his followers to “send our love to Ukraine and the big ** to Putin,” who he called a “sad example” of how isolation related to COVID-19 can lead to poor mental health.

The material was created with the support of Rador Radio Romania