The Tape-Recorded Conversation in April 2016

On January 12, 2017 -- about a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump -- the BBC published an article titled Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?, written by Paul Wood.

This BBC publication occurred six days after the publication -- on January 6 -- of the US Government's Background to Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. It seems that the BBC article was based on information that was not included in that Background but that was provided secretly to Wood, who described his sources as follows:

This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything - giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources.

"I'm going to write a story that says…" I would say. "I don't have a problem with that," he would reply, if my information was accurate. He confirmed the sequence of events below.

In my blog article here, I am focusing on the first event in that sequence:

Last April [2016], the CIA director [John Brennan] was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States.

Subsequently, the CIA organized a six-agency joint counter-intelligence taskforce, and then in June 2016 the US Justice Department submitted a FISA application that targeted two Russian banks.  

To place those events into a broader sequence of events, Christopher Steele delivered his first Dossier reports to the FBI's Michael Gaeta in Rome on July 5, 2016, and those reports were not delivered to FBI Headquarters until September 19, 2016.

In other words, the delivery of the tape-recording to the CIA Director happened much earlier and more consequently than the first delivery of any Dossier report. Well before Gaeta received the first Dossier reports on July 5, 2016, the joint counterintelligence taskforce already had been organized and then, in June 2016, a FISA application had been submitted to a FISA judge.

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Perhaps the tape-recording indeed was "passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic states". Or perhaps the BBC reporter Paul Wood was deceived on that point so that the actual source of the tape-recording would remain secret.

I speculate that the actual source of the tape-recording was CIA Director Brennan's spy in Russia's Presidential Administration, Oleg Smolenkov. Smolenkov was spying for Brennan in that Presidential Administration until about June 2017, when Brennan's CIA arranged for him to defect to the USA. 

(I speculate that the defection was done in that June largely because Robert Mueller's investigation of the alleged Russia-Trump collusion had been initiated in mid-May 2016.)

Sure, Brennan would pay serious attention if Estonian Intelligence gave him a tape-recording of some people talking about "money from the Kremlin going to the US presidential campaign".

However, if Brennan would pay much, much more attention if his precious spy Smolenkov gave him a tape-recording of Presidential Administration officials discussing such transfers of money. Such a tape-recording might cause Brennan to organize a joint taskforce.

Keep in mind that Brennan received the tape-recording in April and organized the task force in June 2016. The tape-recording raised suspicions about Russia's Alfa Bank.

Not until July 2016 did Christopher Steele provide his first Dossier reports to his FBI case officer Michael Gaeta.

The US Intelligence Community's suspicions about Alfa Bank began much earlier than any suspicions raised by Steele's Dossier reports.

The FISA Warrants Against Two Russian Banks

Two British publications -- BBC and The Guardian -- indicate that Estonian Intelligence discovered that money was being transfered through two Russian banks to members of Donald Trump's campaign staff during the USA's 2016 election race. That information from Estonia caused the FBI to request FISA warrants against the two banks and also against four campaign staff members -- who must have been Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos -- in June 2016. However, the FISA judge rejected the FBI's application as being too broad.

Therefore, the FBI revised its FISA application. A major change was to remove Papadopoulos. After all, the only three of the four campaign staff members who had done any business in Russia were Page, Manafort and Flynn. However, the FISA judge rejected the revised application in July 2016.

Therefore, the FBI revised its FISA application yet again, this time removing also Manfort and Flynn -- leaving only Page. Also, the FBI removed the two banks.

The remnant FISA application -- now targeting only Page -- was approved by the FISA judge on October 15, 2016.

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One of the two banks must be Alfa Bank. I speculate that the second banks was an Alfa Bank affiliate that specialized in Estonia.

Page and Manafort, separately, had done legitimate business in Russia for many years. Flynn had been paid to attend an event in Moscow in December 2015. Because of those legitimate business activities, there is no apparent reason why any Alfa Bank transactions involving any of those three men would raise suspicions -- especially within Estonian Intelligence.

In the first half of 2016, none of these three was famous for belonging to Trump's campaign staff. It's preposterous to think that some Estonian Intelligence officer would see an Alfa Bank transfer of money to, for example, Carter Page and would suspect that the money was related to Page's obscure position as an advisor to the Trump campaign. 

I speculate that US Intelligence knew that Estonian Intelligence was capable to monitor some Alfa Bank transactions. Estonian Intelligence was able to do so through an Alfa Bank affiliate headquartered in Estonia. Knowing that capability, US Intelligence asked Estonian Intelligence to look for transactions involving Page, Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos.

Something like that happened. It did not happen that Estonian Intelligence, on its own initiative, noticed some Alfa Bank transactions involving any of those four persons and recognized them as being related to Trump's election campaign. However, some British reporters were told a story that was false in the element that the initiative in this situation was from Estonian Intelligence.

Apparently, Estonian Intelligence was able to discover at least one such transaction -- and it must have been an Alfa Bank transaction of money to Page. At the request of US Intelligence, Estonian Intelligence discovered this Alfa Bank transaction of money to Page no later than June 2016 -- the month when the first FISA application was submitted to the FISA judge.

Now I will quote the two British articles.

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On January 12, 2017 -- about a week before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the US President -- the BBC website published an article by Paul Wood, titled Trump 'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here?. The article contains the following passage:

.... [in the US Government] a joint intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid money to his [Trump's election] campaign through his associates.

On 15 October [2016], the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me [Paul Wood] by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community.

.... He confirmed the sequence of events below.

Last April [2016], the CIA director [John Brennan] was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States [allegedly, Estonia]. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June [2016], was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October [2016], three weeks before election day.

Neither Mr Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities - in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offence.

A lawyer - outside the Department of Justice but familiar with the case - told me that three of Mr Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry. "But it's clear this is about Trump," he said.

I spoke to all three of those identified by this source. All of them emphatically denied any wrongdoing. "Hogwash," said one. "Bullshit," said another. Of the two Russian banks, one denied any wrongdoing, while the other did not respond to a request for comment.

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On March 8, 2017 -- two months after Woods' article was published -- The Guardian newspaper's website published an article by Julian Borger, titled Why James Clapper's Trump comments may not conflict with reports of secret court order. That article includes the following passage:

The News Corp-owned Heat Street news site and later the BBC published reports in November [2016] and January [2017] respectively that a secret surveillance order had been issued by a special court allowing the justice department to investigate two Russian banks suspected of being part of the Kremlin’s efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and aid Trump’s.

The BBC said the justice department request had originally been based on a tip-off from an intelligence agency in one of the Baltic states, saying that the banks were being used to channel Kremlin money into the US presidential campaign.

Both reports said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court gave permission in mid-October for monitoring of the activities of the two banks that also covered Trump associates.

The Guardian has been unable to independently verify that reporting. However, the Guardian reported earlier this year that the Fisa court last summer turned down an application for an order that would have involved four members of the Trump campaign.

A source familiar with the case said that the intention behind the application was to explore the nature of contacts between individuals linked to the campaign and Moscow. ...

The Heat Street and BBC reports said that after the first unsuccessful application, the justice department had refined its request. According to the BBC, the successful application in October [2016] named only the banks as direct targets, but the request was part of a broader investigation into possible collusion, in which three Trump associates were under scrutiny. ...

.... the Trump advisers most closely linked to Russia – Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and the businessman Trump once described as a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page – had left the campaign over the summer, after reports surfaced about their ties. If they had been covered by the court order, it would not count as targeting the campaign.

“Anyone who is in the intelligence community would understand what Clapper said as there being no wiretap targeting of Trump or his campaign,” Todd Hinnen, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the justice department, said. “I don’t think what Clapper said contradicts the BBC report that there was a Fisa order targeting Russian banks.”

The most important understanding here is that US Intelligence began looking for Alfa Bank transactions related to Trump's campaign staff no later than June 2016.