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MoXjo I appreciate you don't have sympathies for Hilarary Clinton or the Democrats. Nonetheless using a puff piece from Forbes business magazine written in Jan 2017 the day after Christopher Steele was identified as the author of the report to discredit it is just plain wrong.
The indisputable fact is that Christopher Steele was commissioned to research Donald Trumps activities in Russia. He pulled together a number of observations from many people in and around the Kremlin. The accuracy of the observations can be questioned and as every intelligence operative would attest you can't believe or be sure of everything you are told. Steele said he had confidence in 70-90% of the observations made in his report.
Steeles history as a MI5 operative and later work as a private investigator have given him total credibility in the eyes of the FBI and US Secret Service. In their view he is a professional and his work needs to be taken and checked seriously. During 2017 there were a number of stories which explored the report. The best one I could find was written by John Sipher a former member of the CIA's senior intelligence service.
His analysis of the Orbis report is worth reading if only to undersatnd how intelligence services analyse and evaluate information.
The Steele Report, Revisited
How much of the infamous document ended up being corroborated elsewhere? A whole lot.
By John Sipher
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
This piece was originally published on Just Security.
Recent revelations of Trump campaign connections to Russia have revived interest in the Steele dossier. The dossier is composed of a batch of short reports produced between June and December 2016 by Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based firm specializing in commercial intelligence for government and private-sector clients. The collection of Orbis reports caused an uproar when it was published online by BuzzFeed just 10 days before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Taken together, the series of reports painted a picture of active collusion between the Kremlin and key Trump campaign officials based on years of Russian intelligence work against Trump and some of his associates. This seemed to complement general statements from U.S. intelligence officials about Russia’s active efforts to undermine the 2016 election. The greatest attention was paid to the first report, which conveyed salacious claims about Trump consorting with prostitutes in Moscow in 2013. Trump himself publicly refuted the story, while Trump associates denied reported details about their engagement with Russian officials. A lot of ink and pixels were also spent on the question whether it was appropriate for the media to publish the dossier.
Almost immediately after the dossier was leaked, media outlets and commentators pointed out that the material was unproven. News editors affixed the terms “unverified” and “unsubstantiated” to all discussion of the issue. Political supporters of President Trump simply tagged it as “fake news.” Riding that wave, legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward characterized the report as “garbage.”
For professional investigators, however, the dossier is by no means a useless document. Although the reports were produced episodically—almost erratically—over a five-month period, they present a coherent narrative of collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. As a result, they offer an overarching framework for what might have happened based on information from individuals on the Russian side who claimed to have insight into Moscow’s goals and operational tactics. Until we have another more credible narrative, we should do all we can to examine closely and confirm or dispute the reports.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...eele_dossier_has_since_been_corroborated.html
Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken the Orbis reports seriously since they were first published. This is not because they are not fond of Trump (and many admittedly are not) but because they understand the potential plausibility of the reports’ overall narrative based on their experienced understanding of both Russian methods and the nature of raw intelligence reporting. Immediately following the BuzzFeed leak, one of my closest former CIA colleagues told me that he recognized the reports as the obvious product of a former British Secret Intelligence Service officer, since the format, structure, and language mirrored what he had seen over a career of reading SIS reports provided to CIA in liaison channels. He and others withheld judgment about the veracity of the reports, but for the reasons I outline further below they did not reject them out of hand. In fact, they were more inclined for professional reasons to put them in the “trust but verify” category.
The indisputable fact is that Christopher Steele was commissioned to research Donald Trumps activities in Russia. He pulled together a number of observations from many people in and around the Kremlin. The accuracy of the observations can be questioned and as every intelligence operative would attest you can't believe or be sure of everything you are told. Steele said he had confidence in 70-90% of the observations made in his report.
Steeles history as a MI5 operative and later work as a private investigator have given him total credibility in the eyes of the FBI and US Secret Service. In their view he is a professional and his work needs to be taken and checked seriously. During 2017 there were a number of stories which explored the report. The best one I could find was written by John Sipher a former member of the CIA's senior intelligence service.
His analysis of the Orbis report is worth reading if only to undersatnd how intelligence services analyse and evaluate information.
The Steele Report, Revisited
How much of the infamous document ended up being corroborated elsewhere? A whole lot.
By John Sipher
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7.
Carlos Barria/Reuters
This piece was originally published on Just Security.
Recent revelations of Trump campaign connections to Russia have revived interest in the Steele dossier. The dossier is composed of a batch of short reports produced between June and December 2016 by Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based firm specializing in commercial intelligence for government and private-sector clients. The collection of Orbis reports caused an uproar when it was published online by BuzzFeed just 10 days before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Taken together, the series of reports painted a picture of active collusion between the Kremlin and key Trump campaign officials based on years of Russian intelligence work against Trump and some of his associates. This seemed to complement general statements from U.S. intelligence officials about Russia’s active efforts to undermine the 2016 election. The greatest attention was paid to the first report, which conveyed salacious claims about Trump consorting with prostitutes in Moscow in 2013. Trump himself publicly refuted the story, while Trump associates denied reported details about their engagement with Russian officials. A lot of ink and pixels were also spent on the question whether it was appropriate for the media to publish the dossier.
Almost immediately after the dossier was leaked, media outlets and commentators pointed out that the material was unproven. News editors affixed the terms “unverified” and “unsubstantiated” to all discussion of the issue. Political supporters of President Trump simply tagged it as “fake news.” Riding that wave, legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward characterized the report as “garbage.”
For professional investigators, however, the dossier is by no means a useless document. Although the reports were produced episodically—almost erratically—over a five-month period, they present a coherent narrative of collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. As a result, they offer an overarching framework for what might have happened based on information from individuals on the Russian side who claimed to have insight into Moscow’s goals and operational tactics. Until we have another more credible narrative, we should do all we can to examine closely and confirm or dispute the reports.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...eele_dossier_has_since_been_corroborated.html
Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken the Orbis reports seriously since they were first published. This is not because they are not fond of Trump (and many admittedly are not) but because they understand the potential plausibility of the reports’ overall narrative based on their experienced understanding of both Russian methods and the nature of raw intelligence reporting. Immediately following the BuzzFeed leak, one of my closest former CIA colleagues told me that he recognized the reports as the obvious product of a former British Secret Intelligence Service officer, since the format, structure, and language mirrored what he had seen over a career of reading SIS reports provided to CIA in liaison channels. He and others withheld judgment about the veracity of the reports, but for the reasons I outline further below they did not reject them out of hand. In fact, they were more inclined for professional reasons to put them in the “trust but verify” category.
