A Nuclear Bribery
Plot Exposed
“Ask your politics.”
—FBI counterintelligence agent, 2010
(on why Obama caved to Putin)
William Douglas Campbell had seen enough. For months, the affable Florida businessman had remained silent while the soon-to-be-disproven tale of Trump-Russia conspiracy ricocheted through the media. He knew a different tale of Russia collusion, one with more dire national security consequences. By fall 2017, he could no longer bear the strain.1
For at least six long years, he had worked inside Vladimir Putin’s nuclear empire as an FBI operative, informing U.S. authorities about a jaw-dropping bribery, kickback, and extortion scheme that had compromised one of America’s main uranium trucking firms. Now sickened by cancer and threatened into remaining silent, Campbell (known as Doug by those closest to him) made his move.2
Campbell’s new lawyer, former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing, publicly chastised her former employer until it finally agreed to lift the “gag order” so he could tell his story. Campbell worked with The Hill newspaper and respected investigative reporter Sara Carter, a Fox News regular, and offered an unblemished accounting of his undercover work.3 Appearing on camera with his face shadowed to protect his new look (he had substantially changed his appearance to protect himself from resentful Russians), Campbell offered an explosive companion story to the Uranium One tale that Peter Schweizer had exposed in 2015.4
Uranium One, he explained, was not just a story about political cronyism that had enriched the Clinton family and represented a bad national security decision for America. It was also the tale of a nuclear bribery, extortion, and kickback investigation that had identified, but ultimately failed to punish, top-level beneficiaries in Putin’s inner circle.5
Congress quickly seized on Campbell’s revelations, giving Republican leaders fresh ammunition to combat the Democratic storyline of Trump-Russia collusion that had been foisted on the country by the Steele dossier in late 2016. Though weakened by cancer and struggling with a faulty memory that required him to rely on notes for accuracy, the silver-haired former FBI operative became an instant celebrity for conservatives, even appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News TV show. In March 2018, he was summoned to Capitol Hill for a private interview with congressional investigators.6
Though Campbell’s story was meticulously backed by thousands of pages of FBI documents and contemporaneous evidence, he was about to suffer one final indignity at the hands of Democratic members of Congress and Rod Rosenstein’s former Maryland U.S. attorney’s office.7
A whisper campaign was launched, first in news media articles quoting anonymous Justice Department officials and then in a congressional memo leaked by Democrats. Each sought to portray Campbell as lacking credibility. They insinuated that Campbell had been deemed unreliable by the U.S. government and that there was no evidence he had ever raised concerns about the Uranium One transaction with his FBI handlers.8
Michael Isikoff, the Yahoo! News reporter whose stories gave life to Christopher Steele’s uncorroborated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, was one of the first recipients of the leaks. Within weeks, most of the mainstream media had published the story.9
Nothing, actually, could be further from the truth.
* * *
As a crisply dressed Doug Campbell stepped into the elevator on the eleventh floor of the Pentagon City-Ritz Carlton, he could feel his heart pounding. At least the sudden rush of adrenaline helped clear his bleary eyes and the sensation of fatigue he had felt all morning after a sleepless night in his hotel room.10
It was October 2010 and the Florida businessman had been working for the FBI as an undercover operative inside Putin’s nuclear giant Rosatom for about two years. That particular morning was set for a “drop,” a consequential assignment in which Campbell was supposed to capture on video members of Russia’s nuclear monopoly accepting cash bribes. It was either going to be a seminal moment that advanced the FBI’s counterintelligence case against Russia or blow Campbell’s carefully crafted cover.11
As the elevator descended, Campbell could feel sweat beading in the palm of his right hand, which clenched “the football,” the moniker that he and his FBI handlers had given to his trusty steel-enforced briefcase. Black on the sides with numerical locks on the top, the briefcase was his portable office on the far-flung journeys he had taken across the globe. It was also the repository for whatever secrets he was carrying for the U.S. government at the moment. As such, it seldom left his sight.12
A few moments before he stepped onto the elevator, FBI Special Agent Tim Taylor and his counterintelligence team had left Campbell’s room to retreat to the back of the swanky hotel. It was a beautiful, crisp October day, and the agents had squirreled away behind the Ritz in an unmarked black SUV loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment to monitor Campbell’s meeting with the Russians. He was to regather with them after the drop was completed.13
Thanks to Taylor and his fellow counterintelligence agents, the morning had already been surreal. Campbell gazed in wonder as the agents spread rubber-banded piles of hundred-dollar bills across his hotel bed. The agents counted the stacks until they were certain that they had all $50,000. Then they removed his laptop and folders from the briefcase to clear room for the cash. The bills were placed in the body of the briefcase, filling all but a few inches.14
From the lid, Taylor had removed one of three pens Campbell usually kept tucked in the storage pouches. In its place, he had put a sophisticated wireless camera shaped like a pen. The device was equipped with a 180-degree eye designed to capture all the sights and sounds as soon as the Russian targets opened the briefcase.15
Taylor was a tall, slender, and youthful agent working his first major Russian counterintelligence case. He had a young family that he adored, and he also shared with Campbell a deep Christian faith. Occasionally, the two would pray together before assignments. When it came time to assign Campbell an operative code name, Taylor whimsically chose to call him “The Pastor.” The agent would joke that Campbell reminded him of those preachers on TV with the crisp suits, southern drawls, and photographic recitations of Bible verses. On weekends, that was Campbell’s life. He loved church and worshipping Christ in the congregation of friends that he shared back home.16
Doug Campbell appeared to friends, family, and Florida colleagues as a globetrotting business consultant who successfully dabbled in agriculture products, nuclear fuel, and other commodities. Never one to settle down, he seemed every inch the model of an ambitious corporate climber, married to his job by day and to his church life on weekends. But the silver-haired businessman harbored a secret for more than three decades that even his closest friends did not detect: his frequent international travels were cover for work as an operative for the United States government.17
Campbell had worked undercover for the CIA and FBI for more than thirty years.18 Campbell’s dangerous work took him into meetings with members of Russian organized crime in the United States, and in Western Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other regions around the world. Early on, the job was simple. On trips overseas, Campbell would collect information about foreign leaders and businesses who were trying to spread cash in the form of bribes to win more business inside the United States. He would report back to his handlers, who would use the information to make Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prosecutions against violators, both foreign and American.19
But starting in mid-2005, the feds had a more targeted assignment for Campbell. They wanted him to penetrate Vladimir Putin’s burgeoning uranium sales empire. Putin was gobbling up uranium supplies across eastern Europe, and U.S. officials suspected that he was looking to build a monopoly that could dominate the global uranium market, much as Moscow dominated natural gas sales in Europe. For a country lacking a robust, diverse economy, energy was Putin’s geopolitical weapon. It kept the West at bay, and nearby neighbors from the former Soviet empire dependent on him.20
Campbell’s assignment began in Kazakhstan in 2005, around the time that former President Bill Clinton and his top aides were also focusing on the rugged, uranium-rich former Soviet republic. (As Campbell would later learn, the Clinton connection was much more than a coincidence.) Eventually, the Russians engineered a deal to get their hands on the Kazakhs’ yellowcake uranium supply, as well as a large share of America’s uranium in the transaction that would become known as the Uranium One scandal.21
By 2008, Campbell had made a strong connection with a South African nuclear executive named Rod Fisk, who had begun working with Russians to grow their uranium market in the United States. Fisk had become a top executive at an American trucking company that moved enriched uranium around the United States, including some of the nuclear fuel the Russians had sold under the Megatons to Megawatts program created after the fall of the U.S.S.R.22
The growing ties to Rosatom figures like Fisk convinced the FBI in 2008 that it was time to sign Campbell to a nondisclosure agreement barring him from publicly discussing his mission. (This gag order would eventually be lifted in 2017 by the Trump Justice Department after it was publicly revealed that he was being muzzled.) A team was set up to handle Campbell, including Taylor, the bureau’s young counterintelligence agent, and David Gadren, a more experienced criminal investigator with the Energy Department’s office of inspector general who was steeped in the ins and outs of nuclear energy.23
Inside Rosatom, Fisk took a liking to Campbell and brought him into the inner circle of Tenex, the Rosatom subsidiary that was the Russians’ main commercial uranium sales arm. Eventually, Campbell was hired by Tenex’s lead executive in the United States, Vadim Mikerin, as a consultant to help Rosatom grow its uranium sales to nuclear utilities inside the U.S.24
Barack Obama, a big proponent of nuclear utilities while in the U.S. Senate, was then taking over as president, and the Russians had high hopes for expansion in the American market. That is because President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were pursuing a high-risk diplomatic “reset.” As mentioned, the reset was designed to create a more peaceful relationship with Moscow after months of tension brought on by Russia’s 2008 military action against the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.25
Campbell would soon find out that working for Tenex came with a high cost. Shortly after he signed the consulting deal, Mikerin demanded that Campbell hire a Russian consultant for training on how to write the reports for Moscow. Mikerin gave Campbell the name of the company and where he was instructed to wire $25,000. But weeks later, there was no training and not even the name of a Russian who was to advise him.26
Campbell became suspicious and alerted his FBI handlers. Was this Mikerin’s backhanded way of demanding kickbacks, or just the Russians being slow and plodding? Campbell and his handlers eventually determined it was the first. In fall 2009, Mikerin approached Campbell again and told him that in order to keep his consulting job, he would have to kick back $25,000 of his monthly $50,000 consulting fee.27
The demand thrilled Campbell’s FBI handlers. They knew they had criminal conduct. Now they needed to follow the money trail to see how far the scheme went. So, they gave Campbell permission to start making the payments. The Russians had set up an elaborate payment path that laundered kickbacks through a series of shadowy offshore accounts. They called it “the System.” The FBI soon discovered through Campbell’s undercover work that the same accounts were being used by Moscow for other illegal activities.28
For most of his first year with Tenex, Campbell made wire transfers every other month and otherwise kept his head down performing legitimate consulting work, seeking to help Tenex win billions in new nuclear fuel contracts from American utilities. The work was going well, and Russia was scoring some big deals.29
In October 2010, Mikerin needed a temporary change in the kickback scheme. Some of his senior bosses from Moscow were coming to visit Tenex’s new American headquarters in suburban Maryland, called Tenam. They needed cash for shopping and partying while on the trip, so Mikerin asked that Campbell skip the normal wire transfer and bring the next $50,000 in cash.30
Campbell coordinated with the FBI and checked into the Ritz the night before. But he could not sleep. The notion of delivering a briefcase full of cash to a corrupt Russian nuclear official was unnerving. And for the first time during this operation, he felt that his life could legitimately be at risk. So, he tossed and turned all night, rose for breakfast, and waited for the FBI to get him prepped.31
Taylor assured Campbell the FBI would have eyes and ears on him the whole time. All he needed to do was stay calm and deliver the cash. The pen camera would do the rest.32
As the elevator hit the first floor and the doors opened to the lobby, Campbell took one last deep breath. “Walk slow. Talk slow. Don’t show the nerves. And just get this over with,” he told himself. That little voice in his head was all there was to calm him until he could grab a drink.33
Campbell walked to the hotel bar, took a table, and waited. Soon, the stout Russian with the pug, emotionless face arrived. The two ordered a morning vodka. Campbell toasted Mikerin with a quick drink—Nah zda-rovh-yeh! They downed their liquor and headed back to Campbell’s room. Mikerin seemed nervous, perhaps by the impending arrival of his bosses.34
As soon as Campbell keyed the door to his room, he put the briefcase on the small table by the bed. His fingers turned the numbers to the lock and popped open the briefcase. Then he stepped back so Mikerin could peer in.35
“It’s all there,” Campbell told his Russian counterpart.36
“Very good,” he replied. As he was thumbing quickly through the cash, Campbell peered over his shoulder to check just once that the pen-shaped spy camera was staring right at him. The camera had not moved, and Mikerin seemed blissfully ignorant of its presence. Campbell gave a faint smile. Mission accomplished, he thought.37
Mikerin quickly gathered the stashes of cash into his own bag and got ready to leave.38
“I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said. “Ludmilla wants to go shopping at Saks, and I need to get this back to the vault and get her some money.”39
Ludmilla was a high-ranking female executive from Rosatom, a key member of the visiting delegation. The vault was a large safe installed inside Mikerin’s Tenam office. Campbell was familiar with it because he had photographed it for the FBI during one of his surreptitious surveillance tours.40
Now the FBI would have its first video evidence that the kickbacks Campbell was paying were going far beyond Mikerin, to Rosatom’s top brass back in Moscow. Campbell could not wait to tell Taylor and to get assurance that the camera caught it all.41
Soon, Mikerin was out the door and on the elevator. Campbell walked back into the room and slumped into the chair for a moment of relief. He let about ten minutes elapse, then called Taylor on the FBI’s burner phone.42
The agents came to his room from their stakeout location. They opened the briefcase, pulled out the camera, and confirmed they had perfect footage of Mikerin taking the kickback money.43
The case had just made a giant leap forward. Campbell was relieved and increasingly certain that the FBI would be able to take down this group of Russian criminals, and, more importantly, stop Putin from amassing more uranium business inside the United States.44
He would be sorely disappointed. An undercover mission he hoped was about to end with speedy arrests would instead stretch on for four more frustrating years.45 The reason for the delay, Campbell would later learn, could be traced to a meeting that had occurred about 4,800 miles away and exactly one year earlier.46
In October 2009, in the high-tech Moscow suburb known as Barvikha, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had met in an opulent statehouse with Putin’s right-hand men, then-President Dmitry Medvedev, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to discuss ways the two countries could improve relations.47
Medvedev reportedly crowed, with a smiling Clinton standing nearby, that Clinton’s further discussions with Russian colleagues demonstrated “that the level of our cooperation…is gradually advancing.” To which Clinton responded that the U.S. was looking forward to “deepening and broadening this strategic relationship.”48
A key agenda item in the U.S.-Russia talks, it turns out, was a plan to accelerate commercial uranium sales to the United States. For nearly two decades, the Russians had been guaranteed a steady sale of nuclear fuel to America by disassembling old Soviet nuclear warheads and converting the uranium to a form that could be used in reactors.49
That “ploughshares” program, known as Megatons to Megawatts, was about to expire in 2013. Moscow’s already shaky economy could suffer a significant financial blow unless Rosatom could replace the lost revenue with sales to American utility companies. But there was a rub. Old Cold War restrictions kept Moscow from selling uranium directly to utilities.50
George W. Bush’s administration had begun lifting those restrictions with the creation of the U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. The program was on track to be ratified during Bush’s last year in office when Russia suddenly engaged in a military conflict with Georgia, a key U.S. ally.51
Thus, Bush’s carrot was immediately pulled in favor of the stick of sanctions. But by March 2009, the new Obama team wanted to go back to the carrot approach. In rapid succession, Obama restored the agreement and lifted various restrictions that let Russia start to line up billions of dollars in new uranium sales.52
Little did Campbell know on the day he delivered the $50,000 to Mikerin that Secretary Clinton’s jaunt to Barvikha (and the reset generally) had already opened the door for Rosatom to collect unprecedented billions from the United States. These extraordinary benefits would flow even as Campbell was documenting Russian criminality in the form of bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering. The United States was rewarding a bad actor, and the FBI and the intelligence community knew it. There are procedures for informing the appropriate persons in the government.53 Did they do so or were the procedures ignored?
Campbell was forced to keep quiet for four more years, as he gathered a raft of evidence on how Russia’s corrupt nuclear machine was compromising national security inside the United States while executing a plan to dominate the American and global uranium markets.54 Some inside the Obama administration believed that allowing Putin this nuclear business would keep Russia closer and more dependent on the United States, much like the original ploughshares deal with Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. America could account for Russia’s nuclear supplies and create a more lenient business environment, one that would lower the temptation to sell nuclear materials on the black market, such as to Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program.55
Others saw red flags. They had seen how Putin wielded his natural gas monopoly in eastern Europe as a weapon against U.S. allies, and remembered his bad behavior in Georgia in 2008, which occurred even as the Bush administration was opening the U.S. nuclear market for Russia. They worried that Russia would dump below-market-priced uranium and drive out its global competition, and that America would lose its independent ability to quickly mine uranium. And they suspected that once Putin got what he wanted, he would start acting badly, such as by aiding Iran.56
By 2014, these fears were realized. The American nuclear industry was shrinking, and Putin deployed troops to the separatist region of America’s most important ally in the region, Ukraine.57
For Campbell, the hardest pill to swallow occurred in fall 2010 shortly after the Mikerin $50,000 briefcase drop, when Campbell learned that the Obama administration had approved Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One, which owned large deposits of uranium ore in both the United States and Kazakhstan.58
For months before CFIUS approved the deal, Campbell had been feeding intelligence to the FBI that Uranium One was an essential part of Putin’s strategy to corner uranium markets and gain leverage over the United States. He also learned that Rosatom harbored ambitions to build a uranium enrichment complex on U.S. soil.59
Fisk opened doors inside Tenex for Campbell and was the first to alert him about the mining deal’s importance.60 “The attached article is of interest as I believe it highlights the ongoing resolve in Russia to gradually and systematically acquire and control global energy resources,” Fisk emailed Campbell on June 24, 2010.61
Fisk forwarded a June 21, 2010, article from Reuters on Rosatom’s efforts to buy Uranium One through its ARMZ subsidiary, and relayed a conversation that Fisk had with Canadian executives of Uranium One lamenting Russia’s impending acquisition. “There are a lot of concerns,” Fisk wrote.62
By autumn, Campbell was being solicited by his colleagues to use his lobbying muscle as a Tenex consultant to help overcome Republican opposition to the Uranium One deal. Some lawmakers in uranium mining states and neoconservatives in Congress were raising concerns about the impact of the deal on domestic production and national security.63
Rosatom has “shown little if any inclination to effectively address the widespread and continuing corruption within Russia, particularly its energy sector,” Republican House members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Spencer Bachus of Alabama, Peter T. King of New York, and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California wrote the Obama administration in October 2010, hoping to pause the deal.64
Fisk wrote Campbell on October 6, 2010, in an email entitled “ARMZ + Uranium One”:
Good afternoon Doug,… The referenced [October 5, 2010] article may present a very good opportunity for Sigma [Campbell’s company] to try and remove the opposing influences (if that is something you can do).65
The next day, Campbell intercepted a memo prepared for Mikerin by an American energy consultant named Cheryl Moss Herman, who would later go to work inside the Obama Energy Department’s nuclear energy office. The eleven-page report, entitled “Policy/Legislative Issues Affecting the Business Climate in the U.S. for TENAM/Tenex,” made clear Uranium One’s importance to the overall Russian nuclear strategy and warned that the plan could be foiled by conservative political opposition.66 Herman warned Mikerin:
Some Republicans truly fear the entry of Russia into the U.S. market, as demonstrated by the fact that they are taking steps to block the purchase of Uranium One…This effort bears watching as it may provide clues as to the likely political reaction if a Russian entity was going to participate in the construction and operation of a uranium enrichment plant in the U.S.67
Herman also warned that there was growing concern inside Congress that Russia’s determined march into new U.S. uranium business conflicted with Western intelligence that Moscow was still aiding Iran’s illicit nuclear program.68 “There are some in Congress who believe that Russia is providing Iran with sensitive nuclear technology as well as the nuclear know-how that will allow it to proliferate a nuclear weapons program, despite Russian Government statements to the contrary,” Herman wrote.69
Campbell forwarded Herman’s memo to his FBI handlers. By that time, he had provided the FBI incontrovertible evidence that the Russians had demanded and received kickbacks from him and others dating back to 2009, had compromised the security of an American uranium trucking firm, and boasted of a plan to corner the uranium market with artificially low prices.70 Under the circumstances, it seemed unthinkable that the U.S. government could fail to act.
Campbell’s FBI handlers assured him that his intelligence had reached the highest levels of the United States government, including then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and President Obama. There was no way, Campbell thought, that the Obama administration could in good conscience allow the Uranium One sale to proceed.71
A few weeks later, he received an unexpected kick to the gut when he saw the first reports that CFIUS had unanimously approved the Uranium One transaction.72
The decision made only back-page headlines, mostly in financial and trade publications. The message was clear: CFIUS saw no national security reason to block the deal.73
The bewildered Campbell wondered if all his undercover work over the last two years had been in vain. Soon, he demanded an explanation from his FBI handlers.74
“Ask your politics,” Taylor answered when Campbell questioned the CFIUS approval. The FBI operative knew exactly what his agent handler meant. The political headwinds of the Obama reset were so strong that officials in his administration would not allow a criminal bribery scheme to stand in its way.75
For years now, Clinton and Obama defenders have cited the unanimous CFIUS decision, which indicates that Obama’s top officials saw no national security reason to block the transaction, pushing back against Campbell’s account. In so doing, they insinuated that career officials who recommended approval must not have known about Rosatom’s criminal conduct. The news media, likewise, picked up on that line, using it to impugn Campbell’s story and calls to reinvestigate the matter.76
Because most of the intelligence available to the federal agencies who participated in the CFIUS review remains classified, there has been no resistance to that narrative. The bureaucracy through claims of secrecy has thwarted any scrutiny of whether CFIUS board members could or should have known about Campbell’s undercover work.77
For more than two long years, that answer has actually been sitting in public view in a congressional correspondence file at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates atomic power in America. Toward the bottom of a lengthy January 2018 letter to Republican Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), the NRC acknowledged that the responsible intelligence agencies had been alerted to the Rosatom investigation in August 2010—the same month that CFIUS was notified of the transaction and well before the Uranium One deal was approved in late October 2010.78
“The NRC first became aware of the investigation in August 2010, when it received a sensitive intelligence report made available to various components of the Federal Government through normal intelligence reporting channels,” the agency wrote Barrasso.79
This is a shocking revelation and an admission that could have neutralized months of attacks on Campbell.
The Obama administration was warned in advance that the Russian company about to get the American assets of Uranium One was engaged in criminal behavior, just as Campbell claimed. Yet the deal proceeded anyway!
The NRC letter raises an additional troubling question: were Obama’s CFIUS members so poorly informed that they did not realize that the Russian company targeting Uranium One was the sister company of a corrupt Rosatom subsidiary that was under FBI investigation? “The NRC was not aware of any connection between the investigation and the transfer of control of Uranium One to ARMZ,” the response said.80
The extraordinary weaponization of the so-called “Russia collusion” issue against Trump has managed to obscure this glaring flaw in the CFIUS process. The Russians dealing with Campbell, meanwhile, could not have been more elated by the Obama administration’s seeming blindness to Rosatom’s misdeeds.81
A few days after Campbell delivered the suitcase full of money to Mikerin, he was invited by the Russians to the swanky Morton’s steakhouse in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Campbell’s role was twofold: host the vodka-laden steak dinner and pick up the $700 tab. The date was October 19, 2010. The Russians were already aware that Uranium One was about to be approved and were planning a party to celebrate the opening of the suburban Washington office of Tenam, their new American subsidiary.82
Mikerin was joined by a handful of Russian figures, including one tied to the KGB and another who was a declared Russian spy on U.S. soil.83 The rowdy guests gleefully boasted about how easy it had been for Rosatom to win concessions from the Obama administration, including lifting a regulatory suspension at the Commerce Department that allowed Tenex to receive billions in U.S. nuclear fuel contracts and the approval of the Uranium One sale.84
Campbell would later recount to congressional investigators how he kept a straight face that night, but winced when he heard his Russian guests deride President Obama with the nickname “Bongo-Bongo,” a clear racial epithet, and mock his government for its giveaways to Putin.85
The Russians boasted “how weak the U.S. government was in giving away uranium business and were confident that Russia would secure the strategic advantage it was seeking in the U.S. uranium market,” Campbell told lawmakers in a 2018 statement.86
The gloating went public by January 2013. After the CFIUS approval of Uranium One and the Obama administration’s arrangement of billions in Russian-U.S. utility contracts, the headline on the Pravda website declared: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”87
Campbell became disillusioned, a feeling that only worsened as his undercover work dragged on, with no certainty that Russia’s bad behavior would be punished.88
“I was frustrated watching the U.S. government make numerous decisions benefiting Rosatom and Tenex while those entities were engaged in serious criminal conduct on U.S. soil,” his statement to Congress recounted. “Tenex and Rosatom were raking in billions of U.S. dollars by signing contracts with American nuclear utility clients at the same time they were indulging in extortion by using threats to get bribes and kickbacks, with a portion going to Russia for high ranking officials.”89
Russian nuclear officials cryptically threatened Campbell on at least two occasions. They ominously alluded to the radioactive poisoning of ex-FSB officer (and famed Putin critic) Alexander Litvinenko to ensure that Campbell would never betray them. In 2006, Putin’s operatives allegedly slipped polonium-210—a radioactive isotope produced almost exclusively at a single Russian nuclear facility—into a teapot that Litvinenko drank from. The murder was linked to Rosatom, Tenex, and Putin’s Ozero comrade: former Tenex CEO Vladimir Smirnov. Campbell knew that the threats were credible. “It makes you think hard about those you love so far away,“ Campbell recalled of the harrowing experience.90
Nonetheless, Campbell trusted his handlers inside the FBI and the Department of Energy inspector general’s office (DOE IG). And for three more years, he intensely worked the Rosatom inner circle to garner intelligence.91
He did so even as the toll of being undercover began to show. He turned to drinking to calm his nerves and was arrested more than once for driving under the influence. Eventually, he would be diagnosed with a tumor that required thirty-six extensive radiation treatments, as well as leukemia, which, as of this writing, still requires chemotherapy.92
His government handlers stood beside him through the good and the bad times: Taylor’s prayers and Gadren’s salty pursuit of crimes provided welcome motivation. Together they made significant investigative strides.93
Through his work uncovering the System, Campbell identified specific money-laundering channels used by the Russians (both Kremlin officials and organized criminals), and others inside Latvia, Cyprus, and the Seychelles. This was a significant accomplishment that led to prosecutions. Campbell also provided crucial evidence that the kickbacks he was paying to Mikerin via overseas accounts were being partly funneled to higher-ranking Russians in Moscow, a potential major counterintelligence discovery.94
“They refer to the money that comes in as the parcel and in Vadim’s words it is delivered by hand directly to their group,” Campbell wrote in one of his updates to the FBI. “No one goes to any bank and because of the political positions of the individuals in the network no one can investigate this system.”95
Most FBI debriefings occurred in a hotel or the unmarked Chevy Suburban that would meet Campbell at a designated rendezvous point. But the undercover operative and his handlers also set up two email accounts, one on Yahoo and the other on Google, in the name of his company, Sigma, in case that cryptic instructions needed to be passed along in between the meetings. The emails made it look like Campbell was communicating with his employees. In fact, he was talking to the feds.96
Nuggets of intelligence kept flowing. For example, Campbell provided the FBI with evidence about the consulting work that a lobbyist named Amos Hochstein performed to advise Rosatom and Tenex as they began their conquest of the American nuclear market.97 While legal, Hochstein’s assistance to the Russians was keenly interesting to the FBI because of his frequent proximity as an advisor to such luminaries as Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. Tenex’s outreach to past or future government advisors like Herman and Hochstein clearly demonstrated that the Kremlin had mastered the art of revolving-door influence in Washington.98
Campbell was also able to give the FBI a heads-up about a special twist in Tenex’s American persuasion strategy. While Russia made much of its money from fossil fuels, it understood the need to acknowledge the climate change agenda of the Obama administration and its European allies. So Mikerin began incorporating minor environmental nods into the company’s policies.99
“Compliance with environmental standards during production and transportation of exported uranium products TENEX both observes and will promote the following environmental policy principles,” Campbell reported to his handlers in summer 2010. “They will require that all suppliers and counter parties must have environmental compliance certificates (Series ISO 14001) and environmental monitoring systems.”100
As time wore on, Campbell’s nerves settled down. His hands no longer trembled when he made the bimonthly kickback payments, and his integration into the Russian machine became less stressful. Thirty years of operating covertly for Uncle Sam had made playing a role, even a dangerous one, more natural.101
Not surprisingly, Mikerin and his Russian comrades only seemed to grow in their trust of Campbell. He could drink them under the table one day and open the door to an American utility executive the next. That trust became readily apparent when a rival lobbying firm with deep ties to the Clinton Foundation, APCO Worldwide, tried to muscle Campbell’s smaller firm out of the way on a project involving the 123 Agreement. If Campbell got sidelined, the FBI’s intelligence pipeline would dry up. But the Russians intervened and overruled any effort to push Sigma aside, blissfully unaware that the consultant was in fact the FBI’s best mole inside their enterprise.102
Campbell reported to his FBI handlers that his position inside Rosatom had survived the APCO power play.103 “APCO lobby group requested that ROSATOM/TENEX allow them to approach US utilities and assume the responsibilities of Sigma,” he wrote. “The leadership of ROSATOM (Kiriyenko) and TENEX (Grigoriev) blocked this involvement and stated that the arrangement with Sigma would stand. We know why this happened (network). Clearly APCO is far more competent and far better politically wired than Sigma. This made no difference to the Russians.”104
As the bond between The Pastor and Putin’s nuclear team solidified, the FBI’s appetite for inserting Campbell deeper into the Russian web also grew. In 2012, the bureau devised a plan for Campbell to use his Russian contacts to invite Putin to visit the United States during or after the election. The agents’ hope was that they could spy more effectively on the Russian leader while he was here.105
Campbell wanted a hook that would be a sure winner, especially given the long odds of getting Putin to say yes. He knew that Putin valued his old title as a colonel in the KGB and had a penchant for horses and racing. (Putin’s personal jockey left for the United States in 2013.) Campbell tried to merge the two passions in an offer that Putin could not refuse.106
Through his old agricultural business work, Campbell had developed strong political ties in Kentucky, which hosts the mother of all horse races. So, he reached out to aides for the state’s then-Democratic governor, Steven L. Beshear, and got Putin named an official “Kentucky Colonel.” The Kentuckians had no idea that Campbell was an FBI operative. He simply knew how to pull off the Kentucky Colonel designation.107
This designation, one of the most coveted social honors in Kentucky, comes with an official certificate. Campbell obtained the certificate signed by Beshear and sent word through his Moscow contacts that Putin had a VIP invitation to attend the Kentucky Derby in spring 2013 and would be honored as a “Kentucky Colonel.” Campbell hoped that the PR stunt would be too alluring for Putin to turn down. His handlers were impressed by his creative approach. A few weeks later, though, Campbell got word from his Moscow contacts that Putin had declined.108
Today, all that remains of the failed FBI operation is the official certificate declaring:
To All To Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greeting: Know Ye, That Honorable Vladimir V. Putin Is Commissioned A KENTUCKY COLONEL. I hereby confer this honor with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities thereunto appertaining.109
Dated October 15, 2012, the declaration bears the signature of both Governor Beshear and then-Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.110
The FBI’s drive to gain evidence inside Rosatom of Russian complicity with Iran’s nuclear program proved to be Campbell’s final mission as a Tenex consultant. Throughout 2010–2012, Campbell had repeatedly provided his handlers information about Rosatom’s dealings and interests in Iran.111 Of all the worries that critics of the Uranium One deal held, illicit support of Iran’s nuclear program loomed near the top, as Herman’s internal memo to Mikerin correctly noted. The FBI had similar concerns.112
In one debriefing, for instance, Campbell related to his handling agents that Mikerin had identified a specific Russian company, TVEL, that was facilitating business between Iran and Tenex. “As I have mentioned previously they do all the uranium business between Russia and Iran,” Campbell wrote of the intermediary. “Vadim is involved in the process under the same kind of payment network between Iran and the special TENEX group. I have asked him if he visits Tehran and he indicates he will not go because he feels it will cause trouble both for [U.S.] relations as well as his US travel.”113
Such intelligence was intriguing for FBI counterintelligence, especially as the Obama administration secretly began discussions with Tehran aimed at reaching a deal to delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program.114
In 2010, Campbell had obtained from his Russian sources a nonpublic report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog that was bird-dogging Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. The public version of the May 2010 report identified current enrichment-related activities inside Iran, including evidence that UN inspectors gathered related to a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.115
While U.S. officials likely already knew the contents of the report, Campbell’s acquisition had provided valuable insight: an IAEA report marked “restricted” for limited distribution had fallen into the hands of Rosatom’s leadership quickly. The long arm of Putin’s nuclear team knew few bounds.116
Campbell continued to provide fragmentary intelligence on the Moscow-Tehran nuclear dealings, including additional IAEA reports that the Russians had obtained. But in early 2012, a harbinger arrived that the bureau was preparing to pull its operative out and finally close out the counterintelligence gathering part of the probe and transition to criminal prosecutions.117
Special Agent Taylor contacted Campbell with the most specific instruction the team had ever given him over the years: a detailed list of fifteen questions that the bureau wanted asked of Mikerin. The questions were transmitted via the secret Sigma email accounts that the bureau had set up with Campbell. All were about Iran:
· Is Iran seeking to create a weapon, either through obvious means, or through the design of their nuclear program?
· Are there any other countries, other than Russia, partnering to help Iran’s nuclear program?
· If there are other countries participating, what model for security and nuclear power generation is Iran following?
· What security measures has Iran put in place at nuclear facilities to prevent the computer failures, the failure of automated systems, or a computer virus?
· What political issues are of concern to Russia if they are to continue to support the Iranian nuclear program?
· If Iran is seeking to enrich uranium to HEU, what is the timeframe in which they expect to achieve that level?
· How many Russian employees are currently working on Iranian projects?
· How many Iranian scientists are currently working on nuclear energy projects? Who are they? What are their specialties?
· What is the megawatt capacity of Bushehr? What are the long-term goals for the facility?
· Are there other facilities currently enriching uranium? Have there been requests for assistance or indications of interest in new facilities?
· How may centrifuges are currently operating at Bushehr?
· What are the safety standards to which Iranian nuclear facilities are built? IAEA standards? How is Iran prepared to ensure force protection and answer international security concerns?
· Are there concealed or restricted areas at Iranian nuclear facilities where Russians are not allowed to visit? Where are they, and what do the Russians feel is going on there?
· Are there temporary storage facilities where nuclear materials are stored? How are they secured?
· How is new and used nuclear material moved and stored, and by whom?118
When Campbell got this list, he joked that the FBI was signing his death warrant. The questions were too specific, the kind only an American spy might ask. Campbell had already been threatened by the Russians with polonium poisoning to ensure that he would not betray their criminal network.119
The FBI, however, would not back off, insisting that Campbell press ahead and corner Mikerin with the Iran questions. The agents even coached him on how he could put his Russian friend at ease while unloading this barrage of inquiries.120
The agents coached Campbell:
As discussed: You spoke with contacts who understand US policy. After the conversations you wrote down notes and have some ideas. You believe that Russia, Rosatom and Tenex could improve working relations with the US by being transparent about activities in Iran. You believe that it would be easier for Tenex to do business in the US if the US knows that Rosatom and Tenex have their fingers on the pulse of what is going on in Iran and can ensure that the nuclear energy is being produced responsibly and safely.121
It might have sounded good to the agents, but after thirty years in the business of spying, Campbell knew that these questions would blow his cover, or at the very least break the bond of trust that he had built with his Russian targets.122
Campbell was right. Mikerin refused to provide much in terms of answers, and soon backed away from his longtime Sigma consultant. Campbell’s work for Tenex dwindled, and his access to Rosatom diminished. He still had plenty of other contacts in Moscow. And the FBI’s Taylor and DOE’s Gadren sought to redeploy his attention to other projects, like arranging the Putin visit to America.123
The relationship between the operative and his FBI handlers remained strong even as the spy work declined. But one unanswered question still loomed large in Campbell’s mind: when, if ever, would the U.S. government finally bring Mikerin and his Russian pals to justice?124 He would have to wait another two years—until 2014—for the answer.
In 2014, Campbell was whisked to a meeting in Greenbelt, Maryland, with prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who was Obama’s pick to remain the top federal prosecutor in Maryland (one of the only Bush-era prosecutors that Obama did not fire), and eventually became Trump’s deputy attorney general during the Russia “Spygate” affair.125
After years of grueling deep undercover work and numerous rounds of chemo, Campbell’s memory was not as strong as it once was. To compensate, Campbell, now in his midsixties, had made voluminous notes to keep his testimony straight. He would have to fumble through the piles of paper before answering most questions, a performance that quickly soured the prosecutors. Soon, the writing was on the wall. Rosenstein’s team did not want to use Campbell as a trial witness. Period. And no more energy needed to be wasted to debate that point.126
Meanwhile, so much time had elapsed since Campbell had first proved the bribery and kickback scheme in 2009 that circumstances were changing. Rod Fisk, the South African nuclear expert who ran the uranium trucking company Transport Logistics International, had been a prime early target of the probe. Campbell was able to document how Fisk made hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickback payments to Mikerin all the way back to 2004. But Fisk died in 2011 after a short and sudden bout with cancer.127
In contradiction to its usual practice, the FBI did not execute a search warrant to obtain Fisk’s computer after his death. Instead, agents secured voluntary consent from his widow to sweep the computer of information they wanted. When they returned years later, the hard drive and its potential evidentiary gold mine had been destroyed. It was another misstep certain to aid the defense.128
By the time Campbell was brought to Greenbelt for a second time to meet with prosecutors, a criminal indictment had been filed by prosecutors against Mikerin and another defendant, Daren Condrey, the executive who replaced Fisk at the uranium trucking company.129
Gadren, the DOE IG agent who worked alongside the FBI’s Taylor, filed the initial affidavit in February 2015 in support of a search warrant for some of Mikerin’s evidence. His affidavit suggested that the Justice Department had uncovered a major kickback scandal and would eventually prove that some of the monies were going to Putin’s inner Moscow circle.130
“As part of the scheme, MIKERIN, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and ROSATOM (both Russian state-owned entities), would offer no-bid contracts to U.S. businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some of the same offshore bank accounts to which MIKERIN was directing CS-l to make payments between 2009 and 2011.”131
In the end, the government pursued convictions or plea deals for just three figures: the trucking company executive Condrey, a Russian national in New Jersey named Boris Rubizhevsky whose security firm worked as a Tenex consultant, and Mikerin, who got forty-eight months in prison after pleading guilty to felony money laundering.132
The missed opportunity was not lost at Mikerin’s sentencing hearing in December 2015. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang expressed his deep dismay that the Russian had been able to compromise a sensitive American asset like the uranium trucking company. For that enterprise “to be corrupted by graft is very troubling,” the judge said.133
Mikerin’s lawyer made clear what the government had suggested from the beginning. Attorney Jonathan Lopez argued that “while his client served as a conduit for the payments he was neither the mastermind nor the ultimate beneficiary of the bribes,” Reuters reported. In other words, the kickback money that Campbell so meticulously tracked for the FBI for more than six years actually benefitted inner circle nuclear industry officials in Moscow. But none would be brought to justice by Obama or Rosenstein’s prosecution team.134
Campbell took some solace in knowing that his harrowing undercover work had resulted in some convictions. His pride was further boosted when his FBI handler team invited him out for a steak dinner to celebrate. When he arrived at the restaurant, the operative got an unexpected surprise: FBI supervisors had authorized a check for $51,046.36 as a reward for his undercover exploits.135
Campbell was grateful. He respected Taylor, Gadren, and his other government handlers, and remained in contact with them for months afterwards. As late as 2017, Gadren continued to reach out to Campbell for assistance on cases, in one instance seeking intelligence on Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry and some of his international dealings.136
But Campbell still felt like he had been left at the short end of a stick. His compensation for legitimate work for Rosatom had been gouged by Mikerin’s kickback scheme, and he believed that the U.S. government should reimburse him for far more than roughly $50,000. By his calculation, he was still short about $500,000 that he had rightfully earned in consulting fees.137
By summer 2016, as the U.S. presidential campaigns raged, Campbell retained private counsel and filed a lawsuit seeking payment from the feds. His suit laid out his entire role in the Rosatom affair, threatening to expose the Obama administration’s feckless response to Russian nuclear bribery and tainting its anticipated successor for the White House, Hillary Clinton.138
Within hours, Campbell’s litigation set off alarm bells in the U.S. Justice Department. His lawyer was threatened by the attorneys in the Criminal Division with prosecution for violating his nondisclosure agreement. Campbell demurred and quickly withdrew the lawsuit before it attracted any media attention or compromised what he was told were other ongoing operations in Russia based on his earlier intelligence.139
After Campbell went public in late 2017 and early 2018, he was immediately embraced by Republicans and smeared by Democrats and the news media. Inaccurate stories and a House Democratic staff memo sought to impugn his reputation, falsely suggesting that he was unreliable even though the FBI had awarded him the bonus check. The counterattacks became so severe that Toensing, Campbell’s attorney, wrote then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Inspector General demanding a leaks investigation. It did not happen.140
Eventually, the Justice Department would make statements backing away from the anonymous attacks on Campbell, acknowledging the FBI’s $51,000 check and the mentions of Uranium One in the bureau files. It was too little too late. And as too often happens with the twenty-first century news media, reporters were loath to go back and correct their erroneous reporting. They could just move on to a new tale, without any consequence.141
Like most undercover operatives, Campbell had his flaws, whether it was his bouts with the bottle or his struggles with memory lapses inflicted by the effects of cancer treatment. He was the first to embrace those flaws, often telling people that he did not think that he would have been a good congressional or trial witness.142
In the end, Doug Campbell’s heroic efforts to assist the FBI in building a major Russian counterintelligence case did not warrant the smear job that he received. It was yet another travesty leveled by the falling dominoes that began with Obama’s failed Russian reset.