Theres a state department scandal brewing in Albania...
Politics in Albania is tribal, mean and vindictive, just like in America.
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Lucas: Follow the $$ through case of spies & State Dept.
Peter LucasFebruary 22, 2024 at 12:48 a.m.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama shake hands after a joint press conference in Tirana, Albania, Thursday last week. (AP Photo/Armando Babani, Pool)
It was more than just a coincidence.
While Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Tirana praising Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama last week, a disgraced FBI agent with ties to Rama was sentenced to prison on bribery charges.
Former FBI spymaster Charles McGonigal, 55, once head of the New York FBI counterintelligence office, was sentenced to two years in prison last Friday after pleading guilty for taking a $225,000 payment in cash.
The money came from a former Albanian intelligence agent, Agron Neza, now a U.S. citizen, who attended meetings with McGonigal and Rama, both in Washington and in Tirana.
The sentence is on top of the four years McGonigal was previously given for conspiring to violate sanctions on Russia by going to work for Russian Oleg Deripaska whom he once investigated.
McGonigal, who admitted he had an ongoing relationship with Rama, met secretly with Rama and Neza on several occasions.
At a meeting in Tirana on Sept. 9, 2017, which the FBI knew nothing about, McGonigal discussed oil field drilling contracts, among other issues, with Rama. McGonigal even presented Rama with an FBI baseball cap.
Shortly after, McGonigal allegedly accepted the cash in several payments from Neza during meetings in New York. It has not been made clear what McGonigal did in return for the money.
Rama has denied any wrongdoing. And he has not come under investigation, not in the U.S. and certainly not in Albania, which he controls.
That September visit was one of several trips McGonigal made to Albania, a tiny former communist country where political corruption and drug money laundering are common.
McGonigal’s arrest caused a political fire storm in Albania. However, Rama, the Socialist Party leader, has been able to ride out the storm.
He has been helped by Blinken, the U.S. Embassy and the State Department, all of which continue to support him while thrashing Rama’s main political opponent, former Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the center right Democrat Party.
Berisha, 79, seeking a political comeback, is running against Rama in 2025.
Blinken is up to his neck in Albanian politics which may stem from Berisha’s prior attacks on George Soros, a Blinken family friend, who has sought to influence Albanian politics and its justice system.
Blinken’s ambassador to Albania, Yuri Kim, threw herself into Albanian politics as no other U.S. official has ever done. She tried to get Berisha thrown out of the Democrat Party, which he founded upon the fall of communism. Failing that, she tried to get him unseated as a member of Parliament.
Blinken earlier did Rama a huge favor when he banned Berisha, once the darling of the State Department, from entering the U.S.
He declared Berisha as “persona non grata” over unspecified “corrupt acts” that allegedly took place when Berisha was in power eight years earlier.
Most recently Rama in December placed Berisha under house arrest over alleged corruption of a land deal 15 years ago.
Berisha, the first popular elected head of Albania upon the fall of communism, served as president from 1992-1997, and again as prime minister from 2005-2013.
Blinken’s brief stopover in Tirana enroute to the Munich Security Conference, served as a major public relations distraction to the McGonigal/Rama relationship and McGonigal’s sentencing. A grateful Rama greeted Blinken as though he were a head of state.
The visit also symbolized Blinken’s endorsement of Rama’s decision to place Berisha under arrest and cripple his campaign. “Corrupt officials are being held accountable,” Blinken told Albanian reporters, indicating that he meant Berisha, not McGonigal or anyone in Albania.
Berisha, meanwhile, speaks nightly from the balcony of his Tirana apartment to supporters who gather on the street below.
Like Joe Biden, Edi Rama with Blinken’s help is making sure his opponent campaigns from a prison cell. Politics in Albania is tribal, mean and vindictive, just like in America.
Berisha is no saint, to be sure, but neither is Rama. The last Albanian saint was Mother Theresa, and she took the last train to the coast.
The unanswered question is: Where did the $225,000 payoff come from and what was it for?
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and author of The OSS in World War II Albania./peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
Charles McGonigal, former special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, arrives at the federal courthouse in Washington last Friday. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
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