Will Christopher Steele Be Charged in the UK as a Spy? by Publius Tacitus [UPDATE]

Do you want to know why the FBI continued to insist that the Nunes' memo not be declassified and released to the public? The answer is right there on page 2, (see 1b) in the discussion about what was excluded from the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court:

The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of-and paid by-the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

I believe that the part in bold is what the FBI wanted out of the memo because it exposes the uncomfortable fact that Christopher Steele was (and had been for some time) a paid asset of the FBI. That is huge news. In other words, Steele was not a mere consultant or sub-contractor for the FBI. He was being paid to provide information/intelligence to the FBI. There are two classes of FBI "informants." One is serving as a "criminal informant" and the other is as an "intelligence asset." Information from "criminal informants" can be used in a U.S. judicial proceeding and the informant called as a witness. Getting money under that circumstance can be problematic because the source's credibility can be impeached by defense counsel, who can argue that the testimony is purloined.

You do not have to worry about that with an "intelligence asset." In that case the priority is protecting the identity of the source. The fact that Steele had been on the FBI payroll for a while sheds new light on Glen Simpson's testimony (which was leaked by Senator Feinstein) to the U.S. Senate. Simpson testified that Steele told him in late September 2016 that the FBI wanted to meet him in Rome to discuss the dossier.  That struck me initially as quite odd. If Steele was just acting as an average "foreign" citizen who was trying to help the FBI then he could easily have met with the Bureau in London. That city hosts the largest number of FBI agents in the world outside of the U.S. But Steele was asked to go meet in Rome. That's what you do when you are meeting an intelligence asset that the Brits do not know about.

That is the problem.

The United States and Great Britain have had a long standing "understanding" or informal agreement to not recruit each others intelligence and law enforcement personnel as intelligence assets. I chatted yesterday with an old intelligence hand (a U.S. person) who was approached by British MI 6 during a TDY to London. My friend rejected the come on and reported the approach to the CIA Chief of Station (aka COS).  The COS was angry with the Brits. They were not supposed to do that, nor are we.  But sometimes a target is so attractive that very high level permissions to break the agreements are given.

The real irony here is that the Schiff memo is likely to compound the problem for Steele because it is likely to highlight Steele's prior activities on behalf of the Bureau that predate the 2016 election cycle (remember, Steele was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016). This is the issue that had FBI Director Wray's panties in a knot. When you sign up a foreign source you vow to protect them. When you expose such a source you make it more difficult to recruit new sources.

There may be another twist to this. Was Steele actually operating as an FBI intel asset with the secret knowledge of the Brits? In other words, was he a double agent or an agent of influence? One way to tell will be watching the reaction of the U.K. authorities now that they know that Steele was a paid FBI informant. Imagine the outrage here if one of the former CIA or FBI talking heads that are appearing on punditry circuit was exposed as someone getting paid by the Russian version of the FBI or CIA. It would be ugly.

The media (and the trolls on this blog) are working feverishly to ignored the uncomfortable truths exposed by the so-called Nunes memo. But facts are stubborn things and more facts will be exposed.

UPDATE--Based on some confused comments by our friend The Twisted Genius aka TTG, I need to provide more of the Nunes memo to establish that Steele in fact was a source. According to that memo:

. . .Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations-an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn. 

If this was a simple matter of Steele, having no official relationship with the FBI, simply reaching out to an old friend to pass on information, then TTG would be right to assert that Steele was not a source. But that is clearly not the case. The FBI can only suspend and terminate a source relationship if that person is a source. Very simple.

Let's take a quick look at the article by Corn that got Steele terminated. The Corn piece was part of an orchestrated media campaign (we know that from Simpson's testimony that was leaked by Diane Feinstein) in order to put pressure on the FBI and James Comey, who had just announced that new Clinton emails had been found on Anthony Weiner's laptop. Corn wrote:

• On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information.”. . .
• But Reid’s recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him. . . .
• [A] senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.
• In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. . . .
• “It started off as a fairly general inquiry,” says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.” . . .
• This was, the former spy remarks, “an extraordinary situation.” He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. . . .
• The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was “shock and horror.” The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump’s inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI.

There you have it. The story was right in front of us. What is reported in the Nunes memo is consistent with David Corn's article and with what Glen Simpson testified under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Comments

[NancyK]

Your shocked that Schiff is a member of the intelligence community, I'm shocked that Trump is the president. We live in shoving times.

[fanto]

Cvillreader at #54 - Victoria Nuland was on Face the Nation on Sunday, the host was a Ms. Brennan (if I remember correctly)(any relations?) who called Ms Nuland by the admiring "Toria" or "Tory" - and Ms. Nuland was talking about Steele talking to her and her telling to FBI... so the story goes.

Anna at #59 and Eric Newhill #61 - Armand Hammer was another benefactor and beneficiary of Lenin and Soviet Revolution.

And VV - I was confused , but I see now...And it is not a pretty sight. I love your comments as always.

[Fred]

Keith,

re: comment 74. The Borg have no transcendent religous moral foundation and are only loyal to the collective.

[Eric Newhill]

PT,
You are probably already aware - the Senate memo released last night states that Steele either lied to the FBI or the FBI lied to the FISA court.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-02-06%20CEG%20LG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20(Unclassified%20Steele%20Referral).pdf

Steele will have to be dragged in for questioning. He could be charged, minimally, w/ lying to the FBI (it's not like the FBI is going to confess to lying to the FISA at this stage of the game). I would not want to be his life insurance company. IMO, they are headed for a payout. This is clearly leading to Obama and Clinton and Steele will be squeezed to get the dominoes falling.

[Rhondda]

In a previous thread I had asserted that perhaps Page is no idiot, but rather an intelligence asset of some sort operating without official cover.

Colonel Lang replied with a question: “That he was a US NOC working the Russia target?”

I answered: “Yes. Or perhaps as TTG puts it (…) “an OFCO (offensive counterintelligence operations) dangle.”

As news has broken and rumors surfaced, I now wonder if maybe Russia was not the target of ‘the dangle’ after all.

What if the target was the FBI?

Based on the chain of events that culminated in Clapper and Ash Carter calling for Adm Rogers to be fired, we might deduce that the NSA and/or military side of the intel/cyber house had discovered a multi-pronged operation of ’domestic spying for political gain using the organs of the national security state’ collusion between FBI-DOJ / other non-mil IC / British assets / ObamaAdmin+Brennan+Clinton.

Page is ex Navy Intel. It seems possible he is still Navy intel, undercover for the DIA…or similar?

Thinking about this scenario I found I had a grin on my face like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas when he conceives his evil pan to rob the Whos. Impressively dastardly!

Perhaps I’m wrong, but it fits the facts insofar as I can see them and gave me hope that perhaps the swamp will be drained after all.

[blue peacock]

Eric

Grassley's & Graham's criminal referral to the DOJ corroborates the Nunes memo insofar that the Carter Page FISA application "relied heavily" on the Steele dossier.

This is a very smart referral as it now gives FISC an opportunity to investigate the DOJ's FISA application while putting them in a spot for rubber-stamping the application with no verification of the evidence and it puts the DOJ & FBI in a tight spot as their application stated that the information from Steele was credible because he had been credible in the past knowing that Steele was briefing the media contradicting what the FBI claimed. This becomes an issue especially when it comes to the FISA extension requests timelines. The other contradiction is the use of the Isikoff story to corroborate the Steele information in the FISA application when Isikoff's source was Steele himself.

Today, Sen. Johnson released his memo on the FBI investigation of Clinton's mishandling of classified information.

[Newmarket]

PT,

What is your take on WAPO's puff piece today "whitewashing" Christopher Steele. The apparent involvement of Sir Andrew Dearlove and Sir Andrew Wood, the former advising Steele while seated in a winged chair within the cozy confines of the posh and venerable Garrick Club "to work discreetly with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI". There are a lot of threads in the pro-Steele article that might be pursued, such as the involvement of the British government to build a case against Trump. After all, the Brits had strong motives to bring down a presidential candidate who cared not a whit for the "special relationship, supported Brexit and was less than lukewarm in his feelings about NATO.

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?utm_term=.bf18d66bdab5

[Keith Harbaugh]

reply to #59:

Anna, are you familiar with the tract
“Russophobia”, 1989
http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA335121
by the great Russian mathematician Igor Shararevich
(associate of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov,
as well as his scholarly career)?

Shafarevich, from his inside knowledge of Russia, in Russophobia discusses at length
issues congruent with those you raised in your comment 59,
in particular,
the attempts by what he calls "The Lesser Nation" (or "Lesser People", depending on the translator)
to undermine, attack, and ultimately dissolve
what he considers mainstream traditional Russian culture.
A charge which certainly has resonance with the changes in America since, say, 1960,
driven by the cultural Marxists and their Frankfurt School.

I really am surprised, amazed, and disappointed that
“Russophobia” is not more widely available than
through the military link below,
and that Americans have not taken advantage of the insights it provides into
the forces that have shaped Russia.

BTW, if you want to give Russophobia the attention I think it deserves, let me add a practical suggestion.
It is a densely written work, one I find difficult to read online.
If you print it, and your PDF print software allows 2x2 printing,
i.e., putting four logical pages on each physical sheet of paper,
that may be a good idea.
That works well, starting with either (logical) page 1 or 2 and going up to page 39.

For some discussion between me and Lyttenburgh about this work, see
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/open-thread-23-july-2017.html

Also BTW, Colonel Lang, if you happen to be reading this,
do you have any comments on the FBIS and/or its JPRS Reports in which Russophobia appeared?

[turcopolier]

KH

Like Radio Free Europe these institutions were largely manned by soviet exiles who spread the same bile that was inculcated at Garmisch. it has become a collective disease in the US and if not challenged it may kill us all. pl

[TV]

Very little chance of this, I'd guess.
This whole mess is the actions of clumsy, sloppy not bright people - the "gang that can't shoot straight."
Just the teen age girl texting between Strzok and Page shows the ineptitude of this bunch.
"OPS security" - what's that?
And Comey (another legend in his own mind) seems to have left a trail of breadcrumbs a rookie cop could follow.

[Flavius]

Comey. Dunce, liar, or political dancer? Beltway bureaucrat? Likely he's some combination of all of them. I'll throw Brennan and Clapper in there with Comey as well. Comey even tried to dance with Trump but couldn"t pull it off, probably because he couldn't shake off the narrative into which he had gone all in; and no one in that warm little nest of all in deputies could shake it off either to maybe give the truth a chance.
Comey was done from the moment he let himself, and worse, the Bureau, be played by the DoJ at the outset of the e-mail investigation. The longer the case wore on, sustained strictly on the Bureau's reputation, the uglier it got. When it was declared over, anyone who knows what an investigation is supposed to look like, saw that it was not an investigation at all. FBI reputation - poof. Throw in being taken in by Steele as a result of clinical Trumpophobia complicated by clinical Russophobia, double poof.
The russophobia is probably worse over in GB - eases their pangs of nostalgia and gives MI 6 the feeling of the way it had been in the old days. No moving on for them, either.
All very sad.

[Arioch The]

Flavius: Steele's credibility and reliability are peripheral .... whether Steele's alleged Russian sources were credible and reliable.

You know... I have an intel that Trump eats Christian newborns every morning. My sources? The best they can ever be, Trump himself. Surely he would deny it if confronted, it is not the public info. See, you don't have to trust me, but because my source on it is the best that can be imagined you have to trust my intel. Thanks for understanding and cooperation.

[Arioch The]

> ... that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was a popular uprising .... against .... the Tsars

> ... American Schiff's grandson, John, ... given about $20 million for the triumph of Communism in Russia."

Assuming in this context Communism and Bolshevism mean the same. So far so good.

> On March 23, 1917 a mass meeting was held at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the abdication of Nicolas II, which meant the overthrow of Tsarist rule in Russia

Sorry, WUT ?

> On March 23, 1917 a mass meeting was held at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the abdication of Nicolas II, which meant the overthrow of Tsarist rule in Russia

Again ???

> On March 23, 1917 ... overthrow of Tsarist rule in Russia

March.
Oh, yeah, Bolsheviks did it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_hymn_of_free_Russia_sheet_music_(1917).pdf

Yep, this American liberal movement was of Bolsheviks, sure.

....except that in March 1917 Bolsheviks were no one fools, tiny fringe marginal.

It was only in October 1917 that incompetence of the liberals allowed two marginal "doers not thinker" parties - Bolsheviks and Social-Revolutionaries together - made the THIRD revolution.

However it had nothing to do with Tzar and monarchy, which were long sieged and finally finished by the second, Liberal revolution half year before it.

[Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg]

Weren't they originally Gehlen's guys? An independent Ukraine as foil to Russia seems to be a consistent project of German foreign policy. And a lot of Gehlen's ideology was absorbed by the nascent CIA

[Just a radioman]

Actually it was Victoria Nuland who passed the Steele memo to the FBI after Steele passed it to her. It was Victoria Nuland that arranged and authorized the meeting between Steele and the FBI.

She actually has stated that herself. "He [Steele] 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,"

I have read Glen Simpsons testimony and the interviews that Steele himself have given and both leave out the fact that Steele was actually sharing the Dossier with the State Department first. WHY?

Was Steele misleading Simpson or were they trying to establish better cover and bona fides of the dossier.

[turcopolier]

radioman

What kinda radioman? I remember Shapiro who stood at my elbow for two years when I led 42 good men and true. pl