Former New York Times reporter and author Tim Weiner told MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Wednesday night that the alleged ties between the Trump Administration and Russia could be equated to the Soviets stealing atomic bomb secrets from the United States in 1945 after World War II.
"The American people are getting a look in real-time at the most politically charged counterintelligence investigation since the Soviets stoled[sic] the secret of the atomic bomb in the end of World War II," Weiner told Matthews.
Matthews referenced Klaus Fuchs, the German physicist and atomic spy who was convicted of stealing atomic bomb secrets from the United States, and asked Weiner whether he was talking about a similar situation.
"Yeah that was a case that took almost ten years from beginning to end. This is moving a lot faster because technology has improved in terms of intelligence gathering," Weiner said. "We are in a case now, you were harkening back to Watergate, Chris."
Matthews disagreed, saying he was harkening back to Venona, the top-secret U.S. effort to decrypt messages in the 1940's by KGB agents.
Malcolm Nance, a retired Navy cryptologist and intelligence analyst, also made comparisons on Wednesday night using the alleged ties between the Trump administration and Russia.
"I think that this scandal is unique in all of American history," Nance said. "This would be the equivalent of the British, you know, running Abraham Lincoln or actually funding Jefferson Davis to take over the United States. This is — there has never been anything like this."
Matthews interjected, clarifying that the British supported the South during the Civil war and that Russia allegedly wanted the North to win.
"But this is the equivalent of the Queen of England actually handling Jefferson Davis as an agent. Right? This is different," Nance said. "We are in a place where we are potentially looking at people who were handled as assets or unwitting or wittingly for Russian intelligence in order to affect an election of the President of the United States and disrupting the entire American electoral process to get that person elected. This is close to Benedict Arnold territory I'm afraid to say."