Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Answered earlier:
Oh come on, I can’t begin to think how much criticism I’ve read of McCain at NRO over the years.
I would say, though, that McCain’s statement about it (he didn’t have the information to evaluate it so handed it over to the FBI) seems reasonable enough, and if that’s all he did much better than leaking to the press. Who knows.
I voted for him. No problem admitting it.
Adding to this — it looks to my non-lawyer mind like Cohen might have a libel case against Buzzfeed here? Because it looks like something they very easily could have checked.
My doppleganger gets around too. I think he trashed a night club in Tokyo and engaged in some craziness at a karaoke bar in China with some Shandong Air flight attendants. It was the other bloodthirsty neocon, I swear! No, seriously, NT’ers, are we ready to let go of this story now?
is he also a member of the Tea Party?
I am reminded of earlier pieces of incisive and prophetic Berlinski pieces. Who could forget this classic? http://ricochet.com/378942/why-was-this-the-breaking-point/
That of course was the fateful day in October last year when the wider public finally awoke to the true horror of having such a morally-compromised human being in the White House and resolved to never elect him president, thus handing victory to Hilary Clinton, who was by far the more conservative choice.
I’m not reading a single conservative NeverTrumper who is taking the Buzzfeed story seriously.
He sure likes to party. He ruined my reputation on 3 continents. Unfortunately, it’s logically impossible to prove that I have never traveled to any of his old stomping grounds. I demand to see the passports of all of Trump’s staffers!
I think the Buzzfeed documents are more likely to be true than Rafael Cruz is to have conspried with Lee Harvey Oswald, or that Ted Cruz had affairs with Katrina Pierson and five other women, but not actually likely to be true.
Live by innuendo, die by innuendo.
That’s good to hear!
A different Michael Cohen not connected to Trump or a different Michael Cohen connected to Trump?
This unfortunate false equivalency is popping up here to a distressing degree. There is no world in which Trump’s comments are remotely on the same plane with fake documents attempting to discredit the President-elect of the U.S. I get that those advancing this idea dislike Trump (and may have good reasons for doing so) but this is not the way to go.
Michael Cohen connected to another Trump.
Half disagree. Ted Cruz was a serious candidate for the office Trump won, and that kind of utterly irresponsible allegation is in no way less morally abhorrent because Cruz didn’t actually hold that office. Lying to discredit an officeholder isn’t more reprehensible than lying to discredit a mere candidate. Moreover there is a whiff of hypocrisy in the outrage from someone who has defended the National Enquirer as being sometimes right.
That said, agree that history is absolutely zero excuse for Buzzfeed, and this is more damaging to our political system — in part because it’s coming not from a political opponent but from a “news” source that claims some kind of standard.
Just my two cents, in parts because of length:
First, I have some familiarity with the wilds of 4Chan, having done some academic research in the past on online groups such as this. I spent a couple hours this morning diving into the links, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the idea that 4Chan members had anything to do with the dossier is self-aggrandizing BS. It’s far from the first time they’ve claimed post-event influence.
The name of Dr. Spook has been outed in the last few hours, but I’ll give my own perspective on it from our little corner of the world in Estonia. It’s been reported in Newsweek and the Estonian press that the Estonian security services were the ones that staked out Prague, where Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to the dossier, supposedly met with some form of Russian agent or agents of influence.
This is my color – it is not talked about much, but Estonia and Tallinn have become a hub for US intelligence in and about Russia (it was Helsinki during the Cold War, among other places; after ’91 it has moved south).
The Estonian security services are extremely competent, and from what I’ve been able to discern, work at an upper tier with US intelligence in terms of its NATO allies, although it doesn’t get much media attention internationally (I will note that the report that Russia was moving Iskander missiles into Kaliningrad a few months ago was first reported in the Estonian press. I think it will be many years before we find out the full story about the kidnapping of Eston Kohver from Estonian territory a couple days after Obama visited Tallinn).
It would not surprise me if indeed the ISS was tapped by the US to check out anything going on in Prague (Prague is a place known to be riddled with, and possibly compromised, by Russian intelligence). The ISS released a non-denial denial today when asked about the report by the Estonian media.
Anway, from eyewitness accounts of Cohen being in Calfornia during the time described, and the fact that Jake Tapper said on CNN (I saw it live) that it was another Michael Cohen with a non-American passport that was in Prague based on US government sources he had, it seems like nothing in this story seems to stand up to daylight, even if, as others have said, it seems like parts are plausible.
The story about former British prime minister David Cameron going “Black Mirror” while at university (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you don’t really want to know), actually had better sourcing than this.
That’s one thing that puzzled me on first look at the reports: if it were all true, wouldn’t it be extremely easy for the Russians to identify “Dr. Spook?”
Evan McMullin, 12/10/16: “It must be clear that Donald Trump is not a loyal American and we should prepare for the next four years accordingly.”
Trump clones Michael Cohen in the basement of Trump Tower. He keeps them numbers for just such an emergency.
Buzzfeed: Joe Schmo, a very reputable source, says you cheated on your wife and betrayed your country.
CNN: I don’t know what you did or didn’t do, but Joe Schmo is a very reputable source.
Now tell me, are CNN’s hands clean?
There should be a price to be paid for doing your job badly. CNN should at very least go to the back of the WH pressroom. I’m probably being to lenient.
CNN didn’t say Joe Schmo is a very reputable source.
Tapper et al said that intelligence officials went to Trump and said “you need to know that we think the Russians are prepared to say bad things about you.” They also said that included some stuff from Joe Schmo. And then they said “we have the stuff from Joe Schmo, but we have no evidence it’s actually true and aren’t publishing it.”
Discrediting Joe Schmo doesn’t prove that the Russians don’t have a file on Trump. (There could be plenty of fake news in that file, too.)
I have no particular regard for CNN, but what I’ve read of Jake Tapper has been typically solid; he’s often been the one ready to ask tough questions of President Obama and not the one I would consider most likely to publish an indefensible hit piece. He was also calling out Buzzfeed very early on. I’m not invested in the CNN story, and if it’s established that neither Trump nor Republican leaders were briefed on any such Russian activities, I’ll happily call it debunked too. But that hasn’t happened yet.
I’d submit that it’s the nature of the lies in addition to the nature of the office held that forms the basis for the false equivalency. The news cycles involved don’t strike me as remotely comparable, and, frankly, Trump’s comment regarding Cruz’ father hurt Trump more than Cruz.
In all fairness, let’s go to the text:
Yes, it does go on to state that it has not been verified by the FBI. However, lending credibility to the only specific source of the information mentioned was wrong and irresponsible. Referencing “compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump” in paragraph 1 draws in the reader. Lending credibility to the source suggests that the information is true.
Let’s get real. You know, I know, and CNN knows that many readers would just assume that it was true, especially if they wanted to any way.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4108960/How-Trump-s-nemesis-John-McCain-kicked-Kremlin-memo-scandal-handing-dossier-FBI-sending-emissary-abroad-collect-it.html
Now I am sorry I voted for this man.
Please, Never Trump, tell me how good HIS character is, again, and how bad Trump is.
Yes, and many will assume it’s fake if they want to.
I’m not saying there’s no bias at work. There’s a difference between bias and blatantly unethical reporting. Buzzfeed was guilty of the latter. CNN’s has not been shown to reach that level.
I’m going to withdraw from the argument because I’m deferring judgment at least until tomorrow. The thing is there are four key witnesses who have every incentive to make the story go away who haven’t spoken yet, and those are the four Republican congressional leaders who were also supposedly briefed. I’m guessing Paul Ryan will be asked tomorrow whether CNN or NBC had it right about the briefing, and I don’t see any reason to disbelieve whatever answer he gives.
Think about all the attempts to discredit Trump from the beginning – hacking allegations, recounts, threatening the electors. This is the beginning of the battle for the soul of America, which has been deeply compromised. We have someone about to be president who doesn’t play by the establishment rules, who actually works toward results, who knows what a bottom line is, a red line too, who can add 2 + 2 using the old math – and it doesn’t add up. Which is even more disturbing – the characters in this movie…. no one could make up.
I don’t doubt that Russia is trying to confuse America and is probably playing both sides. Obama has let Russia run amuck to the peril of all of us. His pathetic cyber-warfare attempts have also led us here, along with weakness in the Middle East. I don’t think any Republican candidate could have repelled the slings and arrows that Trump has. Pray for our country and the new administration.
The left is leaving their past president to cause problems in DC.