The Washington Post - 09.11.2019

A4 EZ rE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019

ministration “that nobody should be talking to rudy G iuliani, on o ur team or anybody else should be.” Even before Trump’s J uly phone call with Zelensky, during which Trump said Ukraine’s president should be in touch with Giuliani about investigations, “there was a lot of usurpation of that power,” Hill told impeachment investigators, characterizing Giuliani and his associates as “trying to appro- priate presidential power or the authority of the President, given the p osition that mr. Giuliani is i n, to also pursue their own personal interests.” Hill said that, in hindsight and with the benefit of a rough transcript of the call and media re- ports, she b elieved that her “ worst nightmare” for U.S.-Ukraine relations had come t o pass. “my worst nightmare is the p oliticization of the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine and, also, the u surpation o f authorities, you know, for other people’s personal vested interests,” Hill said. “A nd there seems to be a large range of people who were looking for t hese opportunities here.” [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

rachael bade, Josh Dawsey, Karoun Demirjian, Karen Deyoung, tom Hamburger, John Hudson, Colby Itkowitz, Greg Jaffe, Paul Kane, Ellen nakashima, John Wagner and matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

disturbing” and “wrong,” Vind- man told House i nvestigators. He said he brought notes of the conversation into a meeting that included White House lawyers John Eisenberg and mike Ellis, as well as Vindman’s twin brother, Ye vgeny, an ethics lawyer on the National Security C ouncil. Vindman said what he found “particularly troubling was the references t o conducting a n investigation” into Hunter Biden, telling lawmakers he thought it was wrong for the president to ask a foreign power to investigate an American citizen. He was also disturbed by Trump’s request that Zelensky speak with his personal attorney, rudolph W. Giuliani, and Attor- ney General William P. Barr to “conduct an investigation that didn’t e xist.” many of Vindman’s concerns about politicizing t he r elationship with Ukraine, which the United States sees as a bulwark against russian expansion in Europe, were shared by Hill, the former NSC russia o fficial. Hill testified that Giuliani and his business associates, Igor fruman and Lev Parnas, were trying to use the powers of the presiden- cy to further their own interests. fruman and Parnas were arrested last month and f ace federal charg- es of funneling foreign money to U.S. politicians while trying to in- fluence U.S.-Ukraine relations. Hill said Bolton repeatedly told his staff and colleagues in the ad-

Gordon Sondland, t he U.S. a mbas- sador to the European Union, told him t hat the i dea to precondition a White House meeting on the Ukrainians’ help in investigating the B idens was “ coordinated” with the acting White House chief of staff, mick mulvaney. Sondland “just said that he had had a conversation with mr. mulvaney, and this is what was required in order to get a meeting,” Vindman testified. mulvaney defied a subpoena friday to appear for a deposition, claiming through his attorney “ absolute immunity,” an official working o n the i nquiry s aid. Trump later told reporters that allowing White House officials to testify would validate what h e sees as an illegitimate proceeding. “They’re making it up,” he said. “I don’t want to give credibility to a corrupt witch hunt. I’d love for mick to go up... except it vali- dates a corrupt investigation.” Sondland told investigators l ast month that the disbursement of military aid was c ontingent on the investigations Trump desired. A transcript of his deposition was released earlier this week. Within an hour of Trump’s July call with Zelensky, Vindman said, he told White House lawyers that Trump had made an inappropri- ate request for an i nvestigation. “I thought it was troubling and

vice president Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and was once employed by a controversial Ukrainian energy firm. Vindman, explaining what he called the vast “power disparity” between Trump and Zelensky, t old rep. John ratcliffe (r-Te x.) that Trump’s r equest f or a “favor” from Zelensky was fairly interpreted as a demand. “When the president of the United States makes a request for a favor, it certainly seems — I would take i t as a demand.” “fair enough,” said ratcliffe, who went on to express doubts about the premise. ratcliffe pressed Vindman on the word “demand,” saying, “The word when we’re talking about an allegation that there was a quid pro quo has significance, and ‘ demand’ has a specific connota- tion.” He stressed that Trump and others have denied there was any such demand. But Vindman stood by his description, saying: “It became com- pletely apparent what the deliver- able would be in order to get a White House meeting. That deliv- erable was r einforced b y the Presi- dent.... The demand was, in order to get the White House meeting, they had to deliver an investigation.” Vindman also testified that

Bolton, Secretary of State mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense mark T. Esper, Vindman said. They g athered with Trump “ to dis- cuss the hold and other issues” after Bolton instructed Vindman to draft a memo for the president explaining why distribution o f the security aid — totaling almost $400 million — was in the United States’ interests. Vindman told lawmakers that there was broad agreement among national security officials that not providing the aid to Ukraine “would significantly un- dermine the message of support” for the country and “also signal to the russians that they could po- tentially be m ore aggressive.” But accounts of what trans- pired in the oval office varied, Vindman told investigators. one official told h im that, i nexplicably, the hold on military aid “never came up,” according to Vindman’s testimony. A second account indi- cated that it was raised, “but no decision was t aken.” In a discussion with impeachment investigators about what constitutes a quid pro quo, Vind- man was grilled by a republican lawmaker about why he believed Trump had made a “demand” that Ukraine launch an investigation of Hunter Biden in return for a White House meeting for Zel- ensky. Biden is the son of former

The release of Vindman’s testi-
mony, and that of fiona Hill’s, a
former s enior official for r ussia o n
the National Security Council,
comes as the House enters the
next phase of its impeachment
investigation.
Next w eek will b ring two days of
public testimony from three se-
nior State Department officials
who have already met with law-
makers behind closed doors. Hill
and V indman are i n discussions to
testify at a public hearing later t his
month, according to congressio-
nal Democratic advisers familiar
with the plan who spoke on the
condition o f anonymity because o f
the o ngoing inquiry.
Vindman’s description of a quid
pro quo focused on the White
House meeting desired by Zel-
ensky as Ukraine’s new president
desperately sought a show of U.S.
support i n his country’s continued
battle with russian-backed sepa-
ratists. But the Army officer also
detailed a previously undisclosed
discussion in the oval office on
Aug. 16, a conversation among se-
nior leaders that he did not wit-
ness but understood to be aimed
at persuading Trump to restore
the f low of h undreds of m illions of
dollars i n security aid to Ukraine.
Those involved included then-
national security adviser John

transcrIpts from a

Transcripts detail o∞cials’ concerns on Ukraine

the russians. He found Vindman to be perfect for the job. Zwack said he never saw any indication that Vindman either held a grudge against the country his family had fled or had a soft spot for the russian regime. “If he were a hard-ass to the russians, it would have been difficult for him to succeed,” he said. “A nd he never let his feelings about the country get in the way of his job.” During Vindman’s tenure in russia, from 2012 to 2014, Zwack said, “we weren’t obsessed with the political situation as so many people are now. I never knew whether someone w as an r or a D. our job was to be supportive of whoever was president.” In July, when Trump spoke to the Ukrainian president, Vind- man listened in from the Situa- tion room, growing ever more “concerned by the call,” as he would tell members of Congress. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.... The request to investigate the Bidens had nothing to do with national security.” Vindman felt compelled to reg- ister his concerns to his superiors. “The command structure is ex- tremely important to me,” h e said. Vindman has remained public- ly silent since his name burst into the news. His attorney, michael Volkov, said Vindman goes to the White House every day: “He is at work, busy, doing his job.” [email protected]

Julie tate and tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

er than his “kid brother,” a s he told lawmakers — served in South Ko- rea, Germany and Iraq, where he was wounded in 2004 by an im- provised explosive device, an inci- dent that led to him being award- ed the Purple Heart. After his time in Iraq, Vind- man’s path shifted from combat infantryman to Harvard Universi- ty student, and he earned a mas- ter’s degree in russian, Eastern Europe and C entral Asian studies. Already fluent in russian and Ukrainian, he gained the history and political grounding that would serve him well as a foreign area officer, a job in which military officers serve in embassies around the world. Vindman held posts in Kyiv, Ukraine, and in moscow, where he, his wife and their baby daugh- ter lived in a diplomatic apart- ment complex outside the central city. V indman represented the De- fense Department to his russian counterparts, visiting military fa- cilities, m eeting with russian officers and organizing visits by Americans. The mission in moscow in those years was to support Presi- dent Barack obama’s effort to “reset” t he American relationship with russia. It wasn’t going well. russian President Vladi mir Putin believed that the United States was behind pro-democracy dem- onstrations that were putting pressure on his regime, and Wash- ington had moved against corrupt russian oligarchs, freezing their assets. Zwack, Vindman’s b oss, needed officers he could trust to engage

Vindman told the House committee. “He stressed to us the impor- tance of fully integrating into our adopted country. for many years, life was quite difficult. In spite of our challenging beginnings, my family worked to build its own American Dream.” for Alexander, Ye vgeny and Le- onid, that meant serving their country in uniform. Their family left t he Soviet Union in part so the boys would not be subject to being drafted into the Soviet military. But the brothers eagerly enlisted in the U.S. Army, in Alexander’s case after graduating from Bing- hamton University in Upstate New York — a school that so many Soviet emigrants chose that it eventually started a “russian for russians” course f or native speak- ers, said Nancy Tittler, the school’s undergraduate director of russian studies. Alexander — nine minutes old-

ca as part of a wave of hundreds of thousands o f Jews who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ’80s. The Vindman boys’ mother had recently died when the family made it to Brooklyn in 1979, after a brief stay i n Italy. The twins arrived with their father, their grandmother, their older brother, Leonid, and $750. The boys lived in a neighbor- hood known as Little odessa, where the shops under the elevat- ed trains had become a cluster of tastes of the old country — russian dinner clubs where new bot- tles of vodka appeared with every course, russian video and book shops. But Alexander and Ye vgeny pressed to get out of their immi- grant community and become as American as they could imagine. “Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night,”

the word “our” i n capital letters. “I have dedicated my entire professional life to the United States of America,” Vindman said. Both Vindman brothers regis- tered to vote as Democrats when they signed up in New York while still in their teens. After Alexan- der moved to Washington, he reg- istered in the District in 2012 without any party affiliation, according to city elections records. But in today’s Washington, where party affiliation can be viewed as a scarlet letter that brands even the apolitical as somehow biased, no affirmation of political neutrality seems to suffice. Those w ho know Vindman well say nothing could pain him more than to have people question his allegiance to the country that gave him a home and a future. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker who happened to fea- ture the Vindman twins in a 1986 film about the Statue of Liberty, recalled them fondly. “Theirs is the story of America a t its best,” he said. As k ids, the twins often d ressed alike. They still do. over four decades in America, they have moved from the powder-blue sail- or suits their grandmother put them in to the deep-blue dress uniform of the U.S. Army, i n which they both serve as lieutenant colonels. T hey both work in the White House, both for the National Se- curity Council. They both live — five houses apart from each other — in Woodbridge, a leafy Virginia suburb 38 miles from their office. The Vindmans came to Ameri-

Vindman is a military man in a job
that puts a premium on discretion
— and the commander in chief,
without evidence, calls him a
“Never Trumper witness.”
But those who have worked
with Vindman describe him as a
model officer.
“He was firm and he was bal-
anced,” said Peter Zwack, a now-
retired brigadier g eneral who was
Vindman’s boss when the young
officer was a Defense Department
official working in the U.S. Em-
bassy in moscow. “Totally self-
made, as you often get with immi-
grants. They’re hungry. There’s a
drive to pay back the opportunity
that your new nation gave you.”
A s director of European affairs
for the National Security Council,
Vindman was required to listen i n
to the July 25 phone call between
Trump and the president of
Ukraine, where Vindman was
born. After the call, Vindman felt
compelled to report his alarm
over hearing the president re-
quest that Ukraine investigate
former vice president Joe Biden
and his son Hunter Biden.
Washington scandals have at
times over the years featured pre-
viously anonymous bureaucrats
who glimpsed wrongdoing and
found themselves thrust into in-
stant fame, their lives abruptly
gone topsy-turvy, their motives
and histories examined for b ias or
venal intent.
In t his time of political division
and Internet-facilitated inspec-
tion, Vindman has lost the ano-
nymity that served him well in
Army positions at t he U.S. Embas-
sy in moscow and in the White
House. After consulting with an
ethics lawyer — his twin brother, a
National Security Council attor-
ney who worked across the hall
from him — Vindman took his
concern up the chain of com-
mand. He was no whistleblower,
but he ended up telling his story
to investigators, to a congressio-
nal committee, and soon, he is
expected to appear before law-
makers during nationally tele-
vised hearings.
If Vindman’s first appearance
on Capitol Hill was any indica-
tion, he will be a formidable wit-
ness. Wearing his military uni-
form, Vindman testified in closed
session for 10 hours last month —
a grueling, combative session re-
counted in a 340-page transcript
released friday by the House In-
telligence Committee.
Vindman’s brush with fame
quickly got ugly. on fox News,
Laura Ingraham described him as
“a U.S. national security official
who is advising Ukraine while
working inside the White House,
apparently against the president’s
interests,” and John Yoo, a Justice
Department official in the George
W. Bush administration, replied
that “some people might call that
espionage.” on CNN, former con-
gressman Sean P. Duffy (r-Wis.)
suggested that Vindman “has an
affinity, I think, for the Ukraine.”
As a defense attache posted to
an embassy overseas, Vindman, in
the military’s nonpartisan tradi-
tion, has insisted that he had no
politics other than representing
his government.
“I am a patriot, and it is my
sacred duty and honor to advance
and defend our country, irrespec-
tive of party or politics,” he told
the congressional committee last
month. In his written text, he put

VIndman from a

A Soviet emigre d etermined to be as American as can be

PHotos by CArol KItmAn Identical twins alexander and Yevgeny Vindman race after a friend on the boardwalk in Brooklyn, where their family settled in 1979. today the brothers, below, s erve as lieutenant colonels in the U.s. army, work in the White House for the national security council and l ive f ive houses apart from each other i n Woodbridge, Va.

The Washington Post - 09.11.2019

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