Chris Steele: Source From Hell--Or What?

Eric Felten's article today about Russia Hoax fabulist Chris Steele and Steele's FBI handler--Michael Gaeta--is strangely not as thorough as one usually expects from Felten's past work:

Supposedly Reliable Steele Acted 'Crazy,' His FBI Handler Says: 'People's Ears Were Bleeding.'

The article is fine, as far as it goes--Felten concentrates on Gaeta's and the FBI's dismay when Steele turned out to be the source for an article by ueber-sleazy 'journalist' David Corn. Corn's article--A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump--Has the bureau investigated this material?--came out in Mother Jones on October 31, 2016, just a week before the election. Corn's article is, typically, full of innuendo and anonymously sourced characterizations. Coming in the immediate wake of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey's reopening of the Hillary email case, Corn hints at possible negligence on the part of the FBI in not following up on the 'Veteran Spy's' information about supposed Trump - Russia collusion, leading off with a statement by noted champion of bipartisanship, Senator Harry Reid:

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.”

The FBI was predictably upset that their supposed top source, Steele, was participating in a hit job on the Bureau. Steele's handling agent, Michael Gaeta was dispatched to contact Steele--tellingly, not so much to read Steele the riot act but to find out what had gone wrong. Was it something the FBI had done or neglected to do? Was Steele in a huff about slow payments? Was this payback for the Bureau's slowness?

Again: The Important Takeaway From Schrage's Revelations

Margot Cleveland comes down on my side this morning at The Federalist. The tantalizing takeaway in what Steven Schrage has had to say thus far about the Cambridge meeting of Stefan Halper with Carter Page actually has to do with the role of British intelligence operatives in the Russia Hoax. Or, technically, former British intelligence operatives.

Recall that I wrote yesterday:

Finally, regarding the MI6 connection, while Dearlove and Steele are "retired," that doesn't mean that Dearlove might not have served as a high level--but deniable--connection among Five Eyes intel agencies. Note, for example, the way in which Dearlove's presence seemingly energized and directed Halper, in Schrage's telling of the events. That appears to be the truly main point that Shrage is trying to make--the influence of Richard Dearlove on what transpired and developed into the Russia Hoax. And we know that Christopher Steele consulted with Dearlove on this, as well.

What I was briefly referring to in the red highlighted sentence was a WaPo profile of Christopher Steele that contained this, to me, significant passage (below)--which I quoted in Let's Talk About Michael Gaeta. After presenting what appeared to me to be anomalies in the early July, 2016, mission of FBI agent Michael Gaeta, traveling from Rome to London--with the approval of Victoria Nuland--to meet with Steele, I continue:

Michael Gaeta's Bombshell Lands Right On Bruce Ohr

Eric Felten has a very good article today that, while focusing on what might at first seem like one small data point in the Russia Hoax, actually opens up major vistas into the overall conspiracy. The article is at Real Clear Investigations, and concerns Michael Gaeta's recently released testimony, comparing it to Bruce Ohr's previously released testimony: FBI's Man in Europe Undercut Ohr's Claim of Limited Russiagate Role.

You'll recall that Michael Gaeta was, in the summer of 2016, stationed at the FBI's Legat office in Rome. He had in the past been Chris Steele's handling agent and when, at the beginning of July he got a call from Steele telling him that he (Steele) had some very hot but unspecified info for him, Gaeta dropped everything and rushed off to London.

That raises all kinds of questions in my mind for which I have no convincing answer at this point. The FBI has numerous Legat offices around the world, but London is certainly one of the largest and most prestigious. They operate on a regional basis, just as FBI Field Divisions in the US operate territorially. Just as an FBI agent would never travel to another Field Division in the US to conduct investigation without notification (there are exceptions to the general rule), likewise no agent at one Legat would simply fly to the territory of another Legat to conduct investigation. In fact we do know that Gaeta sought and received permission for his jaunt from no less a high DoS official than Victoria Nuland, but why an agent stationed in London could not have visited Steele remains unclear to me--as does who at FBIHQ would have been aware of Gaeta's trip.

That said, the main point of Felten's article concerns Bruce Ohr.

Wisdom From Larry Johnson

Larry Johnson has an excellent piece at TGP today: Two Important Transcripts Shed Light on the FBI and Two of Their Informants. The two transcripts are those of Felix Sater and Michael Gaeta--Gaeta being Chris Steele's handler. Gaeta's transcript in particular is of great interest to me, but for reasons it would take too long to go into right now.

Here's what I want to stress--Johnson's concluding paragraph:

For those of you who are impatient with the progress of John Durham and William Barr is bringing the coup plotters to justice, I hope the foregoing shows you how complicated and voluminous the task is. This is not a two week investigation. But these transcripts show you some of the ammunition that Durham and Barr are collecting and loading. These are deadly facts that Comey, Brennan and even Obama will have trouble running from.

Documentation That Bruce Ohr Was Pushing The Steele Dossier

We all know Bruce Ohr's story--Hey, I told the FBI this Steele "dossier" thing was unverified, that Steele had strong political motives, and all that. I was just a conduit of information. It was the FBI that ran with it.

It was always a very unlikely story, but Jeff Carlson has done the digging in the Horowtiz Dossier and has come up with documentation that Bruce Ohr contacted Steele's handler, Michael Gaeta (ak "Handling Agent 1"), within days of Ohr handing the "dossier" to McCabe and Lisa Page, to find out whether the FBI was doing anything with the Steele nonsense. Ohr had regular contact with the top levels of FBI management right there in DC--he didn't need to ask the Bureau's guy in Rome about that. Except that he probably wanted to pretend to be dealing at arms length with FBIHQ.

1) P. 99 of IG Report: Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] stated that, prior to sending the reports [Steele Reports 80 & 94], ASAC 1 had contacted him to explain that the reports would be placed in a sub-file in NYFO and thereby "walled off" from agents in NYFO...

Josh Cremeans “DirtyTruth”
@AKA_RealDirty
Replying to @AKA_RealDirty

@LindseyGrahamSC tells @MariaBartiromo he wants to find out how Andrew McCabe knew to get the document in New York when they couldn’t get the warrant in July of 2016. He wants to know how he even knew to go to New York.

10:02 AM - Feb 23, 2020

2) ...and that the Assistant Director in Charge of NYFO and the "Executive Assistant Director (EAD) level" [Michael Steinbach] at FBI Headquarters were aware of the reports' existence. 

3) Date of Steinbach's awareness [FBI HQ] likely just prior to 8-4-16.
But outside possibility that it was as early as 7-13-16 [Date ASAC first spoke w/Handling Agent 1]
See: Footnote 224 & P. 99 

4) Additional confirm - P. 273:
On August 3, 2016, Ohr emailed Handling Agent 1 asking to speak to him. Handling Agent 1 told us he talked with Ohr, who asked him if he had seen Steele's election reports and whether the FBI was doing anything with them.... 

5) Handling Agent 1 stated that he told Ohr that an executive assistant director at FBI Headquarters and executive management in the New York Field Office (NYFO) knew about Steele's reporting and were addressing it. 

I'd say the walls are closing in on Ohr. It seems clear that, in fact, Bruce Ohr was advocating for the Bureau to take action--albeit discretely. But this is undoubtedly not a new development. I imagine we'll be hearing lots more about Michael Gaeta as well as Joe Pientka.

Let's Talk About Michael Gaeta

In Margot Cleveland's article today (referenced in the immediately prior post), she mentions FBI SA Michael Gaeta, who contacted Chris Steele in London during the summer of 2016. I've always found that fact curious and possibly important. To set the stage, here's what I wrote about Gaeta in The FBI: Working Hand In Glove With Clinton Operatives, in the context of tracing the FBI's contacts with Steele:

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We know that over the years from at least 2009 the FBI had been in periodic contact with Steele, beginning with the FIFA case. Our first publicly documented contact with Steele in this Russia Hoax occurred when the FBI's Michael Gaeta (working for the FBI's Rome Legat office) traveled to London on July 5, 2016, and obtained the first two Steele reports that later featured in Steele's "dossier." We don't know to whom Gaeta sent that reporting, but given that the Trump campaign was the subject of the "reports" it should have gone pretty much straight to the top of the FBI chain of command--at least to the Deputy Director, Andy McCabe, if not to Comey himself. The next FBI contact with Steele came later that same month, July 2016.

To my mind, the most plausible supposition is that the FBI, which we know had for months been targeting advisers to the Trump campaign (Carter Page, Papadopoulos, etc.) was now prepared for further communications from Steele. It seems likely that Gaeta would have asked Steele--whom he had known and worked with for years and apparently trusted--to keep in touch with future developments. Given that Gaeta had traveled from Rome to London to meet Steele, the FBI's interest should have been obvious. Also, given that Gaeta had to get approval for the trip from Rome (remember, the FBI has a large Legat office in London that could have met with Steele) from Victoria Nuland at the State Department, Gaeta must have had a fairly good idea as to the topic he'd be discussing with Steele in order to justify the trip. For what it's worth, however, the WaPo has provided Steele's version of events.

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