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Russian Collusion and Active Measures
I spent most of my 30 years in the FBI dealing with counterintelligence. I have been retired for 20 years and have no inside information. My comments are based on facts reported in the news.
The idea that the FBI opened a counterintelligence case on facts that led them to believe President Trump was an agent of Russian Intelligence is an interesting one. What could have been the predication that was sufficient to set this in motion in the FBI? I think it is possible there was more to this than some short-sighted bureaucrats striking out against a person they regarded as a political enemy.
Consider the following:
- The Russian intelligence services have long engaged in “Active Measures,” which are sophisticated disinformation actions to influence or disrupt its enemies. For years, particularly during the Cold War, western counterintelligence services suspected that the KGB was sending us false (perhaps, “fake” is a better word here) defectors and recruitments in place.
- Anatoliy Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected in 1961, was suspected of being such a fake defector. Among several things he reported that were believed to be false, was information that UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a KGB informer and an agent of influence of the Soviet Union.
- The Russian security services must have known that Christopher Steele was collecting information about Donald Trump for Hillary Clinton. It is impossible that a former British intelligence officer could have moved around Russia collecting information from Russians without coming to the attention of Russian security services. It is hard to believe that the Russians would have passed up such an opportunity to contribute disinformation to Steele’s dossier.
- The FBI has fought tenaciously to hide the information on which the Russia investigation was initiated. If the basis for the investigation was just the George Papadopoulos information and/or the Steele dossier, why would they fight so hard to keep it secret? Was there something much more secret that the FBI would not disclose?
- Several Republican Senators and Congressmen have seen the pertinent FBI documents and say that the basis for the investigation was sound. Would they say that if the basis was the Papadopoulos information and the dossier?
- When we try to find out something important in the intelligence world, the first place professionals go is to their defectors and recruitments in place. In an investigation of what the Russian intelligence services were doing in our election, wouldn’t the FBI and CIA ask their Russian defectors and recruitments? Could such a source be what the FBI is protecting?
- Is it possible the FBI had the Steele dossier and found it was confirmed by a recruitment in place or a defector? If the FBI had information from such a source, they might have believed it and that would be the sort of thing they would protect until the end. Anatoliy Golitsyn may have been just the first Russian intelligence agent to provide disinformation that a Western head of state was an agent of Russian Intelligence.
These facts suggest the Russians may indeed be behind the Russia story — not by colluding with President Trump, but by running a disinformation action and, perhaps, a fake defector or recruitment at the FBI and CIA. If so, they fooled CIA Chief Brennan and Director Comey and produced much more disruption than they could have imagined. Golitsyn’s information about Prime Minister Wilson was disruptive but, in the end, most counterintelligence professionals were not fooled. If the Russians have done such a thing now with the Trump collusion narrative, it surely has been the most damaging disinformation program that they ever pulled off.
The counterintelligence world is a complicated and multifaceted place. If the Russians were running a collusion disinformation effort, the situation called for the leadership of the FBI to exercise the greatest sophistication and act with great care. One would hope that senior FBI officials would be sophisticated enough not to be taken in by such a scheme. Director Comey may have known a lot about criminal investigation, but he was a rookie in the counterintelligence world. I doubt Comey was a person who would have enough self-awareness to recognize he didn’t know very much about counterintelligence and his chief advisors, McCabe and Strzok, don’t strike me as careful, sophisticated people.
Published in Law, Politics
Ostensibly close enough to gather the information used to compile the Steele Dossier which was used help obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
You think the information came from the regime?
Isn’t a major issue that there was no validation or verification of sources and accuracy of the information yet those filing requests for the FISA warrant attested that there was?
I guess things changed, because it seems every spy under Obama had a news reporter on speed dial.
I don’t think so but regardless, why would that bear on whether an investigation into Russian involvement in the Clinton campaign was warranted?
And they were compensated by the ‘reporter’.
Why did you pose the question about where the information came from? Do you know where it came from or not? Media reports that the research to produce the information used to justify the the FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page was financed by the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton Presidential Campaign but that there was not independent verification of what was included. Are you asking about things you already know or are you ignorant of all this public information?
If you believe the information in the Steele Dossier is accurate, then YOU are the one who believes Steele obtained accurate information from trustworthy Russian regime sources.
Given where we are in this debacle today, I can believe “information” was given to Steele by Russian regime operatives as a form of political vandalism to hopefully create the Trump/Russia collusion never ending Mueller investigation cluster schtoop which has morphed into porn star affairs and campaign finance violations, process lying “, tax evasion “crimes” …. and to that end(ie: political vandalism) the Russians have have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
I didn’t.
Whether I believe what is in the Steele dossier is irrelevant to any statement I have made. Manafort, Gates, Page, and Carter had long standing relationships with the Russian regime and no one in the Clinton campaign had remotely similar ties.
Read the whole thread.
Was not the Podesta Group closely connected with Paul Manafort and Hillary Clinton?
And Hillary Rodam Clinton isn’t that enough corruption in one place?
Perhaps but irrelevant to whether the FBI had legitimate concerns about Russian ties to campaigns.
Podesta and Clinton obviously had ties, where does Russia fit in?
If you were referencing different information from that used to write the Steele Dossier, please say so.
“Legitimate” Try uranium one.
I was asking about the ties each campaign had to the Russian regime. The Steeele dossier was offered and I was asking why.
And Uranium One’s relationship to the campaign is?
Is it just me? or is the uber-vicious Brennan, an actual one-time Communist-supporting voter, a much more likely Russian plant?
You beat me to that one. The Clintons and the FBI are connected there.
Manafort and Gates lobbied for the pro Russia Ukranians and DNC Chair John Podesta also lobbied on behalf the same pro-Ukranian government with the Podesta Group.
Both Chris Steele and Glenn Simpson have worked for/with Oleg Deripaska and both were working for the DNC/HRC campaign.
So while not quite remotely similar, probably more like nearly exactly the same.
Manafort did more than lobby for the pro-Russian Ukrainians, he was an advisor to the Russian allied President of Ukraine.
You are confusing John Podesta with his brother Tony.
Steele did work for one of Deripaska’s lawyers.
This attempt at whataboutism is absurd.
A super false-flag hack was not required, since there was no honest investigation. There was just the declaration of a hack by some DNC/Clinton hired firm that destroyed all the evidence. If any of the 17 spy agency losers that agreed to that still have a job, they should get fired and jailed for fraud.
Calling John la Carre fans, there is a novel here – based on the truth – good luck finding out what that is…
Klaatu – the real one from outer space was found to really be a Russian spy….
John Podesta was part of the Podesta Group when they lobbied for the pro-Russian Ukranian government. The the fact John Podesta has no ownership interest in the Podesta Group(Tony Podesta has an ownership interest) is used as a head fake to infer John Podesta never worked for the Podesta Group.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-emails-showing-podesta-groups-work-pro-russia-ukrainian-political-party/
It’s not whataboutism when the intent of my comment is to refute your assertion only one campaign had ties to Russia, and to bring to light that the Mueller investigation certainly appears to be focused only on the Trump campaign, completely ignoring the Steele Dossier which is ostensibly comprised of information gathered from Russian regime sources. Wouldn’t the Mueller investigation getting to the bottom of the veracity of Steele’s claims in the Dossier be central to this Russian collusion investigation.
Being “part of” the Podesta Group does not equate to being engaged in every lobbying effort the firm engaged in. You are playing six degrees from Russia rather than accepting the fact that the Trump campaign had unique ties to Russia and those ties were a legitimate counterintelligence concern of the FBI.
No they arent. Your the one holding your hands over your head ‘going NANANANA I CANT HEAR YOU’ because you dont like the very valid points other people are making to you that refute your beliefs.
The fact is that the entire Washington Field Office has been pretty proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/14/ig-report-fbi-agents-bribed-journalists/