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Thursday, December 12, 2019

Is Case Agent 1 Steve Somma?

All I know is what I read on the internet:





Second opinion:






18 comments:

  1. Case Agent 1 was said to have been Halper's handler.

    From The Federalist last May:

    Halper was handpicked by a seasoned FBI counterintelligence agent out of the New York office, according to the article. While the Times does not identify the agent by name, the paper says the FBI agent spoke at a conference organized by Halper about a 2010 case involving Russians posing as Americans. The public schedule for a 2011 conference hosted by Halper about the exact same case shows that three FBI counterintelligence agents were invited to speak on the topic.

    The three agents publicly identified as speaking at that conference on the topic are George J. Ennis, Jr., Alan E. Kohler, Jr., and Stephen M. Somma. Ennis currently serves as the special agent in charge in the FBI’s New York office, according to his LinkedIn profile, and worked closely with Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a virulent anti-Trump activist whom the president fired in 2017.

    The public schedule for a 2014 conference led by Halper shows that Kohler also spoke to the same group about the same Russian case on May 9, 2014.

    “Alan Kohler the FBI representative at the United States Embassy in London will talk about the challenges of modern counter espionage: including the case of Anna Chapman and other Russian illegals,” the schedule noted.

    A representative for the FBI’s office in Norfolk, where Kohler worked as of March 2017, said he is no longer with that office. The representative, who refused to provide her name, did not say when or why Kohler left that office or whether he was still employed by the FBI. The FBI’s New York office did not respond to queries about the current employment status of Kohler, Ennis, or Somma.

    Real estate records show Kohler relocated to the Washington, D.C. area from Norfolk in July of 2017, shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate alleged connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. When asked whether Kohler had been transferred to the FBI’s Washington field office, an FBI representative for that office directed the questions to the FBI headquarters in D.C. The FBI refused to comment when asked whether Kohler had been detailed to work on Mueller’s investigation of Trump or whether he was the agent responsible for deploying Halper against the Trump campaign in 2016.


    https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/02/new-york-times-admits-multiple-spies-deployed-against-trump-campaign/

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    1. Mollie Hemingway did this article with Sean Davis contributing. Both do fine investigative journalism.

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  2. Might be of interest:

    The Hidden Hand

    http://andmagazine.com/talk/2019/12/11/the-hidden-hand/

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  3. In my comments under your recent article It's About Pressure Points, I pointed out that on July 26, 2016, the CIA's Chief of Station in London met with two unnamed FBI officials in her London office.

    1) The FBI's Legal Attache (Legat) in London

    2) The FBI's Assistant Legal Attache (ALAT) for Counterintelligence in London

    During that meeting, Haspel gave Alexander Downer's report about George Papadopoulos to the Legat, who was supposed to forward it to FBI Headquarters.

    The ALAT, however, insisted to the Legat that Downer's report -- along with the Legat's cover letter -- should be sent first to the former London-based ALAT, who now was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Field Office.

    The Legat wrote his cover letter describing the Haspel meeting and then indeed did send his cover letter and Downer's report to the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Field Office.

    This way, the Legat's cover letter was approved in Philadelphia before it reached FBI Headquarters.

    ======

    Who were the Legat, the ALAT and the former ALAT?

    It seems that the Legat was not involved in the FBI's amti-Trump shenanigans, but the ALAT and former ALAT were involved in July 2016. Were they involved also later?

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  4. Off topic, but tossing this one in because it is absolutely delicious:

    Democrats are feigning outrage after Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert called the alleged Ukraine “whistleblower” by name during a televised House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing last night.Gohmert dropped the alleged whistleblower’s name during his opening statement, when he said Eric Ciaramella and others should be questioned as fact witnesses.

    https://www.lucianne.com/2019/12/13/libs_apoplectic_after_louie_gohmert_dares_tobrcall_alleged_whistleblower_by_name_at_hearing_22720.html

    I love Louie Gohmert… daring to spill the world’s worst-kept secret...

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  5. Just as an aside--I've been reading parts of the OIG report, and it is hilarious! At nearly every juncture where an error, misstatement, omission, etc., is identified, the report states with boilerplate consistency "we do not speculate whether the correction of a particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome. Nevertheless, blah, blah, blah..."

    What a complete joke. The totality of the errors and omissions means that either partisan bias is so comprehensive or the institutional corruption is so deep (or both), that the whole place should be burned to the ground.

    The supervisory structure (and the OIG's critique) is completely inverted. The claim throughout is that it is the responsibility of lower level employees to keep the higher level supervisors adequately and fully informed as to all pectinate details. Apparently supervisors don't supervise investigations, they patiently await a periodic feeding by their minions who have performed the investigatory digging and sifting of evidentiary information. Supervisors merely sign-off on the steps taken and conclusions arrived at by others, taking no responsibility for the result or accuracy to which they've affixed their signature.

    The buck stops at the bottom, apparently.

    I pray that Durham's investigators and prosecutors are more competent.

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    1. I hope you saw the video of Josh Hawley questioning Horowitz. Hawley was excellent. His bottom line was pithy: There was collusion between the FBI and the DNC, and it's there on pretty much full display.

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    2. That's supposed to be "pertinent" above--not "pectinate"--whatever that means. No idea how that spellcheck was effected. Admittedly, I need larger print or better eyeglasses!

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  6. Dan Bongino is talking about footnote 361 in IG Report. He said it blows Horowitz's narrative about the investigation. Really interesting video.

    Rob S

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    1. I've started listening. This ties into what I've been saying about the "late September or early October, 2016" Bruce Ohr describes which included Steele, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and three DOJ career officials from the criminal division, Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, and Andrew Weissman. I've maintained all along (since 1/19) that this meeting was to tell Steele what they needed to get the FISA on Carter Page. That's what Bongino is saying--at mid-Sept they realized they needed to get the FISA on Page and they didn't have enough.

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    2. But I think his bigger point was it was Hillary Clinton that got the Crossfire Hurricane going rather than Ambassador Downer.

      Rob S

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    3. That's been my belief. The FBI apparently tried to get a FISA on PapaD and DoJ turned them down. Turning to Page for a FISA derives from the dossier which derives--at least in terms of who payed for it--to Clinton.

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  7. Oops I said footnote 361, that should be 461.


    Rob S

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  8. Others have probably been saying this about Horowitz. As my wife regularly tells me, I rarely have an original thought, or at least one she hasn't heard already...

    But one of the things about Horowitz (and others like him) that I am very tired of is that he skates past making judgments that he clearly has sufficient information to make and so nothing happens. I watched the Hawley exchange and Horowitz deflected...to Wray, for example...on questions he clearly knew the answer to.

    On a similar note what's up with all this code language in the Horowitz report about Agent 1 and unnamed investigative firm and unnamed CHS and unnamed primary subsource, etc., etc. We have already been obfuscated for three years and at this rate it will be another three years of obfuscation before all the facts come out if they ever do.

    I wish Trump and Barr could persuade Wray to go back to his multi-million $ law firm gig and get some kick ass guy to go in there to FBI and clean up and stop redacting and obfuscating.

    How about no-BS Matt Goetz?

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    1. I believe Horowitz is clueless, not an evil genius. Same with Wray. These people got promoted because they're "team players", certain to never back-stab their superiors, who were likewise certain to never back-stab their superiors, who were political appointees, clueless partisan hacks.
      Think of Mueller: A tool, that's all. But who's tool?

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    2. The FBI desperately needs a vision guy, not a plain vanilla lawyer like Wray.

      Yes dfp21, everyone seems to think you get promoted in the government because you must be really competent. Please!

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    3. I'm not sure whether there are legal reasons why they can't name some of these people. It seems rather childish to pretend that we don't know who these people are.

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