For the men from behind the Iron Curtain, Trump was a celebrity capitalist. He was also, we now know, the target of an extensive spying operation conducted by Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) intelligence service – together with “friends” from the KGB.
The StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, when he married a Czechoslovakian-born woman, Ivana Zelníčková. News of the wedding reached the StB bureau in Zlín, the town in Moravia where Ivana grew up and where her parents lived. Ivana’s father, Miloš, regularly gave the StB information on his daughter’s visits from the US and his son-in-law’s burgeoning career.
The StB’s work on Donald and Ivana intensified in the late 1980s, after Trump let it be known he was thinking of running for president. The StB’s first foreign department sat up. Inside the Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia’s spies were reputed to be skilled professionals, competent and versatile English speakers who were a match for the CIA and MI6.
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