Tranquillus in Exile
New member
12 January 2017
Last April, the CIA director 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. 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. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks. Their first application, in June, 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, three weeks before election day.
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.
The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding back "explosive information" about Mr Trump. Mr Reid said: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government - a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public ... And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
The CIA, FBI, Justice and Treasury all refused to comment when I approached them after hearing about the Fisa warrant.
. . . .
A former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni durak" - a useful fool.
The background to those statements was information held at the time within the intelligence community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration, they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38589427
[50% down]
Postscript
On the basis of privileged access to classified information, Rep. Nunes has said that the FISA application (evidently the one referred to above) relied largely on the "unverified" Steele dossier. Nunes has since "confirmed" on Fox News that no intelligence was used to start the FBI probe.
Last April, the CIA director 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. 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. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks. Their first application, in June, 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, three weeks before election day.
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.
The investigation was active going into the election. During that period, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid, wrote to the director of the FBI, accusing him of holding back "explosive information" about Mr Trump. Mr Reid said: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government - a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public ... And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
The CIA, FBI, Justice and Treasury all refused to comment when I approached them after hearing about the Fisa warrant.
. . . .
A former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni durak" - a useful fool.
The background to those statements was information held at the time within the intelligence community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration, they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38589427
[50% down]
Postscript
On the basis of privileged access to classified information, Rep. Nunes has said that the FISA application (evidently the one referred to above) relied largely on the "unverified" Steele dossier. Nunes has since "confirmed" on Fox News that no intelligence was used to start the FBI probe.