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The National Prayer Breakfast's organizer, The Family, has a long history of serving as a backchannel for spies, long before #MariaButina. As I write in THE FAMILY, the very first was Manfred Zapp -- Nazi spy...
Starting in 1938, Zapp posed as a German journalist in Manhattan, a glamorous figure who moved among the elite and even made Walter Winchell's gossip columns. But he had another agenda... 
Zapp was a lot smoother than #MariaButina. He actually avoided talk of politics, and somehow found himself at dinner with FDR -- whose reelection he had secretly worked against. Authoritarian election meddling is an old practice....
Zapp, like #MariaButina - & like the Christian Right today - thought the U.S. shld embrace its inner authoritarianism. Along with another Nazi spy, he sought backdoor communications between American elites & the Third Reich...
& like #MariaButina, Zapp & fellow Nazi spy Ulrich von Gienanth were nabbed by the FBI. Not much pre-trial detention for them -- they were traded for two Americans. That shld have been that, but then the Prayer Breakfasters got involved...
By early 50s, Zapp - whose capture had been frontpage news across , like #MariaButina - was advising congressman. On what? Christian values. & since the Prayer Breakfasters couldn't get S.S. man Baron von Gienanth into U.S., they sent congressmen to him in Germany.
Just as the Prayer Breakfasters sent American politicians to Germany to meet former Nazis banned from the U.S. in the 50s & 60s, they've been sending Americans to Russia to meet banned Russians -- including Alexander Torshin, #MariaButina's boss.
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