The concoction of the Protocols was probably the work of the head of the czarist secret police outside Russia, a Paris-based agent named Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky. Borrowing and paraphrasing Machiavelli's speeches without even bothering to change their order and attributing them to a secret Jewish council, Rachkovsky was attempting to discredit Russian liberalism by showing it to be a Jewish plot.