Do you want to know why the FBI continued to insist that the Nunes’ memo not be declassified and released to the public? The answer is right there on page 2, (see 1b) in the discussion about what was excluded from the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of-and paid by-the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.
I believe that the part in bold is what the FBI wanted out of the memo because it exposes the uncomfortable fact that Christopher Steele was (and had been for some time) a paid asset of the FBI. That is huge news. In other words, Steele was not a mere consultant or sub-contractor for the FBI. He was being paid to provide information/intelligence to the FBI.
There are two classes of FBI “informants.” One is serving as a “criminal informant” and the other is as an “intelligence asset.” Information from “criminal informants” can be used in a U.S. judicial proceeding and the informant called as a witness. Getting money under that circumstance can be problematic because the source’s credibility can be impeached by defense counsel, who can argue that the testimony is purloined.
You do not have to worry about that with an “intelligence asset.” In that case the priority is protecting the identity of the source. The fact that Steele had been on the FBI payroll for a while sheds new light on Glen Simpson’s testimony (which was leaked by Senator Feinstein) to the U.S. Senate. Simpson testified that Steele told him in late September 2016 that the FBI wanted to meet him in Rome to discuss the dossier. That struck me initially as quite odd. If Steele was just acting as an average “foreign” citizen who was trying to help the FBI then he could easily have met with the Bureau in London. That city hosts the largest number of FBI agents in the world outside of the U.S. But Steele was asked to go meet in Rome. That’s what you do when you are meeting an intelligence asset that the Brits do not know about.
That is the problem.
The real irony here is that the Schiff memo is likely to compound the problem for Steele because it is likely to highlight Steele’s prior activities on behalf of the Bureau that predate the 2016 election cycle (remember, Steele was hired by Fusion GPS in June 2016). This is the issue that had FBI Director Wray’s panties in a knot. When you sign up a foreign source you vow to protect them. When you expose such a source you make it more difficult to recruit new sources.
There may be another twist to this. Was Steele actually operating as an FBI intel asset with the secret knowledge of the Brits? In other words, was he a double agent or an agent of influence? One way to tell will be watching the reaction of the U.K. authorities now that they know that Steele was a paid FBI informant. Imagine the outrage here if one of the former CIA or FBI talking heads that are appearing on punditry circuit was exposed as someone getting paid by the Russian version of the FBI or CIA. It would be ugly.
The media (and the trolls on this blog) are working feverishly to ignored the uncomfortable truths exposed by the so-called Nunes memo. But facts are stubborn things and more facts will be exposed.
UPDATE–Based on some confused comments by our friend The Twisted Genius aka TTG, I need to provide more of the Nunes memo to establish that Steele in fact was a source. According to that memo:
. . .Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations-an unauthorised disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn.
If this was a simple matter of Steele, having no official relationship with the FBI, simply reaching out to an old friend to pass on information, then TTG would be right to assert that Steele was not a source. But that is clearly not the case. The FBI can only suspend and terminate a source relationship if that person is a source. Very simple.
Let’s take a quick look at the article by Corn that got Steele terminated. The Corn piece was part of an orchestrated media campaign (we know that from Simpson’s testimony that was leaked by Diane Feinstein) in order to put pressure on the FBI and James Comey, who had just announced that new Clinton emails had been found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Corn wrote:
There you have it. The story was right in front of us. What is reported in the Nunes memo is consistent with David Corn’s article and with what Glen Simpson testified under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces.
Featured image is from the author.