However, Gaeta kept the Dossier reports in Rome. Here are three examples:
* Gaeta received Steele's Report 80 on July 5 and sent it to the FBI's New York Field Office (NYFO) on about July 28, 2016 -- a delay of 23 days.Furthermore, Gaeta did not send the Dossier Reports 80 and 94 directly to FBI Headquarters, even though Gaeta's supervisor, the FBI's Legat in Rome, thought that Gaeta would do so. Rather, Gaeta sent those two reports only to the NYFO, on about July 28, and then the NYFO office held those two reports until about September 19, when the NYFO sent them to the Crossfire Hurricane team.
* Gaeta received Steele's Report 94 on about July 19 and sent it to the NYFO on about July 28 -- a delay of nine days.
* Gaeta received Steele's Report 97 in mid- or late-August, but it still did not arrive at the Crossfire Hurricane team even as late as September 19 -- a delay of more than one month.
The Horowitz report does not explain what Gaeta ever did with Report 97. Apparently, Gaeta never did forward it to the FBI in the USA, and it eventually, much later, reached the Crossfire Hurricane team by some other route that did not involve Gaeta.
In my previous article, I speculated that Gaeta had received secret instructions from very high ranking officials -- I called them "the cabal" -- to delay Steele's reports and to send them secretly to the cabal, which would approve or disapprove Gaeta's forwarding the reports to the FBI in the USA.
I speculated further that the cabal disapproved Gaeta's forwarding of Report 97, because Steele's supposed source for that particular report seemed to be obtaining information from inside Donald Trump's campaign staff. The cabal feared that this report might eventually create an impression that the US Intelligence Community was spying on Trump's campaign staff.
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Keep in mind that Steele did not know that Gaeta was delaying and even blocking Steele's reports. Steele assumed that Gaeta forwarded them promptly.
In mid-August, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr apparently became puzzled about Gaeta's handling of Steele's reports. Bruce Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Steele's boss, Glenn Simpson.
According to the Horowitz report, Gaeta in Rome heard from Bruce Ohr "out of the blue". Ohr asked whether Gaeta had even seen any of Steele's reports. Ohr apparently had heard from his wife and from Simpson that Steele had provided two reports to Gaeta by mid-July, but neither report had reached FBI Headquarters by mid-August.
Also in mid- or late-August, Gaeta told Steele to send him more reports. On about July 12, Gaeta had told Steele not to send him any more reports until told to do so. Now that Gaeta did tell Steele to send more reports, Steele must have sent Report 97, which Steele had written on July 30. Although Gaeta must have received Report 97 by the end of August, he never forwarded it to the FBI in the USA.
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Report 105 was written by Steele on August 22, but it was not included in the Dossier reports that were delivered belatedly to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19. The date August 22 might be considered to be mid-or late-August. We do not know whether Report 105 was written before or after Ohr contacted Gaeta "out of the blue" or before or after Gaeta asked Steele for more reports. It seems to me that Gaeta must have received Report 105 before the end of August but that he never forwarded it to the FBI in the USA.
Report 105 -- like Report 97 -- purported to be based on a Steele informant who obtained information from inside Trump's campaign staff. I speculate that Gaeta secretly sent those two reports to the cabal, which subsequently told Gaeta to keep them in Rome rather than forward them to the FBI in the USA.
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If my speculation is correct -- if the cabal indeed told Gaeta to block some of Steele's Dossier reports -- then the cabal was concerned during June, July and at least the first half of August 2016 that the Dossier might cause trouble in the future. For example, the reports that indicated that Steele was obtaining information from inside Trump's campaign staff might eventually cause accusations that the US Intelligence Community was spying on Trump's campaign staff.
The Horowitz report says in Footnote 8 (on page 17) that Steele "reported the information herein to the FBI over the course of several meetings with the FBI from in or about June 2016 through August 2016". In other words, Steele did not meet with Gaeta or provide Dossier information to Gaeta in September 2016. Steele wrote three Dossier reports -- 111, 112 and 113 -- that are dated September 14, 2016, but did not provide them to his FBI handling agent Gaeta during September.
Did Gaeta avoid contact with Steele during September? If so, did Gaeta do so because of instructions from the cabal?
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I think that a change in the cabal's attitude toward Steele occurred in mid-September 2016. That change was marked by the NYFO's delivery of its six Dossier reports ts -- 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 -- to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19. By that date, Steele had written 12 Dossier reports, but the NYFO apparently had received only those six from Gaeta.
Gaeta must have received also Reports 97 and 105 from Steele but continued to keep those two in Rome. Gaeta had not received Reports 111, 112 and 113 -- all written on September 14 -- because Gaeta was (I think) avoiding Steele during the entire month of September.
Because the Crossfire Hurricane team did receive six reports on September 19, some team members met with and questioned Steele in a European city (London or Rome) in early October. The logistics of that meeting were organized by Gaeta, according to the Horowitz report (Page 108).
Surely Steele mentioned to the Crossfire Hurricane team members at that meeting in early October that he had written 12 reports -- not merely the six that the team had received on September 19. By the time of this early-October meeting, the cabal accepted the inevitability that the Crossfire Hurricane team eventually would obtain all the Dossier reports.
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As I asserted above, the cabal changed its attitude toward Steele in mid-September.
Before mid-September, the cabal was focused on dealing with a future October Surprise that might cause the defeat of Hillary Clinton on Election Day, November 8. If embarrassing e-mails of Clinton were released a few days before Election Day, then during those intervening days top officials of the US Intelligence Community would assure the public that the e-mails had been stolen AND ALTERED by Russian Intelligence. This assurance would have to convince the public only for those few days. After the election, the e-mails could turn out to be unaltered.
The cabal's initial preparation for an October Surprise might be helped by the Dossier reports -- or the preparation might be troubled. If top Intelligence officials would be trying to assure the public that Russian Intelligence was to blame for the October Surprise, then allegations that, for example, Trump had been filmed watching prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed might detract from the attempted gravity of the assertions.
The cabal did not need Steele. The cabal had the CrowdStrike findings and Downer's report about Papadopoulos. That evidence would suffice to convince the public that Russian Intelligence had stolen the e-mails in order to affect the US election.
In the cabal's perspective before mid-September, Steele was mostly an unreliable, uncontrolled trouble-maker. That is why the cabal told Gaeta to get its permission before forwarding Steele's reports to the FBI in the USA and why Gaeta was told to block some reports and eventually to avoid Steele.
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In mid-August, however, the cabal's attitude toward Steele began to shift. On August 15, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page indicated in their text messages that discussions had begun about perhaps preparing "an insurance policy" for the possibility that Trump won the election. If Trump won by just a small margin in the Electoral College, then perhaps a sufficient number of Electoral College voters might be convinced that Trump had won only because he had colluded with Russian Intelligence to affect the election.
Suppose that Trump won by, say, just a dozen Electoral College votes. If so, then the top officials of the US Intelligence Community -- such as James Clapper, John Brennan and James Comey -- might declare that all of the USA's 17 Intelligence agencies agreed that Trump had won by colluding with Russian Intelligence. In such circumstances, at least a dozen Electoral College voters might change their votes, enabling Clinton to win when the Electoral College actually voted on December 19.
In relation to the cabal's new "insurance policy", Steele's Dossier might turn out to be useful. The discussions within the cabal began on about August 15 and culminated shortly before September 19, when the NYFO was instructed to delivery its six Dossier reports belatedly to the Crossfire Hurricane team in FBI Headquarters. That delivery led to the meeting between team members and Steele in early October and to the team's belated acquisition of all the Dossier reports written by the time of that meeting.
Anyway, the cabal no longer could block Dossier reports by means of Gaeta, because Steele and Simpson were distributing Dossier reports around Gaeta.
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During the rest of October, the cabal prepared for an October Surprise and also for a Trump victory with just a small margin of Electoral College votes.
As it turned out, however, Trump won without an October Surprise and won with an Electoral College margin that was too large to change. Therefore, the cabal began to sabotage Trump's presidency, a process that would last for years.
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