In the days of the Soviet Union, the KGB was looking for American contact who might be useful at some time in the future.

Donald Trump came to their attention in 1977 when he married his first wife Ivana Zelnykhov.

She was a citizen of Czechoslovakia, a Soviet ally.

Trump fit the KGB's personality profile perfectly.

They were looking for ambition, vanity, egotism, narcissism, someone who was corruptible,

someone who perhaps had affairs on the side, someone who wasn't a great analyst,

and you go down this list, and Donald Trump ticks every box, I mean, every single box.

Hi, I'm Orman Alney.

Today on To the Point, I'm joined by Luke Harding.

He's the former Moscow Bureau Chief for The Guardian.

He knows from personal experience how former KGB agents like Vladimir Putin have operated then and now.

His latest book is Collusion, Secret Meetings, Dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win.

Luke Harding, great to have you on our program.

Thank you, Warren.

The book is collusion, secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win.

That's a pretty tough title.

Well, it's a pretty extraordinary story, Warren, that I think actually goes back rather a long way to understand what happened last year in the extraordinary election of 2016.

I think you have to kind of delve back into the Cold War and to look at KGB techniques, to look at kind of classic espionage being done both by Soviet, Moscow and by the Russia of Vladimir Putin. And to also look at kind of classic espionage being done both by Soviet Moscow and by the Russia of Vladimir Putin.

And to also look at a kind of very curious trip by Donald Trump in the summer of 1987 to the USSR,

which was paid for by Moscow and followed really, I would say, a fairly kind of concerted campaign.

This is something I discovered when I was researching my book by the Soviet government

and the then ambassador, someone called Uri Dabin, to kind of woo Trump and bring him over.

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