The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier

Christopher Steele's Dossier includes eight reports that tell about a Russian Government organization that the Dossier calls the Presidential Administration (PA). The Russian-language name is Administratsiya Prezidenta, which translates as "The President's Administration". The Kremlin's website translate's the name as "The Presidential Executive Office".

That Kremlin website says the office is managed by the President's Chief of Staff and does the following:

* prepares draft laws, decrees, orders, instructions, Presidential speeches, etc.

* monitors the enforcement of federal laws, decrees, orders, etc.

* coordinates with political parties, non-governmental organizations, unions, foreign governments, international organizations, etc.

* analyzes socioeconomic, political and legal trends

According to the Wikipedia article, the office's staff numbers about 26 officials, employs about 50 "Presidential Envoys" and manages about 30 "Subdivisions".

Steele's Dossier tells about the PA in these eight reports:

Report 94, dated July 19, 2016

Report 100, dated August 5, 2016

Report 101, dated August 10, 2016

Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

Report 130, dated October 12, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Report 130 says that the "Trump Support Operation" was controlled by a sequence of three agencies:

1) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)

2) The Federal Security Service (FSB)

3) The Presidential Administration (PA).

The Dossier does not specify when this control was shifted from agency to agency, but from various clues (which I will not detail in this article) I define the three phases as follows:

The MFA phase began in mid-2011 and ended in late-2013. A major effort in this phase was to arrange for Donald Trump to bring his 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

The FSB phase began in late-2013 and ended in mid-2016. Major efforts in this phase were to record Trump with prostitutes and to hack into computers involved in the USA's 2016 election.

The PA phase began in mid-2016, between the Indiana primary election on May 3, 2016 and the appointment of Paul Manafort to head Trump's campaign staff on June 20, 2016. The PA phase ended in mid-October 2016. The major effort in the PA phase was to collude with Trump to win the Presidential election. 

I myself do not believe that any of this actually happened. I do not believe that there was any "Trump Support Operation" or any of these three phases. There was no recording of prostitutes in a Moscow hotel or anything else.

However, I am summarizing here the story that the Dossier tells about an alleged "Trump Support Operation" that was controlled -- after being controlled by the MFA and then by the FSB -- by the PA during the USA's 2016 election race.

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Understanding the Dossier's treatment of PA is important because the CIA had an informant who reported about the PA -- about the Russian President's Executive Office. The CIA's informant was Oleg Smolenkov, who was the assistant of Yuri Ushakov, who is one of the PA's 26 officials listed in the Wikipedia article about the PA. The separate Wikipedia article about Ushakov says (emphasis added):

Ushakov is a graduate of Moscow State Institute of International Relations and was the Russian Ambassador to The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 1996 to 1998.

He was appointed Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States in January 1999, and he was released from his posting by the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, on 2 June 2008. From June 2008 to May 2012 Ushakov was Deputy Chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation. Since May 2012 he has been Aide to the President of the Russian Federation responsible for international affairs in the Presidential Administration.

According to newspaper reports, Ushakov's assistant Smolenkov informed the CIA that Putin's PA was meddling in the USA's 2016 election. About eight months after that election, the CIA helped Smolenkov to defect from Russia to the USA in June 2017. So, the CIA learned from Smolenkov that the PA was meddling in the US election.

From whom did Steele learn that the PA was meddling in the election?

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Steele began his Dossier with Report 80 on June 20, 2016, but did not mention the PA until Report 94, dated July 19, 2016. Therefore, Steele began learning in mid-July 2016 about the PA's meddling. Until then, Steele knew only about the FSB's involvement -- for example, about the FSB's recording of Trump with prostitutes.

Suddenly, beginning on July 19, Steele began writing a series of eight reports that told about the PA's various communications, controversies, decisions, actions and personnel changes related to the PA's Trump Support Operation. Steele wrote:

President PUTIN had issued direct orders that Kremlin and government insiders should not discuss it in public or even in private.

Despite Putin's order, Steele learned the PA's secrets about the Trump Support Operation.

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Surely CIA officials who knew about Smolenkov wondered how Steele learned about the PA's meddling in the US election. Only a few CIA officials knew about Smolenkov, and CIA Director John Brennan informed only a few White House officials.

* Was Smolenkov informing Steele?

* Was someone in the in the CIA informing Steele?

* Was someone in the in the White House informing Steele?

* Was someone else inside the PA informing Steele?

The CIA was able to compare Steele's information with Smolenkov's information.

For example, Steele's Report 111 says that Ushakov (Smolenkov's boss) "urged caution" because the Trump Support Operation might have "a potential negative on Russia". Was that information in Smolenkov's reports to the CIA?

As another example, Steele's Report 94 says that Igor Divyekin, a senior official in the PA's Internal Political Department, met secretly with Carter Page in early July 2016. Was that information in Smolenkov's reports to the CIA?

Steele's eight reports state many such details that the CIA could compare with Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. If there are many matches, then the CIA might figure that Steele was obtaining Smolenkov's information somehow.

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Report 136, dated October 20, 2016, was not, however, based on Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. That report said that Trump's attorney Michael Cohen had met with "Kremlin representatives" in Prague in August. In fact, Cohen did not visit Prague, and this false information seems to have come to Steele from a NSA database, which had details about another Michael Cohen who was not Trump's lawyer. Smolenkov never told the CIA about Trump's lawyer Cohen meeting Kremlin representatives in Prague.

Perhaps Report 136 was the first blatant mismatch that the CIA found between Steele's and Smolenkov's reports. Or perhaps there had been other such mismatches in Steele's previous reports, written before October 20. If, however, the Steele and Smolenkov reports had matched fairly well, then Report 136 presented the first blatant mismatch.

The Dossier discusses Trump's lawyer Cohen in four reports.

Report 134, dated October 18, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Report 166, dated December 13, 2016

I summarize the Dossier's story about Cohen as follows.

After Paul Manafort was deposed as Trump's campaign manager on August 19, 2016, Trump's lawyer Cohen replaced Manafort as the "secret liaison" between the campaign staff and "the Russian leadership". In the last week of August or the first week of September, Cohen (accompanied by three colleagues) traveled to Prague, where he met with several lawyers employed in the PA's Legal Department. One of the PA lawyers was Oleg Solodukhin. The issues that Cohen and the PA lawyers discussed included the following:

Steps would be taken to prevent revelations about the previous liaison activities of Page and Manafort.

The people who had hacked computers or had done other jobs would be paid secretly.

The computer hackers would go into hiding for a while.

Cohen's future contacts would not be with the PA officials, but rather with "trusted agents of influence working in pro-government policy institutes like that of Law and Comparative Jurisprudence".

The city of Prague was specified only in the Dossier's Report 136 and Report 166, but all Dossier four reports that discussed this alleged meeting between Cohen and the PA lawyers were NOT from Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. Smolenkov did not tell the CIA about any such Cohen-PA meeting.

It's likely that soon after the CIA received and studied Dossier Reports 134, 135 and 136 -- probably by the end of October 2016 -- the CIA decided that the Steele was generally unreliable  Even if Steele somehow had received some of Smolenkov's information, Steele now was using that information as a basis for other, false reporting about the PA's meddling in the US election.

The CIA did not have to rely on Steele's Dossier for insights about such meddling. The CIA was receiving information directly from Smolenkov.

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The CIA apparently did not inform the FBI about Smolenkov and about the mismatches between Steele's and Smolenkov's information. CIA Director Brennan informed only a few White House officials about Smolenkov.

In December 2016, when the CIA and FBI were cooperating to prepare the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the FBI and CIA disagreed about including the Dossier in the ICA. The Horowitz report summarized the disagreement as follows:

According to FBI staff, as the interagency editing process for the ICA progressed, the CIA expressed concern about the lack of vetting for the Steele election reporting and asserted it did not merit inclusion in the body of the report. An FBI Intel Section Chief told us the CIA viewed it as "internet rumor." In contrast ... the FBI, including Comey and McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA. Limited information from the Steele reporting ultimately was presented in an appendix to the ICA.

The CIA had compared the Dossier to the Smolenkov reports and so knew, for example, that the Dossier reports about the Prague meetings were false. The FBI still thought the Prague meetings were plausible. The CIA might have found many more such mismatches that were unknown to the FBI.

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If Steele's and Smolenkov's information indeed did match to a great extent, then Steele somehow was obtaining some of Smolenkov's information. If so, then it's likely that some CIA official was leaking Smolenkov's extremely secret information directly or indirectly to Steele.

Because of such a consideration, the CIA might have decided not to share this concern -- or any information about Smolenkov -- with the FBI. The CIA might have preferred to find its leaker without the FBI's help or even knowledge.