Senior intelligence officials strenuously fought the demands of former FBI Director James Comey and other Obama intelligence chiefs to include the false and unverified Steele dossier in an official assessment of Russian activities ordered by President Barack Obama in the closing weeks of his presidency, records reviewed exclusively by The Federalist show. The records, which are related to ongoing criminal investigations into Comey and other top intelligence officials for their roles in launching the Russia collusion hoax, provide damning evidence of Obama intelligence chiefs’ malfeasance beyond the explosive information released Wednesday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Previous government investigations into the Russia collusion hoax dryly described the opposition merely as officials having “expressed concern” about using the infamous Steele dossier because it was “not completely vetted.” But records reviewed by The Federalist reveal career intelligence officials expressed outright shock at the poor quality of the reporting that the FBI repeatedly insisted be included in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) — and objected to any reference to the dodgy dossier.
“Based solely on what we DO know now, my bottom line is this – unless FBI is prepared to provide much better sourcing – I believe this should NOT be included in the paper,” one official wrote, caps and all. Noting that the document had not been formally issued as an FBI product, the official stressed it suffered from “POOR SOURCE TRADECRAFT,” had “extremely sketchy” sourcing, and “simply does not meet normal [intelligence community] standards.”
The Steele dossier, a product of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, was a collection of salacious and unverified stories about rival presidential candidate Donald Trump supposedly colluding with Russia. Clinton secretly funded the information operation and the group she hired to create the dossier spread the false information it contained to reporters, politicians, and the FBI.
Recent disclosures from Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed that Obama and his top intelligence officials coordinated an information operation against President-elect Donald Trump to falsely paint him as having colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. First, they suppressed a Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, that concluded that Russia’s election activities did not affect the election. President-elect Trump and his incoming National Security Advisor Mike Flynn would have received a copy of the PDB had the Obama administration not eighty-sixed the final report mere hours before its publication.
Then, at the direction of Obama and under the tight fist of disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan, a small cabal in the intelligence community rushed out the ICA which fraudulently concluded Russia meddled in the election to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. (Earlier exclusive reporting by The Federalist revealed how CIA Director John Brennan overruled and disparaged top officials who complained that his claim about Russia’s preference for Trump had “no evidence” to support it.)
Former FBI Director James Comey’s demand the ICA include the Steele dossier helped Brennan develop the false but explosive narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to help Trump. Intelligence officials immediately pushed back on including the dossier in the ICA, with one senior official recorded as saying, in materials reviewed exclusively by The Federalist, that the fact that the source was paid at first by an “anti-Trump Republican, and later a different Democrat client” meant the author knew what his clients wanted. He “clearly had a motive to pass along info, however poorly sourced, since it generated revenue,” the official warned.
Intelligence officials also worried that Steele had relied on sub-sources whose identity and credibility were unknown to the FBI. The concern was validated in January 2017 when interviews with the primary subsource, Igor Danchenko, showed the document’s scurrilous allegations lacked credibility. Rather than admit their error, FBI officials continued to defend their use of the dossier for years and hid Danchenko’s identity from congressional scrutiny by hiring him as an informant.
FBI officials insisted to the officials working on the ICA that the information in the dossier was good. One intelligence official wondered why, if the information was as good as the FBI claimed, Democrats did not deploy it against Trump during the campaign, the records stated.
The FBI countered that Steele was a credible source whose reporting had, at least somewhat, been corroborated. The intelligence officials were skeptical.
“If, as we have been told, FBI has some corroborating material from an ongoing investigation, can that be used? I thought they never do that? If they feel this overrides the investigation, some of the corroborating reporting must be included in the paper. If not, I would argue for dropping the page,” the official said, explaining in detail “Why we should oppose inclusion of the FBI material.”
The previously unreported records reviewed by The Federalist also showed the FBI stressing that since the Steele dossier was already “out there,” it should be included in the body of the ICA.
A senior intelligence official eviscerated the argument, responding: “Just how ‘out there’ is it? All we know for sure is that much of the content of the document appeared in [Mother Jones] in October and a copy of something is in Sen. McCain’s hands.” The senior official added that including the dossier in the ICA would essentially confirm the salacious reporting, punctuating his point by comparing the Steele reporting to a December 12, 2016 National Enquirer story headlined, “MUSLIM SPIES IN OBAMA’S CIA!” That article included quotes from sources alleging that the agency had 55 double agents, so the analyst asked rhetorically if that detail should be included in an intelligence assessment as well.
Notwithstanding these many flaws, the materials reviewed exclusively by The Federalist show assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap, on December 22, 2016, lobbying one of the officials working on the ICA to put the dossier “in the body” of the assessment and not in a separate box or appendix. Priestap added the FBI felt “strongly” that the information be included in the text.
Disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok would also later call one of the officials working on the ICA to lobby for the inclusion of the Steele dossier in the ICA. “According to Pete, Comey does not want the text we discussed in the appendix but wants it in the main body somehow,” the recently reviewed records explained. Strzok added that the FBI “needed to have the information in the body of the paper,” with the since fired FBI agent stressing the Bureau had confidence in Steele because of his past work.
While Steele had previously served as an FBI source, a review of the quality of his reporting established it had been only “minimally corroborated.” Nonetheless, FBI officials suggested the Clinton-paid source had a track record that had withstood judicial scrutiny in cases.
“My overarching concern is that inclusion of this sensationalist data would lead to many problems,” an exasperated senior intelligence official responded to the FBI’s demand that the ICA include the dossier, apparently not realizing that the problems Steele’s claims would cause were precisely why the boosters of the dossier wanted it included in the ICA.
Comey and his cronies were able to legitimize their fraudulent Steele dossier by including it as a substantiating piece of evidence for the false claim Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win. The ICA referred to the dossier as “Russian plans and intentions” as opposed to the manufactured and uncorroborated claims of people working on a campaign project for Hillary Clinton. A lengthy two-page summary was added as an appendix. That served the deep-state’s purpose, as it gave an unwarranted heft to the narrative that Russia wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.
“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” House of Representatives overseers wrote in a a long-suppressed analysis of the flaws in the ICA.
The inclusion of the Steele dossier in the appendix to the ICA also provided an excuse for those pushing the Russia-collusion hoax to brief Obama and Trump on the unverified and salacious details. Soon after, the fact of the ICA briefing and details of the Steele dossier leaked to CNN, launching a new front in the war against Trump. Just as the senior career official predicted, the inclusion of the manufactured Steele dossier served to legitimize its allegations despite their lack of veracity.
With their complicity in peddling the Russia-collusion hoax, no wonder then that the legacy media refuse to report on the recent revelations concerning the manipulation of the ICA.
