There
has always been a bit of mystery surrounding Sen. Richard Lugard's trip
to Russia in 2005 with the newly-elected Senator from Illinois, Barack
Obama, as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program which oversaw
the elimination of some nuclear weapons. In particular, was the
incident where Lugar and Obama were detained by Russian authorities for
several hours while their passports were inspected. Actually, it was
only Obama's passport that the Russians were interested in inspecting,
but Lugar has always provided cover for Obama concerning the incident.
The American Thinker's Mondo Frazier has an interesting perspective on
what it was the Russians were interested in learning more about Obama. Frazier
cites Italian sources as claiming the Russians were interested in
learning about Obama's role as a spy for the British government, one of
the three countries of which he has held citizenship (i.e., there is no
such thing as a natural born citizenship requirement in the U.S.
Constitution for being president anymore--at least as applied to Obama):
In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama
went on a mission to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The
newly-minted U.S. senator was invited to be part of a Russian
fact-finding tour that inspected a nuclear weapons site in Perm,
Siberia. The base Lugar and Obama visited was where mobile launch
missiles were being destroyed under the Cooperative Threat Reduction
program (CTR), which also went by the name of the Nunn-Lugar program.
In
2005, then-Senator Barack Obama went on a mission to Russia with
Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The newly-minted U.S. senator was
invited to be part of a Russian fact-finding tour that inspected a
nuclear weapons site in Perm, Siberia. The base Lugar and Obama visited
was where mobile launch missiles were being destroyed under the
Cooperative Threat Reduction program (CTR), which also went by the name
of the Nunn-Lugar program.
What
happened next -- after the inspections were over -- was at the time
reported by several foreign news sources but was never reported in the
USA by the CMM. The Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three hours
at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama's and Lugar's passports
and search their plane. Some sources reported that the Russians accused
Barack Obama of being a spy.
But wait -- there's more!
According
to an Italian source, the Russians did not accuse Obama of being an
American spy; they accused him of being a spy for the British! The
report went on to say that the incident ended up involving the White
House, the U.S. State Department, and military officials, along with
their counterparts in Moscow.
Strangely
enough, an official report from Lugar's office about the trip never
mentioned the incident. Neither did Barack Obama in 2008 when he was
desperate to exhibit some foreign policy chops.
One
other oddity: in the fall of 2008, Obama admitted on his
Fightthesmears.com site that he had held dual citizenship with both the
United States and Great Britain (the site explained that this was due to
Barack Obama, Sr. being a foreign national) until 1982. Did the
Russians know something about Obama's citizenship in 2005 that ordinary
Americans don't know in 2011?
Frazier also discusses Obama's
odd trip to Pakistan as a "penniless" 20-year-old student where he
spent time with the future prime minister and president of Pakistan with
whom he went bird hunting. Who arranged the trip is anyone's guess but,
hey, who asks questions when it's about The One? It would be nice,
however, if just one reporter in this state would ask Sen. Lugar for his
perspective on this incident during the Russian trip in 2005. I truly
would like to hear what he has to say about it. Let's face it, the real
reason Lugar is in trouble for re-election is because so many
conservatives distrust him because of the way he embraced Obama,
a person with whom he arguably should share no ideological or
personal connection if the narrative he wants us to believe about him
has any validity.
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