Horowitz's Footnote 350

When the Hororitz report was published, Footnote 350 (on page 195) was mostly classified.

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A couple days ago, Footnote 350 was mostly declassified.

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This footnote elaborates the Horowitz report's discussion of whether the Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) fed disinformation to Christopher Steele.

Below I have broken up the footnote's now declassified version into its sentences.

Sentence 1
350 REDACTED In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from REDACTED indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.

Sentence 2
A REDACTED 2017, report relayed information from REDACTED outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen.

Sentence 3
The REDACTED stated that it did not have high confidence in the subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.

Sentence 4
A second report from the same REDACTED five days later stated that a person named in the limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the REDACTED assessed that the person's denials were truthful.

Sentence 5
A REDACTED report dated REDACTED 2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's REDACTED activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false, and they were the product of RIS [Russian Intelligence Service] "infiltrat[ing] a source into the network" of a REDACTED who compiled a dossier of information on Trump's activities.

Sentence 6
The REDACTED noted that it had no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS activities or information.

My analysis begins with Sentence 2. The "limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen" is within the Dossier's following reports, which mention or refer to Cohen.

Report 134, dated October 18, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Report 166, dated December 13, 2016

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In my previous blog article titled The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier, I summarized 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 Legal Department of the Kremlin's Presidential Administration (PA). 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 Paul Manafort.

The people who had hacked Democrats' 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".

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I argued in that previous blog article that the CIA must have recognized quickly that this Cohen story in Steele's Dossier was false. The CIA employed a secret informant -- Oleg Smolenkov -- who worked on the PA's periphery and who purported to know much about the PA's secret activities to help Donald Trump win the USA's 2016 Presidential election. Despite Smolenkov's position and purported knowledge, Smolenkov did not know anything about this Cohen's meeting in Prague.

Steele thought that Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen had visited Prague, because the National Security Agency's databases contained details that another Michael Cohen (not Trump's lawyer) had visited Prague. Somehow, someone who could access the NSA's databases fed some such details to Steele, who then wrote some such details into his Dossier.

This story about Trump's lawyer Cohen visiting Prague was a significant mistake committed by Steele and by the people who fed Steele information from the NSA databases. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's gang of Trump-hating lawyers was compelled to report to the public that Trump's lawyer Cohen had not visited Prague. Of course, Mueller's gang did not explain to the public that Steele's information the other Michael Cohen's Prague trip had originated in the NSA's databases.

Certainly, the NSA figured out this mistake. The NSA found in its own database that another Michael Cohen (not Trump's lawyer) had visited Prague at the same time as the meeting reported mistakenly by Steele.

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The NSA's understanding of this mistake was a major reason why the NSA's assessment of alleged Russian meddling in the USA's 2016 election differed significantly from the CIA's and FBI's assessments. The Intelligence Community's joint report titled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, published on January 6, 2017, stated the assessments as follows (Page 1; emphasis added):

We [CIA, FBI and NSA] also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

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Now let's review the footnote's third sentence (emphasis added):

The REDACTED stated that it did not have high confidence in the subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.

I think that the REDACTED expression at the beginning of this third sentence refers to the NSA. Perhaps the redacted expression is something like NSA Assessment or NSA Dissent. The footnote summarizes some NSA assessment that explained to the CIA and FBI why the NSA did not share those two agencies' high confidence.

In general, the NSA is concealed by the footnote's REDACTED expressions that apparently refer to an agency or a report.

Furthermore, I think that the REDACTED expressions that apparently refer to a 2017 date are date a few days after January 6, 2017, the date when the Intelligence Community's joint report was published. The redacted date was something like January 9, 2017 -- when the NSA explained to the US President its objections to the CIA's and FBI's "high confidence".

Horowitz based much of his Footnote 350 on the NSA's dissent against that "high confidence".

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Based on the above reasoning, I speculate that the completely declassified Footnote reads something like this:

Sentence 1
350 [S/NOFORN] In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from NSA's assessment indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.

Sentence 2
A January 9, 2017, report relayed information from NSA's assessment outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen.

Sentence 3
The NSA assessment stated that it did not have high confidence in the subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.

Sentence 4
A second report from the same NSA assessment five days later [on January 14, 2017] stated that a person [i.e. Michael Cohen] named in the limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the NSA Assessment assessed that the person's denials were truthful.

Sentence 5
A NSA assessment report dated January 9, 2017, contained information about an individual with reported connections to Trump and Russia who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's prostitute activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false, and they were the product of RIS [Russian Intelligence Service] "infiltrat[ing] a source into the network" of a double-agent who compiled a dossier of information on Trump's activities.

Sentence 6
The NSA assessment noted that it had no information indicating that the individual had special access to RIS activities or information.

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In another previous blog article titled Simpson and Steele wanted the FBI to investigate Millian I speculated that Millian was called a double-agent:

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Now we know, however, from the recent partial declassification of Footnote 302 that Millian is called variously a KGB/SVR officer or a  Russian Intelligence Service officer.

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