John R. Houk
© May 17, 2019
The infamous Steele Dossier used by the Dems to try to frame
President Trump for working with the Russians to steal the 2016 from Crooked
Hillary did have an author who claims he had sources. The author or at least
compiler is British former MI6 agent Christopher Steele – hence the most used
appellation of the Steele Dossier.
So, did Steele merely create a work of fiction to villainize
an American he didn’t like? Did Steele have a source (or sources) framework to
construct the dossier that was and is unverified? AND if those sources exist,
how reliable are they?
Chuck Ross writing for the
Daily Caller some how has discovered potential sources via notes
taken by State Department official
Kathleen Kavalec. Accordingly
the sources she noted were high level Russian Intelligence personnel.
These Russians are KNOWN individuals to Americans in
government who care or watch what the Russians are doing. The chief implication
Ross brings across is these Russian Intelligence individuals peddled
disinformation to Trump-hater Steele.
My guess is Dem Trump-haters desired to believe the disinformation
so badly, they observed at best the data was factual. AT WORST these Dem
Trump-haters cared little about accuracy and colluded directly with Steele and
perhaps indirectly colluded with Russians to frame Trump to first win 2016 for
Crooked Hillary and/or failing the objective then impeach President Trump.
Of course my narrative is speculation. Time will tell how
close my speculation is. I am willing to bet that “time” will show I am pretty
darn close.
I’ll mention the names of those Russian Intelligences
sources, but my guess you’ll never remember those hard to pronounce names even
if those names begin to circulate among the Leftist Mainstream Media:
Vyacheslav Trubnikov and
Vladislav Surkov.
Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Vladislav Surkov
JRH 5/17/19
Your generosity is always appreciated:
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STEELE IDENTIFIED RUSSIAN DOSSIER
SOURCES, NOTES REVEAL
Christopher Steele
5/16/19 8:44 PM
- Christopher
Steele told a State Department official a former Russian spy chief and a
top Kremlin adviser were involved in an operation to collect compromising
information on Donald Trump.
- The
State Department official’s notes also indicate Steele claimed the
Russians, Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Vladislav Surkov, were “sources”
for the dossier.
- There
is no evidence the compromising material mentioned in the dossier actually
exists, raising questions about whether Steele was given disinformation.
- Trubnikov,
the former head of the SVR, also has links to Stefan Halper, an FBI
informant who had contact with the Trump campaign.
Dossier author
Christopher Steele identified a former Russian spy chief and a top adviser to
Russian President Vladimir Putin as being involved in handling potentially
compromising information about President Donald Trump, State Department notes
show.
In her notes, State
Department official Kathleen Kavalec also referred to the two Russians — former
Russian foreign intelligence chief Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Putin aide
Vladislav Surkov — as “sources.”
The references to
Trubnikov and Surkov, which have not previously been reported, are not
definitive proof that either were sources for Steele’s dossier or that they
were involved in an effort to collect blackmail material on Trump.
But the notes are significant because they are
the first government documents that show Steele discussing potential sources
for the information in his dossier, which the former MI6 officer provided to
the FBI.
Trubnikov also has
links to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who collected information from Trump
campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Halper arranged for
Trubnikov to visit intelligence seminars at the University of Cambridge in 2012
and 2015. He also tapped Trubnikov to contribute to a Pentagon study published
in 2015.
Kavalec took the
notes during an Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with Steele at State Department
headquarters. The documents, which were released earlier in May by Citizens
United and first reported on by The Hill, show Steele laid out many of the same
allegations about Trump and his advisers that are found in the infamous
dossier.
The notes contain
several inaccuracies, including that Russia was running operations out of its
consulate in Miami. As Kavalec pointed out, Russia does not have a consulate in
Miami.
Trubnikov and Surkov
are not identified by name in Steele’s dossier, which the FBI used as part of
its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russia. But the information that the former British spy attributed to the two
Russians involves the dossier’s most salacious allegation: that the Russian
government had sexually compromising material on Trump.
Kavalec’s notes said
Steele claimed Trump was “filmed engaged in compromising activities” with
Russian prostitutes in 2013, but that “the Russians have not needed to use the
‘kompromat’ on [Trump] as he was already in cooperation.”
Steele, who operates
a private intelligence firm in London, told Kavalec that Putin and some of his
top advisers were running the Trump operation.
“Presidential
Advisor Vladislov Surkov and Vyasheslov Trubnikov (former head of Russian
External Intelligence Service — SVR) are also involved,” wrote Kavalec, who
served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian issues.
Kavalec’s
handwritten notes also contain a reference to Trubnikov and Surkov as
“sources,” but with no additional explanation.
Trubnikov served as
head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, from 1996 to 2000. He went
on to serve as first deputy for foreign affairs and ambassador to India.
The unverified
allegations of sexual blackmail material on Trump are included in the June 20,
2016, memo from Steele’s dossier. Steele had been hired that same month by
Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid
to investigate Trump.
Citing “a former top
level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin,” Steele
claimed Russian authorities had gathered a substantial amount of “embarrassing
material” on Trump and would “be able to blackmail him if they so wished.”
It is difficult to
know how to interpret Steele’s claims about Trubnikov and Surkov, given the
numerous problems that have emerged with the former British spy’s reporting.
The special
counsel’s report all but debunked Steele’s core claim of a “well-developed
conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Kremlin. The report also said
Michael Cohen did not visit Prague, which is where Steele claimed the former
Trump lawyer met with Kremlin insiders to pay off computer hackers.
Public evidence has
not backed up other allegations, including about “kompromat” on Trump. The
president has vehemently denied the sex tape claim, and individuals who were with Trump during his Moscow trip have
cast doubt on the allegation, saying Trump had virtually no time to take part
in the steamy activities described by Steele.
But questions remain
about who provided the information to Steele and what his sources’ motives were
if the information is false.
Steele, who operated
in Moscow through 2009 before leaving MI6, relied on a network of sources and
sub-sources, some of whom are said to have worked in Russia. Virtually nothing
is known about Steele’s collectors, but it has been reported that some of the
sources who Steele cited in the dossier unwittingly provided information that
ended up in the 35-page document.
A former CIA station
chief in Moscow, Daniel Hoffman, said discerning how Steele obtained and used
information from Trubnikov and Surkov is “tricky.”
“Was [Steele]
collecting intelligence on Trubnikov, or was he using Trubnikov to collect
intelligence? Those are two different things,” Hoffman told The Daily Caller
News Foundation.
Hoffman said
Trubnikov remains a “trusted guy in the Russian national security bureaucracy,”
despite not having an official title in Russian government for over a decade.
“They never stop,” Hoffman
said of Russian intelligence operatives. “There’s no such thing as a former
intelligence officer. The guy is going to be reporting back to the SVR or
Putin.”
Hoffman has been a
leading proponent of one theory about the dossier that has gained traction in
the wake of the special counsel’s report. The former CIA officer has argued
Steele likely fell victim to a Russian disinformation campaign.
A growing number of
experts in Russian intelligence operations have embraced the theory, and Attorney General William Barr testified to
Congress on May 1 that he is concerned about the prospect and is looking into
it.
Hoffman has written
that if the Russian government hacked Democrats’ computer systems, they could
have figured out that Steele was trying to gather information on any
connections between the Kremlin and Trump. Steele is also likely known to
Russian intelligence given his covert work in Moscow, making it easier for
Russian operatives to uncover his intelligence-gathering operation.
Hoffman said it’s
difficult to determine whether Trubnikov and Surkov were involved in a
disinformation campaign — saying “it’s a hall of mirrors” — but that it can’t
be ruled out. He said he could envision a scenario in which Trubnikov could
sniff out Steele’s operation and spin the dossier author’s collector with false
leads.
Steele’s firm, Orbis
Business Intelligence, did not respond to requests for comment. The Russian
embassy also did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department
declined comment.
Trubnikov’s links to
Halper, the FBI informant, are also a source of intrigue.
Halper tapped
Trubnikov to contribute to a study he did in 2015 for the Pentagon’s Office of
Net Assessment (ONA) titled “The Russia-China relationship: The Impact on the
United States’ Security Interests.” Halper, who served in three Republican
presidential administrations, was paid over $1 million from 2012 through 2018
for reports from ONA, which is led by Pentagon officials Andrew May and James
Baker.
Halper established
contact with Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign aide, under the guise of
contributing to a study on energy security issues in the Mediterranean and
Middle East.
Halper paid $3,000 to
Papadopoulos to write a paper on the topic. During meetings in London, Halper
and a covert government investigator, Azra Turk, plied Papadopoulos for
information on any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. While no
evidence has emerged that Halper paid Papadopoulos out of ONA funds, a source
familiar with Halper’s work for ONA told The DCNF that $3,000 was a sum he
often paid contributors.
Halper also cozied
up to Page in the midst of the 2016 campaign. The pair met for the first time
July 10, 2016, at a political event hosted at Cambridge University. They
remained in contact through September 2017, which is the same month the FBI
ended its electronic surveillance on Page.
Halper might also
have had a role in sharing information about Michael Flynn, the former national
security adviser.
The Washington Post
and The New York Times have reported Halper and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6,
expressed concerns about interactions between Flynn and a Russian-British
researcher at Cambridge named Svetlana Lokhova.
Flynn visited the
Cambridge Intelligence Seminar in February 2014, when he served as director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Several news outlets
published stories in 2017 about Flynn and Lokhova, with the thinly veiled
suggestion that the pair had a romantic fling and that Lokhova was trying to
compromise Flynn. Lokhova has vehemently denied allegations of any impropriety
with Flynn, and no evidence has emerged to suggest that there was any.
Halper and Dearlove
publicly raised concerns about possible Russian infiltration of the Cambridge
Intelligence Seminar. In December 2016, Halper was quoted in a Financial Times
article saying he was resigning from the seminar due to “unacceptable Russian
influence on the group.”
According to two
sources for the FT piece, Halper and Dearlove feared “that Russia may be
seeking to use the seminar as an impeccably-credentialed platform to covertly
steer debate and opinion on high-level sensitive defence and security topics.”
Despite his concerns
about possible infiltration at Cambridge, Halper twice provided a platform for
Trubnikov at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Trubnikov spoke at the
university May 4, 2012, and May 11, 2015. The latter appearance was rescheduled
because Trubnikov had issues with his visa, according to a program for the event.
Christopher Andrew,
who convened the intelligence seminar with Halper and Dearlove, took Halper to
task over the FT article, according to an email obtained by The DCNF.
“I am somewhat
shocked by the comments attributed to you in today’s FT. I can well imagine
that you’ve been misquoted but do need to know as a matter of urgency what you
actually told the FT,” wrote Andrew, who serves as official historian for MI5,
the British domestic intelligence service.
___________________________
Disinfo as Fact to Frame Trump
John R. Houk
© May 17, 2019
_________________________
STEELE IDENTIFIED RUSSIAN DOSSIER SOURCES, NOTES REVEAL
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