He pens verbose letters to various investigators, including one to the Justice Department claiming “hate crimes” against him during the 2016 campaign. (“The actions by the Clinton regime and their associates may be among the most extreme examples of human rights violations observed during any election in U.S. history since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was similarly targeted for his antiwar views in the 1960s.”)
The Madison Avenue offices of Page’s investment firm, Global Energy Capital, are just around the corner from Trump Tower — a geographic coincidence in which Page has invested much import. “For your information, I have frequently dined in Trump Grill, had lunch in Trump Cafe, had coffee meetings in the Starbucks at Trump Tower, attended events and spent many hours in campaign headquarters on the fifth floor last year,” Page wrote in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in March. “As a sister skyscraper in Manhattan, my office at the IBM Building (590 Madison Avenue) is literally connected to the Trump Tower building by an atrium.” Page says he has been the subject of what he calls “terrorist threats” for over a year and is generally skittish about revealing his haunts, but the office is an exception: “It’s within the Trump Tower Secret Service zone, so it’s one of the places where I feel secure,” he explained in an email to me.
Before I visited him in November, Page told me I was the first reporter he had allowed into the office. “I’m sure if you Google ‘Carter Page shadowy,’ hundreds of articles come up,” he boasted. “I like being a shadowy figure.” But when I entered the inner sanctum, I discovered that Global Energy Capital’s headquarters were actually a corporate co-working space. Page, the firm’s only employee, rents a windowless room — outfitted with a small circular table, a whiteboard on wheels and a painting of an orchid — by the hour. Other tenants include the National Shingles Foundation and a wedding-band company called Star Talent Inc. Still, when he mentioned Trump, Page cocked his head toward Fifth Avenue and referred to him as “the gentleman next door here.”
The office is one of many things about Page that are less than initially meets the eye. When Trump announced Page as one of his foreign-policy advisers during a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board in March 2016, he was eager to tout Page’s credentials, identifying him as “Carter Page, Ph.D.” Page’s doctoral adviser for his degree, received in 2011 from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, was Shirin Akiner, a controversial scholar who has been derided by fellow academics and human rights groups for trying to whitewash human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. But in an email, Akiner told me, “I am afraid I have no information about Carter Page — some 10 years ago, he was one of my many students.”
He even likens his plight to those of women who have suffered sexual harassment or assault. “Talk to some ladies you know,” he told me, “and ask them: ‘What would you rather have? Someone putting their hand on your rear end or your breast momentarily? Or having to give up all of your personal communications, all of your thousands of emails and thousands of documents? Which would you prefer?’
How to spread confusion?
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