The Temporary Disappearance of Dossier Report 97

FBI Headquarters established its Crossfire Hurricane investigation on July 31, 2016.

Christopher Steele's first 12 Dossier reports were dated as follows:

1) Report 80, dated June 20, 2016

2) Report 86, dated July 26, 2015 (twenty-fifteen)

3) Report 94, dated July 19, 2016

4) Report 95, undated, but apparently written in late-July 2016

5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016

6) Report 100, dated August 5, 2016

7) Report 101, dated August 10, 2016

8) Report 102, dated August 10, 2016

9) Report 105, dated August 22, 2016

10) Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

11) Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

12) Report 113, dated September 14, 2016

According to the Horowitz report, the first time when FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigative team received any of those Dossier reports was on September 19, 2016. On that occasion, the team received six Dossier reports -- 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 (Horowitz page 100).

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When the six Dossier reports were delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19, the following six reports had been completed but were not included in that delivery:

2) Report 86, dated July 26, 2015 (twenty-fifteen)

5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016

9) Report 105, dated August 22, 2016

10) Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

11) Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

12) Report 113, dated September 14, 2016

Report 86 had been written five weeks after June 16, 2015, the date when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President. but Report 86 had not mentioned Trump or the election. Rather, Report 86 asserted that "Russia" has a state-sponsored apparatus that conducts offensive cyber operations against foreign governments and big corporations, especially banks. Report 86 did not include any specific details that would significantly interest the Crossfire Hurricane team.

Report 97 certainly would have interested the Crossfire Hurricane team. Report 97 claimed to be based on the knowledge of "a Russian émigré figure close to the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign team". Report 97 included the following passages:

The émigré said there was a high level of anxiety within the TRUMP team as a result of various accusations levelled against them. ....

the émigré associate of TRUMP opined that the Kremlin wanted the situation to calm, but for 'plausible deniability' to be maintained concerning its extensive pro-TRUMP and anti-CLINTON operations ....

.... the émigré confirmed that an intelligence exchange had been running between them [the TRUMP team and the Kremlin] for at least 8 years. .... TRUMP and his associartes duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with ... information [about leading Russian oligarchs and their families].

As far as 'kompromat' ... on TRUMP were concerned, although there was plenty of this, he [the émigré] understood the Kremlin had given its work that it would not be deployed against the Republican presidential candidate given how helpful and co-operative his team had been over several years, and particularly of late.

Why was this Report 97, written on July 30, not delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19, 2016? In comparison, Reports 100, 101 and 102 were written later, in August, and they were delivered.

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Before I speculate about the puzzling absence of Report 97 from that delivery, I will tell how those first six reports -- 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 -- traveled from Steele to Crossfire Hurricane.

At the beginning of July 2016. Steele phoned from London to Michael Gaeta, his FBI handling agent, stationed in Rome. (The Horowitz report calls Gaeta "Handling Agent 1"). In response to Steele's phone call, Gaeta flew from Rome to London on July 5, obtained Report 80 from Steele and returned to Rome on that same day (Horowitz page 95).

After Gaeta returned to Rome with Report 80, he proceeded to misplace the report into oblivion. Gaeta informed his supervisor, the FBI's Rome Legat, about the report and advised the Legat that the report should be sent to the FBI's New York Field Office (NYFO). Steele's reasoning was that he himself previously had worked at the NYFO and therefore knew that his former colleagues there would "put the information directly in the hands of the people who need to see it". The Rome Legat accepted Gaeta's advice and agreed that the report should be sent to the NYFO (Horowitz page 97).

Horowitz's Footnote 222 (page 97) remarks:

Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] said that he did not contact the International Operations Division (IOD) at FBI Headquarters, which supports the Legats, about the reporting.

The Horowitz report does not clarify whether the Rome Legat thought erroneously that Gaeta indeed would inform also the IOD about Report 80. The Legat told the Horowitz team that he thought that Report 80 would be sent to the FBI's Counterintelligence Division (Horowitz page 97).

However, according to the Horowitz report, Gaeta did not send Report 80 from Rome to any recipient anywhere until the last days of July 2016. Gaeta held Report 80 in Rome.

On July 13, Steele phoned Gaeta again and asked whether Gaeta wanted more Dossier reports. Gaeta responded that Steele should not send any more reports yet, because "I'm still dealing with this." Gaeta added that he would contact Steele when he did want more reports.

On that same July 13, Gaeta contacted an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) of the NYFO and described the gist of Report 80. Gaeta did not, however, send Report 80 to the NYFO promptly.

Despite Gaeta's instructions to wait until re-contacted, Steele sent Report 94 to Gaeta on July 19. Gaeta informed the Rome Legat about this second report. The Legat apparently thought that Gaeta would send this report too to a proper FBI office.

Now Gaeta possessed Report 80 and Report 94. He had briefed his supervisor, the Legat in Rome, about both reports and had given the Legat the impression that he was sending both reports promptly to FBI offices in the USA. However, Gaeta did not actually send them until about July 28. On that date, the two reports were received belatedly by the NYFO ASAC. The Horowitz remarks that the NYFO ASAC does not know why "nothing happened with the reports [80 and 94] between July 13 ... and July 28" (Horowitz page 97, footnote 224).

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In "mid-August" [exact date unknown], Gaeta re-contacted Steele and asked for more Dossier reports (Horowitz page 97). The Horowitz report does not specify whether Steele subsequently sent any reports to Steele or which reports he sent. Surely, however, Steele sent Report 97 -- which was written on July 30 -- to Gaeta when Graeta requested more Dossier reports in mid- or late-August 2016.

The Horowitz report (pages 99-100) tells about another event that happened in mid- or late-August 2016:

... Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] also told us that, in mid to late August, he heard from [Bruce] Ohr "out of the blue," who inquired whether Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] had seen Steele's reports. According to Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta], Ohr contacted him to confirm that the FBI was aware of the reports and was "handling" them.

Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] ... advised Ohr that news of the reports had reached the "EAD [Executive Assistant Director] level" at FBI Headquarters and that executive management at NYFO was aware of the reports and trying to determine where to forward them. Ohr stated that he recalled Handing Agent 1 [Gaeta] telling him this, but that at some later date Ohr said he became concerned that the right people at FBI Headquarters did not know about the reporting.

In mid- or late-August 2016, two "out of the blue" events occurred.

1) Gaeta -- who had told Steele on July 13 not to send him any more reports until told to do so -- now told Steele to send more reports.

2) Ohr contacted Gaeta, who still was in Rome, to inquire whether Gaeta had seen Steele's reports.

I think that these two "out of the blue" events were related. Steele informed his boss, Glenn Simpson, that he had completed five new reports -- Reports 95, 97, 100, 101 and 102. That news was communicated by Simpson to Ohr -- via Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, who worked for Simpson. The news was communicated also to Gaeta, and then Bruce Ohr followed up by asking Streele whether he had received those five new reports.

The next Dossier report -- Report 105 -- was written on August 22. Perhaps that report was written after the two "out of the blue" events that occurred in mid- or late-August. However, I will revisit Report 105 later in this blog article.

The Horowitz report (pages 99-100) tells a dubious story about the various delays that delayed until September 19 the reports' delivery to the Crossfire Hurricane team at FBI Headquarters.

On August 25, 2016, according to Supervisory Special Agent 1 (SSA 1) [Joe Pientka] who was assigned to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, during a briefing for then Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on the investigation, McCabe asked SSA 1 [Pientka] to contact NYFO about information that potentially could assist the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.[footnote 225] SSA 1 said he reached out to counterintelligence agents and analysts in NYFO within approximately 24 hours following the meeting. Instant messages show that on September 1, SSA 1 [Pientka] spoke with a NYFO counterintelligence supervisor, and that the counterintelligence supervisor was attempting to set up a call between SSA 1 and the ADC.

On September 2, 2016, Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta], who had been waiting for NYFO to inform hm where to forward Steele's reports, sent the following email to the ADC and counterintelligence supervisor: "Do we have a name yet? The stuff is burning a hole." The ADC responded the same day explaining that SSA 1 had created an electronic sub-file for Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] in the Crossfire Hurricane case and that he should forward the Steele reports to it. However, SSA 1 told us that there was a problem with his attempt to send an email to Handling Agent 1 in early September. SSA 1 [Pientka] said he did not recognize the problem until September 13 and email Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] that day with the case information necessary to upload the reports.

On September 19, 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team received the Steele reporting for the first time when Handling Agent 1 [Gaeta] emailed SSA 1 six reports for SSA 1 to upload himself to the sub-file: Reports 80 and 94 and four additional reports (Rep;orts 95, 100, 101, and 102 that Handling Agent 1 had since received from Steele.

The Dossier reports that were delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19 were Reports 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 -- only six of the 12 Dossier reports that were written before September 19.

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In my blog article here, I now am addressing two of the reports -- Report 97 and Report 105 -- that were not delivered on September 19.

Those two reports indicated that Steele was obtaining information from sources who knew about happenings inside Trump's election-campaign staff. In particular,

* Steele wrote that his source for Report 97 was "a Russian émigré figure close to the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign team".

* Steele wrote that one of his sources for Report 105 was "an American political figure associated with Donald TRUMP and his campaign" who knew why Trump had removed Paul Manafort as his campaign manager on August 17.

I speculate that Michael Gaeta in Rome acted as a secret gate in the Dossier reports' path from Steele in London to FBI offices in the USA. When Gaeta received Steele's reports, he stopped their progress while the reports were studied and discussed by a cabal at the top of the US Intelligence Community.

The cabal was higher than Bruce Ohr, who was puzzled about the reports' mysterious inertia in Gaeta's office in Rome. In fact, Gaeta was sending Steele's reports to the cabal and was blocking the reports' progress until the cabal told Gaeta to send the reports forward to FBI offices in the USA.

The cabal told Gaeta to keep holding Reports 97 and 105 because those two reports eventually might cause accusations that the US Intelligence Community was spying on Trump's campaign staff.

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In September 2016, the cabal still was focused on preparing for the possibility of an October Surprise, in which many of Hillary Clinton's e-mails might be released to the public a few days before the election, hwich would take place on November 8. The cabal was preparing to argue that Russian Intelligence had stolen AND ALTERED Clinton's e-mails in order to embarrass and discredit her.

Much of what Steele was writing in his Dossier was extraneous and problematic for the cabal's preparations to deal with such an October Surprise.

In particular, the cabal did not like Steele's claims that he was using secret agents to collect information from inside Trump's campaign staff. Because of that concern, the cabal tried to keep Dossier Reports 97 and 105 out of circulation -- even from delivery to the Crossfire Hurricane team -- as long as possible.