Getting the Dossier Out . . . with a Little Help from John McCain
When the ballots were counted on election night and Donald Trump was officially the president-elect, most of Washington was caught off guard. But one man, across the ocean, was positively ready: Christopher Steele.
Donald Trump’s unexpected victory made it even more urgent that Steele get the dossier in front of top law enforcement officials and get it out to the public. He was on a mission and he needed results. Fast. People needed to know what he had on Trump. As he told David Corn of Mother Jones a week before the election, “This story has to get out.”1
But he was thwarted at every turn.
The FBI was not giving Steele the attention that he felt his findings deserved. In fact, he was “increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump.”2
And, on top of that, the press would still not publish his unverified dossier.
Over his years as a private spook, Steele had built up a good relationship with the FBI and had worked extensively with the Bureau on its investigation of the FIFA World Cup scandal. From 2013 to 2016, he had provided them with information on Russia and the Ukraine that he had found in his work for private clients.3 Who were these private clients? We don’t know. But, based on what we know about Steele, it seems impossible that he would ever work for Putin’s people and gather information on the democratic regime in the Ukraine. So, while Steele was working for the Hillary backers, could it be possible that he may also have been working for a pro-Western, Ukrainian private client?
The motivation of the Hillary supporters to pay for Steele’s work obviously ended on election day. But Steele continued to work on releasing the dossier well after election day had passed and long after he stopped getting a paycheck. Why was he doing this? Was some other anti-Trump or anti-Russian entity paying him? Or was something else going on? Because it really doesn’t make sense that he would become a volunteer, pro bono spook long after his contract expired.
This was apparently not simply a cut-and-dried project for Steele. He spoke to Mother Jones about feeling “duty bound to share information he deemed crucial.”4 Duty bound? Who was this duty to? Certainly not to the American clients who were paying him and apparently didn’t know he was also working with—and getting paid by—the FBI. He described his view of Putin in cataclysmic terms, telling Corn that he “believed Russian intelligence’s efforts aimed at Trump were part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to disrupt and divide and discredit the system in Western democracies.”5 That quote from Steele to Corn is, interestingly, a direct paraphrase of the language used in the first memo in the dossier:
Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.6
So who is speaking—the sources or Steele? Are they one and the same voice?
As election day approached, Steele had been pressuring the FBI, without success, to investigate and publicize Trump’s ties with Russia, which Steele believed to be something of huge significance, way above party politics.7
Since Steele had given his initial report to his FBI contact in July, he had kept sending them regular reports but heard nothing back about any investigation. In August, they had questioned him on the reports, asking for details. He had continued to bombard the FBI with his reports, but the story continued to remain confidential. Then, in October, the FBI asked him to come to Rome and bring his reports. It seemed like the FBI was now paying attention. But his trip to Rome came and went and still nothing seemed to be happening.
So, prior to the election, here’s where things stood: The dossier had not been published anywhere and the FBI did not seem particularly aggressive in attempting to verify it. It was at this point that Steele appears to have taken steps to bring the dossier to the attention of the highest level of the FBI.
But how to get it there?
How could he accomplish that? Nothing was working. He needed to switch gears. If the sensational charges against Trump in the dossier didn’t get out, Steele’s apparent mission would fail. That’s why, in retrospect, it seems that, at this moment, there was a dramatic shift in strategy. Instead of approaching journalists and media outlets, a series of events were set in motion to bring the dossier to the attention of a prominent U.S. senator, then to the director of the FBI, and, eventually, to the president of the United States.
How did they do it?
Did Steele—and whoever he was working with—decide that it was necessary to enlist someone with irrefutable political gravitas to take it to the highest level of the FBI and get those in charge to take it seriously? It looks like they did.
Because one week after the election, the first steps to accomplish this began.
Intrigue at the Halifax Conference
The Halifax International Security Conference in Nova Scotia, Canada, November 17–20, 2016, attracted dozens of anti-Trump diplomats, intelligence community leaders, anti-Russian activists, Ukraine militants, elected and appointed officials from around the world, as well as NATO officials, high-level U.S. military, ex-spies, and U.S. politicians.8 Almost everybody who participated had likely rooted for or voted for Hillary, and, looking over the list of attendees, the conference may have been scheduled two weeks after election day in order to celebrate her anticipated victory.
These folks were definitely not Trump’s people—they were horrified by his comments on NATO and dumbfounded by his comments on Russia and Putin.
The keynote speaker was Senator Tim Kane, Clinton’s nominee for vice president. Other American politicians attending were Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen—both diehard Hillary Clinton supporters.
But they had nothing to celebrate.
Donald Trump had changed everything on November 8. Hillary Clinton was over. Now the buzz was all about the new president-elect. One newspaper wrote that there was little doubt that “the delegates would speak about little else than the billionaire and his impact on foreign and defense policy.”9
That prediction became true in more ways than one.
While pro-Hillary participants consoled each other, sharing their shock at the election of Donald Trump, others worried about the likely policies of the new administration, particularly concerning NATO. Since its inception in 1949, NATO had provided a collective defense against Russian aggression aimed at the United States or Europe. But Trump had specifically criticized the unacceptably high cost of American involvement and called for changes at NATO,10 sending the participants at the Halifax conference—for whom the alliance was gospel—into a tizzy.
Trump was the big elephant in the room. Although none of the panel discussions focused specifically on the new Trump administration, the image of the incoming president did furnish a little fun. One of the workshops at the symposium reportedly put an empty stool on stage with a red hat on it bearing the logo make democracy great again, a jab at Trump’s signature baseball cap and its make america great again logo.11 (It seems unlikely that they were trying to make the point that Trump had been invited and turned them down. More likely, they were celebrating his absence and mocking his personal style and unabashed nationalism.)
Many of the delegates were trying to understand and predict what Trump’s foreign policies might be. Janice Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, said: “For them, whatever else they’re worrying about, top of mind right now, is what will Donald Trump’s foreign policy be? What will his security policy be? Will it be disruptive of the existing order?”12
A disruption of the existing order was exactly what they feared.
But while those questions dominated the public discussions among the delegates, a completely different agenda was playing out in private.
One of the most prominent attendees was Senator John McCain, a regular speaker at the Halifax conference each year. McCain made no secret of his utter contempt for Donald Trump.
Many might argue that he was entirely justified. During the presidential campaign, Trump cruelly disparaged McCain’s war record and time as a POW in Vietnam: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”13
McCain spent five and a half years as a POW, enduring constant torture and beatings after the plane he had been piloting was shot down by the North Vietnamese. He spent two years in solitary confinement. The injuries caused by his brutal torture permanently damaged his arms and legs.
Todd Purdum recounted this torture in a profile of McCain in Vanity Fair:
Despite the injuries he had already suffered, upon capture he was promptly bayoneted in the ankle and then beaten senseless. The North Vietnamese never set either of his broken arms. The only treatment of his broken knee involved cutting all the ligaments and cartilage, so that he never had more than 5 to 10 percent flexion during the entire time he was in prison.14
Offered early release in 1968, McCain refused to leave his fellow POWs behind. Then “his captors went at him again; he suffered cracked ribs, teeth broken off at the gum line, and torture with ropes that lashed his arms behind his back and that were progressively tightened all through the night.”15
For his bravery and service to his country, McCain earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Prisoner of War Medal.
Despite Trump’s insensitive and outrageous comments about McCain’s service, McCain initially supported him as the Republican nominee, but he publicly withdrew his support for Trump before election day, citing his vulgar comments about women.
So it was no secret that there was undisguised hostility between the two men.
At the Halifax conference, McCain further fueled that animosity by publicly challenging Trump. In his speech, he declared, “I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do. . . . We will not waterboard.” He threatened that anyone who sought to bring back that torture would find themselves in court “in a New York minute.”16
Them’s fighting words!
McCain Learns About the Dossier
It was at the Halifax conference that Sir Andrew Wood, a former UK ambassador to Russia, spoke to McCain and his associate David Kramer about the dossier. Soon after, a bizarre and clandestine scenario to eventually deliver a copy to McCain in Washington unfolded.
McCain had come to the conference already very concerned about where Putin was taking Russia and where Trump would lead America. A constant and forceful critic of the Russian regime, McCain was accompanied at the conference by David Kramer, the senior director for human rights at the McCain Institute for International Leadership and a respected former assistant secretary of state, who, like Senator McCain, is vehemently anti-Russian, pro-Ukraine, and pro-democracy. Also joining them was Kurt Volker, the equally respected former deputy assistant secretary of state and former U.S. permanent representative to NATO, who is the executive director of the McCain Institute. All three men are tireless advocates for the Ukraine—writing and speaking about the importance of a democratic Ukraine, the Russian menace in Crimea, and the Putin regime’s absence of any regard for human rights. Volker’s firm, BGR Group, has a $600,000 lobbying contract with the pro-Western Ukraine government.17 These men care passionately about the future of NATO and the preservation of Europe. And, given that, it would be natural for them to be horrified by Trump’s comments about Putin, NATO, and the Ukraine.
And Ukraine was certainly on the minds of the people at the Halifax conference and the private group discussing the dossier.
Sir Andrew was there as a panelist on the subject of “Maidan, Crimea, and the Obstacles to Democracy in Ukraine.” Maidan was, of course, the name of the famous square in Kiev where 104 protesters were brutally murdered in clashes with Ukrainian government security forces in February 2014. The protests were sparked by pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an EU association agreement and had endured for months.18
The dossier included allegations about Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who, as noted earlier, had been Yanukovych’s political consultant for years. Those charges no doubt interested the unabashedly pro-Ukrainian trio.
This was not the first meeting between Sir Andrew and David Kramer. Two and a half months earlier, Sir Andrew had been invited to help organize and speak at a conference put together by the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Tbilisi, Georgia, a former Soviet Republic. Among the issues listed for discussion at the conference were “democracy under attack and outlook for the region, the upcoming presidential elections in the United States.” No doubt there was plenty of discussion among the delegates about what a Trump presidency might mean for the region.19
We don’t know for sure whether the McCain–Sir Andrew meeting in Halifax was arranged beforehand, but it’s probably safe to assume that it was, given Steele’s efforts to get the attention of the FBI and the known antipathy of McCain and his associate to Trump’s policies.
Steele may not have been able to arrange the meeting himself. He admittedly operated “in the shadows” and might not have wanted to approach McCain directly.20 Unlike Sir Andrew, he did not participate in the anti-Russian, pro-Ukraine conference circuit. So he likely had turned to his colleague Sir Andrew to work it out. The existing collegial relationship between Sir Andrew, Kramer, and McCain made it easy. And the Halifax conference was the perfect time and place to talk to McCain.
The men discussed the dossier and Sir Andrew “arranged for Steele to meet Mr. Kramer as McCain’s representative to review the sixteen pre-election memoranda on a confidential basis.”21 A hard copy was to be delivered to the DC opposition research firm that had originally hired Steele. Fusion GPS would then deliver it to McCain, via Kramer—all done very hush-hush. It looked like the dossier was on its way to the FBI.
Undercover Operations to Get the Dossier Out
But it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. For reasons that are not at all obvious, things got complicated and convoluted.
And somewhat comical.
The story of how McCain eventually got a copy of the dossier was very close to a caricature of a scene from a James Bond movie. Kramer arranged to go to Heathrow on November 28, 2016, to meet Steele, and was instructed to look for a man reading a copy of the Financial Times.22 Once Kramer saw the man, they “engaged in an exchange of word code”23 to assure that they were the proper parties. (What a comment on the limited daily print circulation of the vaunted Financial Times that there would be only one man reading it at baggage claim in a major airport in Britain.)
Why the spook antics? Couldn’t McCain have easily gotten a copy of the dossier by email, fax, or DHL? What was the reason for all of the drama?
Was there some reason to carefully add layers of distance between McCain and the transfer? Why would that have been important?
Is it possible that Sir Andrew wanted to keep his distance from the dossier?
Sir Andrew claimed, erroneously, that the dossier had been “pretty much public” since the autumn. But it wasn’t.
Sir Andrew also insisted that he had nothing to do with getting the dossier to John McCain: “I would like to stress that I did not pass on any dossier to Senator McCain or anyone else and I did not see a dossier at the time.”24
He may not have actually handed the dossier to McCain physically, but media accounts and a sworn statement by Steele indicate that he was the one who arranged for Steele to give the document to Kramer.
It was Sir Andrew who arranged for him to meet Kramer in London. Otherwise, McCain would have never received the dossier. There’s no question that after they spoke, a covert James Bond–like scenario was put into place that led a trusted McCain associate to London to meet Steele and get the dossier for McCain.
Afterward, when his role became public, Senator McCain, too, was extremely circumspect about his involvement in the dossier project.
At first, McCain seemed to be trying to keep the British role confidential. The Guardian reported that he “was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state” and “dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source.”25 Sounds like military spook babble. What was going on here?
But then McCain denied that he had sent an emissary. “Media reports that I dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source of the information I received are false.”26
McCain suggested that he was just being a good citizen when he handed it over to the FBI:
“I did what any citizen should do, I received sensitive information, and then I handed it over to the proper agency of government and had nothing else to do with the issue.”27
But McCain had everything to do with the issue, because he personally brought it to the FBI.
But when asked on CNN why he thought that he had been given the dossier, he replied, “No idea.”28 Here’s a hint, Senator: It wasn’t for your reading pleasure.
But, of course, he did know exactly why it was given to him, and he went to great lengths to get it, probably hoping, all the while, to keep his role secret.
At first, McCain was apparently worried that any involvement he had with bringing the dossier to FBI attention might appear as simply a vindictive move against Trump. He may also have been loath to break so publicly with the newly elected president. After all, they were both Republicans. But, despite his reservations, McCain handed over the dossier to FBI director James Comey on December 9, 2016, six weeks before Trump would be sworn in.
Even as he did so, he confirmed his lack of knowledge about the dossier’s credibility.
Mission accomplished.
The story of how the dossier came to be published is as bizarre as its allegations.
Once McCain gave the dossier to Comey, as the Washington Post reported, “the nation’s top spies . . . faced an excruciatingly delicate question,” should they tell the president?29
As we reported earlier, they decided to tell President Obama by appending a two-page summary of the dossier to one of his regular intelligence briefings.
Why did they choose to do it? The spooks said they had no choice. “ ‘You’d be derelict if you didn’t’ mention the dossier, a U.S. official said. To ignore the file, produced by a private-sector security firm, would only make the supposed guardians of the nation’s secrets seem uninformed, officials said, adding that many were convinced that it was only a matter of time before someone decided to publish the material.”30 This response is certainly puzzling. Why would there be any obligation to pay attention to any document created outside U.S. intelligence agencies that could not be verified? Why would anyone be derelict in not releasing a completely unverified document?
While director of national intelligence James Clapper insisted that “The [intelligence community] has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable,” he said it had to be released anyway to give policy makers “the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”31
These protestations that the top spooks were protecting national interests are absurd. They had gone rogue. Anyone could see how bogus the dossier was after an hour of examination and a few phone calls.
Then, likely to assure that the dossier would, in fact, be leaked, the spooks sent it to the congressional leadership. They might as well have issued a press release.
The only purpose in releasing it was to embarrass, hobble, ensnare, and weaken Donald Trump as he prepared to take the oath of office.
It was as close to an assassination attempt as you can get without a gun or a knife.
To lend an appearance of fairness, Comey also privately briefed President-elect Trump about the dossier. Everything about the confidential briefing was leaked by officials in the Obama administration. NBC reported that “a senior U.S. official said that it was FBI Director James Comey himself who pulled Trump aside after the briefing and spoke with him one-on-one about the so-called ‘dossier.’ ”32
Donald’s reaction must have been something to see.
It didn’t take very long for the classified material to be leaked by rogue spooks, holdover Obama appointees, and congressional staff or members. CNN admitted that its sources in preparing the story about the dossier included “multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos.”33
Of course, the dossier spread like a gasoline fire all over the capital. Now there was a presidential imprimatur on a document so outlandish, phony, and fabricated that no journalist had dared publish it on his own. Christopher Steele’s wish had finally come true—the story did get out.
Liberal, left-wing publications, always eager for headlines, readers, and ratings, had refused to print the dossier in what was perhaps the most stellar—and unique—example of following the ethics they had been taught in journalism school.
If even these folks—who would print anything and stop at nothing—wouldn’t touch the dossier, what conceivable business did the FBI and the president have in letting it out and legitimizing it?
And so the dossier hung out there for months. It’s still out there, unrefuted, unquestioned, and unverified, for all to read about their new president. The fact that it is false seems not to have diminished its circulation in any way.
It is easy to understand why committed liberals and partisan Democrats would not flinch when it came to peddling dirt about a conservative Republican president. But why were a British ex-spy (and possibly current ones?), the directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and national intelligence, a former UK ambassador to Russia, and a U.S. senator so interested in doing so? Who, exactly, wanted it out there?