Подкоп под Госдеп

[tijd]

В Washington Post - репортаж про историю Кристофеда Стила и его досье, включая отзыв о Стиле бывшего главы MI-6:

Among those who have continued to seek his expertise is Steele’s former boss Richard Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004.
In an interview, Dearlove said Steele became the “go-to person on Russia in the commercial sector” following his retirement from the Secret Intelligence Service. He described the reputations of Steele and his business partner, fellow intelligence veteran Christopher Burrows, as “superb.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hero-or-hired-gun-how-a-british-former-spy-became-a-flash-point-in-the-russia-investigation/2018/02/06/94ea5158-0795-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html

Журналисты Washington Post признаются, что встречались со Стилом в сентябре 2016 и получили от неги информацию из досье "off the record", но не смогли ее проверить и в итоге ничего не опубликовали.



Единственная публикация по материалам Стила касалась была статья Майкла Исикоффа в Yahoo News: U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html

Isikoff said he was introduced to Steele by Glenn Simpson, the former journalist who founded the research firm, Fusion GPS, who invited him to meet a “secret source” at a Washington restaurant.
“Glenn had booked a private room upstairs so that no one would see us,” Isikoff recalled. “During the hour or so we talked that day, Steele tells me an amazing story - how one of Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, had flown to Moscow and had private talks with close associates of Vladimir Putin about lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia.”
“And Steele tells me something else that day that gets my attention: He’s taken this information to the FBI and the bureau is very interested,” Isikoff continued. “Why were they interested? What did the bureau know that would prompt them to take the extraordinary step to launch an investigation into an adviser of the Republican nominee for president?”
Isikoff said Steele was “a serious guy” and came across as credible.
“He was not interested in small talk,” Isikoff said. “It was all business. And he had what clearly he viewed as very significant information he developed from his sources.”
Isikoff said his resulting story did not rely solely on what Steele told him.
“I talked to a senior U.S. law enforcement official who was well aware of these allegations,” Isikoff said. “For me, the key piece, the reason that this was a story, was the fact that the FBI was investigating Page.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-news-michael-isikoff-describes-crucial-meeting-cited-nunes-memo-231005733.html

Два загадочных вопроса:

1. Почему ни один другой журналист из тех, с кем встречался Стил, не смог сделать того, что сделал Исикофф?
2. Какую именно информацию из статьи Исикоффа использовали в ФБР для запроса на прослушку Пейджа?

That was a good scoop, but the FBI obviously did not need to reference a Yahoo article to inform a FISA court of Comey's participation in briefings or receipt of a letter. The FBI did not need a Yahoo article to inform a FISA court that Page was on the “radar screen” of federal law enforcement. The FBI did not need a Yahoo article to inform a FISA court of Page's publicly known work for Merrill Lynch in Moscow or his publicly known (and previously covered) speech at a Moscow school in July 2016, all of which Isikoff mentioned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/02/02/the-memos-description-of-a-supposedly-key-news-report-is-wrong/


Falsely accusing someone of lying is itself a lie. And it's something @realDonaldTrump does daily. #GOPDebate
- Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 26, 2016

Доклад Нунеса обвиняет Стила в том, что тот утаил свои контакты с прессой от ФБР.

Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September-before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October-but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/fbi-nunes-memo-full/index.html

Формулировочки лукавые. Слово "terminated" к Стилу неприменимо - он не работал на ФБР, а просто поделился с ними имеющейся у него информацией. Он также был в полном праве делиться этой информацией с журналистами.

Во вранье ФБР Стила также обвиняли в своем доносе сенаторы Грассли и Грэм. Ныне они опубликовали рассекреченную версию доноса, с отдельными купюрами: https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/constituents/2018-02-02%20CEG%20LG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20%28Unclassified%20Steele%20Referral%29.pdf



В письме Грассли и Грэма содержится толстый намек: когда журналистам стало известно о том, что Стил собирает информацию про Трампа, об этом же могло стать известно российским спецслужбам, которые могли попытаться скормить ему дезинформацию.

Тайну этих намеков ныне приоткрылась. Выяснилось, что когда по повесткам Грассли и Нунеса ФБР передало им документы о своем сотрудничестве со Стилом, среди этих документов оказалось еще одно досье с компроматом на Трампа, которое независимо от Стила составил некий Коди Ширер. На досье Ширера были рукописные пометки, оставленные Стилом.

The Shearer memo was provided to the FBI in October 2016.
It was handed to them by Steele - who had been given it by an American contact - after the FBI requested the former MI6 agent provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation, according to multiple souces.
The Guardian was told Steele warned the FBI he could not vouch for the veracity of the Shearer memo, but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.
Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel. The Shearer memo cites an unnamed source within Russia’s FSB, the state security service.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/30/trump-russia-collusion-fbi-cody-shearer-memo

К Стилу досье Ширера попало от его контакта в Госдепе, Джонатана Винера.

Shearer’s information was passed to Steele by Winer. Winer, a friend of Steele’s, was then serving as the special envoy for Libya, and had previously passed Steele’s Russia and Ukraine reports along to the State Department’s Europe bureau between 2014 and 2016.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/nunes-dossier-deux/552389/

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О том, что в Госдепе в 2014-2016 использовали доклада Стила о России и Украине, писал в своей книжке Люк Хардинг:

Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the US state department, and sent up to secretary of state John Kerry and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the US response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine. Many of Steele’s secret sources were the same people who would later supply information on Trump.
One former state department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele’s reports. On Russia, the envoy said, Steele was “as good as the CIA or anyone”.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke

Это подтвердила Виктория Нуланд. Она также сообщила, что, получив выжимку из досье Стила летом 2016, чиновники Госдепа решили не впутываться в это дело, а передать информацию ФБР.

VICTORIA NULAND: I will tell you though, Margaret, that during the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and '15, Chris Steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in Russia, what was going on Ukraine, what was going on between them. Chris had a friend at the state department and he offered us that reporting free, so that we could also benefit from it. It was one of, you know, hundreds of sources that we were using to try to understand what was going on. Then in the middle of July when he was doing this other work and became concerned...
MARGARET BRENNAN: The dossier.
VICTORIA NULAND: The dossier, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, "This is not in our purview. This needs to go to the F.B.I., if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian federation. That's something for the F.B.I. to investigate."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-michael-morell-fran-townsend-victoria-nuland-on-face-the-nation-feb-4-2018/

Близка к исполнению заветная путинская мечта: руками Трампа и его прихвостней развалить не только отдел контрразведки ФБР, но и ненавистный Госдеп с его " печеньками".

“Phase one of our investigation was getting to the FISA abuse,” Nunes said during an interview on “Fox & Friends.” “What we’re looking at now is the State Department and some of the irregularities there.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/05/nunes-sets-sights-on-state-department-next-says-fisa-memo-only-phase-one.html