Friday, October 16, 2020

Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 8

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

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In the year 2011, Glenn Simpson founded the company Fusion GPS, which eventually contracted Christopher Steele to provide intelligence reports. Apparently, Steele numbered the reports sequentially and reached the number 80 on June 20, 2016. From that point forward, the following reports have become available to the public:
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

13) Report 130, dated October 12, 2016

14) Report 134, dated October 18, 2016

14) Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

15) Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

16) Report 166, dated December 13, 2016
I presume that Steele has continued to provide sequentially numbered reports to Simpson to the present. 

During the 25 weeks of the above list, Steele provided 87 reports -- about 3.5 reports a week. If Steele had provided the previous 79 reports at about the same rate, then he provided report #1 in about mid-January 2016.

However, Steele's production of reports for Simpson before June 26, 2016, might have been sporadic and might have begun in 2015 or even earlier.  

The reports' numbering does not indicate any report's year. For example, report #80 is not numbered as 80-2016 or as 2016-80. Therefore, the sequence seems to have begun whenever Steele provided his first report to Simpson, and the sequence then continues from year to year to the present.   

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Although Steele's report #86 is dated July 26, 2015 (fifteen), it obviously was completed in 2016 (sixteen). That report's paragraphs 1, 3 and 6 indicate that the report was written after 2015.

1. Speaking in June 2016, a number of Russian figures with detailed knowledge of national cyber crime, both state-sponsored and otherwise, outlined the current situation in this area. ...

3. In terms of the FSB's recruitment of capable cyber operatives to carry out its, preferably deniable, offensive cyber operations, a Russian IT specialist reported in June 2016 that this was often done using coercion and blackmail. ....  

6. The senior Russian figure cited above also reported that non-state sponsored cyber crime was becoming an increasing problem inside Russia for the government and authorities there. The Central Bank of Russia claimed that in 2015 alone there had been more than 20 attempts at serious cyber embezzlement of money ....

One explanation might be that this report's date is a typo. Steele meant to type July 26, 2015, but mistyped the date as July 26, 2016. However, such date mistakes (writing the previous year instead of the current year) happen in the first few days of a January, not in the last days of a July.  

Another oddity would be that report #86, written on July 26, is numbered before and dated after report #94, written on July 19. No other reports are out of chronological order.

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My explanation for the odd date of report #86 is that this report was an update of an earlier report that indeed was dated July 26, 2015 (fifteen). 

The Perkins Coie law firm, acting on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, contracted Simpson in early June 2016 to provide a dossier about Donald Trump's involvement with Russians. Simpson soon subcontracted the project to Steele, who previously had provided 79 reports to Simpson.

Simpson then wrote his first report for this new project and delivered it to Simpson. This report was routinely numbered #80. Although it was the first report that Steele had delivered to Simpson for this particular project, it was the 80th report that Steele ever had delivered to Simpson.

I speculate that Steele then updated some of the previous reports that he had delivered to Simpson. One such report was dated July 26, 2015 (fifteen). Steele basically updated its first, third and sixth paragraphs and then numbered this updated report as #86 -- but he forgot to update the report's date, which thus remained July 26, 2015 (fifteen).

I speculate further that Steele likewise updated several other previous reports and numbered them #81 through #93 -- and they are dated correctly between June 20 and July 19, 2016 (sixteen). It's likely that only #86 has the mistaken previous date.  

Both Steele and Simpson have a set of all the reports, beginning with #1 and continuing at least through #166 -- all the way to the number of the last report that Steele ever wrote for Simpson.  

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I speculate that the FBI's Counterintelligence Division also has a complete set, at least through #166. 

On the other hand, the public has only the reports that I listed at the beginning of this blog article here.

The FBI's Counterintelligence Division obtained its set of reports variously from Steele and from Bruce and Nelly Ohr.

The FBI's Counterintelligence Division developed many of its opinions, inquiries, investigations and actions based largely on reports that were written by Steele but that still have not become available to the public. 

Many of those still unavailable reports were originally written long before June 20, 2016. They were originally written in, for example, July 2015 and then were updated, re-numbered and re-dated after June 20, 2016. 

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Continued in Part 9

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