Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

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The Horowitz report makes the impression that Rome-based FBI official Michael Gaeta received only one Dossier report (#80) from Christopher Steele in London on July 5, 2016 (page 95). However, Steele himself testified to a British judge that Gaeta, accompanied by one or more other FBI officials, received more than one report (paragraph 51(1); emphasis added):

On 5 July 2016, Mr Steele and Mr Burrows [Steele's business partner] met FBI officials at Orbis’ offices in London. Mr Steele provided the FBI with the reports which Orbis [i.e. Steele] had prepared by that point.

The Horowitz report indicates further that Gaeta received the second Dossier report (#94), attached to an -e-mail, on July 19, 2016 (page 98).

The Horowitz does not explain the numbering gap -- Report 81 through Report 93. The only Dossier report that is numbered in that gap and that is available to the public is Report 86, which is dated July 26, 2015 (fifteen).

Report 80 says that the Russian regime had been cultivating Donald Trump -- in order to encourage splits and divisions in the western alliance -- for five years, since 2011. However, none of the publicly available Dossier reports provide information about that cultivation during those five years. Therefore, I speculate that such information was provided in Reports 81-93, which Steele had written before 2016. That is why Report 86 is a report that Steele had written in the year 2015.

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In this series of blog articles, I speculate that Gaeta worked directly for the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. One or more officials from that Division accompanied Gaeta to his meeting with Steele on July 5, 2016, and received copies of all the Dossier reports that Gaeta himself received that day.

Gaeta's position working for the Legal Attaché (Legat) in the USA's Rome Embassy was a cover. When Gaeta returned to Rome from his London meeting, he deceived the Legat about the number of Dossier reports that he had received and about his effort to send Dossier reports to the FBI Counterintelligence Division, which itself already had received Steele's reports at the London meeting.

When FBI Inspector General Horowitz and his IG team investigated this matter, Gaeta and  other FBI officials told nonsensical stories about a months-long delay in delivering the Dossier reports to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team. Steele began delivering Dossier reports to Gaeta on July 5, 2016, but no such reports were delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team at FBI Headquarters until September 19, 2016 -- and even at that late, only six reports were delivered.

Of course, whenever Gaeta received Dossier reports from Steele, Gaeta sent them immediately to the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. Furthermore, at least one Division official accompanied Gaeta to the London meeting on July 5 and received the first batch of Dossier reports directly from Steele.

 I expect that John Durham will indict several FBI officials for deceiving the IG investigation about the delivery of Dossier reports to FBI Headquarters.

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The Horowitz report provides (page 81) the following organizational chart of relevant FBI officials. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Click on the image to enlarge it

I think that Gaeta sent all the Dossier reports immediately to Assistant Director Bill Priestap, who concealed most of them from his subordinates. Even Priestap's immediate subordinate Peter Strzok was kept ignorant of much information.

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Only a few of the Dossier reports that the Counterintelligence Division received have become available to the public. Those reports that have become available were given by Steele to people outside of the FBI, and those particular reports were collected by the Buzzfeed organization, which made them available. The FBI itself never has made any Dossier reports available to the public.

Although Gaeta fired Steele at the end of October 2016, the FBI surely received all the Dossier reports that Steele wrote after he was fired. Nelly Ohr -- an employee of Fusion GSI, which paid Steele to write the Dossier -- gave all the Dossier reports to her husband Bruce Ohr -- a top official in the US Justice Department -- who gave them all to the FBI.

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The publicly available Dossier reports range in number from Report 80 to 166. This range indicates that FBI's Counterintelligence Division obtained at least 87 Dossier reports. That total number would be even higher if some Dossier reports are numbered before 80 or after 166.

Of the 87 or more Dossier reports, only the following 16 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

There are three major gaps in the above numbers:

1) Reports 81 through 93 (only #86, written in 2015, is available)

2) Reports 114 through 129

3) Reports 137 through 165

I think that the first gap (81-93) comprises reports that Steele wrote before 2016 and that support his assertion that the Russian regime began cultivating Trump in 2011.

I think that the second gap (114-129) comprises mostly other reports that Steele wrote before 2016 and that he deemed to be useful to the FBI following his meeting with FBI officials in Rome on October 3.

I think that the third gap (137-165) comprises mostly reports that Steel wrote after he was fired by Gaeta at the end of October 2016.

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Only a small number of the 87 or more Dossier reports are based on information that Steele received from his so-called primary subsource, Igor Danchenko.

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The essence of Steele's pre-2016 reports is provided by the book Russian Roulette: The Inside Stroy of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn and published in 2018.

Book Cover of Russian Roulette

Isikoff met Steele in September 2016, at a meeting that was arranged by Glenn Simpson, the owner of the Fusion GPS company, which had hired Steele to write the Dossier. Isikoff, writing about himself in the third person, describes the meeting (page 232-233):

It was the first time Isikoff met Steele, and the journalist [Isikoff] was impressed by his [Steele's] credentials. Steele explained who he was -- a former MI6 spy who had served in Moscow. Wearing a starched white shirt, he was grave and all business. He was not there for small talk.

Emphasizing that he believed what he had discovered was truly disturbing, Steel laid out his story about Carter Page and his trip to Moscow. ....

Steele wouldn't say anything about his sources. That was strictly confidential. After all, this was Russia -- where sources could be shot or poisoned for talking about such matters.

[....]

There were strict ground rules for this meeting. It was on background. That meant Steele could not be quoted by name or referred to as an ex-MI6 officer. He was to be described as a Western "intelligence source" -- which was true, since he had been a steady source of intelligence for the FBI. ....

When he [Isikoff] got back to the office, Isikoff called Jonathan Winer at the State Department; he [Isikoff] had known Winer for years. Simpson had told him Winer could vouch for Steele.

Although Isikoff does not say so in his book, Steele did two activities for his paying clients:

1) collected derogatory information

2) distributed the derogatory information.

Steele himself did not always do the second activity. Rather, Steele used associates like Winer to distribute much of the information. For example, Steele himself did not give any Dossier reports to Isikoff. Rather, Steele would tell a journalist to go meet with Winer, who then would "vouch" for Steele. Then Winer provided to that journalist Dossier reports -- or perhaps summaries of the reports.

The book Russian Roulette indicates that, for years, Steele had been giving intelligence reports to Winer with the intention that Winer would distribute them (page 144):

In the spring of 2015, Steele, retained by a private business client, was producing reports on the Ukrainian crisis. He thought they might be of interest to Washington and reached out to Jonathan Winer, a senior official at Foggy Bottom [the US State Department] ....

Winer notified [State Department official] Victoria Nuland that he had a source with good contacts in Russia and Ukraine. Would she be interested? Yes, she said, and after reviewing a few of Steele's reports, she told Wine to "keep them coming". But Nuland, concerned that the material could be intercepted by Russian hackers, asked Winer to place them into a secure State Department classified computer system before forwarding them to her.

Between May 214 and February 2015, Steele sent Nuland 120 Orbis [Steele] reports about political and diplomatic developments in Russia and Ukraine.

Journalist Eric Felten tells how Steele continued to distribute his intelligence reports through Winer in 2016:

As Winer tells it, he and Steele were old pals. They “met and became friends” in 2009, when both were in the business of selling “business intelligence,” much of it involving Russia. Winer went back to work at State in 2013, after his old Capitol Hill boss, John Kerry, had become secretary of State.

But he didn’t lose track of his friend Steele — not at all. He shared, and shared, and shared Steele’s corporate intelligence work with the State Department’s Russia desk. “Over the next two years, I shared more than 100 of Steele’s reports with the Russia experts at the State Department, who continued to find them useful.” ....

Come the summer of 2016, Steele’s prime client was the campaign of Hillary Clinton, by way of the hired-guns at Fusion GPS, for whom he was assembling a grab bag of Trump tales from some sort of Russian sources. Come the fall Steele was spreading dossier info to various news organizations, the FBI, and the State Department. “In September 2016, Steele and I [Winer] met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the ‘dossier.’” ....

“I was allowed to review, but not to keep, a copy of these reports to enable me to alert the State Department,” Winer writes. “I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland.” ... To hear Winer tell it, when he gave her his memo, Nuland was all for the State Department doing something about it: She “indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of State needed to be made aware of this material.”

When Steele told Isikoff to contact Winer right after the Steele-Isikoff meeting, Steele surely expected Winer to begin supplying Dossier reports and summaries to Isikoff. Therefore, Isikoff has become well informed about the Dossier -- including about reports that have not become available to the public.

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Isikoff's co-author Corn tells about how he too has become well informed about the Dossier. Corn too tells about himself (pages 268 - 271) in the third person.

That weekend [October 29-30, 2016], Corn checked in with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. He [Corn] had known Simpson for years -- as a colleague, a social acquaintance, and an occasional source -- and he [Corn] wsa award that Simpson was doing opposition research on Trump, including his links to Russia. He asked if Simpson had any last-minute leads that warranted independent investigation.

Let's meet today, Simpson told him. ...

Corn and Simpson met at a Le Pain Quotidien [restaurant] in Dupont Circle [in Washington DC]. "I got some crazy shit," Simpson told the reporter [Corn]. He then recounted the story of Steele and his memos. ...

"Let me see the memos," Corn said.

Later that day, Corn was at Simpson's office, reading through all the Steele reports. ....

Corn arranged to speak via Skype with Steele, who was in London. .... After speaking with Steele, Corn ... contacted Jonathan Winer to ask him about Steele. ....

Thus, both co-authors -- Isikoff and Steele -- became well informed about the Dossier -- including about Dossier reports that never have become available to the public.

Therefore, their book Russian Roulette provides insights into Dossier reports that Steele provided to the FBI's Counterintelligence Division but that never have become available to the public.

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Continued in Part 4

Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 2

Part 1

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On October 3, 2016, Michael Gaeta hosted a meeting in Rome in order to introduce himself and Christopher Steele to several members of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team. Gaeta had served as the FBI's Handling Agent for Steele since 2011 and would continue to do so.

In 2016, Gaeta and Steele were focused on counter-intelligence collections. Although Gaeta officially was working an assistant to the FBI's Legal Attaché (Legat) in Rome, I think that job was a cover.  Actually, Gaeta was working directly for the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.

Three Crossfire Hurricane team members attended the Rome meeting (Horowitz, page 108):

1) an Acting Section Chief from FBI's Counterintelligence Division ("Acting Section Chief 1")

2) "Case Agent 2"

3) "Supervisory Intel Analyst"

I think those three Crossfire Hurricane team members were the officials marked in the below diagram (Horowitz, page 81).

Click on the image to enlarge it.

I think also that those three team members did not know that Gaeta worked directly for the Counterintelligence Division. Only higher officials in the Division knew -- such as Peter Strzok or Bill Priestap.

The three team members at the Rome meeting thought that Steele had provided only six reports to the FBI. In fact, however, Steele already had provided at least 34 reports during the year 2016.

One major purpose of the Rome meeting was to discuss with Steele whether he might eventually quit the private company Fusion GPS in order to write counter-intelligence reports exclusively for the FBI.

This switch would be complicated.

Steele would have to identify his relevant sources to the FBI.

Steele would have to sever his contract with Fusion GPS.

The FBI would have to pay Steele more money.

Steele would have to obey the FBI's rules.

These issues were discussed but not decided at the Rome meeting.

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I group Steele's Dossier reports as follows:

Reports 80 to 93
On July 5, 2016, Steele gave Gaeta 14 reports. Report 80 was the Dossier's introduction, which said that Russian Intelligence had been cultivating Donald Trump for five years -- since mid-2011. Reports 81-93 were old reports, which Steele had written during the years 2011-2015, telling about that cultivation.

Gaeta immediately sent all 14 reports to the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. However, Gaeta concocted a false story to deceive the Rome Legat. Gaeta pretended that he had received only Report 80 and pretended further that the routing of this one report was delayed for many weeks because of uncertainties and misunderstandings.

Report 80 was delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19 and is publicly available now. Reports 81-93 have been concealed by FBI Counterintelligence to the present.

According to a judgment of a British court, Steele himself has testified that he gave Gaeta more than one Dossier report on July 5 (paragraph 51(1)).

Reports 94 to 99
These reports were written in the last half of July 2016 and helped to justify the establishment of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on July 31, 2016.

Reports 94 and 95 were delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19.  Reports 96, 98 and 99 have been concealed by FBI Counterintelligence to the present. Report 97 was concealed for a while because it indicated that Steele was collecting information from inside Donald Trump's campaign staff, but Report 97 has become available to the public.

Reports 100 to 113
These reports were written after the establishment of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation (after July 31) and before the Rome meeting (before October 3).

Reports 100, 101, 102 and 105 were delivered to the Crossfire Hurricane team on September 19. Reports 104 and 106 to 113 have been concealed by FBI Counterintelligence to the present.

According to a judgment of a British court, Steele himself has said that sometime in August he gave Gaeta all the remaining Dossier reports that he had written by that August date. (paragraph 51(2)).

According to that same judgment, Steele himself has said that he gave Report 112 (dated September 14) to Gaeta "within a few days" after September 14. (paragraph 51(4)).

Reports 114 to 129
These are old reports that Steele wrote before the year 2016. Based on the discussions at the Rome meeting, Steele thought these old reports might be valuable for the investigation. In the days following the Rome meeting, Steele gave these old reports to Gaeta, who sent them promptly (no later than October 12) to FBI Counterintelligence, which has concealed them to the present.

Reports 130 to 166
These reports were written from October 12 to December 13, 2016. Some (at least through Report 135) were written before Gaeta fired Steele at the end of October, and the rest were written after Gaeta fired Steele.

The only reports that were written before the firing and that are available to the public are Report 130 (October 12), Report 134 (October 18) and Report 135 (October 15). The rest of the reports written before the firing have been concealed by FBI Counterintelligence to the present.

The only report that was written after the firing and that is available to the public is Report 166 (December 13). It's likely that, despite the firing, Steele delivered all these reports to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who delivered them to FBI Counterintelligence, which has concealed them to the present.

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Reports that have become publicly available did so because they were given by Steele to people outside of the FBI.

There is no reason to think that the Dossier reports assembled by Buzzfeed are all the Dossier reports that the FBI received.

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By October 3, Steele had written the following Dossier reports that are 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

In mid-September, a decision was made that some Dossier reports should be delivered belatedly to the Crossfire Hurricane team at FBI Headquarters. Specifically, six Dossier reports -- 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 -- were delivered on September 19 (Horowitz page 100).

The Horowitz report specifies (pages 103-104, footnote 231) that Steele did not furnish several reports to the FBI before the October 3 Rome meeting: 97, 105, 112 and 113. The Horowitz report explains:

.... the FBI was unaware at the time that Steele had not made available to the FBI all of the reports he prepared as of mid-September concerning Russia. .... These and other reports were provided to the FBI in November and December 2016 by a journalist, Senator John McCain, and Ohr. When we [Horowitz's inspectors] asked Steele why he failed to provide all of his then-existing reports to the FBI, he could not provide us with an explanation and said that he should have given them to the FBI at the time.

Of course -- in my opinion -- Steele actually had given those four reports to Gaeta before the Rome meeting, and Gaeta had sent them directly to the Counterintelligence Division at FBI Headquarters. When Steele was asked by Horowitz's inspectors about missing reports, Steele "could not provide us with an explanation". Steele was surprised by the question -- and that is why he could not provide an explanation -- because he had provided all those reports to Gaeta promptly after he had written them.

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The Horowitz does not explain Dossier Reports 96, 98, 99 and 111.

Those four reports are not listed in the six reports -- 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 -- that were delivered to the Crossfire Headquarters team on September 19.

Those four reports are not listed in the four reports -- 97, 105, 112 and 113 -- that the Horowitz inspectors asked Steele about.

When the Horowitz inspectors wrote about their asking Steele "why he failed to provide all of his then-existing reports to the FBI", why are Reports 96, 98, 99 and 111 missing from that account?

No information about Reports 96, 98 and 99 is available to the public.

Report 111 is based on information from "a senior official of the Russian Presidential Administration (PA)". This particular report was particularly troublesome for the CIA, which indeed collected information secretly from such a PA official -- Yuri Ushakov, whose assistant Oleg Smolenkov secretly was reporting Ushakov's remarks to the CIA. I wrote about this arrangement in an earlier blog article titled The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier.

I speculate that the CIA asked Horowitz to avoid discussion of Steele's Report 111. Horowitz claims absurdly that Steele never provided Report 111 to the FBI, which obtained that report only after the November 2016 Presidential election, belatedly from a magazine reporter (page 175).

I speculate that Dossier Reports 96, 98 and 99 likewise were based on the PA official and therefore could not -- at the CIA's request -- be mentioned by Horowitz.

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Continued in Part 3

Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 1

On July 5, 2016, Michael Gaeta flew from Rome, where he was an FBI official at the USA's Embassy, to London in order to meet with Christopher Steele. A short time after the meeting, on that same day, Gaeta flew back to Rome. According to the Horowitz report, Gaeta brought back one Dossier report -- Report 80 -- that he had obtained from Steele in London. A couple weeks later, on July 19, Steele sent another report -- Report 94 -- to Gaeta in Rome.

Here is a list of all the known Dossier reports that Steele wrote before September 19, 2016 (the date when the Crossfire Hurricane team officially received its first Dossier reports).

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

Here is a list of 13 numbers between 80 and 94:

81

82

83

84

85

86 -- refers to a report that Steele wrote in 2015

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

I speculate that the 15 reports numbered 80 through 94 were structured as follows:

Report 80

Steele wrote this report (dated June 20, 2016) to introduce his Dossier, which will tell about Russian Intelligence operations that previously had happened during 2011-2015 and that now were continuing in 2016.

Reports 81 - 93

Steele previously had written these reports (dated 2011 through 2015) while he had been collecting information Russian Intelligence operations as they were happening during 2011-2015.

Report 94

Steele wrote this report (dated July 19, 2016) to tell about current Russian Intelligence operations as they are happening during 2016.

I speculate further that on July 5, 2016, Gaeta obtained 14 reports (not just one report) from Steele. Specifically, Gaeta obtained Reports 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 8,5, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 and 93. When Gaeta returned to Rome, he informed his supervisor, the FBI's Legal Attaché (Legat) that his London source had given him one report. Gaeta showed the Legat Report 80, and Gaeta did the paperwork recording that he had received one new report.

Then, on July 19, 2016, Gaeta received Report 94 from Steele. Accordingly, Gaeta informed his supervisor, the Rome Legat, that he had received a second new report from his London source. Again, Gaeta did the paperwork recording that he had received a second new report.

As far as the Legat knew and as far as the paperwork recorded, Gaeta had received two new reports from Steele. In fact, though Gaeta had received 15 reports -- two of which Steele had written during June-July 2016, and 13 of which Steele had written during 2011-2015.

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Steele introduced his entire Dossier in his Report 80, which begins with this Summary (emphasis added)

Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.

So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further Kremlin's cultivation of him. However he and his inner circle have accepted regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.

Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB [Russian's Federal Security Service] has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him. According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.

A dossier of compromising material on Hillary CLINTON has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls rather than any embarrassing conduct. The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on PUTIN's orders. However it has not been distributed abroad, including to TRUMP. Russian intentions for its deployment still unclear.

Based on this Summary of the Steele Dossier, I speculate that Steele had written Reports 81-93 during the previous five years -- mid 2011 to mid-2016 -- and that Reports 81-93 provided information about the following Russian Intelligence activities during 2011-2015:

Offers of real-estate business deals to Trump

Collection of compromising information about Trump's activities in Moscow

Bugging of Hillary Clinton's conversations in Russia

Interception of Hillary Clinton's phone calls

One such report that Steele wrote during 2011-2015 has become available to the public. This is Report 86, which Steele had written on July 26, 2015 (fifteen). Report 86 tells how Russian Intelligence steals information from other countries' computers. Report 86 does not mention Trump or refer to Trump. Report 86 eventually was delivered to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Team on September 19, 2016.

As Steele implicitly promised to do in his Dossier's introductory Report 80, Steele indeed did provide to Gaeta much information about Russian Intelligence activities targeting Trump and Clinton. However, all that information was in Reports 81-93, which Gaeta did not show to the Rome Legat and which Gaeta did not record in his paperwork.

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Gaeta was routinely insubordinate to his supervisor, the Rome Legat. Based on the Horowitz report, I think that:

* Gaeta showed only two of his 15 Dossier reports to the Legat.

* Gaeta misinformed the Legat that sending the reports to Gaeta's former colleague at the New York Field Office (NYFO) was proper.

* Gaeta misled the Legat into thinking that Gaeta would send the reports officially to the Counterintelligence Division at FBI Headquarters.

In general, I think that Gaeta was not really working for the Legat. Gaeta's official subordination to the Legat was merely a cover. Gaeta actually was working for FBI Counterintelligence and was concealing that actual work from the Legat.

In fact, Gaeta did send immediately to FBI Counterintelligence all the Dossier reports that he received during July 2016. However, Gaeta also concocted a false story that he had to wait many weeks for advice and instructions about what he should do with the few Dossier reports that he supposedly received. In accordance with this false story, the reports very slowly were sent to the NYFO's Chief Division Counsel, which hid the reports without any administrative records of their arrivals and filing.

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Continued in Part 2