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Robert Mueller’s two-year, $25 million investigation concluded that there was no collusion between President Trump and Russia; however, Russian collusion is a legitimate threat to the security and sovereignty of the United States, according to former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

 “Collusion is very real and the Russians are very dangerous,” the former Speaker told WIBC host Tony Katz in an interview Thursday, adding that there is a long history of Russian efforts to penetrate the United States, recruit spies, and plant agents of influence.

In a recent op-ed for Fox News, Former Speaker Gingrich detailed some of the more troubling, yet lesser-known instances of the Russian government’s attempts to compromise U.S. national security.

In the most famous example of Soviet penetration – and the American left’s refusal to believe in it – Alger Hiss was a very high State Department official and a Soviet agent. Hiss presided over the first United Nations Conference in San Francisco. When then-Congressman Richard Nixon charged that Hiss was a communist, the establishment rallied to Hiss’s defense. It seemed unthinkable that such an elegant member of the club could be a spy. Now (with access to Soviet documents) we know that while Hiss attended the Yalta Conference in 1945, he went to Stalin’s private railroad car at 2 a.m. to receive the highest civilian medal in the Soviet Union.

In more recent times, we had the case of Robert Hanssen – an FBI agent and long-time double agent. Hanssen spied for the Soviets and went to the Russians when the empire collapsed. At one point, Hanssen was assigned to find a suspected mole in the FBI (he had to find himself). He was saved by the 1994 discovery that Aldrich Ames, a very senior CIA analyst, had also been spying for the Soviets and the Russians. With Ames arrested, the FBI thought it had discovered the mole. Hanssen spied for seven more years until he was arrested in 2001.

Gingrich used confirmed instances of Russian efforts to compromise U.S. national security as the inspiration for his new novel, “Collusion” which is available now. He spoke with WIBC host Tony Katz about the book Thursday.

Click the link below to hear Tony’s full interview with Former Speaker Newt Gingrich.