In 1958, the glorified and sufficiently popular French actor Alain Delon came to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. The purpose of his visit was very practical, almost a business one. He had a role in Marco Polo movie. But, as it turned out later, that visit had huge political consequences. And it was not because Delon spread the banned literature in the then capital and gave lectures on the right to democracy or the necessity of having an opportunity to choose among different political parties. To the contrary. Delon felt great in Belgrade, and it was not only because of the job he had done, but also because of his new acquaintances who shot the dangerous and demanding movie scenes instead of him. The name of the first acquaintance was Stevica Marković, while the other one’s name was Miško Milošević and his third acquaintance was Uroš Milićević. After the end of the shooting in Belgrade, Delon decided to take Miško Milošević to France. First of all to enjoy in his company, which was so much different from what he had had in Paris, then to befriend him and, eventually, to have him as his bodyguard. Stevica Marković joined them two years later and it was not quite clear whether he did that as a fugitive or as a tourist with a valid Yugoslav passport and with little help of Yugoslav secret services. Anyway, Delon had already shot his first great movie with the first cult director he had cooperated with. Luchino Visconti appointed him as the leading actor in an important movie – “Rocco and His Brothers”. After Marković, others appeared also – Miša Slovenac and many others with what were, more or less, nicknames and resounding names, such as Vuk (Wolf), King Kong, Mile Robija (Mile the Prisoner), but these guys were usually well known to the police and all of them were Serbs. Delon opened his door to all of them. And thus, he opened the most important door to Marković, who was, at the time, his inseparable companion. That was the door to the bedroom of the French Prime Minister. More precisely, that door was opened by the Prime Minister’s very wife. And that is precisely where the fateful political twist starts. Namely, the guys from Belgrade literally excited the lively Paris ladies, whose husbands were mainly most influential politicians. Both through involvement in fights and with drinking and the Balkan directness, as well as in beds. And, occasionally, they recorded some of their actions. The French secret services assessed that the records, particularly those from the bed of the French PM cold be sold to Moscow via Yugoslav secret service for the impact on French election.
A few days ago, on last Friday, May 7, 2017, immediately before the election silence in France, I read the press release of the office of the presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. It stated that the unidentified perpetrators, with very clear intention to influence on the French election, hacked the future President’s server and stole 9 GB of his emails. They allegedly mixed those with falsified documents in order, and that is precisely how it was written in the official statement, to destabilise the French presidential election and Macron’s predictable victory. The hackers, with Moscow standing accused all the time, allegedly prepared three groups of data to be published. First suggesting that Macron wanted to Islamise France, which was why he supported the initiatives for historic researches of northern and southern Mediterranean coast. The second suggested that he had bank accounts full of money on Cayman Islands while according to the third group of data, assisted by his wife, he literally cheated in public discussions with Marine Le Pen. Though they dismissed all allegations relatively quickly, primarily those about hidden money and election frauds, the whole case was very unpleasant. The decision of Le Monde not to reveal the hacked electronic contents until the end of election and to check them in detail before they are published was probably crucial in that regard. That was allegedly because the traces indicated that the attack came from a Russian hacker central named Pawn Storm and ATP 28. With very similar consequential order as was the case with Hillary Clinton.
On March 24, 2017, Le Pen, in an elegant black dress, was received by the smiling Vladimir Putin. Of course, they did not mention the EUR 10 million loan with which the Russian banks supported the guest’s political party. But Marine Le Pen pointed to the necessity of developing relations with Russia in the light of, as she put it, a long history connecting the two states and because Putin represented the new vision of the world. If the latter is understood as a necessary expression of respect for the host, the first sentence should be viewed in the context of European sanctions against Russia. Le Pen, with her statement on a long historic cooperation of the two states, actually reminded about the time when German Emperor Wilhelm II did not want to renew the agreement on neutrality with the Russian Emperor Alexander III. Russia was then left with France as the only great ally, Of course, there were many reasons for the then close cooperation and huge loans that Russia had been granted by France at the time, but only one was enough for Putin to understand Le Pen’’s message. That was the promise that, in the case of victory in French election, Le Pen would suspend the sanctions against Russia. That was why she could continue by saying that she was the presidential candidate with whom Putin shared the vision of cooperation and not servility.
Le Pen was, undoubtedly, the political leader that her interlocutor in Moscow wanted to see on the position of the French President. Whether they helped her then by hacking the emails of France’s new President and by abusing their contents, we will probably never know for sure.
Like it will never be quite clear what happened with Delon’s friends from Belgrade, Stevica Marković and Miloš Milošević. Back then, it was hard to identify the line dividing real events from all fabricated stories associated with them. The border between reality and the world of the moving novel by Miodrag Bulatović on the people with four fingers, on the dark and tragic shades of the Yugoslav emigration is hard to define, yet, something is known.
Stevica Marković recorded the orgies of the ladies of France’s elite and similar photos of the wife of the French Prime Minister Claude Pompidou. French secret services were convinced that the photos of the PM’s wife were meant to destabilise the Fifth Republic and that they would be sold to Moscow and thus serve to blackmail and destroy Georges Pompidou and his political mentor, French President Charles de Gaulle. Members of the Corsican mafia then appeared as alleged Russian contacts and buyers of photos. Their boss, Francois Marcantoni was very likely in contact with French secret services. On October 1, 1968, at one of Paris landfills, Marković’s massacred body was found. The police investigation ended very quickly without any results. Marković’s friend from Belgrade Milošević believed he was a good actor. He was convinced he was better than Delon and he moved to the United States with one of his rich lovers. Soon after, he was found beaten and shot in the bathroom of his new muse, Barbara Thomason, wife of the film agent Mickey Rooney. She was found in the same bathroom with a bullet in her head. In that case too, the police investigation ended quickly.
US President Donald Trump yesterday dismissed FBI Director James Comey in a surprising move. The reason for the dismissal was Comey’s testimony at the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee and his assessment that the investigations of emails of Presidential candidate and likeliest election winner Hillary Clinton affected the results of the US presidential vote. Thus Comey politically revived the question of Russian influence and, through the connections with the closest assistants of the current US President, the results of the US vote.
The murdered Miloš Milošević had several small roles during his film career in USA. His first important role was in a film with the title that is particularly significant today – “Russians Are Coming, Russians Are Coming”.
Borut Šuklje 