'Garbage' Steele dossier
had CIA's fingerprints,
says Post's Woodward
Lack of payoffs weakens obstruction notion, journalist believes
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward said Sunday he had recently learned that the "garbage" Trump dossier appeared in an early draft of a U.S. intelligence assessment on suspected Russian election interference. Woodward also said that the material disclosed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report was "disturbing" but came nowhere near the Watergate scandal in wrongdoing.
Woodward, who has had contacts with the CIA since his days exposing the Watergate scandal, saw such an action as "surprising" and told a Fox television audience that the origins of the investigation against Trump "should be" investigated.
As far as potential obstruction of justice, Woodward observed that no money was paid out with that aim in mind, as opposed to the criminal payoffs by President Richard M. Nixon's White House.
During a discussion on "Fox News Sunday," Woodward declared that he thought the inclusion of the Steele dossier occurred at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, but it was ultimately taken out after being reviewed by intelligence experts.
"What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box," Woodward said.
"I think it was the CIA pushing this," he added. "Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out. But in this process the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments as Mueller also found out is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated."
As the Washington Examiner notes, Woodward's suggestion that the CIA was pushing for the inclusion of the dossier in the intelligence assessment comes nearly a month after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was told former CIA Director John Brennan "insisted" the dossier be included in the report. "BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report ... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP," Paul tweeted.
The Examiner observed that Woodward also wrote about Brennan's endorsement of the dossier in his book Fear: Trump in the White House. “The sources that Steele used for his dossier had not been polygraphed, which made their information uncorroborated, and potentially suspect,” Woodward wrote in the book published last year. “But Brennan said the information was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.” A spokesman for Brennan insisted he never trusted the dossier, telling the Associated Press, “because it wasn’t corroborated intel."
The declassified January 2017 report determined that Russia had ordered an "influence campaign" to help Trump get elected in 2016. There is no mention of the dossier, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, which contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia. It was used by the FBI to obtain a series of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to wiretap Carter Page, at the time a Trump campaign adviser.
The Examiner points out that now that Mueller has concluded his investigation into Russian meddling, finding no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, allies of the president are eagerly anticipating the findings of several investigations looking into possible government surveillance abuse against Trump. Among them are investigations being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump, served as CIA director from 2013 to Jan. 20, 2017, the day of Trump's inauguration.
The intelligence chief turned television analyst has admitted that as a young man he was a Communist sympathizer.
The use of the national security apparatus to go after journalists who have helped Trump is one of the more shocking aspects of "Russiagate." For example, Jerome Corsi, a septuagenarian conservative journalist, was roped in by the Mueller probe. After Corsi's associate, Alex Jones, was delegitimized by the System, Corsi was, he said, threatened by the Mueller team. Corsi said the feds tried to force him to lie and implicate Trump in Russia collusion.
Another journalist and political adviser, Roger Stone, was indicted at Mueller's direction for perjury before Congress. No one in the Justice Department has charged James Clapper, who lied to Congress as an intelligence chief before Edward Snowden's whistleblowing blew President Barack Obama's abuse of national security authority out of the water.
The current maneuver to snare Julian Assange ties in to Mueller's accusation, as reflected by the intelligence system, that Assange was assisting the Russians, and to Hillary Clinton's desire that the unconventional publisher should "answer for what he has done." Even so, no proof or strong evidence has been presented against Assange.
Mueller reported that Trump, in the heat of a tough campaign, was eager to get his hands on the 30,000 missing Clinton emails. Several intelligence chiefs have said they were convinced that the Russians had downloaded all the secretary of state's emails that had been held on her private server before she ordered them destroyed, because her computer security was poor and because one of her close confidants, Sidney Blumenthal, had had his emails hacked.
Yet, if the Russians obtained the missing emails, they evidently did not pass them along to WikiLeaks, which in turn did not publish them. Now, had Trump and Assange really been colluding with the Kremlin, one would think the Kremlin would have handed off the missing emails to Assange during the presidential campaign. Obviously, it is possible Russian hackers failed to pirate Clinton's emails. But, considering her position as secretary of state, it doesn't seem likely that either Russians or other intelligence agency hackers weren't prowling about, ready to pounce.
Woodward, who has had contacts with the CIA since his days exposing the Watergate scandal, saw such an action as "surprising" and told a Fox television audience that the origins of the investigation against Trump "should be" investigated.
As far as potential obstruction of justice, Woodward observed that no money was paid out with that aim in mind, as opposed to the criminal payoffs by President Richard M. Nixon's White House.
During a discussion on "Fox News Sunday," Woodward declared that he thought the inclusion of the Steele dossier occurred at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, but it was ultimately taken out after being reviewed by intelligence experts.
"What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box," Woodward said.
"I think it was the CIA pushing this," he added. "Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out. But in this process the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments as Mueller also found out is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated."
As the Washington Examiner notes, Woodward's suggestion that the CIA was pushing for the inclusion of the dossier in the intelligence assessment comes nearly a month after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was told former CIA Director John Brennan "insisted" the dossier be included in the report. "BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report ... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP," Paul tweeted.
The Examiner observed that Woodward also wrote about Brennan's endorsement of the dossier in his book Fear: Trump in the White House. “The sources that Steele used for his dossier had not been polygraphed, which made their information uncorroborated, and potentially suspect,” Woodward wrote in the book published last year. “But Brennan said the information was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.” A spokesman for Brennan insisted he never trusted the dossier, telling the Associated Press, “because it wasn’t corroborated intel."
The declassified January 2017 report determined that Russia had ordered an "influence campaign" to help Trump get elected in 2016. There is no mention of the dossier, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, which contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia. It was used by the FBI to obtain a series of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to wiretap Carter Page, at the time a Trump campaign adviser.
The Examiner points out that now that Mueller has concluded his investigation into Russian meddling, finding no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, allies of the president are eagerly anticipating the findings of several investigations looking into possible government surveillance abuse against Trump. Among them are investigations being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump, served as CIA director from 2013 to Jan. 20, 2017, the day of Trump's inauguration.
The intelligence chief turned television analyst has admitted that as a young man he was a Communist sympathizer.
The use of the national security apparatus to go after journalists who have helped Trump is one of the more shocking aspects of "Russiagate." For example, Jerome Corsi, a septuagenarian conservative journalist, was roped in by the Mueller probe. After Corsi's associate, Alex Jones, was delegitimized by the System, Corsi was, he said, threatened by the Mueller team. Corsi said the feds tried to force him to lie and implicate Trump in Russia collusion.
Another journalist and political adviser, Roger Stone, was indicted at Mueller's direction for perjury before Congress. No one in the Justice Department has charged James Clapper, who lied to Congress as an intelligence chief before Edward Snowden's whistleblowing blew President Barack Obama's abuse of national security authority out of the water.
The current maneuver to snare Julian Assange ties in to Mueller's accusation, as reflected by the intelligence system, that Assange was assisting the Russians, and to Hillary Clinton's desire that the unconventional publisher should "answer for what he has done." Even so, no proof or strong evidence has been presented against Assange.
Mueller reported that Trump, in the heat of a tough campaign, was eager to get his hands on the 30,000 missing Clinton emails. Several intelligence chiefs have said they were convinced that the Russians had downloaded all the secretary of state's emails that had been held on her private server before she ordered them destroyed, because her computer security was poor and because one of her close confidants, Sidney Blumenthal, had had his emails hacked.
Yet, if the Russians obtained the missing emails, they evidently did not pass them along to WikiLeaks, which in turn did not publish them. Now, had Trump and Assange really been colluding with the Kremlin, one would think the Kremlin would have handed off the missing emails to Assange during the presidential campaign. Obviously, it is possible Russian hackers failed to pirate Clinton's emails. But, considering her position as secretary of state, it doesn't seem likely that either Russians or other intelligence agency hackers weren't prowling about, ready to pounce.
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