Really! I just read it at Zerohedge, although the story has been out for a few days:
The 'Leading British Spy Expert' would be Nigel West.
In some not so surprising news, a spy expert has come out saying what most of us already knew: the Steele dossier was completely “fabricated.” Nigel West, one of Britain’s leading experts on espionage, was hired to examine the dossier written by his friend Christopher Steele. He concluded it was all manufactured falsehoods.
It took West a long time to come out with the information that the dossier was an utter fabrication. It isn’t clear why he waited so long to reveal what most already knew anyway. ...
Steele himself was paid purely above-board, of course: by Fusion GPS, which was a client of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, at the direction of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
West told RT that he was surprised Steele made such obvious errors in the dossier. Some of the most glaring mistakes were those such as treating one particular source as an expert in three entirely different fields or making up the existence of the Russian consulate in Miami, Florida. The source in question starts out as a middle-manager at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, but is later described as an expert on cyber warfare, and later yet as an expert on money-laundering by Russian immigrants in the US, West explained.
Yup.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for a trifecta.
The Dossier was whollyfabricated, confirmation that Mifsud worked for Brennan and an acknowledgement that 'Russia' didn't 'interfere' in the 2016 election.
Then we'll have proof that the whole thing was made up...
By, I suspect, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Who can then go to hell.
It would be sweet.
DeleteYet, what so many have known since 2016 seemingly eluded those "Best & Brightest" at FBI HQ, and the Hennesseys and Rangappas and Siphers and Schindlers and Steven L. Halls.
ReplyDeleteWe should all feel safer knowing that such incredibly smart, knowledgeable and capable people were once part of the Intelligence Community.
When the Steele dossier first appeared, I kept a record of each source while reading it so I could keep track of who's who--I assumed a certain complexity I wanted to keep straight.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was done, 32 differently-described sources were identified. For someone (Steele) who had his MI-6 cover blown and hadn't been in Russia for a decade and a half, this seemed an extensive espionage network operating (apparently?) unbeknownst to the Kremlin, or the UK's security services. Was that likely or possible?
There were many possible explanations (spy craft is a game of deception, after all), but literally and transparently truthful/factual wasn't one of them. Pulling the wool over the public's eyes seemed likely--it was political oppo research meant to effect the outcome of an election...
I offer you two choices: The FBI was fooled; the FBI was NOT fooled.
DeleteWhich, if either, is more disturbing?
Here's the third choice: The FBI was not fooled, but knowingly used it to "get their man."
DeleteHow long was it after the July 31 opening of CH were Comey, et al., publicly claiming the Steele dossier was salacious and unverified??
Salacious and unverified, yet used as the central evidence in obtaining FISA warrants. Isn't that the rub?
As to your choice options, reckless appears to be the disturbing answer.
The third choice is implicit in the second. However, between "reckless" and "disturbing," a third choice of "stupid" may emerge.
DeleteThe dossier never made any sense anyway. If Putin wanted to help Trump, why would he have his Toadies leak unfavorable information to Steele. Duh. Maxwell Smart's dumber brother.
ReplyDeleteRob S
For some reason the Brit brand still sells well in the US.
DeleteThis is the exact argument Stephen Cohen, noted modern Russian History scholar and academic, has made from day one about the allegations in the dossier. If Trump were Putin's bitch, there is no way Russian Intel officials, former or current, would ever share this info with anybody, let alone a former MI-6 agent whose identity had been blown years ago and had to leave Russia.
DeleteLiterally, as Cohen pointed out, the existence of claims in the dossier were self contradictory of the underlying putative narrative, and made no sense at all.
The clue I discovered when I first read the dossier was the pattern that repeated in memo after memo: they were rich in superfluous details, but thread-bare when it came to the specifics related to Trump and the Trump campaign. The sources were unknown, the locations were non-specific, the dates of meetings vague, names of participants present almost nonexistent, and there was absolutely no corroborative documentary evidence that anything they claimed had even happened. No hotel bills showing somebody was at that hotel on the day the alleged meeting, no phone bills, credit card receipts, restaurant receipts, photographic evidence, etc.
That's when I realized it was designed to be as vague as possible ON PURPOSE, to minimize the ability of anyone involved from the Trump camp to put forth a viable alibi to disprove the allegations.
Despite this design feature in the dossier material, Trump's lawyer was nonetheless able to prove he had never been to Czech Republic, let alone met with Russian Intel people in Prague, despite someone with the same name having traveled there around the time of the alleged meeting. That doesn't happen by chance; ergo, the allegation was an intentional fabrication, designed around the travel info of the person with the same name as Trump's personal lawyer.
The point is that the Dossier material had all the hallmarks of fabricated allegations, with minimal detail to minimize the ability of people accused to disprove the allegations easily.
There are a multitude of additional indicators that it was a fabrication, such as this most recent revelation, about the magic morphing expert source.
The idea that this didn't jump out at FBI HQ's top Counter Intel people means they were intentionally ignoring the fact that the dossier was multiple hearsay gossip, just so that can get a FISA warrant on Carter Page, and through the two-hop rule and retroactive searching of persistent digital communications, effectively spy on the Trump campaign during the final month before the election.
The other option -- sheer incompetence -- while possible true, doesn't explain the actions of people at FBI: specifically the acts of attorney Clinesmith to alter memos in order to get the affiant to sign off on the final (?) renewal of the Carter Page FISA warrant application.
Idiots don't go around altering emails to reverse the meaning with no apparent motive. It's an intentionally mendacious and illegal act, that cannot be explained by simple incompetence.
And as MW has pointed out, no one in the Federal bureaucracy goes around breaking the law forging documents and altering federal records that do not benefit them personally unless they have reason to think their management is going to "have their backs."
And that means we have not just incompetence, and not just rogue officials, but rather it implies we have a conspiracy.
It's all part of the infantilization of Leftist politics--but there's an unquestionably malign element in it. A major element.
DeleteAn excellent summary By EZ of the characteristics and defects of the dossier.
DeleteShorter EZ: The dossier served to proffer the question: "When did you stop beating your wife," where a standard denial serves to confirm the underlying assumption(s).
The Steele dossier similarly delivered a narrative (and assumptions) that a denial or dismissal similarly serves to stoke a public debate/discussion that conforms the existence of the dossier's assertions.
In reality, living proof of the effectiveness of Big Lie--the bigger the better, where audaciousness knows no bounds.
Re the Big Lie...
DeleteAnd a small number of folks at the top of the Dem Party, the Clinton Campaign, the White House, the DOJ, the CIA and the FBI concocted and co-ordinated the Big Lie (its complicated with a lot of moving parts) and enlisted dozens of lawyers, investigators, functionaries, officials, confidential human sources, special agents, spies, 'reporters', and allies to execute it.
Yes, audacious. They must have really believed they could get away with it...Watching Schiff, they still do.
... like telling someone "don't think of an elephant."
Delete;-)
"Watching Schiff, they still do."
DeleteI'm guessing that their scheme was that even if Trump were acquitted they could get more than 50 votes. And now it looks like Trump may even peel off a few Dems. I think that's the reason for Granny Winebox's incoherent rage. They thought they'd be able to say: He got off by a minority.