Fiona Hill’s New Book Gives ‘Fly-on-the-Wall’ Insight to Trump White House

Washington (AP) -- Vladimir Putin paid scant attention to Fiona Hill, a preeminent U.S. expert on Russia, when she was seated next to him at dinners. Putin’s people placed her there by design, choosing a “nondescript woman,” as she put it, so the Russian president would have no competition for attention.

Fluent in Russian, she often carefully took in the conversations of men who seemed to forget she was there and wrote it all down later, she recalled in an Associated Press interview. “Hey, if I was a guy, you wouldn’t be talking like this in front of me,” she remembered thinking. “But go ahead. I’m listening.”