Former MI-6 spy Chris Steele must be a good guy … working for and against Russian oligarchs in London, even sending reports on Russian involvement in the Ukraine to Victoria Nuland, former assistent to US VP Cheney. Now, those are true credentials … for American/British neocons. Steele in the same category as CIA, Brennan and Clapper. Why am I not a believer??
How Trump walked into Putin’s web
The inside story of how a former British spy was hired to investigate Russia’s influence on Trump – and uncovered explosive evidence that Moscow had been cultivating Trump for years. By Luke Harding– The Guardian
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The episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the US intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the US state department, and sent up to secretary of state John Kerry and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the US response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine. Many of Steele’s secret sources were the same people who would later supply information on Trump.
One former state department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele’s reports. On Russia, the envoy said, Steele was “as good as the CIA or anyone”.
Steele’s professional reputation inside US agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material.
‘Correspondent’ Luke Harding also cooperated with Chris Steele to write his earlier book –
○ A Very Expensive Poison – a dramatic account of Litvinenko’s murder
○ Luke Harding on panel discussion on Ukraine – Hromadske International
Info from above linked from The Guardian article –
○ Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate
What I find striking is the thinness of Steele’s Russia resume:
Three years in the field before the Yeltsin years. Perhaps a Russian desk jockey in London from ’93-’98, but those were the years when the US was cool with Russia as Russians were financially and physically devastated. So, what Russians would he likely have become cozy with?