Paul Wood

Poison, spies and lies

This political provocateur has three rules: ‘Admit nothing; deny everything; launch counterattack’

issue 11 March 2017

 Washington DC

 

Roger Stone — political consultant, agent provocateur, friend and confidant of Donald Trump — arrives for lunch with a bodyguard in tow. ‘I’ve had way too many death threats,’ he explains. He says he’s recovering from poisoning by polonium, a radioactive substance used to kill the Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London. Litvinenko, he says, had ‘a much larger dose, probably done by British intelligence’. But the British government named the Russian agents responsible, I reply. ‘What was the proof?’ he asks. ‘It’s all mirrors. You know that.’

Stone blames his ‘poisoning’ on ‘the deep state’, a term that in Trumpworld means the intelligence community. Trump has taken to Twitter to accuse the deep state of tapping his phone on President Obama’s orders. ‘This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!’ Stone has called for Obama to be ‘charged, convicted and jailed’.

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