Events Leading to the Tipping Point

The Horowitz report says (page 53) that a report about a conversation between Alexander Downer and George Papadopoulos was a "tipping point" for the FBI to open the counterintelligence the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. FBI Headquarters received the report on Thursday, July 28, 2016, and opened the investigation on Sunday, July 31.

The report had been written more than two months previously, in May 2016 (the Horowitz report does not specify the date). Downer, the Australian Government's  High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, had invited Papadopoulos, a foreign-policy advisor on Donald Trump's campaign staff, to a conversation in a London bar. Downer secretly recorded the conversation. After Downer and Papadopoulos parted, Downer (I think) gave the recording device to a subordinate, who wrote a summary of the conversation. The conversation was not transcribed, because it did not seem sufficiently important.

However, on Friday, July 22, Wikileaks released to the public many hacked e-mails from the computer server of the Democratic National Committee. This release caused a panic among Hillary Clinton's supporters, including Downer. The Democratic Party's convention was about to take place during July 25-28, and many of the released e-mails indicated that the DNC had treated Clinton preferentially over her main rival, Bernie Sanders. The e-mails surely would cause trouble for Clinton during the convention. Future e-mails might cause Clinton more trouble also during the general election race.

Clinton's supporters strove to portray Wikileaks as a tool of Russian Intelligence, which allegedly had hacked the DNC server and was trying to cause political trouble for Clinton.

In these circumstances, on about Monday, July 25, Downer brought the written summary of the May conversation to the CIA's Chief of Station, Gina Haspel, in her London office. Downer told Haspel that the summary might be useful to Clinton's supporters in the US Intelligence Community.

From one perspective, Downer was acting on behalf of the Australian Government, because he was, after all, Australia's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. He did not, however, take this summary report to Haspel with the approval or even knowledge of the Australian Government. A more correct perspective on Downer' action was that he was acting as an informant to the CIA's official Haspel. Perhaps Haspel was even the CIA case officer for Haspel.

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The summary of the Downer-Papadopoulos conversation that Haspel received in her office on that day was vague. The public has received only a brief passage, quoted in the Horowitz report, and that passage is vague.

The public does not know who wrote the summary of the conversation, and the public does not know whether Downer edited, annotated or rewrote the summary before he gave it to Haspel.

The entire passage in the Horowitz report says:

[Papadopoulos] suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).

It was unclear whether he [Papadopoulos] or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump's team reacted to the offer. We note the Trump team's reaction could, in the end, have little bearing of what Russia decides to do, with or without Mr. Trump's cooperation.

* Were those words written by Downer's subordinate who summarized the recording for Downer in May?

* Or were those words an interpretive commentary that Downer himself added during the weekend before he brought the summary to Haspel?

I think the second possibility is more likely.

In either case the above passage was part of the summary that Downer gave to Haspel in her London office a few days after Wikileaks released the DNC e-mails.

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Exactly how was the summary supposed to be useful to Haspel or to her further fellows?

We can assume that the passage in the Horowitz report is the most incriminating part of the summary. However, this passage mentions merely some "suggestions" and "unclear references" that "could have little bearing".

The most apparent usefulness of the summary might have been to cause another interview of Papadopoulos in order to clarify his actual knowledge.

Another apparent usefulness might have been to justify a belated transcript of the recording of the actual conversation. Surely the recording still existed.

However, the subsequent events indicate that no urgent effort was made to re-interview Papadopoulos or to transcribe the recording.

The only practical usefulness of the summary was that it might justify an energetic US Government investigation of the "Trump team" in relation to Russia and the hacked e-mails.

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I have been basing my understanding of the events on the account in the Horowitz report, pages 51 - 52. Some words are redacted, and I have guessed [in brackets] the senses of the redacted words .

[Paul] Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as the campaign convention manager.

In the weeks that followed, [George] Papadopoulos met with officials of an FFG [Friendly Foreign Government -- Australia] in a European city [London] that had arranged several meetings in May 2016 to engage with members of the Trump campaign. During one of these meetings, Papadopoulos reportedly "suggested" to an FFG official [Alexander Downer, an Australian] that the Trump campaign "received some kind of a suggestion from Russia" that it could assist the campaign by anonymously releasing derogatory information about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. However, the FFG [the Australian Government] did not provide information about Papadopoulos's statements to the U.S. government at that time [in May 2016].

On July 26, 2016, four days after Wikileaks publicly released hacked emails from the DNC, the FFG official [Downer] spoke with a U.S. government (USG) official [CIA Station Chief Gina Haspel] in the European city [London] about an "urgent matter" that required an in-person meeting. At the meeting, the FFG official [Downer] informed the USG official [Haspel] of the [May 2016] meeting with Papadopoulos.

The FFG official [Downer] also provided REDACTED [surreptitiously recorded] information from REDACTED [cooperating] FFG officials REDACTED [summarized] following the May 2016 meeting (hereinafter referred to as the FFG information). REDACTED [The summary of the recording] stated, in part, that Papadopoulos

suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).

It was unclear whether he [Papadopoulos] or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump's team reacted to the offer. We note the Trump team's reaction could, in the end, have little bearing of what Russia decides to do, with or without Mr. Trump's cooperation.

On [Wednesday] July 27, 2016, the USG official [Haspel] called the FBI's Legal Attache (Legat) and REDACTED [Assistant Legal Attache for Counterintelligence] in the European city [London] to HER [Haspel's] office and provided them with the FFG information.

The Legat told us he was not provided any other information about the meetings between the FFG and Papadopoulos. The Legat also told us that he did not know under what FBI case number the FFG information should be documented and transmitted.

At the recommendation of the European city [London] Assistant Legal Attache (ALAT) for Counterintelligence, the [London] Legat contacted a former ALAT who at the time was an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the FBI's Philadelphia Field Office. The [Philadelphia] ASAC told the [London] Legat that he believed the FFG [Australian] information was related to the hack of DNC emails and identified a case number for that investigation for the Legat to use to transmit the information.

The following day, on [Thursday] July 28, 2016, the Legat sent an EC [electronic communication] documenting the FFG information to the Philadelphia Field Office ASAC.

The same day [Thursday, July 28], the information in the EC was emailed to the Section Chief of the Cyber Counterintelligence Coordination Section at FBI Headquarters.

From [Thursday] July 28 to [Sunday] July 31, officials at FBI Headquarters discussed the FFG information and whether it warranted opening a counterintelligence investigation.

Pay attention here to my understanding that Downer had surreptitiously recorded his conversation with Papadopoulos, but then only a summary -- not a transcript -- of the recorded conversation had been done, by some subordinate of Downer. The summary had been annotated -- already in May  or perhaps much lster in July -- with a few interpretive remarks (e.g. "It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring ... ").

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An objective reader of the summary would perceive that Papadopoulos was talking hypothetically in a meandering, intoxicated conversation in which Downer was asking lots of provocative and leading questions. The passage in the Horowitz report surely is the most incriminating passage, and it says merely:

{Papadopouls] suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).

It was unclear whether he [Papadopoulos] or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump's team reacted to the offer. We note the Trump team's reaction could, in the end, have little bearing of what Russia decides to do, with or without Mr. Trump's cooperation.

In the first line above, what does the word suggested really mean? The word does not necessarily mean that Papadopoulos actually uttered some certainty that the Trump team actually had received "some kind of suggestion".

Because the Downer-Papadopoulos conversation was so obviously unimportant and useless in May 2016, the recording was merely summarized and then filed in May 2016.

The conversation suddenly became important and useful after July 22, because Clinton's supporters urgently needed to justify an enormous investigation of the Trump campaign's possible knowledge of future Wikileaks releases of hacked e-mails that might cause political trouble for Clinton.

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The now official story is that the US Government -- in particular, Haspel -- did not know about the May Downer-Papadopoulos conversation until Downer provided the summary to Haspel on about July 25, 2016.

However, that story might be misleading. If Downer indeed was an informant to CIA officer Haspel -- if she was even his case officer -- then Downer might have informed  Haspel about his conversation with Papadopoulos soon after the conversation happened in May. Furthermore, Haspel might even have tasked Downer to interview Papadopoulos.

If Haspel did know about the Downer-Haspel conversation already in May, then she herself might have recognized belatedly its possible usefulness to the US Intelligence Community as a justification for an investigation. In other words, Haspel's meeting with Downer on about July 25 might have happened not at the initiative of Downer, but rather at the initiative of Haspel.

Perhaps Haspel contacted Downer and asked him to bring to her office any summary of that May conversation. Furthermore, Haspel might have asked Downer to annotate the summary belatedly for her own purposes.

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Although Downer, Haspel and much of the US Intelligence Community's elite were in a hysterical panic about the Wikileaks releases of hacked e-mails, many ordinary people approved of Wikileaks' actions. Many people felt that the public should be informed about the DNC's preferential treatment of Clinton over Sanders. Many people felt that Wikileaks had released the e-mails for the common good of the USA's electorate.

The US Intelligence Community's elite was terrified that Clinton might lose the election. For all those hysterics, the summary of the Downer-Papadopoulos conversation was a huge, crucial matter -- because the election of Clinton was a huge, crucial matter.

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Of course, Haspel surely sent a copy of Downer's summary to CIA Headquarters -- more specifically, to CIA Director John Brennan.

However, Downer's summary involved some potential problems for the CIA.

* Did Downer act on behalf of the Australian Government when he interviewed Papadopoulos and subsequently provided a summary of that conversation to the CIA's London Chief of Station?

* Was the CIA allowed to collect such information about Papadopoulos, a US citizen?

Because of such potential problems, the summary had to be given to the FBI legal attache (Legat) in London. Haspel would invite the Legat into her London office, tell him that she had obtained the summary incidentally, tell him that the summary seemed to be a matter for the FBI, and give the Legat the impression that the CIA would take no further action with the summary.

On Tuesday, July 26, the Legat came to Haspel's office in London, talked with her about the situation, received the summary from Haspel, and went back to his own London office.

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Haspel foresaw that the Legat would go back to his office and write a cover letter to accompany the Downer summary that would be sent to FBI Headquarters. Haspel (I think) worried that the Legat's cover letter might screw this crucial situation up. Perhaps the Legat's cover letter might say something that was mistaken, too insightful or otherwise troublesome.

Therefore, Haspel had invited a second FBI official to attend the meeting in her London office on July 26. Haspel had invited the FBI's London-based Assistant Legal Attache (ALAT) for Counterintelligence. This ALAT participated in the conversation between Haspel and the Legat.

Then the Legat and the ALAT left Haspel's office and talked between themselves. Evidently, the ALAT told the Legat that this matter might be extremely important, and so the Legat should be extra careful to not make any mistakes. For example, the Legat should not assign a mistaken case number to the matter and should send the summary to the correct section at FBI Headquarters.

Further, the ALAT recommended to the Legat that the Legat consult with the ALAT's London predecessor, who now was stationed at the Philadelphia Field Office as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC). Following the insistent urging of his London ALAT colleague, the Legat immediately called the ASAC in Philadelphia and consulted with him. Subsequently, after the Legat wrote his cover letter, he sent his cover letter and the Downer summary to the Philadelphia ASAC, who then forwarded them to the FBI Headquarters in Washington DC.

When the Legat's cover letter reached FBI Headquarters, the cover letter no longer could be changed. The cover letter's detour through the Philadelphia ASAC enabled any problems in the cover letter to be caught and fixed before the cover letter reached FBI Headquarters.

Simpson and Steele wanted the FBI to investigate Millian

Glenn Simpson, the owner of the Fusion GPS company, hired Christopher Steele to write a dossier about Donald Trump's nefarious interactions with Russians. Steele supposedly employed a network of informants to collect relevant information.

Steele employed a particular person who is called "Primary Sub-Source" in the Horowitz report. In my article here, I will call this person "PPS". This person is known to and has been interviewed by the FBI, but his identity is not known to the public.

PPS employed a network of informants, one of whom is called "Person 1" in the Horowitz report. Steele has not named this person to the FBI, but he provided hints that enabled the FBI to identify him as Sergei Millian. An example of such a hint is that Steele mentioned that this person controlled a Russian-American organization in the USA, while Millian had founded The Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the USA. Although the Horowitz report does not name Millian as Person 1, Millian has been identified as Person 1 in the press. In my article here, I will treat Millian as being Person 1.

It seems from the Horowitz report that Millian began to provide information to PPS in mid-June 2016. PPS forwarded Millian's information to Steele, who then used Millian's information to write three Dossier reports:

* Report 80, dated June 20, 2016

* Report 95, which is undated but apparently was written in late July 2016.

* Report 102, dated August 10, 2016

Shortly after Steele wrote the August report (dated August 10, 2016), he and Simpson apparently came to an opinion that Millian was a double-agent, working in part for Russian Intelligence. Subsequently, both Simpson and Steele suggested that the FBI should investigate whether Millian's worked for Russian Intelligence.

On August 22, Simpson sent an e-mail to Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr to arrange a meeting later that day. At their subsequent meeting, Simpson told Ohr that Millian was "a potential intermediary between Russia and Donald Trump's campaign staff" (Horowitz page 274). Simpson did not mention to Ohr that Millian was a source of information for three of Steele's Dossier reports.

I speculate that a redacted passage in the Horowitz report mentioned that Simpson called Millian "a double agent" (page 164, Footnote 302) . This footnote refers to the Horowitz report's discussion of an FBI counterintelligence investigation of Millian.

I speculate that Simpson called Millian "a double agent".
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Steele did not write any Dossier reports based on Millian's information after the report dated August 10, 2016. I assume the reason was Steele's growing distrust of Millian.

In early October 2016, the FBI interviewed Steele in Rome in order to identify people in Steele's supposed network of informants. During that interview, Steele generally refused to identify his network's members but did provide the hints that enabled the FBI to identify Person 1 -- the source of information for those three particular Dossier reports -- as Millian.

Also at this Rome meeting, Steele characterized Millian to the FBI as being "a boaster and egotist and may engage in some embellishment". In other words, Steele essentially disavowed the reliability of the three Dossier reports that were based on Millian's information.

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To recapitulate, it seems that Simpson and Steele decided to disassociate themselves from Millian sometime between August 10 (the date of the third Dossier report based on Millian's information) and August 22 (the date when Simpson advised Ohr that Millian was a potential intermediary between Russia and the Trump campaign staff). Subsequently, Simpson and Steele suggested to the FBI that Millian's relationship to Russian Intelligence should be investigated.

I speculate that this disassociation from Millian was related to Millian's developing relationship with George Papadopoulos. On July 22, 2016, Millian contacted Papadopoulos via LinkedIn. During the following months, Millian and Papadopoulos exchanged e-mails and met in person. During these communications, Millian lured Papadopoulos with promises of lucrative consulting contracts. The Washington Post described those communications as follows:

The two [Millian and Papadopoulos] struck up an online correspondence and met several times, Papadopoulos said. Millian claimed to be a business associate of the candidate [Trump] and told Papadopoulos that he had connections at Bashneft, a Russian energy company that he said was looking for American investors.

By October [2016], Papadopoulos said Millian approached him with an idea: He said he could get Papadopoulos a public-relations contract with a New York firm connected to an unidentified Russian national. The job would pay $30,000 a month, Millian told him.

“It was an enticing offer,” Papadopoulos said. He said he was clear with Millian from the start that he would not work for any Russian under U.S. sanctions. In the fall of 2016, Millian flew to Chicago, where Papadopoulos was living at the time, to discuss the proposal. The two met at the bar of the Trump International Hotel. Papadopoulos said that Millian seemed nervous during the meeting. He was pacing, sweating and wearing a scarf around his neck, even though they were indoors.

Then, Millian explained that the job would require Papadopoulos to continue to work for Trump after the election. “He said, ‘You know, George, in Russia it’s very common for people to work both in the private and public sector at the same time,’ ” Papadopoulos recalled Millian telling him. Papadopoulos said he knew the offer was unethical — and possibly illegal.

“I told him, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” Papadopoulos recalled. Later, Papadopoulos said he concluded that the meeting may have been a setup ...

Simpson and Steele were not involved in these communications between Millian and Papadopoulos. Millian did not inform PPS about these communications, and therefore Steele's Dossier does not provide any information about Papadopoulos. However, I speculate that Simpson and Steele learned something about the Millian-Papadopoulos communications and came to the opinion that Millian was conducting those communications at the behest of Russian Intelligence.

Who was going to pay the $30,000 a month to Papadopoulos? Keep in mind that Steele's Dossier does not provide any information about Papadopoulos.

Why would any Russians pay $30,000 to Papadopoulos in this situation? Perhaps some Russians intended to control or to discredit Papadopoulos because of his activities in petroleum issues of the eastern Mediterranean region.

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The Washington Post has reported:

In 2011, he [Millian] was invited to take part in a Russian government-backed effort to bring American entrepreneurs on visits to Moscow. The Post has previously reported that the FBI later investigated the trips as possible influence operations linked to Russian intelligence, although Millian was never implicated.

The Post's previously reported article explains (emphasis added):

The FBI is investigating [in October 2013] whether the U.S. based director of a Russian government-run cultural exchange program was clandestinely recruiting Americans as possible intelligence assets, according to [US] law enforcement officials.

FBI agents have been interviewing Americans who participated in Rossotrudnichestvo exchange program run by Yury Zaytsev, who also heads the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Washington. For the past 12 years, the program has paid for about 130 Americans to visit Russia. ...

Law enforcement officials said the FBI is investigating wither Zaytsev and Rossotrudnichestvo have used trips to Russia to recruit Americans. Rossotrudnichestvo paid for all their expenses, including meals, travel, visa fees and lodging. Most of the trips involved about 25 participants, who sometimes stayed in luxury hotels and met with Russian government officials.

Zaytsev .... created files on some of the participants, allegedly to cultivate them as future intelligence assets. Law enforcement officials would not comment on whether the FBI has any evidence that Zaytsev was successful in recruiting any assets.

In October 2016 -- around the time when Millian offered Papadopoulos a job paying $30, 000 a month -- Steele researched the organization Rossotrudnichestvo. Dossier Report 136, dated October 20, 2016, includes the following passage [emphasis added]:

... the Kremlin insider highlighted the importance of the Russian parastatal organisation, Rossotrudnichestvo, in this contact between TRUMP campaign representative/s and Kremlin officials. Rossotrudnichestvo was being used as cover for this relationship and its office in Prague ....

I assume that Steele decided in October 2016 to search the Internet and public records for information about Millian and found that Millian was involved in this Rossotrudnichestvo program that was investigated by the FBI. I assume further that Steele inserted Rossotrudnichestvo into his Dossier in order to prompt the FBI to investigate Millian's collaboration with Rossotrudnichestvo.

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The FBI did establish a counterintelligence investigation of Millian, but the Horowitz report (page 164) obfuscates the chronology:

... Person 1 [Millian] was at the time [of the FISA application in October 2016] the subject of an open FBI counterintelligence investigation. We also were concerned that the FISA application did not disclose to the court the FBI's belief that this sub-source [Person 1, Millian] was, at the time of the application, the subject of such an investigation. .....

NYFO [the FBI's New York Field Office] opened the case after consulting with and notifying Case Agent 1 and SSA 1 prior to October 12, 2016, nine days before the FISA application was filed. 

The NYFO opened the investigation of Millian before October 12, 2016, but the public does not know how long before that date.

On that date, several top FBI officials -- including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page -- met to discuss concerns about the prudence of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that had been raised by Stuart Evans, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General (Horowitz pages 139-144). During that meeting, those top officials should have taken into effective account -- but did not do so -- that Steele's key informant Millian was officially suspected of working for Russian Intelligence.

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Simpson and Steele decided to disassociate themselves from Millian between August 10 and August 22, 2016. One factor in this decision might be that Steele obtained another informant, who supposedly described actions within the Kremlin's Presidential Administration related to Trump's election campaign. The Dossier reports that explicitly named the Presidential Administration were the following:

Report 94, dated July 19, 2016

Report 100, dated August 5, 2016

Report 101, dated August 10, 2016

Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

Report 130, dated October 12, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Perhaps Simpson and Steele decided after the third such report -- dated August 10 -- that they no longer needed Millian, who might turn out to be a problem for the Dossier if he indeed was working for Russian Intelligence. (See my previous article, The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier.)

The CIA's Concerns About Steele's Dossier

Christopher Steele's Dossier includes eight reports that tell about a Russian Government organization that the Dossier calls the Presidential Administration (PA). The Russian-language name is Administratsiya Prezidenta, which translates as "The President's Administration". The Kremlin's website translate's the name as "The Presidential Executive Office".

That Kremlin website says the office is managed by the President's Chief of Staff and does the following:

* prepares draft laws, decrees, orders, instructions, Presidential speeches, etc.

* monitors the enforcement of federal laws, decrees, orders, etc.

* coordinates with political parties, non-governmental organizations, unions, foreign governments, international organizations, etc.

* analyzes socioeconomic, political and legal trends

According to the Wikipedia article, the office's staff numbers about 26 officials, employs about 50 "Presidential Envoys" and manages about 30 "Subdivisions".

Steele's Dossier tells about the PA in these eight reports:

Report 94, dated July 19, 2016

Report 100, dated August 5, 2016

Report 101, dated August 10, 2016

Report 111, dated September 14, 2016

Report 112, dated September 14, 2016

Report 130, dated October 12, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Report 130 says that the "Trump Support Operation" was controlled by a sequence of three agencies:

1) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)

2) The Federal Security Service (FSB)

3) The Presidential Administration (PA).

The Dossier does not specify when this control was shifted from agency to agency, but from various clues (which I will not detail in this article) I define the three phases as follows:

The MFA phase began in mid-2011 and ended in late-2013. A major effort in this phase was to arrange for Donald Trump to bring his 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

The FSB phase began in late-2013 and ended in mid-2016. Major efforts in this phase were to record Trump with prostitutes and to hack into computers involved in the USA's 2016 election.

The PA phase began in mid-2016, between the Indiana primary election on May 3, 2016 and the appointment of Paul Manafort to head Trump's campaign staff on June 20, 2016. The PA phase ended in mid-October 2016. The major effort in the PA phase was to collude with Trump to win the Presidential election. 

I myself do not believe that any of this actually happened. I do not believe that there was any "Trump Support Operation" or any of these three phases. There was no recording of prostitutes in a Moscow hotel or anything else.

However, I am summarizing here the story that the Dossier tells about an alleged "Trump Support Operation" that was controlled -- after being controlled by the MFA and then by the FSB -- by the PA during the USA's 2016 election race.

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Understanding the Dossier's treatment of PA is important because the CIA had an informant who reported about the PA -- about the Russian President's Executive Office. The CIA's informant was Oleg Smolenkov, who was the assistant of Yuri Ushakov, who is one of the PA's 26 officials listed in the Wikipedia article about the PA. The separate Wikipedia article about Ushakov says (emphasis added):

Ushakov is a graduate of Moscow State Institute of International Relations and was the Russian Ambassador to The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 1996 to 1998.

He was appointed Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States in January 1999, and he was released from his posting by the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, on 2 June 2008. From June 2008 to May 2012 Ushakov was Deputy Chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation. Since May 2012 he has been Aide to the President of the Russian Federation responsible for international affairs in the Presidential Administration.

According to newspaper reports, Ushakov's assistant Smolenkov informed the CIA that Putin's PA was meddling in the USA's 2016 election. About eight months after that election, the CIA helped Smolenkov to defect from Russia to the USA in June 2017. So, the CIA learned from Smolenkov that the PA was meddling in the US election.

From whom did Steele learn that the PA was meddling in the election?

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Steele began his Dossier with Report 80 on June 20, 2016, but did not mention the PA until Report 94, dated July 19, 2016. Therefore, Steele began learning in mid-July 2016 about the PA's meddling. Until then, Steele knew only about the FSB's involvement -- for example, about the FSB's recording of Trump with prostitutes.

Suddenly, beginning on July 19, Steele began writing a series of eight reports that told about the PA's various communications, controversies, decisions, actions and personnel changes related to the PA's Trump Support Operation. Steele wrote:

President PUTIN had issued direct orders that Kremlin and government insiders should not discuss it in public or even in private.

Despite Putin's order, Steele learned the PA's secrets about the Trump Support Operation.

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Surely CIA officials who knew about Smolenkov wondered how Steele learned about the PA's meddling in the US election. Only a few CIA officials knew about Smolenkov, and CIA Director John Brennan informed only a few White House officials.

* Was Smolenkov informing Steele?

* Was someone in the in the CIA informing Steele?

* Was someone in the in the White House informing Steele?

* Was someone else inside the PA informing Steele?

The CIA was able to compare Steele's information with Smolenkov's information.

For example, Steele's Report 111 says that Ushakov (Smolenkov's boss) "urged caution" because the Trump Support Operation might have "a potential negative on Russia". Was that information in Smolenkov's reports to the CIA?

As another example, Steele's Report 94 says that Igor Divyekin, a senior official in the PA's Internal Political Department, met secretly with Carter Page in early July 2016. Was that information in Smolenkov's reports to the CIA?

Steele's eight reports state many such details that the CIA could compare with Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. If there are many matches, then the CIA might figure that Steele was obtaining Smolenkov's information somehow.

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Report 136, dated October 20, 2016, was not, however, based on Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. That report said that Trump's attorney Michael Cohen had met with "Kremlin representatives" in Prague in August. In fact, Cohen did not visit Prague, and this false information seems to have come to Steele from a NSA database, which had details about another Michael Cohen who was not Trump's lawyer. Smolenkov never told the CIA about Trump's lawyer Cohen meeting Kremlin representatives in Prague.

Perhaps Report 136 was the first blatant mismatch that the CIA found between Steele's and Smolenkov's reports. Or perhaps there had been other such mismatches in Steele's previous reports, written before October 20. If, however, the Steele and Smolenkov reports had matched fairly well, then Report 136 presented the first blatant mismatch.

The Dossier discusses Trump's lawyer Cohen in four reports.

Report 134, dated October 18, 2016

Report 135, dated October 19, 2016

Report 136, dated October 20, 2016

Report 166, dated December 13, 2016

I summarize 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 PA's Legal Department. 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 Manafort.

The people who had hacked 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".

The city of Prague was specified only in the Dossier's Report 136 and Report 166, but all Dossier four reports that discussed this alleged meeting between Cohen and the PA lawyers were NOT from Smolenkov's reports to the CIA. Smolenkov did not tell the CIA about any such Cohen-PA meeting.

It's likely that soon after the CIA received and studied Dossier Reports 134, 135 and 136 -- probably by the end of October 2016 -- the CIA decided that the Steele was generally unreliable  Even if Steele somehow had received some of Smolenkov's information, Steele now was using that information as a basis for other, false reporting about the PA's meddling in the US election.

The CIA did not have to rely on Steele's Dossier for insights about such meddling. The CIA was receiving information directly from Smolenkov.

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The CIA apparently did not inform the FBI about Smolenkov and about the mismatches between Steele's and Smolenkov's information. CIA Director Brennan informed only a few White House officials about Smolenkov.

In December 2016, when the CIA and FBI were cooperating to prepare the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the FBI and CIA disagreed about including the Dossier in the ICA. The Horowitz report summarized the disagreement as follows:

According to FBI staff, as the interagency editing process for the ICA progressed, the CIA expressed concern about the lack of vetting for the Steele election reporting and asserted it did not merit inclusion in the body of the report. An FBI Intel Section Chief told us the CIA viewed it as "internet rumor." In contrast ... the FBI, including Comey and McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA. Limited information from the Steele reporting ultimately was presented in an appendix to the ICA.

The CIA had compared the Dossier to the Smolenkov reports and so knew, for example, that the Dossier reports about the Prague meetings were false. The FBI still thought the Prague meetings were plausible. The CIA might have found many more such mismatches that were unknown to the FBI.

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If Steele's and Smolenkov's information indeed did match to a great extent, then Steele somehow was obtaining some of Smolenkov's information. If so, then it's likely that some CIA official was leaking Smolenkov's extremely secret information directly or indirectly to Steele.

Because of such a consideration, the CIA might have decided not to share this concern -- or any information about Smolenkov -- with the FBI. The CIA might have preferred to find its leaker without the FBI's help or even knowledge.

Key Considerations About the Events on Fourth Street in Charlottesville

I have studied various conspiracy theories about the incident in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, when James Fields drove his car into a crowd of so-called "counter-protesters" at the intersection of Fourth Street and Water Street. The questions that interested me included the following:.

* Was Fields guided by conspirators to Fourth Street?

* Why did the counter-protesters turn northward onto Fourth Street?

* Why did Fields idle and drive his car forwards and backwards on Fourth Street for two or more minutes before he drove into the crowd?

* Why had a maroon van and a black truck parked at the intersection of Fourth Street and Water Street?

In that area, only Fourth Street allows vehicle traffic. First, Second, Third and Fifth Streets allow only pedestrian traffic. Fields was able to drive into the crowd only because:

1) he positioned his car on Fourth Street and

2) the walking crowd turned from Water Street onto Fourth Street.

Click on the map to enlarge it.

If you study the streets' layout and traffic, and if you study the protesters' and counter-protesters' movements, you too might wonder how the car and the crowd both came to be on Fourth Street at the same time. You too might wonder further whether the encounter was arranged by a conspiracy.

I have found that the following considerations satisfied many of my own suspicions.

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Fields had to walk a half-hour to get his car.

A riot broke out in Emancipation Park (aka Lee Park) in downtown Charlottesville in the late morning of August 12. The police broke up the worst of the fighting at around noon.

During or after that riot, Fields walked from the area of Emancipation Park to McIntire Park, where he had parked his car.  During that walk, Fields acquainted himself with three men who likewise were walking from Emancipation to McIntire.

Click on the map to enlarge it.

Afterwards, those three men were questioned by police interrogators, and their statements were summarized during the preliminary hearing that took place on December 14, 2017. (Footnote 1)

If there were some conspiracy to place Fields on Fourth Street, then the conspirators surely would have arranged for him to park his car in the town center.

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A large group of counter-protesters
had walked southward from Justice Park.

Fields drove southward on Fourth Street into the crowd at 1:40 p.m.

Twenty minutes earlier, at 1:20, about 100 counter-protesters walked from Justice Park southward through the relevant blocks of Fourth Street. Specifically, they walked southward from Jefferson to Market to Main to Water Street and beyond. (Footnote 2)

Click on the map to enlarge it.

This large movement of counter-protesters might have attracted Fields to Fourth Street. I think he positioned his car to watch them walking southward.

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The counter-protesters had obtained a permit
to establish a base in Justice Park.

The counter-protesters erected some "medic tents" in Justice Park. (Footnote 3)

I suspect that the maroon van and the black truck were make-shift ambulances for these "medic tents" and that these two vehicles parked at the intersection of Fourth and Water to be ready for any fights that might happen in that area.

The reason why the counter-protesters turned northward on Fourth Street was that they were returning to their base in Justice Park. (Footnote 4)

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The counter-protesters had walked southward on Fourth Street
because of an unpredictable reason.

The 100 counter-protesters had walked southward on Fourth Street at 1:20 p.m. because they had been told that a racial confrontation was developing two blocks south of Water Street.

This situation was unpredictable. Various protesters and counter-protesters where fighting and wandering around in a rather large area of several blocks. The particular place and particular time of the supposed racial confrontation were rather random. (Footnote 5)

Therefore it's unlikely that there was any advance plan to send the 100 counter-protesters walking southward on Fourth Street at 1:20 p.m.

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Based on the above considerations, I summarize the situation as follows. Around noon, Fields walked a half-hour to get his car at McIntire Park and then drove into the town center, where he drove around for a while. At around 1:20 p.m. he saw a group of about 100 counter-protesters walking southward from Justice Park on Fourth Street, and so he idled his car at the intersection of Fourth and Market and watched them walking southward.

At around 1:40, the counter-protesters, having found that the reported racial confrontation was not happening, began walking northward on Fourth Street in order to return to Justice Park.

That is why Fields was on Fourth Street and why the counter-protesters were walking northward on Fourth Street.

The maroon van and black truck had been sent to the Fourth-Water intersection as a precaution by the people running the medic tents in Justice Park. That is why those two vehicles stood at that intersection for several minutes.

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Now I will summarize the evidence about the car's movements on Fourth Street before he drove into the crowd. Some evidence indicates that he moved forward and backward and idled for a rather long time -- perhaps two or more minutes. Perhaps he was interacting with some conspirators who were standing along the street and advising or signaling him.

People who wonder along those lines should recognize that before the car began driving into the crowd, only two moments were recorded on video (as far as the public knows). The surveillance camera of a restaurant at the intersection of Fourth Street and Main Street filmed the car drive through the intersection

1) forward and southward at about 1:40

2) backward and northward at about 1:41

The precise difference between those two moments was 70 seconds.

During that interval, Fields drove forward, southward into the crowd and then drove backward, northward away from the crowd. That forward and backward movement took about 45 seconds, according to a video made by Brennan Gilmore.

Therefore, only 25 seconds of those 70 seconds were not filmed. Perhaps Fields interacted with some conspirators along Fourth Street during those 25 seconds.

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The only other evidence about the movements of Fields' car on Fourth Street before the crash is eyewitness statements that are not available to the public. Some such statements were mentioned by Detective Steven Young during the preliminary hearing on December 14, 2017. Young apparently gave also some off-the-record statements to journalists, who therefore were able to add some details to their newspaper articles about the hearing.

However, this information about the car's pre-crash movements is so sketchy, disjointed, confused, second-hand and third-hand that it's practically worthless. Before the car was filmed by the restaurant camera driving south through the Fourth-Main intersection, we do not know any specific details about the car's movements -- when, where, how long, how far?

The publicly available evidence from the restaurant camera indicates only that Fields was south of the Fourth-Main intersection for 70 seconds, during which he drove into the crowd.

He was north of that intersection for a considerable time -- a minute or more? -- before he drove southward through the intersection. During that considerable time, he idled and drive forward and backward, according to eyewitnesses who said so to police investigators. That is essentially all the evidence about those car movements that is available to the public. We don't know any times, locations or distances.

Any speculation that Fields interacted with conspirators on Fourth Street is pure speculation, based on no facts at all.

For more details and discussion, read this blog's articles that precede this article.

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Footnote 1
Preliminary Hearing of James Fields, pages 32-43

Footnote 2
Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia, pages 140-142

Footnote 3
Independent Review, page 123

Footnote 4
Independent Review, page 143

Footnote 5
Independent Review, pages 140-142

The Walk from Justice Park Southward on Fourth Street

For a while before 1:40 p.m. on August 12, 2017, James Fields was idling his car just north of the intersection of Fourth Street and Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia. One block behind Fields, as he sat in his idling car at that intersection, was Justice Park, where a large group of anti-racism counter-protesters had established a base in accordance with a city permit. Within this base, so-called "medic tents" had been erected.

From south to north, the west-east streets are
Water, Main, Market and Jefferson

At about 1:40, Fields drove southward into a crowd of counter-protesters who were starting to walk northward from Water Street.

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The Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia, reports that about 100 counter-protesters began to walk from Justice Park southward at 1:20 p.m.

VSP [Virginia State Police] helicopter footage shows a group of more than 100 counter-protesters leaving Justice Park around 1:20 p.m., walking south on 4th Street. As they passed through the intersection at Market Street, there was no officer present and they passed the small plastic sawhorse that stood to prevent southbound traffic.

They crossed the Downtown Mall and Water Street, went under the railroad tracks, then arrived at Garrett Street. Dan Haig, who was with the group from Justice Park, told us that when they arrived someone from the community ran out to tell them that the everything was safe and they should stop shouting.

The group stopped for a moment to regroup. At 1:30 p.m., the group continued west down Garrett Street, then turned right on 2nd Street SE and moved back towards Water Street.

[Page 142]

The 100 counter-protesters who departed from Justice Park at 1:20
were walking west on Garrett Street at 1:30

The 100 counter-protesters walked southward through the intersection of Fourth and Market at 1:23. By that time, a police sawhorse had been removed from the intersection's south side.

The intersection of Fourth and Market at 1:23 p.m.

The 100 counter-protesters walked from Justice Park southward to Garrett Street because they thought mistakenly that some militia members had gone to the vicinity of Friendship Court Apartments (see the bottom of this post's second map) to harass the residents, who were predominantly African-Americans. Because no such harassment was happening, the 100 counter-protesters walked north on 2nd Street, back toward the town's center. (Independent Review, pages 140-142)

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At about 1:35:30, a maroon minivan drove south from the intersection of Fourth and Market. It reached the intersection of Fourth and Water at about 1:36:00 and stopped there for five minutes.

At about 1:38:45, a black truck drove south from the intersection of Fourth and Market. It reached the intersection of Fourth and Water at about 1:39:15 and stopped alongside the maroon van.

(For the above times, see my previous article titled James Fields' Backward Movement Before He Drove into the Crowd.

I speculate that those two cars were related to the group of 100 counter-protesters that had walked from Justice Park to Friendship Court Apartments. Justice Park had some so-called "medic tents" (Independent Review, page 77), and perhaps those two vehicles were serving as make-shift ambulances and so were positioning themselves to help people who might be injured in future fights.

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It seems that the counter-protesters turned from Water Street northward onto Fourth Street because many of them intended to return to Justice Park, which they considered to be their base for the day.

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The actions of James Fields might be related to the counter-protesters' walk southward on Fourth Street. Their walk might have attracted his attention to Fourth Street. Perhaps some stragglers from Justice Park saw his backing-up and idling on Fourth Street, or perhaps some such stragglers even attacked him.

SonofNewo's Two Major Mistakes About the Charlottesville Incident

SonofNewo is the YouTube pseudonym of William Evans, who is an outstanding critic of the official account of the Charlottesville incident. (He himself has revealed his true name.)

SonofNewo's YouTube home page is there. A YouTube search for "SonofNewo Charlottesville" lists those videos.

I have been a regular viewer of SonofNewo's videos for about a half year. I generally appreciate and respect his intelligence and insights. I became interested in the Charlottesville incident because of his videos, and I have recommended to other people they they watch them.

One public service that SonofNewo has done was to make available on the Scribd website the transcript of the pretrial hearing of James Fields that took place on December 14, 2017.

I immediately began to study that transcript, and it has caused me to find more fault with SonofNewo's explanation of the Charlottesville incident. For a long time, I have sent him e-mails commenting in a civil manner on his videos. However, he has become suspicious of me, and so he recently blocked my e-mails.

For the record, I don't receive any money or other rewards for writing my opinions about the Charlottesville incident or about any other subject that I discuss in my several blogs. I never have earned any money from my blogs, and I have no plans to try to earn money from them.

Also, I don't have any private source of information. I have obtained all my information about the Charlottesville incident from the Internet -- and without any private guidance from anyone.

I have described myself in my Blogger profile.

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Here I will point out two major mistakes that SonofNewo makes in his explanation of the Charlottesville incident.

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Newspaper articles about the pretrial hearing are not better evidence about the hearing than the transcript is.

I don't know when SonofNewo obtained the hearing transcript, but I have the impression that there was a time when his only source of information about the hearing was newspaper articles about it. Since he does have the transcript now, he should treat the transcript as the most authoritative, currently available source of information about what was said and shown during the hearing  When there is a contradiction between the transcript and a newspaper article, then the transcript should be presumed correct and the article should be presumed mistaken.

I myself studied the transcript before I read any of the newspaper articles. When I did read the articles, I found that they included many mistakes about the hearing. For example, an AP News article about the hearing included the following passage:

Surveillance video from a restaurant showed the car head slowly in what Young testified was the direction of the counter-protesters, who were not in view of the camera. The car reversed before speeding forward into the frame again.

That statement is contradicted by the transcript, in which Detective Steven Young testified that the restaurant's surveillance camera filmed the car twice -- once driving forward and once driving backward. In particular, the video did not show the car "speeding forward into the frame".

I don't think that the AP News reporter is lying. Rather, I think that he simply misunderstood Young's testimony.

The above passage is merely one example of mistaken reporting about the hearing. I provided other examples in my previous article titled James Fields' Block-Long Backup on Fourth Street.

Reporters might have received and reported additional information in off-the-record conversations with knowledgeable officials. I appreciate any such additional information. However, when a journalistic report contradicts the transcript, then the journalistic report should be presumed to be mistaken.

Any journalistic report indicating that Fields' car was filmed passing through the restaurant camera's view more than twice -- 1) the first time forward southward, and then 2) the second time backward northward -- is mistaken.

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The restaurant video does not show the car driving south at a high rate of speed at 1:54:49.

During the pretrial hearing, some people in the audience caused two disturbances while the restaurant video was being shown. After the second disturbance, the prosecutor said she was resetting the video to 1:54:49.

SonofNewo thinks mistakenly that this moment in the video shows the car beginning to drive south at a high rate of speed".

The last bullet point is a mistake.

What the video actually shows after 1:43:49 is people running after the car, which already has driven southwards into the crowd and then backed up northwards through the restaurant camera's view. I explained this in my previous articles titled The Disturbances During the Pretrial Hearing and The Discrepancies Between the Camera Clocks. I will not repeat all that explanation here.

This mistake of SonofNewo was caused by his misreading of the following passage.

Judge
Quiet in the courtroom.

Bailiff
Quiet in the courtroom.

Judge
All right, he needs to go out. All of them.

Prosecutor
Your Honor, as you saw, that was the silver Dodge Challenger that drove south at a high rate of speed.

Judge
All right, once again, anybody else who makes a sound like that, out you go. All right.

Prosecutor
I’m pausing and starting again at 1:54:49 and Detective Young, you said it left view at a high rate of speed?

Detective Young
Yes. At this point, many people began to run after Mr. Fields and, at that point, encounter police as they ran east towards the police department.

(Page 32, lines 11 - 24)

When the prosecutor said Your Honor, as you saw, that was the silver Dodge Challenger that drove south at a high rate of speed, the prosecutor was reminding the judge about a set of facts that had been presented before that disturbance.

* The Dodge Challenger had driven south at a high rate of speed, according to eyewitnesses and to the helicopter video. The restaurant video had not shown the car driving southward at a high rate of speed.

* This same Dodge Challenger -- the one that had driven south at a high rate of speed according to eyewitnesses and to the helicopter video -- had been seen backing up northward in the restaurant video. Immediately when the restaurant video showed the car doing so, the second disturbance occurred in the courtroom.

* Before that disturbance in the courtroom, the restaurant video had shown that the car left view of the restaurant camera, backing up northwards at a high rate of speed.

Because of the courtroom disturbance, the prosecutor reset the video to 1:54:49, which was after the car already had backed up northward through the restaurant camera's view. Then the prosecutor showed the video's final part, which showed people running after the car.

I understand why SonofNewo interprets the above passage as he does, but his interpretation is mistaken. This one mistake has led to other mistakes in his analysis.

The Discrepancies Between the Camera Clocks

During the pretrial hearing of James Fields, case agent Detective Young said that the clock

* of the helicopter camera was approximately 12 minutes fast (page 27, lines 9-10)

* of the camera of the Red Pump Kitchen (RPK) was approximately 13 minutes fast (page 29, lines 4-6).

Young did not specify what was the "correct" clock to which these two cameras were compared, but I assume that it was the clock of the Charlottesville Police Department's dispatch clock. Anyway, Young considers some one clock to be correct, according to which other clocks are deemed to be fast or slow.

At one point in his testimony, Young indicated that Fields drove into the crowd at approximately 1:40.

At approximately 1:40, many witnesses and victims describe the Dodge Challenger drive at a very high rate of speed, south on Fourth Street, striking many people and striking the white [Camry] ragtop sedan.

In all these estimates, Young uses the word approximately.

* The car crashed into the crowd at approximately 1:40

* The helicopter camera was approximately 12 minutes fast.

* The RPK camera was approximately 13 minutes fast.

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In another couple of passages, Young indicated that the car crashed into the crowd before 1:40. Since he rounds these times to the minute, he means that the impact happened between 1:39:30 and 1:40:00.

When talking about the RPK camera, Young said

We confirmed through the personnel at Red Pump Kitchen that this footage is ... approximately thirteen minutes fast, but if you fix the time ... just before 1:40 it becomes relevant.

(Page 29, lines 4 - 8)

The above statement indicates to me that Young had calculated that Fields drove into the crowd just before 1:40.

In another passage, Young mentioned that the police dispatcher broadcast the first report of the incident at approximately 1:40.

Prosecutor
At some point throughout the day, did you hear radio traffic for an incident that had occurred here in the City of Charlottesville at approximately Fourth Street and Water Street?

Detective Young
Yes.

Prosecutor
What were you able to hear just for purposes with what you did next?

Detective Young
So, the time I heard radio traffic, I was actually on foot at Emancipation Park. I heard an officer claim that many people were reporting that a vehicle struck a large crowd of people and that the vehicle fled the scene. ...

Prosecutor
Do you recall the time that this radio traffic was being related to you?

Detective Young
Approximately 1:40 p.m.

I assume that Young verified that this police report was broadcast at approximately 1:40, and so the car must have crashed into the crowd just before 1:40.

By interviewing the police officer who reported the crash to the radio dispatcher, Young could have determined that that police officer reported the crash less than, say, 30 seconds after the crash occurred.

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Let's suppose for the sake of argument that, in precise times, Fields drove into the crowd at 1:39:30, that a police officer at the scene sent a radio report to the radio dispatcher at 1:39:45, and then the radio dispatcher broadcast the first report, which Young himself heard, at 1:40:00.

The only precise times that Young would know for sure would be the 1:39:45 and the 1:40:00 times, because those two precise times would have been recorded by the dispatch system in accordance with the dispatch clock.

The 13:39:30 time would be an estimate that the police officer at the scene later told Young that he sent a radio report to the dispatcher about 15 seconds after Fields drove into the crowd.

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The helicopter's video shows Fields driving into the crowd. If Young determined that moment to be 12:39:30, and if the helicopter camera's clock showed the moment to be 13:51:30, then Fields could estimate that the helicopter's camera was running approximately 12 minutes fast, compared to the dispatch clock.

The helicopter crashed. If the helicopter camera survived and its clock continued to run, then Young could have compared the helicopter camera's clock to the police dispatch clock and measured the time discrepancy.

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During the investigation, Young could have compared the RPK camera's clock to the police dispatch clock.

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However, Young was not able to synchronize all these events and clocks precisely, to the second. That is why Fields had to say rather imprecisely that

* Fields drove into the crowd just before 13:40

* Young heard the dispatcher broadcast at approximately 1:40

* Although Fields' car, after the crash, backed northwards into the RPK camera's view when its clock showed 13:54:06, this camera's clock ran approximately 13 minutes fast.

If I correct the RPK time by precisely 13:00:00 minutes, then the corrected time is 13:41:06. However, the actual precise time might be as much as 30 seconds earlier or later, because Young's 13-minute discrepancy is rounded to the whole number 13.

In other words, although the RPK camera showed the car backing northward into the camera's view at the camera's precise clock time of 13:54:06 (corrected precisely to 13:41:06), the actual precise time might have been 30 seconds either way -- anywhere between 13:40:36 and 13:41:36.

Roughly in time, Fields drove into the crowd just before 13:40 and then backed northward into the RPK camera's view at approximately 13:41.