Talk:Strobe Talbott

Career as journalist
Good grief, no mention whatsoever of his long career as a journalist before joining the State Dept.??? Unbelievable. Okay, I guess I will have to take care of that myself when I can free up some time... Cgingold 21:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I just listened to Strobe on a panel discussion on C-Span sponsored by Brookings, and he had the most intelligent wisdom on Russia, Putin and the entire scope of our dealings with Russian and its basic problems... spoken by one with immense experience, insight and knowledge. Has he written any books on Russian diplomacy or analysis? Is he a professor now at Yale? There is more to his credit than listed here on Wikipedia. mpburns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.234.203.48 (talk) 19:38, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Last edits
A significant portion of perfectly sourced text from this article has recently been deleted. If you want to explain your edits, please do it here.Biophys (talk) 17:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

POV
"He has also been a friend of Bill Clinton and other communist sympathizers and one-worlders..." -- Rather amusing and downright biased, don't you think?


 * He was Bill's college room mate. The part about communist sympathies was removed a long time ago.--FeralOink (talk) 15:09, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Question
Hi Joshdboz, first you agreed to keep the Tretyakov allegations; then you removed them. What had happened? Thanks, Biophys (talk) 03:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right, I did go along with it at the time and added Talbott's reactions to the accusations. However, after reviewing the BLP policy, notably the following:
 * "Biographies of living persons (BLPs) must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. The possibility of harm to living subjects is one of the important factors to be considered when exercising editorial judgment."
 * I think these assertions made by Tretyakov would fit into the category of unsubstantiated claims (even if he is a semi-authoritative source) that are both 1) undue weight in relation to the rest of his life/career and 2) possibly harmful. Against this last argument is the fact that he is a public figure and these allegations have been reported to some degree in the press, but that doesn't change the fact that it is undue weight compared with every other notable detail of his life.  That being said, I think all the info is appropriate for Tretyakov's article, and I would certainly support copying the paragraph from here to there. Joshdboz (talk) 19:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This article is very small; so this might be indeed undue weight. But it would be good to ask someone else.Biophys (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no real "controversy" here. No reliable secondary source says the allegations are probable. Author Earley says he was unable to verify the story. The spy Tretyakov never met Talbott.  Tretyakov indicates that some unknown person told him the story that the spy agency gave Georgiy Mamedov questions to ask Talbott about. Both Talbott and Mamedov reject the interpretation. It was Talbott's official job to brief  Mamedov on Clinton's foreign policies, with the expectation that thee reports would go to Moscow. Thus it fails the BLP rules. Rjensen (talk) 09:39, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

removed
Strobe Talbot modeled for several memorable characters in Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies.TogetherinParis (talk) 15:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Caption
The caption on the top right seems to be wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.183.227 (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It has now been removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.183.227 (talk) 12:00, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

"New World Order" and quotes
I removed the link to the "New World Order" conspiracy page, which seemed highly POV and was not justified by the article itself. I'm also skeptical about the quotes - the first one seems to be there mostly to justify the conspiratorial connection, and outside of that context doesn't seem that representative of his overall career. The second one is somewhat interesting, but I'm honestly not sure why it's there. I may remove them or try to find some more representative ones, unless somebody is willing to make a good case for their inclusion here. Lateralus1587 (talk) 15:41, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Reliability of Talbott's information on Russia
At another talk page, there was recently a debate regarding whether Strobe Talbott's account of the 1999 Russian apartment bombings is a reliable source per Wikipedia policies.

More specifically, the following is the excerpt from Talbott's book in which he claimed there was no evidence for the conspiracy theory that the FSB had blown up apartment buildings in Russia to bring Putin to power:

But Putin also had, on top of the full force of Yeltsin's backing, a gruesome bit of luck. The war in the North Caucasus burst back into flame, this time with a difference that made it as much of a political winner for Putin as it had been a loser for Yeltsin.

At about the time of Putin's appointment, Chechen forces under the militant leader Shamil Basayev crossed the eastern border into Dagestan, driving thousands of people from several villages and killing or wounding scores of Russian troops who were manning outposts in the region. In and of itself, the raid was a bolder version of one that Basayev had conducted in June 1995 when he took hostages during the Halifax summit of the G-7. That earlier episode was one of the few occasions when the secessionist struggle in Chechnya spilled into other parts of southern Russia. Because the Chechen conflict had been mostly contained within the republic's borders, many Russians had come to see, and oppose, the war that Yeltsin waged there in 1994-1996 as an attempt to cling to a remote and hostile fragment of the old empire.

However, the Chechens' foray into Dagestan in August 1999 seemed to be explicitly part of an aggressive strategy that would take a new round of warfare into the heartland of Russia. Basayev proclaimed a jihad to liberate the surrounding Muslim-dominated areas from Russian tyranny. That claim seemed all the more credible when it was followed within weeks by a series of bombings against apartment buildings in Volgodansk, Buinaksk and Moscow, killing some three hundred civilians.

The Chechens denied responsibility for the explosions. Some Russians and observers in the outside world suspected a covert provocation by the Russian security services, presumably on orders from their most prominent and powerful alumnus, Putin himself. Berezovsky figured in some of this speculation. In addition to being one of Putin's backers for the presidency, he had extensive ties among the Chechen warlords and therefore might have been able to prod or bribe them into providing the new government of Moscow with a pretext for what might be a popular war.

There was no evidence to support this conspiracy theory, although Russian public opinion did indeed solidify behind Putin in his determination to carry out a swift, decisive counteroffensive. It was organized by General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of staff of the armed forces who had played the heavy during the confused drama in June when Russia "accidentally" deployed its troops into Kosovo ahead of NATO.

Based on that information, the lead section to the Russian apartment bombings currently sais the following: "The theory of FSB involvement has been criticised for the lack of evidence by Strobe Talbott".

I have studied every passage in the "Comrade J" book about Tretyakov which mentions Talbott, and I believe the following is correct:
 * There is no evidence to indicate that Talbott was an unreliable source of information regarding Russia in general and the 1999 Russian apartment bombings in particular.
 * The current view of allegations against Talbott at the Strobe Talbott page is pretty much correct.

I will cite the relevant information from the "Comrade J" book here to corroborate my findings:

From "Preface"

In yet another troubling disclosure, Tretyakov claims Russian intelligence targeted President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, and ran a carefully calculated campaign designed to manipulate him. Talbott was the architect of U.S. policy toward Russia and its former republics during a crucial seven-year period after the Soviet Union breakup. According to Tretyakov, the SVR used Russia's then deputy minister of foreign affairs Georgiy Mamedov to deceive and manipulate Talbott, in part by massaging his ego. Unbeknownst to Talbott, his Russian contact was a longtime "co-optee," which meant Mamedov often did the bidding of Russian intelligence, Tretyakov said. In return, it helped promote Mamedov's diplomatic career. There was no reason for Talbott to suspect that Mamedov was acting as an SVR conduit.

According to Tretyakov, the SVR prepared specific questions for Mamedov to ask Talbott during their private, one-on-one conversations, including times when the two diplomats were socializing. Talbott considered Mamedov a friend and respected colleague. According to Tretyakov, the Russian diplomat used their personal relationship to glean information from Talbott that the SVR considered helpful to Russia.

Talbott was shown a copy of Tretyakov's accusations before this book went to press. In a written response, Talbott called Tretyakov's "interpretation of events erroneous and/or misleading." He wrote that he knew that Mamedov was relaying all of their conversations, including their private ones, back to Moscow. Talbott challenged Tretyakov to provide "specifics and corroboration" that showed he had been manipulated by Mamedov. "There can be none," Talbott concluded, "since what went on in my channel with Mamedov, in fact, advanced U.S. policy goals."

Just the same, the FBI took the accusations about Talbott seriously when Tretyakov raised them after he began secretly helping the U.S. In 1999, FBI officials asked Secretary Albright not to share information with Talbott about an ongoing espionage investigation at the State Department because its agents were afraid he might inadvertently tip off the SVR through Mamedov, according to private and published sources.

Trytyakov said the SVR considered Mamedov's handling of Talbott so clever that Russian intelligence identified the senior American diplomat in correspondence and classified internal reports as a SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT—a specific term that the SVR used to identify its most secret, highly placed intelligence sources.

Chapter "TWENTY"

Sergei recommended that KABAN be awarded a contract to consult and help build housing in Tver, which was a town about a hundred miles outside of Moscow. His superiors and the FSK agreed.

In 1994, Russia was in the midst of a national housing shortage. The main cause was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russian troops from across Eastern Europe were being called home, but there was no place to house them. Yeltsin had specifically asked President Clinton for help with this problem when they met in April 1993 at their first presidential summit. According to The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Yeltsin had been desperate.

There was one area...where Yeltsin said he needed as much help as possible and as soon as possible, and that was in emergency funds to build housing for the Russian officers whom Yeltsin had promised to withdraw from the Baltic states in 1994.

Clinton had earmarked $6 million for housing, but Yeltsin said he needed much more than that. Yeltsin added that he could only make his plea in private, according to Talbott's book, because it was embarrassing for him to talk openly about the conditions in which the Russian army was living. Talbott quoted Yeltsin saying:

''"Tents, Bill! Can you imagine? They're living in tents!"

Clinton promised to increase the figure for housing. In addition to U.S. aid, Yeltsin received loans from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom to help build houses. The World Bank chipped in another $550.8 million loan specifically earmarked for housing improvements in six cities, including Tver.

Chapter "TWENTY ONE"

On January 3, 1995, Mike McCurry, the press spokesman for the State Department, compared Russia's invasion of Chechnya to the Civil War. He said:

We have a long history as a democracy that includes an episode... where we dealt with a secessionist movement through armed conflict called the Civil War. So we need to be conscious of those types of issues when we look at a new democracy in the former Soviet Union.

In April 1996, during a Moscow press conference, President Clinton used that same comparison.

I would remind you that we once had a civil war in our country in which we lost, on a per capita basis, far more people than we lost in any of the wars of the twentieth century, over the proposition that Abraham Lincoln gave his life for, that no state had a right to withdrawal from our union.

In his memoir The Russia Hand, Strobe Talbott wrote apologetically that he felt responsible for suggesting the Chechnya—Civil War comparison to McCurry and Clinon. It proved to be a "gaffe" that "produced a headline we didn't want out," he noted. Clinton was accused in the international media of shilling for Yeltsin. Clinton himself later quipped: "I really painted a bull's-eye on by butt with that Lincoln line."

The fact that Talbott, McCurry, and Clinton each defended Russia's attacks in Chechnya by comparing the invasion to the U.S. Civil War delighted the propagandists inside the SVR, Sergei said. Whether or not their efforts had planted the idea in the three men's minds didn't matter. The SVR spin masters claimed credit.

Chapter "TWENTY-TWO"

It was during the briefings that Sergei discovered the SVR had identified U.S. deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott as a SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT. Inside the SVR, that term was used only to identify a top-level intelligence source who had high social and/or political status and whose identity neened to be carefully guarded.

<...>

Because of the prominence of SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACTS, the SVR's operational dossiers about them were always closely guarded with top-secret access limited to only a few senior officials in Moscow. Sergei later explained that this was why he could not cite specific examples in this book of information that the SVR claimed it had collected through diplomatic channels from Talbott. Nor could he recall any specifics of how information alleged to have come from Talbott might have been used. "All I can tell you is that the SVR conferred on Talbott the SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT designation, and I was told Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him."

A SPECIAL UNOFFFICIAL CONTACT was identified in cables between the Center and rezidenturas as a "11-2" source. That was the same designation used by the SVR to identify sources in its network who were "trusted contacts" (spies).

"Even though the SVR identified Talbott as a SPECIAL UNOFFOCIAL CONTACT, I want to underline that he was not a Russian spy," Sergei carefully explained later. "In fact, I suspect he was the opposite—an ardent American patriot. But like so many before him, he underestimated his Soviet and Russian counterparts and he overestimated his own knowledge and influence to a point where our intelligence service was able to use him with great effectiveness during the Yelstin presidency. He became an extremely valuable intelligence source."

A former columnist and Washington bureau chief for Time maganize, Talbott befriended Bill Clinton when both were Rhodes scholars at Oxford University. After Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, he asked Talbott to oversee U.S. and Russian relations. In The Russia Hand, Talbott would recall that one of his first and, ultimately, his most important contacts in the Yeltsin administration was Georgi Mamedov, the deputy minister of foreign affairs. Talbott noted fondly in his book that Memedov had both a gift for gab and an ability for straight talk that made him effective in arguing his side's case and in probing for diplomatic give on the American side. Talbott wrote that he and Mamedov frequently worked behind the scenes during Talbott's seven-year stint. They arranged the Clinton—Yeltsin presidential summits, handled dozens of international emergencies, and found ways for the Clinton administration to support Yeltsin politically when his administration was being rocked by charges of massive corruption. Talbott added that he and Mamedov privately negotiated the framework for a controversial NATO-Russian cooperative agreement and personally resolved preliminary matters in the START II treaty talks about arms reduction. Talbott wrote that many of their face-to-face meetings were held with only the two of them being present, and during their exchanges, the two diplomats developed a friendship, trust, and respect that Talbott felt was mutual and mentioned repeatedly in his memoir. In one chapter, Talbott described a scene that typified their warm relationship. He wrote that he and Mamedov decided to take a break after working all day during a meeting in Washington, D.C. Talbott invited Mamedov to go with him to see that summer's blockbuster movie Independence Day, along with Talbott's children. Afterward, Mamedov joined the family for dinner at an Italian restaurant, and Talbott and the Russian diplomat playfully joked about whether the aliens in the Hollywood movie would be eligible to join Partnership for Peace (a Clinton and Yeltsin initiative) or if they would be considered for membership in NATO. At the time, the U.S. and NATO were feuding with Russian about NATO expanding its membership.

During the secret briefings that Sergei was given in Moscow before his move to Manhattan, he was told that Mamedov was secretly working for the SVR. "Mr. Mamedov was a longtime co-optee. The KGB and SVR helped him build a very successful career in the foreign ministry. What does this mean? It means he was reporting everything that was said or done by Mr. Talbott directly to us at the Center. Everything. It was part of his job." There is no evidence that shows, nor is there any reason to believe, that Talbott kned Mamedov was a longtime co-optee with Russian intelligence.

Sergei was told that SVR director Primakov and his deputy, General Trubnikov, decided early on that Talbott could be "massaged" and developed into a useful source based on a psychological profile that the SVR had prepared. "Mr. Talbott saw himself as an expert on Russia and he thought he knew what was best for the country and its people. The SVR had seen this arrogant attitude before in Western leaders. We understood this, and Mr. Mamedov was instructed to massage Mr. Talbott's ego to suit our purposes," Sergei said. Mamedov was encouraged by the SVR to meet with Talbott in private as often as he could, without any of the two men's aides being present. During these sessions, Mamedov was told to ask Talbott questions that had been prepared specifically for him by the SVR center. The Russian diplomat posed these questions as if they were coming only from him. "Mr. Talbott was led to believe that many of his conversations with Mr. Mamedov were between only the two of them, when, in fact, Mr. Mamedov was collecting information that had been specifically requested by the Center. This is how the SVR was able to begin manipulating him to the point that it eventually identified him as a SPECIAL UNOFFOCIAL CONTACT."

Sergei was told that Mamedov's relationship with Talbott was an "example of how a skilled intelligence agency could manipulate a situation and a diplomatic source to its advantage without the target realizing he was being used for intelligence-gathering purposes."

Sergei's statements are not the first to raise questions about Talbott's interactions with Russian officials. A U.S. House of Representatives select committee released a three-volume report in 1999 that harshly criticized the Clinton administration for its handling of Russia. Known informally as the Cox Committee Report, after its chairman, Representative Christopher Cox, the study initially was classified top-secret. Several parts of it, however, were later declassified. Representative Cox told reporters at a news conference that the Clinton administration had continuously supported Yeltsin regardless of his actions or his behavior. The Cox report said the Clinton administration's "unchecked" backing of Yeltsin had undermined the development of democratic institutions in Moscow by short-circuiting the legislative process that Russia had put into place and by ignoring the wishes of the country's elected representatives. This partisan and oftentimes parental attitude toward the Russian president had caused Yeltsin and the Russian government to rule by decree rather than by establishing a genuine democratic process, the report concluded. Representative Cox claimed a small group of administration officials, including Talbott, consistently ignored and downplayed U.S. analytical information that contradicted their own personal views of Russia and what was happening under Yeltsin. One criticism was that Talbott had been persuaded by Mamedov and other Russian officials to disregard negative stories about Yeltsin, his presidency, and the oligarchs.

After portions of the Cox report were made public, Talbott noted that twelve of the fifteen committee members who had drafted the critical study were Republicans. He called their findings politically biased and questioned the timing of the report, which was released in the midst of the 2000 presidential campaign.

Talbott became president of the Brookings Institution, a Washintson, D.C., think tank, after he left the Clinton administration. His diplomatic counterpart, Mamedov, was appointed Russian ambassador to Canada.

Talbott was shown Sergei's statements while this book was being written and he quickly dismissed them. "Your source's [Sergei's] interpretation of events is erroneous and/or misleading in several fundamental respects," Talbott wrote. "First, there was never a presumption on Ambassador Mamedov's part or mine that what we said to each other in our one-on-one sessions would remain between us alone. Quite the contrary, each of us presumed that the other would report back to his government. Second, your source suggests that, in his many exchanges with me, Ambassador Mamedov 'tricked, deceived, and manipulated' me into helping him and his government advance Russian causes.... Your source offers no amplification or corroboration. There can be none, since what went on in my channel with Mamedov in fact advanced U.S. policy goals: getting Russian troops to leave the Baltic states, getting Russia to accept NATO enlargement and join the Partnership for Peace, getting Russia to support us in Bosnia, and getting Russia to help in ending the Kosovo war on NATO's terms."

In a note responding to Sergei's accusations, Ambassador Mamedov wrote: "As a devoted fan of John le Carré's novels, I really enjoyed the fantasy land you and your 'sources' from the CIA created to impress me.... Surely, I don't need to tell you what you know already: all of these allegation of my 'manipulation' of Strobe Talbott on behalf of the SVR are blatant lies and nothing else. Unfortunately, old stereotypes die hard and some witch-hunters from the CIA and FBI simply can't make themselves believe in such simple human values as trust and friendship—especially between Russian and American officials. Pity for them!"

Chapter "TWENTY-FOUR"

It was at this critical point that President Aliyev reached out to the Clinton administration, and the White House saw a chance to get access for Western oil companies into the Caspian Sea.

In October 1995, President Aliyev arrived in Manhattan for the United Nations' fiftieth-anniversary celebration and for a series of private meetings with U.S. officials. The Azerbaijan president met with Madeleine Albright, who was then the U.S. permanent representative to the UN, but soon would become Clinton's secretary of state. Three days later, he met privately with President Clinton.

Within hours of those private meetings, Ambassador Kouliev had secretly passed his handwritten notes to his SVR handler (Antonov) to forward to the Center without knowing that Sergei would be reading them, too.

Six months later, the White House sent Deputy Secretary of State Talbott and Deputy National Security Advised Samuel Berger to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Once again, Ambassador Kouliev passed along noted to the New York rezidentura for Moscow.

<...>

In February 2000, President Aliyev visited President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright, and other top U.S. diplomats in Washington, D.C. Sergei would later brag that the SVR had been able to deliver summaries about each of those confidential meetings to Moscow within forty-eight hours after they happened. He said that the SVR was convinced that President Clinton, Albright, and Talbott had no idea Ambassador Kouliev was a deep-cover officer.

Two months later, the U.S. and Azerbaijan announced the start of construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the second-longest pipeline in the world, covering some 1,094 miles. It was being financed by a consortium of Western oil companies and would be completed in July 2006. It was a huge victory for the Clinton administration.

Sergei would later have a difficult time explaining why President Yeltsin had not chosen to take advantage of the more than one hundred cables that had been sent to Moscow based on Ambassador Kouliev's insider reports. "I could see no evidence that Yeltsin did anything about the oil deal. He let the U.S. walk in and simply take it."

Chapter "THIRTY-NINE"

After Sergei told U.S. intelligence officials that Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had been identified by the SVR as a SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT, the FBI asked Secretary Albright not to share information with him about the government's ongoing probe in 1999 into how a Russian bug was planted inside the State Department. Jaime Dettmer, a reporter with the news website Insight on the News, revealed the FBI's unusual request to keep Talbott out of the loop in a story published January 10, 2000. In it she quoted an unnamed CIA source saying, "Talbott has long been widely seen at Langley as being too close to the Russians—a sort of trusted friend, you might say."

— Document hippo (talk) 12:49, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you suggest to include some of that info to the page? Good idea. I do not mind. This is consistent with BLP rule because the subject is a public figure and because there are multiple RS, for example, the book by Earley (secondary RS), this book, this soure, and of course whatever Talbott said himself about it was also reliably published. Or maybe not on this page, but on page about the bombings. For example here The Kremlin “influenced” the Clinton administration. One example: “The fact that Talbott (Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State), McCurry (Mike McCurry, State Department spokesman), and Clinton each defended Russia’s attacks in Chechnya . . . delighted the propagandists inside the SVR”. Note that according to BLP, the allegation for public figures should not proven, but only notable and well documented. That one certainly is.    My very best wishes (talk) 04:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I have looked and found no reliable secondary source that agrees with the wild speculation made by Sergei Tretyakov, a person who never observed or met Talbott and instead speculated on the basis of third-hand gossip. Journalist Earley interviewed Talbott and the Russian diplomat Mamedov and they both rejected Sergei's speculations & challenged him to name an actual detail. [see above from ch 22: " Because of the prominence of SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACTS, the SVR's operational dossiers about them were always closely guarded with top-secret access limited to only a few senior officials in Moscow. Sergei later explained that this was why he could not cite specific examples in this book of information that the SVR claimed it had collected through diplomatic channels from Talbott. Nor could he recall any specifics of how information alleged to have come from Talbott might have been used. "All I can tell you is that the SVR conferred on Talbott the SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT designation, and I was told Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him.""]  So when challenged the "source" (Sergei) was could not specify to Earley a single actual example of manipulation even in the broadest terms--that indicates he is wholly ignorant of Talbott's actions. Not a reliable source. ] Talbott was briefed daily at the time by US intelligence agencies. He was the main interface with Russian officials  --the silly suggestion is that if a Russian intelligence agency supplies questions that were asked of Talbott he was "manipulated" by them. It's the job of intelligence agencies  to draft questions to ask  highly experienced diplomats--who are not easy to "manipulate". Rjensen (talk) 09:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The interactions/negotiations between Talbott and Mamedov is a matter of fact, this is something Talbott described himself in his books. This is just a matter of interpretation. Talbott honestly believed that he promotes US interests, exactly as he said himself. And perhaps he did. SVR believed that they manipulated Talbott. They could be right or wrong about it, I have no opinion. But the story is well known, sourced and can be neutrally described on the page. But whatever. I just replied to the very long post by user Document hippo. My very best wishes (talk) 16:20, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Well no--the point is that "SVR believed that they manipulated Talbott. " is a claim made by someone with no credibility regarding Talbott. He admits it himself: "All I can tell you is that the SVR conferred on Talbott the SPECIAL UNOFFICIAL CONTACT designation, and I was told Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him." That's third-hand gossip --gossip--his informants never gave him access to SVR documents, and never gave him any examples or episodes. Talbott was the official American contact with the post-Soviet Russian leadership (ie Yeltsin) and was therefore indeed a special contact who provided lots of information about the hopes and intentions of the Clinton administration. Rjensen (talk) 02:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, let's not include it. I just looked at preface to a book Endgame: The Inside Story of Salt II written by Talbott himself . It tells: "The former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) operative Sergei Tretyakov claimed that SVR considered Talbott a source of intelligence information and classified him as "a special unofficial contact", although "he was not a Russian spy". These unproven allegations ...", and so on (whole paragraph). I did not read the book, but apparently this story was described in the book (hence it should an important story?). So, I thought one could do the same on this page and present it in the same light as Talbott described himself. My very best wishes (talk) 03:37, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * As a side note, Robert Amsterdam said that "When Talbott was a journalist, he had career-boosting relations with a KGB agent called Viktor Louis". That one is really famous. My very best wishes (talk) 03:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)