In August 2007, it all seemed so easy. Barack Obama announced on the campaign trail that, if elected president, he would banish backroom intrigue with an unprecedented commitment to transparency. By 2016, that promise had been abandoned, as the Obama administration erected barriers to public access to information that surpassed those of previous administrations. That veil of secrecy has been only partially lifted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian involvement in the 2016 election allegedly in collaboration with the Trump campaign.

On this score, I agree with the Hoover Institution’s Paul Gregory, who has extensively studied Russian propaganda tactics, that the Russians knew that they could not influence the outcome of the election with a few well-timed tweets. But they understood that a disinformation campaign could raise the specter of collusion with either party, which would then weaken the presidency no matter which candidate won. So far, this strategy has worked brilliantly. We now know that the Democratic National Committee, through the research firm Fusion GPS, financed the efforts of British spy Christopher Steele to dredge up dirt, contained in his famous dossier, on a supposedly deep Trump-Russia connection in the run-up to the 2016 election. Opposition research is part of the grand American political tradition, and this tidbit from the opening line of Steele’s dossier was an intended bombshell: “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.”

We also now know from the publication of the Republican memo earlier this month, as well as from the subsequent Grassley-Graham letter, that some information that was contained in that explosive dossier made its way into the hands of the FBI—which, according to the Grassley-Graham letter, “relied heavily” upon it in its applications to the Foreign Intelligence Court to continue the surveillance of Carter Page, a low-level Trump campaign volunteer, who  had some previous contacts with the Russians. Exactly how the dossier was used in the application—and whether the dossier was quoted—is not clear. The initial FBI investigation to monitor Page went as far back as 2013.  The previous applications signed either by James Comey or Deputy Director Andrew McCabe have prompted no criticism. However, to get a fourth FISA warrant, as the FBI did in October 2016 on the heels of the election, the bureau had to show with fresh information that there was probable cause to believe that Page was both acting on behalf of some foreign nation—i.e. Russia—and engaged in some form of criminal activity.  The FBI relied on the Steele dossier in an effort to close the gaps in its probable cause case.