officials confirmed that the CIA had “a human source inside the Russian government during the campaign, who provided information that dovetailed with Steele’s reporting about Russia’s objective of electing Trump and Putin’s direct involvement in the operation.” intelligence and law enforcement." And they note that, as of September 2019, U.S. Hill's views of how smoothly Putin’s inner circle works may have led her to underestimate Steele's ability as an experienced Humint collector to ferret out reliable Kremlin sources, who, having an axe to grind with Putin, were willing to reveal secrets.Īccording to Simpson and Fritsch, one of Steele’s sources was "among the finest he had ever worked with, an individual known to U.S. … circle is extremely narrow and difficult to penetrate, even for supposed Russian political insiders.” According to her analysis, this Russian president’s power is unchallenged: “There is no oligarchy or separate set of economic, business, or political interests that compete with Putin." In a 2016 article, when she was still at Brookings, Fiona Hill wrote: "Putin’s Russia is a one-man show. in its ability to collect intelligence from Russia.” Some would say that when it comes to gather human intelligence, “Humint,” the Brits are better. And according to Steven Hall, former chief of the C.I.A.'s Central Eurasia Division quoted in The New Yorker, MI6 is "second only perhaps to the U.S. From 2006 to 2009 Steele headed MI6's Russia desk, where he led the agency's investigation of the 2006 poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko. In her closed deposition, Hill expressed concern that Steele, who worked for MI6 in Moscow under diplomatic cover in the 1990s, might "have been played" by the Russians and fed "some kind of misinformation." (One wonders whether Hill had advance knowledge of the Horowitz report, which notes that “the FBI assessed the possibility that Russia was funneling disinformation to Steele.”)īut Hill, with a reputation for outstanding scholarly writing on Russia, has expertise that is very different from that of Steele, who spent 22 years in MI6. But the political and factual details are rather more nuanced. Simpson, who declined a request to be interviewed by the Horowitz team, and Fritsch laud Steele’s credentials, while the Horowitz report casts doubt on his judgment. The depictions of Steele in the Horowitz report and in Crime in Progress would seem at first glance to be completely contradictory. “This Nunes is a proper clown,” Steele told Fritsch, and the congressman’s alleged efforts proved unsuccessful. The authors claim, for instance, that Nunes, who has been on an obsessive crusade to discredit the dossier, made a secret trip to London in August 2018 in order to undermine Steele by getting derogatory information about him from British intelligence officials. The authors founded the investigative and consulting firm Fusion GPS, which hired Steele to investigate Kremlin connections with the Trump campaign, and the book is full of tantalizing details. Published two weeks ago, it is already the number one New York Times nonfiction print and e-book best seller. Now adding to the debate, but not always elucidating it, we have a new book by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump. Gordon Sondland in his closed-door testimony during the impeachment inquiry hearings: "You've heard that the origins of the Steele dossier were from Ukraine, many of the origins in the original Steele dossier were from Ukraine?" Sondland did not reply. And Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, posed this question to Amb. According to former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani has been touting this theory.
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