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Dr. Spook and the Manchurian President?
Well, that’s a heck of a story to wake up to:
During a special briefing last Friday, leaders of the intelligence community gave President-elect Donald Trump a synopsis of unsubstantiated and salacious allegations that Russian operatives had obtained potentially compromising personal and financial information about the president-elect, a U.S. official confirmed Tuesday.
I gather that everyone who’s anyone in Washington has read the memo containing these allegations, but no one thought it was worth publishing (until now).
Some thoughts, in random order:
1. It looks as if the first publication to write about this was Mother Jones, on October 31. Here’s how they put it:
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.
Let’s call the “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” Dr. Spook, for short. Was Dr. Spook shopping this to every publication in the US? Or just to Mother Jones? Maybe Mother Jones was the only publication willing to publish it? Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek also seems to have used the memos in his reporting. Did Dr. Spook fax his memos to every journalist in Washington?
2. The story as it’s now being presented is that this became newsworthy because Trump himself had been briefed about it. Who leaked the story that he’d been briefed about it, and why? Why now? Apparently, “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” told CNN about this. How many people would have direct knowledge of these briefings in the first place? Why didn’t any of these leaking briefers think to come forward with this before the election, given that everyone in Washington apparently knew about this?
3. As Lawfare blog puts it,
… it is significant that the document contains highly specific allegations, many of which are the kind of facts it should be possible to prove or disprove. This is a document about meetings that either took place or did not take place, stays in hotels that either happened or didn’t, travel that either happened or did not happen. It should be possible to know whether at least some of these allegations are true or false.
If Dr. Spook was passing these memos to every journalist and politician in Washington as early as October 31, at least a few of the key points should have been substantiated by now, wouldn’t you think?
4. John Schindler of 20Committee says that the “GOP was informed back in the spring that Trump was a 1-man FSB kompromat machine come to life. They did nothing. This is on them now.” Was this circulating as early as last spring, then? And no one has made any progress since then in substantiating or discrediting it?
5. Presumably everyone in Hillary’s camp also knew about it, too: It was an oppo research briefing, right? I wonder what kept her from bringing it up?
… the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting. The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House.
McCain is not thought to have made a judgment on the reliability of the documents but was sufficiently impressed by the source’s credentials to feel obliged to pass them to the FBI.
Who is this source? And who’s the Guardian’s source for this story, I wonder? The point of sending an emissary overseas to meet the source is to ensure that only he and the emissary knew of it. So I assume McCain authorized this leak. Why would McCain leak to the Guardian, though? Why not at least leak to a US publication?
7. The Guardian claims that as early as last summer, the FBI applied FISA warrant to monitor four members of the Trump team “suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials.” If so — what’s up with the FBI?
8. If Trump’s the victim of a disinformation campaign, who’s behind it? Is this the intel community’s response to Trump’s claim that they have “no clue?” Hillary’s revenge?
9. It doesn’t help when yet again, Trump replies using exactly the same language the Kremlin does:
10. I don’t understand how our Deep State works. Don’t we have spies of our own in Russia? Why do we need Dr. Spook to tell us this? Why is this only being reported now?
My verdict: I’ve got no idea what’s going on, but this seems fishy.
That said: That people will believe it is Trump’s fault. His behavior toward Putin has been so sycophantic and bizarre that even an extraordinarily weird story like this sounds plausible. If Obama’s refusal to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism” convinced a significant number of Americans that he was a Muslim, the same phenomenon will be at work here — even if these memos prove to be a complete fabrication and fantasy.
It’s entirely plausible to imagine that Trump enjoyed the company of ladies of poor repute when he was in Russia. No one can say, with a straight face, “That’s ridiculous. Donald Trump is an upright and responsible married man and a faithful husband. He would never consort with Slavic hookers.” Exactly no one would be surprised if he had, and exactly no one would be surprised that the Russians taped the encounter.
Trump’s eagerness to adopt the Kremlin’s line in matters of foreign policy and his general mien of moral incontinence will be enough to convince a significant number of Americans that all of these allegations are true.
It won’t be enough for Trump to Tweet indignantly and wait for the media to bore with the story. It won’t. We’ll hear of nothing but this for years to come, I reckon.
What do you make of it?
UPDATE: The Trump Dossier: Dynamite or Disinformation? makes the skeptical case better than I did, and concludes:
In the absence of any evidence, this will do nothing but widen the dangerous divide within American society.
And here’s the irony: that’s exactly what the Kremlin wants. Whether damning proof of complicity with an antagonistic foreign power, or a piece of raw anti-Trump disinformation, at present this cache of documents is probably more effective than any number of hours of programming by Russia’s RT television station – which emerged as the star of the recent and deeply flawed open source on the hacking case – in turning America against itself.
Published in General
Are you telling me there could be a Trump “Sex Tape”!? This would be the apotheosis of the Reality TV culture. I kind of want it to be true, from an entertainment perspective. But, I really don’t want it to be true from a governing perspective.
Looking at all the “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” of this all, I will be watching closely what congressmen who have been briefed on all this say.
Per CNN the top leadership of the House and Senate and the intelligence committees had the same briefing Trump and Obama did — which means they likely know the answers to some of these questions. The Democrats obviously have a partisan interest in believing it. The Republicans — that would be Ryan, McConnell, Richard Burr, and Devin Nunes — don’t. But at the same time if any of the more serious allegations were true, looking at both likely political calculations and their past behavior, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aren’t going to try to cover up anything as serious as these accusations. If Paul Ryan tells us at his townhall meeting tomorrow night that all this is a collection of pure politically-motivated garbage, I’m inclined to believe him. On the other hand if he hedges at all, that would be a tell — not that any specific allegation is true, but that Ryan has seen something sufficiently credible that he has concerns.
If Ryan says “yeah, all that Buzzfeed stuff is totally unverified, but the Russians have been doing bad stuff and Putin is a bad actor” — we’re still left with the question why the President-elect can’t bring himself to say that much.
So wasn’t there some sort of farewell address last night about someone somewhere?
All we are talking about is Pres Trump. Funny that.
I don’t listen to NPR, but please tell me that if someone from NPR ever says that when a right-winger is on, that the right-winger will have the sense to say “So it’s basically their version of NPR?”
Claire,
This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that John McCain and certain members of the intelligence community are idiots.
Did 4Chan Troll The CIA?
Regards,
Jim
As to the question of whether such a story would happen or have an equal impact with Walker/Cruz/Rubio or anyone else — there would be allegations, and some partisans would believe them, but they wouldn’t reach this level. What gives this bite is Trump’s persistently positive tone towards Putin, and that many people — including Trump-supporting Republicans — have found it bizarre and troubling for some time. Part of what makes it bizarre is that it would be so easy to dissipate those concerns: all he has to do is make it clear, in his own words, that he recognizes Russia as a geopolitical adversary.
They are only taking credit for originating the “golden shower” item, not the entire document.
I’m sorry, but I saw this on Daily Caller:
Kellyanne Conway Was Grilled By Seth Meyers About Allegations That Russia Has Dirt On Trump
Seth Meyers? Really?
So … journalism, right?
A mistress is different from Russian hookers.
The unnamed source, I find it interesting that in the simplest of crimes I could not make an arrest based upon hearsay. Journalist’s are not police officers, but then again they claim to be the minders of the powerful, one wonders who minds the journalist.
What does that even mean anymore? The CIA treated erotic trump fan fiction as true and briefed the president about it.
Alice woke up and told the Cheshire cat, “seems legit.”
Listening to the press conference right now. Really, really smart to have Mike Pence take it on first.
Personal experience?
When you start parsing your sleaze on that level it’s time to just stop.
There’s exactly the same amount of evidence for both claims.
At the level Trump plays at I suspect they are not prostitutes or hookers but are known as escorts. Classy guy, that Trump.
The Rubio gay sex orgies are different too, right? The DUI allegations are different too, right?
I cannot take the ideas of anyone who is so afraid of Trump much that he or she wanted the Electorial Collage to ignore the state votes and put someone, anyone, into office other than Trump. That is meaningful to this conversation, because there is no way for such a person to be objective about Trump at all. Any allegation, no matter how wild, you are willing to give a listen too. We already know that one part, about Trump’s lawyer being in Prague, is proven false. It is false without a doubt. As Jim Geraghty puts it:
A hatred of Trump, a fear about Trump, or whatever emotion someone wants to call it, that drove that person to call for the Electorial College to ignore how we have done things for 150 years, to stop Trump from getting elected, renders that person’s opinion very biased.
Keep it cool folks.
To me this seems like a strange fetish that the press is developing. The next four years will consist of reporters opening their news casts with declarations of…
“Contrary to reports that have been unsubstantiated, there is no indication that President Trump is currently or has ever ________ed a ________ and we at __________ will not stoop to presenting this unsubstantiated story as news.”
Feel free to pin this post and fill in the blanks as examples present themselves.
“As far as hacking I believe it was Russia” — that’s new from Trump.
EDIT: Also going on to say that if the Russians had anything on him he assumes they would’ve released it. Also: “I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladmir Putin.” So maybe this all is going to work out, at least, to some change in the Trump tone towards Putin.
A+ for his handling of those more salacious allegations, thus far anyway.
George H.W.Bush took a top secret SR-71 flight to Tehran in 1980 to convince the Ayatollah not to release the hostages before the election. tThis was taken very seriously, was promoted by former Carter staffers, and sparked Congressional investigation.
In terms of temperament and demeanor, no two Republicans could be more different than George H.W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, but the outrageousness of the response to their elections is the same.
Best sarcasm yet!
Just a comment on “4chan did this” or “4chan couldn’t do that” type statements people are making…
4chan is just an anonymous message board. It doesn’t “act” the way that an organization like, say, Wikileaks or CNN acts. It doesn’t make sense to say that “4chan did something”; what you really mean is that users of 4chan did something and posted it on 4chan. And, 4chan users are pretty much anybody on the internet.
So, could a user or multiple users of 4chan have made this thing up? Sure. It’s not an especially convincing document. It’s full of claims anyone could make that aren’t substantiated except in references like “Source D told us that…” and says silly things like “Donald Trump tried to do business in Russia but only succeded at meeting prostitutes.” It could have been printed up by anybody who has Microsoft Word or another word processor, is proficient in English, and has seen any B-grade spy movie or novel. So, basically any person in the English speaking world with internet and too much time on their hands. Which describes just about every user of 4chan who isn’t constantly smoking weed (so at least 5% of their user base, which is big).
LOL. the smoking gun…
I read very few more comments after yours, Bryan. Perfect summary in your last line. Funny thing is, Trump is “asking” for it just by being himself, with the refreshing difference between him and all previous POTUS applicants being that he can handle these twerps. There’s a good reason that your comment has 23 “likes” so far; truth is entertaining!
Thanks
You know, a secret SR-71 flight could explain how Michael Cohen got to Prague and back without anyone finding out.
People believe anything that confirms their bias.
You know, 1980 is before a number of our members were even born
I said this earlier but it bears repeating…If the leak (as I understand it ) is to be believed there was a 2 page appendix attached to the Intel briefing report. The actual “intelligence” is IN the report. This is not. The appendix (as I understand it) is a kind’a ‘be advised that this is floating around out there’ summary of the 35 page thing BuzzFeed published.
So, technically, it is credible and accurate insofar as there is indeed a 35 page alleged ‘report’ floating around. And the appendix apparently accurately summarizes that 35 page ‘report’. It isn’t at all clear to me that the appendix says that the CONTENTS of the 35 page ‘report’ are credible and accurate.
I don’t mean to split hairs here, but this is a very important distinction.
In fact, NBC is now reporting that the Intel community asserts that the appendix was included as an example of the kind of “un-vetted disinformation” that the new administration could expect to see.
But this is a fine real-life example of how The Big Smear works.
(1). The disinformation exists and gets shopped around. No one can verify so no one will publish it directly. But it gives them license to report “Questions swirl around …. (insert smear here)”
(2). Someone eventually either gets sucked in by the disinformation and passes it to the police as real; or asks the police to see if they can stop such obvious falsehoods. Either way, that gets leaked and guess what gets reported? “Authorities investigate…..”
(3). Someone eventually publishes the disinformation. No one else can verify so no one else follows suit. But what the do report is “In a bombshell report it has been alleged that …” Footnote at the end “… We have been unable to verify…”
But what is remembered? The salacious headline or the retraction?