Billionaire investor Peter Thiel went on the run with the FBI after a diplomat working in Moscow at the Kremlin’s Foreign Ministry approached him at a party in Vienna and proposed a private meeting between the former member of the ‘transition team of Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In accordance with Business InsiderThiel was introduced to Daniil Bisslinger by Christian Angermayer, “a gregarious German businessman who had forged relationships with politicians around the world,” at Angermayer’s 40th birthday party on June 23, 2018.
Bisslinger “had previously been an attache working at the Russian Embassy in Berlin and had sometimes served as an interpreter for Vladimir Putin,” the outlet reports.
Bisslinger suggested that Thiel take a trip to Russia to attend the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Thiel later told the FBI. The diplomat said he would arrange for Thiel to meet privately with Putin, a casual invitation that would carry a lot of weight from a counterintelligence perspective, noted former FBI Deputy Director Frank Figliuzzi.
“If these facts are accurate, they would be of potentially significant counterintelligence interest,” Figliuzzi told Insider. “Any time a Russian official invites someone to meet with Vladimir Putin, that has potential significance.”
And Thiel would be an attractive connection for the Kremlin.
“Thiel’s own companies were indispensable to America’s national security establishment,” Insider explains. “He had founded Palantir, an analytics firm used by the Pentagon and the CIA. He was on the board of Facebook (now Meta) and had been an early investor in prominent US defense startups such as SpaceX and Anduril , access that could give the Kremlin a powerful edge in US and Silicon Valley security networks.
Thiel did not follow up on the invitation, but told the FBI that he believed Bisslinger when he said he could arrange the meeting with Putin.
More than three years after the evening in Vienna, Bisslinger approached Thiel’s office again and made the same invitation.
“At the time, Thiel, like the rest of the world, had seen the signs that Russia was about to invade Ukraine,” Insider reports. “He wondered if Bisslinger’s invitation was some kind of psy-op, a plot to make it seem like the invasion wasn’t going to happen, that everything was normal. Again, he didn’t answer.”
But Thiel contacted the FBI.
Unbeknownst to Bisslinger, in the time since their meeting in Vienna, Thiel had officially become a confidential human source for the feds.
The billionaire was now an informant, with an ID number and his own codename: “philosopher.”
“Thiel reported Bisslinger’s two approaches to his front office managers, along with the names of two others: a German and a Russian,” according to Insider. “All three men, Thiel told the FBI, had tried to enter his circle to advance Kremlin interests.”
Thiel’s deal with the FBI was first revealed by Insider last month. Citing three sources: “longtime associate of Thiel [FBI informant Charles] Johnson plus two additional sources with knowledge of what Thiel reported to the FBI” – Insider revealed that Johnson recruited Thiel, who met regularly with Johnson’s handler, Johnathan Buma.
These same three sources disclosed Thiel’s discussion with the FBI about Angermayer and Bisslinger.
On behalf of Angermayer, two lawyers told Insider in a letter that Bisslinger “worked in Berlin at the Russian Embassy and was a regular part of diplomatic circles in Berlin before the war.”
“Although Mr. Angermayer introduced Mr. Thiel and Mr. Bisslinger,” the lawyers stated in a separate letter, “Mr. Angermayer is not, and cannot be, responsible for what Mr. Bisslinger and Mr. Thiel have discussed or not.
While Bisslinger was at the party, Angermayer is “pretty sure he didn’t make any presentations,” a spokesman for the employer wrote.
“And, in any case, Christian is not aware of anything that Mr. Thiel and Mr. Bisslinger may (or may not) have discussed,” the spokesman stressed.
“If Putin had succeeded in forging a meaningful relationship with Thiel, and there is no evidence to suggest that he had, the biggest intelligence prize for Russia would have been Thiel’s influence at Palantir, where he serves as chairman of the board since 2003,” Insider said. reports
“The CIA, the NSA and the FBI have all used their software,” the source explains. “Palantir recently won a $250 million contract to develop artificial intelligence for the Pentagon; another contract, worth up to $463 million, is for battlefield-ready software to be used by the US Special Operations Command. A proposed partnership between Palantir and Britain’s National Health Service could give the company access to the UK Biobank, one of the world’s largest pools of genetic data.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Poker
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