The Mechanics of Deception

Christopher Steele - the Black Hand

Much has been said and written about Christopher Steele’s authorship of the notorious document that alleges Russia-Trump collusion. According to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS (who plead the Fifth and only spoke through his lawyers), Steele was hired by them in June 2016 to gather information about “links between Russia and [then-presidential candidate] Donald Trump.” Pursuant to that business arrangement, Steele prepared a series of reports styled as intelligence briefings, some of which were later compiled into a collection of documents and published by a number of media outlets and later become known as the “Trump dossier.”

On the face of the dossier, it appears that Steele gathered his data from multiple sources in Russia, former Soviet union (FSU) countries, and the US. He then edited the raw intelligence—which seems to be a combination of conversations and notes—organized it in a summarized brief format, and published/leaked it in parts or in its entirety on a spiraling schedule.

Christopher Steele ClaimsTimeline
Image 1: The Dossier events and publication schedule

My initial impression reading the dossier was that the writing was sloppy and that it did not resemble an intelligence report. It exhibited multiple writing styles and writers, both English and non-English speakers, and it was assembled in haste. I also thought that in many ways, it paralleled the plot line of the Dreyfus Affair. As in the case of the “dossier” and the Bordereau from the Dreyfus case, the Trump dossier was presented as undeniable proof of collusion. Yet, it’s uncertain who composed it, how it was collected, or even if the document is genuine.

Just like its nineteen century French predecessor, the Trump dossier too had a powerful social and political impact in the US. Its content has dominated the news and has raised substantial questions about the rule of law, the political impartiality of senior federal career bureaucrats, and the true extent of the separation of powers in government.

Yaacov Apelbaum-Russia issues vs. Non-Russia issues
Russia vs. Non-Russia issues on MSNBC’s news coverage

Considering all of the dossier’s unusual aspects, I decided to take a little time and do a deeper dive into its structure and content. In this post, I’ll demonstrate how by using readily available OSINT tools and techniques, video analytics, and writing style analysis, we can pinpoint the likely sources, methods, and the individuals involved in the creation and distribution of this document.

I would like to apologize for the lengthy and somewhat overwhelming amount of detail in this write-up. Contrary to common belief, the truth is rarely concise, pure, and never simple. As Proverbs 1:2-7 implies, the acquisition of knowledge and understanding does require an investment of time and effort. in the spirit of full disclosure, I was not paid to produce this research and I am not affiliated with democratic or republican circles. My objective in writing this posting was to provide the layman reader not otherwise versed in intelligence gathering and analysis techniques with basic facts and insight so that they can form their own educated opinions on the matter.

The Dossier Team
Even after several testimonies and investigative reports, the composition of the dossier team is still shrouded in secrecy. When Glenn Simpson testified on November 8th and 14th in front of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he was vague and evasive about the names of the people that worked on the document and just said that he hired Steele, who then:

Use[d] his old contacts and farmed out other research to native Russian speakers who made phone calls on his behalf“.

Two of these “native Russian speakers” were subsequently identified as Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. But even after this revelation, there are still many unanswered questions about this team. For example, what was the organizational structure of their network? How and where was the raw intelligence collected, stored, and transmitted? Or, how was Steele, a private British national living in England able to so quickly and effectively reach top US politicians like McCain and Pelosi, publish through and get full backing from media outlets like Yahoo, NYT and WaPo, and gain access to senior officials at the State Department, the DOJ, and FBI?

Before we jump-in, let’s first review our dramatis personæ.


          Name

Title and Role

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Glenn Simpson

Co-founder Fusion GPS and husband of Mary Jacoby

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Mary Jacoby

Executive at Fusion GPS and wife of Glenn Simpson

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Peter Fritsch

Co-founder Fusion GPS

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Neil King Jr.

Principal at Fusion GPS and husband of Shailagh Murray

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Shailagh Murray

Wife of Neil King Jr. and Obama’s senior policy adviser

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Thomas Catan

Co-founder Fusion GPS, husband of Begona Cortina Segurola

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Begona Cortina

Reporter and wife of Tom Catan

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Chris Steele

Co-founder Orbis Business Intelligence

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Chris Burrows

Co-founder Orbis Business Intelligence

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Sir Andrew Wood

Former British Ambassador to Russia and an Orbis contractor

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Luke Harding

A Guardian reporter and a Hakluyt and Orbis contractor

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Sir Richard Dearlove

Former head of MI6, Steele’s boss, and advisor to Hakluyt

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Alexander Downer

Australian politician diplomat and board member at Hakluyt

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Stefan Halper

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and advisor to Hakluyt

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Jonathan Clarke

Former UK diplomat to US and the US representative of Hakluyt

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Edward Baumgartner

Co-founder of Edward Austin. Contractor at Orbis and Hakluyt

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Nellie Hauke Ohr

Russia intelligence specialist and wife of Bruce Ohr

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Bruce Genesoke Ohr

Associate Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ

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Jonathan Winer

State Department special diplomatic envoy

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Robert Otto

State Department leading Russia intelligence officer

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David Kramer

Assistant Secretary of State. Director at the McCain Institute

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Strobe Talbott

Former Deputy Secretary of State

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Cody Shearer

Clinton executive and author of ‘second’ Trump dossier

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Sidney Blumenthal

Clinton Campaign executive and a political coordinator

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Lisa Holtyn

Intelligence adviser & Russia expert DOJ Organized Crime Unit

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Victoria Nuland

Assistant Secretary of State, FBI-Steele meetings coordinator

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Scott Dworkin

Co-founder The Democratic Coalition, Biden’s media adviser

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Alexandra Chalupa

Democratic National Committee ethnic coordinator (for Ukraine)

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Natalia Budaeva

President the Free Russia Foundation

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Nadia McConnell

President U.S Ukraine Foundation. US deputy legislative affairs

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Melanne Verveer

Director Georgetown Institute, former Obama Ambassador

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Iryna Mazur

Program Director of Ukrainian Federation of America

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  Ilya Zaslavskiy

Head of Research at the Free Russia Foundation

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  Rinat Akhmetshin

Contractor of Fusion GPS present during Trump Tower meeting

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  Edward Lieberman

Rinat’s Attorney, employee of the Albright Stonebridge Group

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Evelyn Lieberman

Wife of Edward Lieberman, deputy chief of staff of the Clintons

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Perkns-Coie

US Law firm representing Clinton/DNC and funding Fusion GPS

Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS
Simpson is the public face of Fusion GPS. He was the prime contact for Perkins-Coie, the US law firm that paid for the dossier on behalf of the DNC, the Clinton presidential campaign, and several other financers. Simpson controlled and managed dossier contractors like Nellie Ohr, Edward Baumgartner, Chris Steele, and Chris Burrows. From his own testimony we know that he was the “architect of the research” and the first contributor to it. He graduated from George Washington University in 1986 with a degree in journalism. From 1989-1994 he worked as a reporter for Roll Call, where he met his wife Mary Jacoby, and then later at The Wall Street Journal 1995-2009.

Yaacov-Apelbaum----Simpson-and-Jacob[2]
Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby on Roll Call in 1994.

Simpson also held a number of consulting and freelance investigative positions including one in 2004 with the International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC).

Yaacov-Apelbaum---International-Asse
The 2004 IASC website and Glenn Simpson’s profile

In 2010 Simpson, his wife Mary Jacoby, Peter Fritsch, and Benjamin Schmidt formed Bean LLC, and gave it the trade name Fusion GPS. Shortly afterwards, Neil King Jr. and Tom Catan joined the team.

Fusion GPS Founding Team
(from left to right) Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, Peter Fritsch, Neil King, Tom Catan

According to the original Fusion GPS website (before its content was purged and replaced with a single generic paragraph):

“Fusion GPS brings to your project years of experience in collecting and sifting open source and proprietary intelligence”. They also claimed to have a “global network of contacts and a proven record for accuracy and professionalism and having a “high-level relationships in government and the media, legal, and policy communities”.

The statement about having a “global network” of resources and “high-level relationships in government” is interesting because Chris Steele makes this identical claim about his own company Orbis. Fusion GPS also prided itself on its team of experts that had special depth in matters of financial fraud and complex due diligence. Their value proposition was described as:

“Our work begins where routine surveys of public information leave off: we explore sources others overlook, as well as the complex human and cultural relationships crucial to investment decisions and performance”.

Fusion-GPS-2011_thumb4
Image 2:
Fusion GPS Website circa January 2011

Glenn Simpson Fusion GPS 2011 Peter Fritsch Fusion GPS 2011 Benjamin Schmidt Fusion GPS 2011 
Fusion GPS original founder biographies

The Fusion GPS mission statement was:

Based in Washington, DC, Fusion also stands at the crossroads of the regulatory, policymaking and enforcement communities increasingly important to the sound allocation of capital. We know the people on the front lines of issues related to trade, technology, natural resources and security. Our specialists can provide support in matters of regulatory compliance, asset recovery and market intelligence.

We have the ability to present information in powerful products written by a team of specialists trained in producing material for some of the most discerning readers in the world, including the President of the United States and the readers of The Wall Street Journal.

It is clear from Fusion GPS’s own materials that in 2011 and onwards that the company was already producing “products” in the form of commercial, financial, and political reports that were reaching the Oval Office and were being read by the president himself.

FusionGPS Website 2018
The stripped down version of the Fusion GPS website in 2018

By 2015, Fusion GPS had offices in Washington D.C., LA, and London with a headcount in excess of 22 individuals that included:

  1. Glenn Simpson
  2. Mary Jacoby
  3. Peter Fritsch
  4. Tom Catan
  5. Jason Felch
  6. Neil King Jr.
  7. David Michaels
  8. Taylor Sears
  9. Patrick Corcoran
  10. Laura Sego
  11. Jay Bagwell
  12. Erica Castro
  13. Jason Raymond
  14. Benjamin Schmidt
  15. Joshua Levy
  16. Jackie Flores
  17. David Ford
  18. Jason Schwartz

The political makeup of the team was exclusively democratic with many of the employees and interns having a strong political connection to the Clinton or Obama administrations. Jason Raymond, the Research Director, came from John Kerry’s press office and was affiliated with USAID; Laura Seago, a senior analyst, came from the Brennan Center for Justice and was also affiliated with USAID. It’s also noteworthy that the senior management had a documented history of misconduct and ethical-related issues. Glenn Simpson has a Profane Cursing and Public Intoxication conviction; Jason Felch, a former reporter and the managing partner of the LA office, was fired from the LA Times for deceitful reporting. He was also cheating on his wife on multiple occasions with his Occidental College investigative source. Tom Catan, his wife Begoña Segurola, and Peter Fritch were involved in vicious attacks and a character assassination campaign against a fellow reporter.

Jason Andrew Felch
Jason Felch, the Fusion GPS LA office Managing Partner and his routing data to one of his Occidental College escapades with the School’s sexual misconduct administrator

Christopher David Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence
Steele is ‘officially’ the primary author of the dossier and a second contributor after Simpson. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1986 with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. While at college, he wrote for the student newspaper Varsity. Steele was recruited by MI6 directly following his graduation. From 1987 to 1989, he worked in London at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), then from 1990 to 1993 at the UK Embassy in Moscow. Steele returned to London in 1993 and was posted to Paris in 1998. In 1999, his cover was blown when a media leak disclosed the identity of 116 MI6 agents.

In 2009, Steele and his fellow MI6-retiree Chris Burrows and Nicholas Butcher founded the private intelligence agency HL3299 Limited, later renamed Orbis Business Intelligence. In 2014, Steele and Burrows registered Walsingham Training, with Orbis being the majority controller.

In 2017, Steele and Burrows formed the holding company Chawton Holdings Limited and renamed “Walsingham Training” to “Walsingham Training Limited”, then renamed it again to “Walsingham Partners Limited”. The majority control of the company was then switched to Chawton Holdings.

Yaacov Apelbaum - Steele and Burrows LinkedIn Profiles
Image 3: Christopher Steele and Chris Burrows LinkedIn profiles

According to the Orbis website, the company draws on extensive experience at the boardroom level, in government, multilateral diplomacy, and international business to develop bespoke solutions for clients. In 2011 before the dossier affair blow up, they were also promoting their surveillance, psychological warfare expertise, and influence operations capabilities which included services such as:

  • Creating public opinion groundswells
  • Delivering targeted political media campaigns

Just like in the case of Fusion GPS, Orbis also claims to have a “global network of senior associates which is made up of regional, industry and academic experts, as well as prominent government and business figures, their expertise and a closed network of contacts worldwide”.

Orbis-2011_thumb3
Orbis Business Intelligence Website in 2011

Yaacov-Apelbaum---ORBIS-Business-Int
Image 4:
Orbis Business Intelligence Website 2018

The Orbis mission statement is:

“Our core strength is our ability to meld a high–level source network with a sophisticated investigative capability. We provide strategic advice, mount intelligence–gathering operations and conduct complex, often cross–border investigations.”

Unlike Orbis’ business pitch, Walsingham Training professed to deliver full logistic and tactical intelligence agency services.

“It’s a hostile world out there. Whether ‘out there’ is in the back streets of Kinshasa or negotiating around a table in New York, we understand this all too well. The same skills apply whether you are penetrating terrorist networks, winning over African warlords, or making nuanced corporate decisions in London or in frontier markets: you have to build a team you can trust, equip and then motivate to deliver. Fortunately, these skills can be learnt and honed so that they become second nature.

Walsingham Training delivers bespoke training programs for our clients based off our proprietary modules:

  • Targeting and crafting approaches to investors or potential clients using intelligence to spot opportunities, vulnerabilities and access points.
  • Instrumentality persuading people using a diplomatic and psychological skill set is an essential part of manipulating personal encounters to your own advantage.
  • Deployment High pressure, high stakes decision-making in complex environments like Russia and China as demonstrated by former senior diplomats.
  • Tradecraft Understanding and mitigating the cyber and physical risk posed by hostile states, criminals and companies.
  • Taking risks Identifying, quantifying and managing risks in developed and frontier markets to stay ahead of the competition compliantly.

Walsingham Training Website
Walsingham Training Website 2015

Orbis and Walsingham have an interesting association with a number of companies such as: PS21, the SETA Foundation, and Grace Electronics Limited. Grace Electronics for example, is a 40 year old PC and laptop distributer. The now hidden Orbis/Walsingham ICANN registry lists one Alex Buckland, an employee of Grace Electronics, as the website technical and administrative contact since 2009.

Registrant: Orbis Business Intelligence Limited
Domain name: ORBISBI.COM
Administrative Contact: Alex Buckland
Technical Contact: Alex Buckland
Email: alex@xxxxx.co.uk
Address: Crowthorne Enterprise Centre Old Wokingham Road Crowthorne,
Berkshire RG12 6AW GB
Phone:  +441344752626×0
Fax:       +441344777557

But according to Grace Electronics, they don’t provide any website support, development, nor management. Sounds like the IT equivalent of the Monty Python sketch about the cheese store that doesn’t sell any cheese.

Grace Electronics Ltd and Chris Steele Orbis and Alex Buckland Grace Electronics

Nellie Hauke Ohr
Ohr was the third contributor to the dossier. She earned a degree in history and Russian literature from Harvard-Radcliff 19821983 and MA and PhD in history from Stanford 1986-1990.

Nellie Ohr
Image 5:
Nellie Ohr

After graduation she worked for:

She spent some time in Russia during the 1990s and according to at least one source, had powerful political connections there. In her book Adventures in Russian Historical Research, Cathy Frierson writes: “Nellie encouraged me to call the Smolensk archive [the home of Russia’s historical state secrets] director, assuring me that he would welcome me.”

Edward Emil Baumgartner
Baumgartner was the forth contributor to the dossier. He is a British/French national. He earned his BA in history from Vassar College in 1995 and an MA in Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies from Harvard in 2000.

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Edward-Baumgartner[1]
Image 6:
Edward Baumgartner

Baumgartner Fusion GPS School
Baumgartner’s university track (source LinkedIn profile)

Baumgartner specializes in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). He started as an independent consultant in the FSU focusing on research and business intelligence. From 2002 to 2005, he was a Russia consultant at a London-based public relations company. His clients included Russian and Ukrainian government-owned and private organizations.

In 2008, Baumgartner founded the UK based political consultancy Baumgartner Limited. In 2010, together with Peat Austin Alexander, he co-founded the UK-based intelligence consulting firm Edward Austin.

The firm’s mission statement:

“With an established network spanning the FSU and beyond, Edward Austin serves clients in the private and public sectors worldwide. We are pan-FSU. Alongside extensive work in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine – the region’s three main economies – we have completed numerous projects on the ground in the wider Central Asia region (Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia), the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Belarus and Moldova. Reinforcing this is a global network of trusted partners, enabling us to undertake work across jurisdictions worldwide.”

Edward Austin and Chris Steele
Image 7:
Edward Austin Business Intelligence website

The Analysis: Methods and Tools
The data collection and analysis environment was based primarily on open source tools. I’ve also utilized several commercial packages to fill-in the gaps in the framework. The following are the solution components:

The Analysis: System Architecture

Trump Dossier OSINT Architecture

The Analysis: Data Sources
To identify the entities and build the dossier network I’ve used the following publically available sources (see above architecture diagram for more details):

  • Server and computer logs
  • Network scans and maps
  • Federal, state, media, and news archives
  • Email, forum, websites, blog, and message archives and backups
  • Publically accessible IoT devices and cams
  • On-line image and file depositaries
  • Social media postings by friends, neighbors, and family
  • LinkedIn profiles
  • Twitter profiles
  • FB profiles
  • Corporate and court filings
  • Commercial BR sources

The Analysis: Data Processing
The total data storage was about 7TB, the loading time for the data was about 6 hours, and the processing time (entity creation, enrichment, linkage, and anomaly detection) was about 36 hours. I also spent about 2 hours writing scripts to FR, LPR, and OCR some of the PDFs and images before they could be loaded into the database. The operation was executed on a Dell PowerEdge R630 server with a 4 x 4TB array of SSD Intel P4500 series drives, a quad Intel Xeon E5-4669 2.1GHz processor, and 64GB of RAM.

The following is a summary of the objects in the inventory database:

Object Type

Quantity

Comments

Facial Images

72,284

Used for Person of Interest (POI) searches

Company Logos

1306

Used for on-line searches

Emails 27,051 Individual emails
Linkages

80,190

Total number of individuals in the network

Gravatars

617

Used for on-line ecommerce activity

Avatars

4564

Images used in lieu of photos

Icons 71,388 Icons used in SM and other platforms

Image Patterns

43

Used to general entity searches

Classified graphic objects

12,591

Conference tags, name tags, business cards, etc.

Cars

11,914

License plate, made, and model

General images

270,855

General photographs containing geo tagged data

Sound files

180

Recordings of speeches and interviews

Video Files

823

Video of interviews and presentations

Writing samples

112

Assays, dissertations, articles, book reviews, etc.

For the image processing I’ve used an ML based object classifier to detect and track items such as social media avatars, gravatars, icons, and logos.

Martha Ohr FB Avatar   Grace Electronics Ltd. Logo  image_thumb  Nellie-Hauke-Ohr-Shirt-Pattern_thumb  Walsingham Training Logo
An example of a Facebook avatar, company logos, and patterns used in image object searches

Grace Electronics Ltd-1 Grace Electronics Ltd-3 Grace Electronics Ltd-2
An example of pattern match search results for a Grace Electronics Limited logo

In order to conduct face recognition (FR) on persons of interest (POI), I’ve digitized and reconstructed the portraits of all key dossier team members. These digital portraits where then used to perform recursive on-line searches to discover and catalog the identity of additional individual in the proximity of the POI.

The Trump Dossier Cast of Characters
A sampling of digitized and indexed faces from a 72,284 POI database used for face recognition, image searches, and linkage analysis. Each POI has a number of composite images with aging and weight gain/loss variation.

In addition to the automated linkage and entity identification generated by the system, I’ve also used manual searches utilizing FR, keywords (both literal and keyword Insight based), and object searches. This was done to review anomalies (e.g. same individual that is using two completely different names) and help seed the system with quality entry data. The following are a few illustrations of various search methods and their results.

Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr SM FR matches
FR matches for keyword searches “Nellie+Bruce Ohr” and “Martha Ohr+EKM” and example of one 2 degree network linkage to the ABC News anchor Jeremy Hubbard and his reporter wife Taunia Hottman and their SM Russia collusion and anti-Trump activity

Book

Title

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Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker

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The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill

by Greg Mitchell

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Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs

by Sheila Canby, Deniz Beyazit

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The Worlds of Russian Village Women: Tradition, Transgression, Compromise

by Laura J. Olson, Svetlana Adonyeva

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Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul

by Charles King

clip_image014[6]_thumb

Dans Les Forets De Siberie (French Edition)

by Sylvain Tesson

clip_image016[6]_thumb

ZeroZeroZero: Look at Cocaine and All You See Is Powder. Look Through Cocaine and You See the World.

by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss

clip_image018[6]_thumb

How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People

by Sudhir Hazareesingh

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Boris Mikhailov: Tea Coffee Capuccino

by Boris Mikhailov

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Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile

by Jehanne M Gheith, Katherine R. Jolluck

clip_image024_thumb

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

by Peter Sís

Sampling of Nellie and Bruce Ohr’s reading list recovered from the alias “The Jester”, one of several aliases used by the Ohrs for on-line purchases

Nellie and Bruce Ohr FR and Pattern Matching
An example of search results using FR + the shirt pattern “HF” and the resulting 2 degree linkage for the search “NHO+BGH+MPO” (Nellie Hauke Ohr, Bruce Genesoke Ohr, Michael P Ohr)

XRVision - Third degree linkage
An example of a 3 degree FR and pattern match linkage results for “MarthaPoliwag” (Martha Ohr’s FB avatar)

Yaacov Apelbaum - Martha Ohr's and Martin's media Network Linkage
An example of search results using “MarthaPoliwag” (Martha Ohr’s FB avatar) and the linkage to over 40 news outlets, dossier content creators, and reporters

Yaacov Apelbaum - Example of Martha Ohr's and Martin's Media Network Postings
An example of collusion and dossier related content created and distributed through Martha Ohr’s social network. Metadata on many of the images indicates that they were produced in a commercial studio environment during business hours

Yaacov Apelbaum - Mary Jacoby FR Matches
An example of FR matches for Mary Jacoby in on-line image and media searches

Yaacov Apelbaum - FR Match on Simpson and Jacoby Roll Call 1994
An example of FR matches for Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby in on-line media searches

Yaacov Apelbaum - Jacoby Identity verificaiton Imagery Match
An example of image object classifier used for entity enrichment (address verification) for Mary Jacoby

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Grace-Electronic-L[1]
An example of image object classifier used for entity enrichment (address verification) for Grace Electronics Limited

Car Make Model Address and VIn Detection
An example of image object classifier used to detect “car make and model” and fusion of DMV data for the enrichment (address and name verification) of an Open Source Works entity

Kieran Porter Orbis and Walsingham Training
An example of search results using FR + Walsingham Training logo + some keyword insights for the validation and enrichment of Kieran Porter, an analyst with Walsingham Training

Sam Stainer Fusion GPS Linkage
An example of multi-element identification using FR +  University of Southampton Logo + the keyword “Orbis Business Intelligence” for the enrichment of Sam Stainer, an analyst with Orbis Business Intelligence Limited.

The enrichment yielded the following:

  1. Retrieval of his image and the facial indexing of his entire social network
  2. Geospatial data for his network including: residence, travel patterns, family events, and vacation locations
  3. Social network linkage
  4. Professional network linkage
  5. Anomalies such as association with drug use, firearms, deviance, etc.

Jim Goldgeier Linkage
An example of search using FR + the string search “Ohr+Murray” and the resulting Jim Goldgeier linkage to the Ohrs, Shailagh Murray, and Neil King Jr.

In the pre-data processing operation, I’ve used a number of scrubbing algorithms like cleansing, parsing, name standardization, and shingling in order to account for variation in name spelling, different home addresses, and multiple phone numbers. This insured that we would get the most accurate entity linkage, match, rate, and entity details. The process flow below illustrates how a company name and address are processed to insure that any permutation and variation in the name would be accounted for in the on-line searches.

Cleansing Parsing and Standardization
Sample of cleansing, parsing, standardization, and permutation generation process flow for word and phrase linkage processing

Also, the identification of the strongest relationships between entity names was based on several proximity calculations. In the example below, the relationship between “Mary Jacoby” and “Glenn Simpson” is determined by a number of known linkage points.

  ID

Entity Name

Glenn R  Simpson

Glenn
Simpson

Glenn Richard Simpson

   1

Mary Jacoby

17

94

4

   2

Mary Simpson

11

8

2

   3

Mary Barston Jacoby

3

7

4

   4

Mary B Jacoby Simpson

2

4

0

   5

Mary J Simpson

0

5

0

   6

Mary G Simpson

1

8

0

   7

Mary Jacoby Simpson

3

4

1

All entities were crossed correlated with multiple public registries and databases such as sex offender, criminal, and civil records, DMV, and real-estate registries. As can be seen from the example below Glenn Simpson matched in multiple categories and jurisdictions.

  ID

Glenn Simpson’s Criminal Record

1

Offense

Public Cursing & Drunkenness

Date of offense

07/15/2007

Location

Virginia

Court case

107GC0700300000

Driver License Match

Court date

09/04/2007

Court disposition

Guilty

Court level

Misdemeanor

2

Offense

Speeding

Date of Offense

06/11/2001

Location

Virginia

Court Case

183GT0100782600

License Plate Match

Court Date

09/17/2001

Court Disposition

Guilty

Court Level

Fine and points

3

Court Case

4Y66190849

License Plate Match

4

Court Case

8101997CR 004383

License Plate Match

I’ve also taken into account the possibility that some of the entities did not want to be identified and were utilizing countermeasures like false portrait images, names, addresses, and fictitious registration in order to disguise their location and relationships (a technique used by almost every dossier affiliated team member). Any such linkage anomaly mismatch was flagged and verified manually. For example, Mary Jacoby who according to her professional profile is typically associated with…

Organization:  Fusion GPS, IASC, GIR, WSJ, Roll Call, Main Justice
Job category: Journalism, Investigative Reporting, and Media Production

…generated an anomaly when her affiliation changed to:

Organization: Spring Hill College
Job category: Benefits Specialist Human Resources

Glenn Simpson detection countermeasure
An example of linkage anomaly detection (items marked in red) showing that Glenn Simpson or other individual is creating fictitious personas on social media and via bogus professional registrations to evade detection in on-line searches, (i.e. his new vocation is computer HW professional, mental health worker, admin at a bank, and an RV travel blogger).

Logo

Yaacov Apelbaum - Grace Electronics Ltd. Logo

Yaacov Apelbaum - Grace Electronics Ltd. Logo

Yaacov Apelbaum - Grace Electronics Ltd. Logo

Yaacov Apelbaum - Grace Electronics Ltd. Logo

Location

Yateley United Kingdom

FL USA

AL USA

MA USA

Entity

Grace Electronics Limited

Sandy Dias

Jan Neuendorf

Tim Hayes

Profile

distributes PCs, components, peripherals, and computer software to business customers. Its distribution portfolio includes cables, card readers, cases, coolers and fans, CPUs, enclosures and caddies, genius [sic] products, graphics cards, hard drives, keyboards, laptops and accessories, media products, desktop/flash/laptop memory products, mice, monitors, motherboards, wired/wireless networking equipment, optical products, PCs, peripherals, printers, PSUs, software products, and tablets, as well as sound cards, speakers, and headsets. The company sells products through its online store.

Aviation Technician

Engineering Management

Aviation Technician

An example of linkage anomaly detection showing profile and keyword mismatches between what Grace Electronics Limited claims to do and what its employees are actually doing.

Evan Perez CNN FR1 Yaacov Apelbaum - Evan Perez FR2 Yaacov Apelbaum - Evan Perez FR3
An example of face digitization of Evan Perez used in image searches and linkage and FR matches for Evan Perez in on-line and media searches and his network linkage including his cousin Joseph Aguilar, a British, Belize, and a naturalized US national who is working for the Federal government and posting veiled references to political assassination

 Evan Perez Fusion GPS FR

Stefan Halper US Goverment Payment for Services
An example of identity confirmation using FR and OCR for Stefan Halper’s multiple US Government payment records for “Special Studies/Analysis” services

Dr. Lezlee Brown Halper
An example of entity extraction using face recognition + OCR to build the Halper family and business networks. Of note is that in addition to Stefan Halper’s multi-million dollar Pentagon contracts, both, Dr. Elisabeth Halper and Dr. Lezlee Brown (daughter) also maintained similar engagements

To determine the network graph of people, companies, and content (Image 8), I’ve used these seven entity relationships rules:

  1. Place and time affiliation
  2. Share the same professional, educational, family, or recreational circles
  3. Have a marital, teacher-student, parent-child, or employee-employer relationship
  4. Demonstrate a known public association (i.e. belong to the same social network)
  5. Communicate with each other via email, phone, text, blog comments, etc.
  6. Work for the same company or organization
  7. Confirm a relationship via a statement or testimony

I’ve limited the input/output to two degrees of separation between entities and organizations. However, I did use a three degrees of separation linkage several times in order to trace indirect relations between what on the surface appeared to be random groupings of individuals (e.g. the five person party listed with the same UID U99520 accompanying Mary Jacoby during her April 19 White House visit).

Trump Dossier Network Phone Log Analysis Trump Dossier Network Persons Analysis
Image 8:
Examples of two user linkage profiles using phone numbers and personal history

The Dossier Network
The network graph analysis indicates that the fellowship of the dossier is a close-knit group; everyone knew each other long before embarking on the quest to find the alleged Russian collusion. All of the project key players are related through marriage, family relations, or work affiliations. As can be seen in images 9-10, this team collaborated in various member configurations on many other ‘dossier projects’ and utilized the same collection methods, materials, resources, political network, and publication channels. Some of these relationships go back more than 30 years.

The Trump Dossier Network
Image 9:
The Dossier Network, the actors, entities, and their roles

These relationships between the team members transcended their changing places of employment and job titles. The following is a short sampling of the dossier network linkage results:

Christopher Steele knew Sir Andrew Wood from his days at the UK Diplomatic Service since 1986. In 2013, Wood had a paid consulting gig with Orbis. Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 who promoted the Dossier in UK, Australian, Canadian, and US government circles was Steele’s boss in MI6. Steele knew and worked with Paoblo Miller in MI6 since 1994 and Luke Harding from The Guardian since 1996; Harding and Miller were also Orbis and Hakluyt contractors since 2009.

Steele and Chris Burrows worked with Stefan Halper as early as 2005. Steele knew Jonathan Clarke from his days in MI6 and communicated and met him in the US. Burrows knew and communicated with Joseph Mifsud since 2010. Edward Baumgartner had been contracting with Orbis and Hakluyt since 2011. Steele and Burrows knew and worked with Nigel Inkster from MI6 for over twenty years. They continued to work with him when he joined IISS and PS21. Inkster was also Sir Richard Dearlove’s deputy in SIS.

Orbis hired US nationals that previously held US government positions. For example, Tatianna (Tatyana) Duran, an Orbis Senior Intelligence Analyst, previously worked for the US State Department and had a US government “Secret” security clearance. On October 11, 2016, Duran accompanied Steele to a senior State department ‘urgent’ dossier meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Kavalec. Duran and Nigal Inkster worked together at PS21 and with Ilya Zaslavskiy at the Chatham House.

Orbis Business Intelligence Employees
An example of Tatianna (Tatyana) Duran, one of the Orbis employees, and her linkages using FR and keyword searches such as: “Orbis”, “PS21”, and “Chatham House”

Chris Burrows exchanged dossier related emails with Nicholas Fishwick, the former director of PGI and an MI6 officer, and with Stefan Halper who consulted for Hakluyt, a private UK intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS and Orbis Business Intelligence.

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Stef Halper <random618@xxxxxxxxxx.com>

Date:

Fri, 27 October 2017 17:14:43 -0400

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multipart/mixed; boundary=”———————8a8eec3c2c21558e9eb84a45907f9d6a”

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Chris Burrows <chrisburrows@orbisbi.com>

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<BtIDrwtpFlsE2o1vykBUmyjhn1y5G1s6t4mb3TPT9Cy-ZHN2HUGraVd-wHzPYaYIjesxE_-cAWbnlGLlWZwVKYKWwT9PUu7n5Yl91xFvClI=@xxxxxxxxxx.com>

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Steele and Burrows had a long term working relationship with several other semi-active British foreign office individuals like, Charles Crawford, a former UK ambassador to South Africa, who was stationed with Steele in Moscow in 1993 and Raymond Asquith, a former British diplomat to Russia in 2009.

Steele’s and Burrows’s professional network and email communications also include multiple active and retired British intelligence officers like Claire Smith, a member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee who Steele knew from their joint work in Afghanistan. Steele met with Sir Richard Dearlove in person and communicated with him via email and text messaging in March 2016 and onwards regarding the dossier.

Stefan Halper Hakluyt and Chris Steele
Halper, Clarke, Downer, Smith, Dearlove, Crawford, Lobban, MI6, LAD, and Hakluyt Linkage

Steele worked with the FBI as early as 2010 on the FIFA investigation. In 2016, he met them several times including at two meetings with agent Michael Gaeta, a leading FBI ‘Russia corruption expert’, in Rome and in London to discuss the dossier. Gaeta coordinated and got clearance for these meetings from Victoria Nuland at the State Department. Gaeta was the FBI case officer in Europe and communicated and was one of the “handlers” of Orbis, Stefan Halper, and the Hakluyt dossier assets.

FBI Agent Michael Gaeta and Chris Steele
Michael Gaeta Linkage to US embassy in Rome and dossier related activity

Agent Michael Gaeta’s Biography

Michael Gaeta began his FBI career in 1996 in the New York Field Office where he investigated and supervised La Cosa Nostra organized crime cases for thirteen years. In 2009, Mr. Gaeta became the supervisory special agent for the Eurasian Organized Crime squad. Under his direction, the Eurasian Organized Crime squad aggressively addressed the Eurasian Organized Crime threat and engaged with domestic and international law enforcement partners to advance cases and develop and share intelligence. The squad had scores of successful indictments in high profile cases that indicted fraud amounts over $400 million (USD) and indicted laundered amounts over $200 million (USD) during his tenure. Mr. Gaeta joined the FBI’s Legal Attaché Office in Rome as the Assistant Legal Attaché in May 2014. Prior to working for the FBI, Mr. Gaeta practiced law in New York City.

Baumgartner, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, and David Kramer are all Harvard alumni. Nellie Ohr knew Stefan Halper since at least 2000. Nellie Ohr also worked in the MITRE Corporation with Halper’s son Marin Halper for six years from 2002-2008.

Marin Halper and Nellie Ohr Mitre Corporation
Example of Linkage based on MITRE company name and logo, address, and phone number for Stefan Halper, Marin Halper, and Nellie Ohr

Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, and Baumgartner all attended Vassar College. Nellie Ohr and Baumgartner were together at the History department at Vassar between 1991-1995, where Baumgartner was her student.

Between 2008-2014, Ohr worked for Open Source Works and Plessas Experts Network, a company specializing in OSINT. The company had a contract to provide OSINT development and training for the US Intelligence community (IC). Both, Nellie and Kirby Plessas, the owner of the company knew each other since at least 2008. Both also communicated with each other and with Dale Walter, the director of Open Source Works using email accounts on @open-source-works.org email system.

Nellie Ohr Kirby Plessas Dale Walter
Nellie Ohr, Kirby Plessas, Plessas Experts Network, and Open Source Works linkages

Tom Catan, knew and worked with Steele, Harding, Burrows, and Baumgartner since 2011. Catan’s wife Begoña Segurola and Fritch’s former wife Beatriz “Bea” Hidalgo are from Spain/Mexico and the two families have known each other for over 30 years.

Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby knew Bruce and Nellie Ohr from their days at the International Assessment and Strategy Center as early as 2004. Simpson and Jacoby knew and worked with Stefan Halper at the WSJ since 1996. They also knew Steele from their days at the WSJ going back to 2009.

Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby, founded Main Justice in 2009, a company specializing in paid corruption research and reporting. She has been the Chief Executive at Fusion GPS since 2010. Jacoby also worked as a reporter for organizations such as GIR, and Law Business Research (which purchased Main Justice in 2015). While at Main Justice, she worked with Bruce Ohr and in fact nominated his FIFA investigation for the GIR Anti-Corruption award.

Yaacov Apelbaum - Mary Jacoby and Bruce Ohr FIFA Investigation

As can be gleaned from Main Justice’s mission statement below, Mary and her merry band of for rent corruption fighters were assembling and selling opposition research and dossiers as early as 2009.

Just Anti-Corruption -- Graft, The FCPA and ComplianceMain Justice and our subscription-only site, Just Anti-Corruption, services top law firms and corporate counsel, business leaders of Fortune 500 companies, U.S. Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. It offers on-demand research tools, published analysis from leading practitioners, access to a preparatory searchable FCPA (The Foreign Corrupt Practice) database with links to public documents and associated news stories. We also provide profile guides,  high powered VIP networking events, and the highest insight and intelligence reports.”

While working in Main Justice, GIR, Law Business Research, and the WSJ, Jacoby cultivated a large network of key Federal (FBI, SEC, and DOJ) executives that included notables such as Adam Hickey, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the DOJ who was familiar with the dossier and the FISA application and Andrew Weissmann, the Chief of the DOJ’s criminal fraud section, who is now working for Robert Mueller the Special Counsel investigating the alleged Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and leading the Manafort prosecution.

Chris Lazzaro - FreedomFilmLLC.com Yaacov Apelbaum - Andrew Weissmann DOJ and Mary Jacoby
Adam Hickey and Andrew Weissmann presenting in one of several GIR events

Jacoby also facilitated special recognition awards for ‘strategically’ placed attorneys such as Leila Babaeva, a Russian speaking attorney who is now working at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit at the DOJ and Kathryn Cameron Atkinson, the wife of Michael Atkinson, the next likely candidate for the position of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

Leila Babaeva Fraud Section DOJ

Kathryn Atkinson and Leila Babaeva GIR Awards 2015

2015 GIR Awards FR Overview
Mary Jacoby, Leila Babaeva, and Kathryn Cameron Atkinson at the 2015 GIR Awards

Jacoby knew and worked with Christopher Steele, Nellie Ohr, Peter Strzok and his wife Melissa Hodgman—the Associate Director in SEC Enforcement Division, Peter Fritsch, Neil King Jr. and his wife Shailagh Murray, David Kramer, Jonathan Winer, and Sidney Blumenthal who worked with her at Salon in 2004.

Sidney Blumenthal’s network is noteworthy because his email address book contains many of the dossier characters including Jacoby, Simpson, Winer, and others. It also contains most of the journalist involved in the ‘favorable’ dossier coverage. For example his friendly reporter count includes:

#

News Outlet

Number of dossier related communications

1

The Guardian

49

2

New Yorker

16

3

New York Times

50

4

Washington Post

60

A sampling of Blumenthal’s first 20 contacts (out of over 4000) shows an over 96% linkage to anti-Trump publications, most of these are from leading mainstream media sources.

#

Name

Articles

1

Abbe Lowell

Legal precedent clears Clinton

2

Adam Goodheart

Regime Change in Charlottesville

3

Adam Gopnik

Trump’s Radical Anti-Americanism

4

Al From

The New Democrats and the Return to Power

5

Al Gore

I tried my best, but Trump can’t be educated

6

Alan Rusbridger

Trump has gone totally off the rails

7

Alex Gibney

Every business Trump touched withered and died

8

Alex Goldfarb

How Russia Helped Trump Win

9

Anatol Lieven

Why Trump Is Right on Russia

10

Andrew Shapiro

Thank you Hillary!

11

Ann Pincus

Donald Trump, propagandist-in-chief?

12

Anna Stein

Lure of Greatness

13

Anthony Barnett

Open Democracy

14

Anthony Weiner

Trump “F*ckface Von Clownstick

15

Arianna Huffington

Wake Up Call To The Establishment

16

Arnaud de Borchgrave

Washington Times – The Trump Archives

17

Art Levine

Impossible to believe that Donald Trump can win

18

Arturo Valenzuela

Meet the Obama Holdovers

19

Aviva Kempner

Antidote to Donald Trump

20

Becky Gardner

Trump directed his son to lie about meeting Russian Intel

On April 19, 2016, two months before the content of the dossier was leaked to the media, Jacoby spent a few hours in the White House in the company of the following five seemingly unrelated individuals:

#

Name

Vocation

Relevant Relatives

1

Scott C. Auerbach

Attorney

Wife –  Former Miami New Times Editor

2

Ian G. Bregg

Researcher

Wife –  An Attorney

3

Amy L. Bower

Attorney-DHS

Husband – An Attorney

4

Mary C. Jacoby

Reporter

Husband – Co founder of Fusion GPS

5

Laura K. Kwedar (Minch)

Researcher

Husband – An Attorney with Koch Institute

6

Eileen T. Zamkov

State Department

Former Diplomat

A second degree linkage analysis revealed that despite what appears to be a random group of tourists, these six individuals were in fact related to the dossier team through:

  • Involvement in the Clinton Campaign
  • Direct contact with the core and auxiliary Fusion GPS team via email communications
  • Work at the State Department
  • Participation in news production and reporting
  • Had HLS and government legal services positions

It is interesting that all of the six members of this group’s home and office address are clustered within 4 miles of each other, (see below), and that most attempted to scrub (not always successfully) their online presence and 2016 SM activity. Another interesting observation is that in two cases, it is the spouse of the individual on the list that was the link to the dossier team.

Yaacov Apelbaum-Mary Jacoby Visit to White House

Yaacov Apelbaum - Mary Jacoby 6 White House Visitor Addresses

In 2007, Simpson and his wife, Jacoby, authored an article entitled: “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington”. This mercenary form of journalism promoted the specific political interests of one Ukrainian faction and alleged that prominent Republican politicians provided US business access to Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Putin. One such friend was Viktor Yanukovich who become president of Ukraine in 2010. According to the article, Yanukovich’s facilitator in the US was Paul Manafort. Manafort figures prominently throughout the article and later in the dossier.

Keeping in mind Simpson’s and Jacoby’s paid interest in Manafort and Yanukovich, it is important to note that Rinat Akhmetshin, the facilitator of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, plays house with one Lyudmila Vereshchagina—a Ukrainian national with ties to FISU who has been living in the US since 2008. Both Akhmetshin and Vereshchagina knew and communicated with Simpson, Jacoby, and Alexandra Chalupa (the junkyard dog of the DNC) and were involved in the organization of anti-Putin/Yanukovich/Trump activity across the US.

Akhmetshin is a former Russian GRU counter intelligence officer who in 1994 arrived penniless in the US. Then, over a period of twenty years, he amassed a fortune working for a number of US federal agencies as a Eurasian ‘source’ and a setup artist.

Rinat Akhmetshin Russian Army Training
Rinat Akhmetshin in the Russian army circa 1985

Rinat Akhmetshin’s lawyer/partner was Edward Lieberman, who concurrently worked for the Albright Stonebridge Group and used the Liebermane@xxx.coudert.com email account. Both, Akhmetshin and Lieberman traveled together on Amtrak to New York on June 9, 2016, the day of the Trump Tower meeting. Afterwards, Akhmetshin, Lieberman, and Veselnitskaya spent the evening together in the theater watching Akhmetshin’s niece perform.

Of note is Lieberman’s employment with the The Albright Stonebridge Group, which is a “Commercial Diplomacy” firm in Washington D.C. that is heavily involved with Ukrainian politics and lobbying activity in the US. Even more noteworthy linkage, is Edward Lieberman’s now deceased wife, Evelyn Lieberman’s senior affiliation with the Clintons, Madeleine Albright and Joseph Biden. The following short bio illustrates her political R&R from 1988-2015.

Evelyn Lieberman’s Political Bio
2002–2015: Director of communications and external affairs, Smithsonian Institution
1999–2001: Under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, for Madeleine Albright
1997–1999: Director of Voice of America
1996–1997: White House deputy chief of staff and assistant Bill Clinton
1994–1996: White House deputy press secretary for operations Bill Clinton
1993–1994: Assistant to the chief of staff in the Office of Hillary Clinton
1988–1993: (5 years) Press secretary for Senator Joseph Biden

The Mysterious Edward Harris Lieberman
Edward Lieberman Rinat Akhmetshin’s attorney, his wife Evelyn Lieberman Simonowitz political network, his linkage to the Albright Stonebridge Group and Madeleine Albright.

Rinat Akhmetshin’s spouse, Vereshchagina, was part of Natalie Budaeva Arno’s and Alexandra Chalupa’s social and professional network (Natalia Budaeva Arno ‘surveilled’ Veselnitskaya while she was in the US in June 2016). All three were also posting a large volume of anti-Trump and Russia collusion content as early as July 2016.

Rinat Akhmetshin Lyudmila Vereshchagina
Rinat Akhmetshin and his wife Lyudmila Vereshchagina’s linkage and examples of their Ukrainian anti-Putin, anti-Yanukvich, and anti-Trump network activity

Alexandra Chalupa and Trump Dossier
Alexandra Chalupa’s and Iryna Mazur’s linkage and examples of their anti-Trump network activity as early as March 2016

Natalia Budaeva Surveillance Network
Natalia Budaeva Arno’s (Alexandra Chalupa’s associate) surveillance of Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin. Budaeva’s linkage and examples of her anti-Trump network activity

The Flight of the Red Sparrow
Natalia Budaeva Arno’s flight of the Red Sparrow and her “Lieu-tellen, you sexy man” husband Michael Arno, of Arno Political Consultants

The Trump Dossier The Ukraine Connection
Natalia Budaeva Arno’s and Ilya Zaslavskiy’s pro-Ukraine ‘Free Russia Foundation’ political network in the US, their UK Chatham House linkage, and examples of their pre/post election anti-Trump activity. Ilya Zaslavskiy’s girlfriend, Victoria Korovatykh, works for the Hudson Institute as a graphic designer and is the source of some of the content.

Ilya Zaslavskiy Iryna Mazur and David Kramer
Ilya Zaslavskiy’s pro-Ukraine ‘Free Russia Foundation’ and Iryna Mazur’s ‘US Ukraine Business Council’ close collaboration with the Atlantic Council, John Herbst, David Kramer from the McCain Institute, and ambassador William Taylor

Alexandra Chalupa Sheikh Mansure Chechen Battalion
Alexandra Chalupa’s, Iryna Mazur’s, and Nancy Pelosi’s 2 degree linkage to the Sheikh Mansure Chechen Battalion fighting in Ukraine. Some of the rifles, scopes in the images are ITAR controlled.

The NGO Profile of a Jihadi Cell
Second degree linkage showing Niyara Mamutova and the profile of one of several Ukrainian jihadi NGOs which are a front for the Turkish intelligence

MOD USAID Roman Woronowycz and Ivanna Voronovych
Ivanna Voronovych and Roman Woronowycz Ukraine and US political network linkage and Ivanna’s Cinderella transformation from a Kiev party girl to Nancy Peloci’s legislative aide intern

Yaroslav Brisiuck and the Ukraine Influence Network in the US
Yaroslav Brisiuck’s Influence Network 2015-2016

Robert Otto State Department briefing on Russian militery activity in the Ukraine
An example of Ukrainian Intelligence sharing with Robert Otto, the State Department’s foremost intelligence expert on Russia and a Victoria Nuland’s subordinate

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From

Robert Otto <robertotto25@xxxxx.com>

Date

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Subject

St Princess Olga: Novaya on Sechin, His New Wife and the Luxurious Yacht (and we only just had a hit on his alleged palace…….)

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Apple Mail (2.2104)

An example of Robert Otto forwarding emails from his personal Gmail account to his State Department email account regarding Igor Suchin’s wife and house

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<0F8F19AFC4C52A448230340AD24F36DF015098E0@HER-LN-EX1v.HCML.hermitagefund.com>

Date

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 09:05:18 -0400

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Subject

Fwd: FW: veselnitskaya house

From

Kyle Parker <kyle@xxxxxxxxxx.net>

To

Robert Otto robertotto25@xxxxx.com

Robert Otto Russian Intel and Nellie Ohr
An example of Robert Otto getting and circulating intelligence via his private email accounts on Igor Sechin’s former wife Olga Rozhkova and imagery of Natalia Veselnitskaya home, which was collected three days (June 6, 2016) before she arrived to the US for the Trump Tower meeting on June 9th, 2016. Yelena Patyutko, another red sparrow who is a western intelligence asset is seen babysitting Olga Rozhkova.

Additionally, Robert Otto was sending and receiving updates from multiple sources such as, Nellie Ohr, David Kramer, Kyle Wilson, Andrew Wood, Richard Dearlove, and Michael Weiss, a CNN Investigative reporter for International Affairs, who was tracking and updating him on Veselnitskaya social media activity.

Alexandra Chalupa and Melanne Verveer Ukraine Political Network
Alexandra Chalupa, Melanne Verveer, and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur’s Ukraine linkages

Alexandra Chalupa, Iryna Mazur, Natalia Budaeva, Ilya Zaslavskiy, Melanne Verveer, Nadia  McConnell, and Lyudmila Vereshchagina US political linkage to the following organizations:

#

Logo

Name

1

clip_image002[10]_thumb

Ukrainian Federation of America

2

clip_image004[10]_thumb

Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations

3

clip_image006[10]_thumb

New Ukrainian Wave

4

clip_image008[10]_thumb

Razom for Ukraine

5

clip_image010[10]_thumb

Studena NGO

6

clip_image012[10]_thumb

US Ukranion Fundation

7

clip_image014[10]_thumb

Free Russia Foundation

8

clip_image016[4]_thumb

Ukrainian Congress Committee of America

Jonathan Winer from the State Department knew Steele from mid-2000s. Winer also knew and worked with Glenn Simpson and Douglas Farah, his partner at IASC in 2004. Winer and Farah even cross endorsed each other on their LinkedIn profiles.

Yaacov Apelbaum - Glenn Simpson-Douglas Farah-Jonathan Winer  Yaacov Apelbaum - Jonathan Winer
Jonathan Winer and Glenn Simpson and Douglas Farah linkage

Nellie Ohr, Peter Fritsch, and Jonathan Clarke knew each other from the Wilson Center.

Neil King Jr. from Fusion GPS is married to Shailagh Murray who was President Obama’s Senior Policy Advisor. She was also Joe Biden’s Deputy-Chief-of-Staff. King and Murray knew Steele, Kramer, Winer, and the Ohrs going back to the mid-2000s.

In 2010, several of the members of the future dossier team participated in a workshop dedicated to “Racketeering in Russia”. The event was hosted by the National Institute of Justice and featured among others:

Glenn Simpson – Senior Fellow International Assessment and Strategy Center
Nellie Ohr – Researcher Open Source Works
Bruce Ohr – Chief Organized Crime and Racketeering Section Criminal Division DOJ
Lisa HoltynIntelligence Advisor Organized Crime and Racketeering (who hosted Bruce Ohr multiple times at the White House)

In 2012, Steele did some work for the US state Department and was in communication with Winer and the Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. This was done directly and through Sir Andrew Wood, who was the former British Ambassador to Russia and an employee of Orbis. Steele’s communications included over 100 reports on the Ukraine-Russia conflict. These reports were based on information from UK and Ukrainian government sources and contained political and financial data about Russian companies that was shared with Bruce Ohr at the DOJ.

When questioned about Steele’s relationship with Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland said:

“During the Ukraine crisis in 2014-15, Chris Steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in Russia, what was going on in Ukraine, what was going on between them. Chris had a friend [Jonathan Winer] at the State Department and he offered us that reporting free so that we could also benefit from it.”

Nuland also confirmed that Steele was invited to the State Department on October 2016 (just two weeks before the elections) to give a dossier briefing. The meeting lasted over 3 hours, and included a presentation, handouts, a Q&A, and representatives form several federal agencies.

Victoria-Nuland-on-the-Trump-Dossier[1]

Steele’s information didn’t only flow in one direction. In January 2016, before the Fusion GPS dossier project kicked-into-gear, Johantan Winer and Strobe Talbott were sharing with Steele via Orbis’s Canada hosted servers and email system documents authored by Cody Shearer, who produced a ‘second Trump-Russia dossier’.  This document consisted of two four-page reports, one titled “Donald Trump—Background Notes—The Compromised Candidate,” the second titled, the “FSB Interview”.

The reports are almost identical in terms of content and layout to the Steele dossier but reference unnamed Turkish businessman with “excellent contacts within the FSB” as the source. The reports echo the same salacious claims and alleged corruption and collusion. Cody Shearer’s mysterious ‘one-eyed man from Istanbul’ source claims that Trump was “filmed in Moscow in November 2013, during the Miss Universe pageant in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel”. He also said that there was a copy of the video somewhere in Israel and Bulgaria but that he couldn’t get it.

Strobe Talbott is Cody Shearer’s brother in law and was Cody’s brother Derek’s roommate in Yale. Talbott is a State Department Russian expert who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration. Talbott’s wife Brooke Shearer was Hillary Clinton’s personal aide/fixer and the lead investigator (nicknamed “The Dumpster Diver”) responsible for digging-up dirt on Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct accusers. Strobe Talbott and his wife Brooke Shearer knew and worked with Mary Jacoby, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Neil King, and Shailagh Murray since the mid 1990s. Talbott knew Steele since at least 2006.

Brooke Shearer Clinton aide  Shearer Talbott and Clinton

Nellie Ohr’s relationship with Steele goes back to the early-2000s or even earlier. Bruce Ohr’s relationship with Steele began long before Trump’s presidential bid. It goes back to Steele’s 2009 FIFA corruption investigation. Bruce was then chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering section in the DOJ which had a keen interest in the early stages of the case.

Nellie Ohr’s maintained active communications channels with a number of diplomatic, State Department, and IC members prior, during, and after the dossier publication. This included the likes of Robert Otto, Chris Brot, Nathaniel Reynolds, and Donald Jensen.

Robert Otto Chris Brot Nathaniel Reynolds Donald Jensen
L-R, Robert Otto, Chris Brot, Nathaniel Reynolds, and Donald Jensen

Robert Otto, who worked for Victoria Nuland’s at the State Department (resigned in December 31, 2016) frequently communicated via a number of private aliased emails dossier and Russia collusion and anti-Trump content with his “Russian Workgroup” that among others included David Kramer, Andrew Wood, and a long list of current and former US, British, and Australian Intelligence professionals such as:

Name

Email Address

Job Description

Glenn Howard

howard@jamestown.xxx

Jamestown Foundation – President

John Dunlop

jbdunlop@stanford.xxx

Hoover Institute – Senior Fellow

Walter Zaryckyj

waz2102@xxx.columbia.edu

Center for US Ukrainian Relations – Committee

Columbia University – Senior Russia researcher

Mira Kyzyk
(Chalupa’s Friend)

mirakyzyk@xxxxx.com

mirak@xxx.net

Ukrainians for Obama and Biden

Fordham University – Program Manager

Kyle Wilson

krwilson66@xxxxxx.com

Australian ONA IntelligenceSenior Russia Analyst

David Wall

David.Wall@xxx.gov.au

Australian ONA IntelligenceSenior Russia Analyst

Lilia Shevtsova

liliashevtsova@xxxxx.com

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia

Andrew Wood

andrewood40@xxxxx.com

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia

James Nixey

JNixey@chathamhouse.xxx

Chatham House – Head of Russia and Eurasia

Cooper Julian

j.m.cooper@bham.ac.xx

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia

Richard Connolly

r.connolly@bham.ac.xx

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia

Phil Hanson

phil_hanson@btinternet.xx

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia

Roderic Lyne

rodericlyne@xxxxxxx.xxx

Chatham House – Vice Chairman
UK ambassador to Russia

Bobo Lo

bobolo_uk@xxxxx.co.xx

Chatham House – Fellow Russia and Eurasia
Deputy head of mission Australian Embassy Russia

John Gerson

gersonjohn@me.xx

Foreign & Commonwealth Service – MI6 Officer

Ian Bond

Ian@cer.org.xx

Foreign & Commonwealth Service – MI6 Officer

Alan Parfitt

alan.parfitt@fco.gov.xxx

Foreign & Commonwealth Service Officer

Elizabeth Teague

teagueeliza@aol.xxx

Foreign & Commonwealth Service Office

Jamestown Foundation

David Riley

david.riley@fco.xxx.gov.xx

Foreign & Commonwealth Service Office British Embassy, Washington DC-Head of the Russia Team

Celeste Wallander

Celeste_a_wallander@nss.eop.xxx

White House – Senior Advisor to Obama

Charles Kupchan

charles_a_kupchan@nsc.eop.xxx

White House – Senior Advisor to Obama

Margaret Henoch

m.hh1@xxxxxx.xxx

Former IC Operations manager

US News and News Contributor

Jeffrey Edmonds

jedmonds@nsc.xxx.xxx

Former IC – Senior Russia Analyst

Chris Brot

Chris Brot

Former IC – Senior Russia Analyst

Paul Goble

paul.goble@xxxxx.com

Former IC/State Department – Senior Russia Analyst The Institute of World Politics – Faculty

Brannon’s Friend

petercl@ucia.xxx

IC Undergraduate Scholar program

Donald Jensen

donald.jensen8@xxxxx.com

State Department – Former Ambassador

Nathaniel Reynolds

naterey80@xxxxx.com

National Intelligence – Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia

Julia Gurganus

juliasg@xxx.gov

National Intelligence – Director’s Office – Senior Russia expert

Robert Otto

robertotto25@xxxxx.com

State Department – Russia intelligence expert

Peter Andreoli

peter_d_andreoli@xxx.xxx.gov

State Department – Senior Political Officer

Daniel Russell

russell@usrbc.xxx

State Department – Deputy Assistant Secretary

Russia Business Council – President

Nicholas Berliner

BrinkBA2@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Foreign Service Officer

Alexander Tratensek

judithfriedberg@xxxxxxx.com

State Department – Foreign Service Officer

Kathleen Kavalec

KavalecKA@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Deputy Assistant Secretary Bureau of European Affairs

Eugene Fishel

FishelE@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Chief, Bureau Intelligence and Research

Rose Gottemoeller

gottemoellerre@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Under Secretary of State International Security Affairs

Eric Green

greene@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Director Office of Russian Affairs

Alexander Kasanof

kasanofa@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Director Office of Eastern Europe

Kelly Kivler

kivlerk@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia

Rory MacFarquhar

rory.macfarquhar@xxxxx.com

National Security Council – Special Assistant to Obama. Director at Google

Mark Medish

mcmedish@xxxxx.com

State Department – The Messina Group – President

CEO is Obama’s former campaign manager

James O’Brien

jobrien@albrightstonebridge.xxx

State Department – Special Presidential Envoy

Albright Stonebridge Group – Vice Chair

Mary Warlick

warlickmb@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Ambassador and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary

John Williams

williamsjp@xxxxx.xxx

State Department – Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Andrew Weiss

andrewsweiss@xxxxx.com

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – VP

RAND Corporation – Director

Samuel Charap

charap@xxxxx.org

RAND Corporation – Senior Russia Analyst

Robert Otto Make Russia Great Again
An example of content transmitted in July 26, 2016 via Robert Otto’s “Russia Workgroup”

Many of the correspondences are addressed to and from State Department and UK government emails and indicate that the content was written and read during business hours.

One example of these emails dates to April 29, 2016 (written 6 weeks before Steele was hired by Fusion GPS) and is titled, “Why Is Donald Trump a Patsy for Vladimir Putin?  In this communication to David Kramer, the former Assistant Secretary of State and the Director at the McCain Institute, he wrote:

“To the degree they have attacked him on foreign policy, Trump’s critics in both parties have mostly confined themselves to the themes that are digestible extensions of his personal style — he is ignorant, inconsistent, temperamentally unfit to lead, and a danger to blunder the country into war. All of those charges are true, yet they manage to deny something that, in a candidate without such flamboyant drawbacks, would itself be a campaign-threatening scandal: Trump is Vladimir Putin’s stooge.

Several of Otto’s email correspondences also included Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr. From these emails, it’s evident that Bruce was co-sharing his wife’s AOL account. as the responses that Otto is getting back are tagged as both, “Bruce Ohr neohr@xxx.com”, and “Nellie Ohr neohr@xxx.com”.

Trump Dossier Graph
Image 10: The Dossier Graph

So is it reasonable to assume that all of these incestuous relationships are coincidental? Ian Fleming, a naval intelligence officer and the creator of James Bond, contemplated the problem of coincidental relationships in intelligence operations and came up with the answer in his maxim:

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.

Computer and Communication Network
In 2016, Fusion GPS and Orbis had a pretty sophisticated computer and a communications networks, far beyond what one would expect to find in large law firm or even a bank. They spent a lot of time and money setting up a DoD 8570 and NIST SP 800-37, 39, 53, 53A grade environment, which included among other things:

  • High-end security equipment like Cisco FirePOWER ASA appliances
  • High-end networking equipment like Cisco Catalyst managed switches
  • Multi-layered security and authentication using tokens and VPN
  • Multiple subnetted segments
  • Central configuration and patch management
  • Policy based user ACL
  • Development, test, and production environments
  • An IDS
  • An air-gapped file storage

The complexity of this network (see table below) and some of the artifacts found on it (such as the NISPOM manual) suggests that this was due to some external mandate rather than by choice. Considering the fact that Fusion GPS was not a regulated service provider, it begs the question of who was responsible for such a directive.

Host

Open Ports

162.243.81.134:253 dwww.fusiongps.com

22, 80, 443, 25

162.243.81.134:www.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:adwords.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:amantesdelpuntodecruz3.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:antonuriarte.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:www.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:fumettologicamente.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:homepage3.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:mediawangsamaju.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:seo.fusiongps.com

            “

162.243.81.134:server109235249178.fusiongps.com

            “

104.237.142.153:apps.fusiongps.com

22, 25, 4564

104.237.149.244:tools.fusiongps.com

22, 80, 25

45.56.74.104:dev.fusiongps.com

22, 25, 53, 80, 990

OS CPE: Linux_kernel 3.14

OpenSSH: 5.9p1 Debian 5 Ubuntu 1.1 (Ubuntu Linux; protocol 2.0)

http-server-header: Apache 2.2.22 (Ubuntu)

The Fusion GPS network in 2016

The Great Dossier Authorship Debate
The House Intelligence Committee’s hearings on November 2017 attempted among other things to answer the dossier authorship question. Simpson testified that Steele used his old contacts and farmed out other research to native Russian speakers who made phone calls on his behalf. In the hearing transcripts, Simpson comes through as being evasive and ambiguous; he hemmed and hawed a lot and had problems remembering and recalling details. Despite his fogginess, however, he was crystal clear about Steele being the author of the documents.

From Simpson’s testimony, we also know that while contracting for Fusion GPS in mid-2016 Edward Baumgartner was working on these two projects:

  1. Magnisky Act – Russian government lobbying effort to overturn the Magnisky Act. This case revolved around one Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax accountant working for Hermitage Capital who allegedly outed some Russian officials for fraud. He was arrested and detained and died in prison in 2009. The Russian on the other hand, claim that he was targeted because of a $230 million dollar embezzlement/tax evasion involving Hermitage Capital and its CEO William Browder. The details of the case are unclear, but Interestingly, Robert Otto and a few of his “Russia Workgroup” colleagues believed that the story was William Browder’s PR stunt. Some of the evidence and testimonies in the case subsequently turned out to be substantially inaccurate.In one example William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital and the brain behind the Magnitsky act, stated in an interview on MSNBC on February 5, 2015 that “Eight riot guards with rubber batons beat him [Magnitsky] for an hour and 18 minutes until he died.” But the post mortem examination didn’t show any evidence of beating beyond rough handcuff bruising.

    Magnitsky’s Postmortem Images 2009
    Official 2009 autopsy images of Sergei Magnitsky

    Browder also suspiciously communicated and coordinated his story with several officials at the State Department and House Foreign Affairs Committee including with one Kyle Parker who was using both, his “kyle@kyleparker.xxx” and “Kyle.Parker@xxxx.house.gov” email addresses in these correspondences.

    Bill Browder Kyle Parker Hudson Institue

    The Magnitsky Act team at the Hudson Institute. L-R, Congressman Jim McGovern, Bill Browder, Kyle Parker, and Charles Davidson

  2. Prevezon Money Laundering – Russian government lobbying effort to help Prevezon–a Russian government owned company Prevezon defend itself against a US government charge alleging a 230 million dollar money laundering scheme.

During the Prevezon and Magniseky contracts which ran through October 2016, Baumgartner was the lead writer and researcher working closely in Russia and Ukraine. In his testimony, Simpson identified Baumgartner as a contributor to the dossier:

Foster: And what type of work did Mr. Baumgartner undertake for Fusion?

Simpson: Discovery mostly, helping locate witnesses. He speaks Russian. So he would work with the lawyers on gathering Russian language documents, gathering Russian language media reports, talking to witnesses who speak Russian, that sort of thing. He may have dealt with the press.  I just don’t remember.

Foster: So was Mr. Baumgartner also working on opposition research for Candidate Trump?

Simpson: At some point, I think probably after the end of the Prevezon case we asked him to help with I think — my specific recollection is he worked on specific issues involving Paul Manafort and Ukraine.

Somewhat surprising is Baumgartner’s denial of Simpson’s statement that he did work on the dossier. Specifically:

“I was helping them [Fusion GPS] on this other project, which was unrelated, and they mentioned it to me in July 2016, I was never made aware of Chris Steele’s work or the dossier, and it was kept that way deliberately. I would have had nothing to add, anyway. I produce memos based on information that is in the public record that can be given to the feds or shared with journalists.”

But then in a contradictory statement, Baumgartner said that he produced memos that could be given to the feds. We now know that the only memos given to the feds (DOJ and FBI) by Steele and Fusion GPS were the dossier documents.

The third contributor, Nellie Ohr, was another Russia intelligence analyst working for Fusion GPS and Steele. She has not been deposed nor has voluntarily offered any insight into her role in the writing process so it’s difficult to ascertain the exact part she played. Not surprisingly, when questioned, Simpson didn’t mention her. However, from a recent House Intelligence Committee memo, it’s clear that Nellie Ohr was in fact “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump”. The memo adds that Bruce Ohr “later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research”.

Asked by intelligence panel staff if he verified Steele’s “sources in Russia” or corroborated their information, Simpson said he’d never been to Russia himself and couldn’t “evaluate the credibility of someone on the other side of the [Atlantic]”, nor could he confirm that Steele actually spoke directly with any of his Russian sources.

Private companies like Orbis or Hakluyt (unless they are a front for SIS) lack the means to properly vet foreign intelligence sources let alone vet the source’s information. But that didn’t create any doubt in Simpson’s and Jacoby’s minds—both former investigative reporters for the WSJ. Simpsons said that he completely deferred to Steele’s expertise and did not question his findings because of his “sterling reputation”.

The sterling reputation that the Simpson was referring to was Steele’s work on the FIFA corruption case. According to Steele, he provided investigative services and intelligence to the Interpol, DOJ, and FBI which resulted in the arrest and prosecution of a number of FIFA officials. The problem with this case’s sources and methods is the same as with the dossier initiative.

The whole FIFA case revolved around England’s hope to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, but FIFA awarded those tournaments to Russia and Qatar. Steele was then ‘hired’ in 2009 by England’s Football Association to investigate allegations of corruption by FIFA. In 2015, the DOJ indicted a number FIFA affiliated individuals. Interestingly, the DOJ did not charge anyone at FIFA with bribery because US Federal bribery laws cover only payments to government officials. Bruce Ohr’s team, instead alleged racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies.

Steele didn’t perform any hands-on investigative work on the FIFA case himself. From the documentary evidence, a few of his contacts in MI5/MI6 shared with him some of the SIGINT, HUMINT, and FININT intercepts. He then repackaged the data and passed the file to the DOJ and FBI, all the while collecting a lot in service fees and building his credibility with them. The dossier initiative also wasn’t an altruistic act. Steele received over $270K for his report.

Steele’s payment for his services can be confirmed from pages 15-16 of the Carter Page FISA warrant bellow. Steele is identified as “Source #1 has been compensated”.

Steele and 2016 FISA Application on Carter Page
The Carter Page FISA application referencing Steele as “Source 1”, his compensation by the FBI, and the identification of Glenn Simpson as “U.S. person”

It is also interesting to note that the DOJ statement about Glenn Simpson “Never advising source #1 as to the motivation behind the research” is untrue. In his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017, Simpson was very clear about having previous discussions and actively working with Steele to discredit Trump as early as 2009.  On pages 77-86 of his testimony he states:

“…we’re friends [referring to Steele] and share interest in Russian kleptocracy and organized crime issues. I would say that’s broadly why I asked him to see what he could find out about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia.

…it was opaque what Donald Trump had been doing on these business trips to Russia. We didn’t know what he was doing there. So, I gave Chris — we gave Chris a sort of assignment that would be typical for us which was pretty open ended. We said see if you can find out what Donald Trump’s been doing on these trips to Russia. Since Chris and I worked together over the years there’s a lot that didn’t need to be said. That would include who is he [Trump] doing business with, which hotels does he like to stay at, you know, did anyone ever offer him anything, you know, the standard sort of things you would look at.”

The Dossier Structure
The dossier is 35 pages long and has the following layout and structure (see the sample from page 13 below):

Section 1 – Company intelligence report number date/running total
Section 2 – Report subheading “Russia/USA Growing Backlash in Kremlin…”
Section 3 – Summary of report usually in bullet point format (the ‘raw intelligence’)
Section 4 – Detailed discussion of summary points with a citation of sources

Steele Dossier Sample Page
Image 11:
Dossier sample report

The dossier reports contain multiple PDF page image sizes, and exhibit post production processing such as hand written page numbers and highlighted text. They are not sequential and are spaced unevenly. It is unclear if the report numbering applies just to the dossier or if it’s a running total of all the reports produced by Orbis for multiple customers in that time frame. These gaps strongly suggest that some of the reports have been removed from the final distribution. Its clear form the visual evidence that some of the reports have formatting problems and that they were scanned multiple times. As can be seen from the table below some reports contain data entry errors (e.g. report 86 is dated 20-Jul-2015) which suggests some haste and carelessness in their preparation and poor review prior to publication.

Report #

Report Title

Report Date

80

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE DONALD TRUMP’S ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA AND COMPROMISING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KREMLIN

20-Jun-16

86

USSIA/CYBER CRIME: A SYNOPSIS OF RUSSIAN STATE SPONSORED AND OTHER CYBER OFFENSIVE (CRIMINAL) OPERATIONS

26-Jul-15

95

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER INDICATIONS OF EXTENSIVE CONSPIRACY BETWEEN TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN TEAM AND THE KREMLIN

Missing

94

RUSSIA: SECRET KREMLIN MEETINGS ATTENDED BY TRUMP ADVISOR, CARTER PAGE IN MOSCOW (JULY 2016)

19-Jul-16

97

USSIA-US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN CONCERN THAT POLITICAL FALLOUT FROM DNC E-MAIL HACKING AFFAIR SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL

30-Jul-16

100

USSIA/USA: GROWING BACKLASH IN KREMLIN TO DNC HACKING AND RUMP SUPPORT OPERATIONS

5-Aug-16

101

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: SENIOR KREMLIN FIGURE OUTLINES PRO-TRUMP, ANTI-CLINTON OPERATIONEVOLVING RUSSIAN TACTICS IN

10-Aug-16

102

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REACTION IN TRUMP CAMP TO RECENT NEGATIVE PUBLICITY ABOUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE AND LIKELY RESULTING TACTICS GOING FORWARD

10-Aug-16

105

RUSSIA/UKRAINE: THE DEMISE OF TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER PAUL MANAFORT

22-Aug-16

111

RUSSIA/US: KREMLIN FALLOUT FROM MEDIA EXPOSURE OF MOSCOW’S INTERFERENCE IN THE US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

14-Sep-16

112

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN-ALPHA GROUP CO-OPERATION

14-Sep-16

113

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION-REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE TRUMP’S PRIOR ACTIVITIES IN ST PETERSBURG

14-Sep-16

130

RUSSIA: KREMUN ASSESSMENT OF TRUMP AND RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE. IN US PRESIDENTLAL ELECTION

12-Oct-16

134

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER DETAILS OF KREMLIN LIAISON WITH TRUMP CAMPAIGN

18-Oct-16

135

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF TRUMP LAWYER, COHEN IN CAMPAIGN’S SECRET LIAISON WITH THE KREMLIN

19-Oct-16

136

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER DETAILS OF TRUMP LAWYER COHEN’S SECRET LIAISON WITH THE KREMLIN

20-Oct-16

166

US/RUSSIA: FURTHER DETAILS OF SECRET DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRUMP CAMPAIGN TEAM, KREMLIN AND ASSOCIATED HACKERS IN PRAGUE

13-Dec-16

Trump dossier report number vs. date

The reports production schedule and volume are also problematic. As can gleaned from the above frequency graph, the report numbers between Oct-20th to Dec-13th spike from 136 to 166.

Report Date

Report #

Count Increase

Jun-20-16

80

Jul-26-15

86

6

95

Jul-19-16

94

Jul-30-16

97

11

Aug-05-16

100

3

Aug-10-16

101

1

Aug-22-16

105

2

Aug-10-19

102

3

Sep-14-16

111

9

Sep-14-16

112

1

Sep-14-16

113

1

Oct-12-16

130

17

Oct-18-16

134

4

Oct-19-16

135

1

Oct-20-16

136

1

Dec-13-16

166

31

The “Count Increase” is an anomaly because the report number and dates (see above table) do not follow his average production rates and could indicate that Steele is gaming the numbers by creating fictitious report numbers, deleting ‘problematic’ reports, or altering their composition dates.

A Vast Shadow Legion of Sources
Simpson pimped Steele as a real-life James Bond with deep connections inside the Kremlin and because of this, he didn’t have to corroborate any of his reports. But Steele—his previous contacts in Russia now long gone—had to rely on others like Ohr, Baumgartner, and Ukrainian sources to generate his so-called ‘raw intelligence’.

When Simpson was asked how Steele procured the intelligence he said:

I don’t know. I think there’s been a little bit of confusion I would like to clear up. Some people were saying that he was paying people for information. I don’t know whether he does or not, but that’s not basically how I understand field operations to work. You commission people to gather information for you rather than sort of paying someone for a document or to sit for an interview or something like that. That’s not how I understand it works.

Considering the fact the Simpson paid Steele about $160K (according to Orbis’s income statement it was over $270K) for the information, it is a somewhat puzzling that he didn’t’ bother getting the specifics. But luckily for us, Steele was kind enough to share his methods with The New Yorker. It consisted of the following process:

Orbis employs dozens of confidential “collectors” around the world whom it pays as contractors. Some of these collectors are private investigators; others are investigative reporters or highly placed experts in strategic positions. Depending on the task and the length of project, the fee for a collector can be as high as two thousand dollars per day. The collectors harvest intelligence from a larger network of unpaid sources, some of whom don’t even realize they are being treated as informants. These sources occasionally receive favors—such as help in getting their children into Western schools—but money doesn’t change hands because it could violate laws against bribing government officials or insider trading.

So in other words, Orbis has a “large network” of highly placed government informants in Russia, that don’t know that they are informants—and none of them gets paid for the classified information because that would violate European union bribery laws. So what is the incentive of all for these FSB, Kremlin, and Russian Foreign Ministry personnel to share state secrets with Steele?

This business model also raises some serious questions. Assuming that by “Western schools” Steele means Ivy League and not your average local community college and that his secret compensation formula is:

‘High value intelligence’ = ‘Getting the source’s child into a Western school’

Than how is Steele able to perform this magic with the university admissions office? Is it plausible that Orbis is bribing admission committee members in Cambridge University? And who pays for these students’ tuition, room, and board? The cost of attending a school like Cambridge university for an international student is over $60k per year. How can an FSB source who draws a $10K per year salary possibly afford it? And what about the FSB’s counter intelligence team? Wouldn’t they have a few questions for their fellow employees regarding their children’s attendance at western Ivy League schools?

And if this is the model, is this how Ivanna Voronovych, Pelosi’s legislative aide intern got into a top US university?

Ivanna Voronovych University of Michigan
Ivanna Voronovych’s admission confirmation to the U-M

The Sources
According to the dossier, it is sourced from about 34 valuable, trusted, and highly placed assets such as:

  1. A senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure
  2. A former top Russian intelligence officer
  3. Several knowledgeable FSB sources
  4. A trusted compatriot (there are references to at least 5 of these)
  5. A former top level Russian intelligence officer who is still active inside the Kremlin
  6. A senior Russian financial official
  7. A close associate of Trump
  8. Source E (redacted)
  9. A female staffer at the Ritz Carlton hotel
  10. An ethnic Russian operative connected to the Ritz Carlton hotel
  11. A senior Kremlin official
  12. A Russian IT specialist with direct knowledge of FSB operations
  13. A senior Russian government figure
  14. An ethnic Russian who is a close associate of Trump
  15. A separate source with direct knowledge of Trump’s investment in Russia
  16. A Russian source close to Rosneft President
  17. An official close to Presidential Administration Head Sergei Ivanov
  18. A Kremlin official close to Sergei IVANOV
  19. A trusted associate of a Russian émigré
  20. Two well-placed and established Kremlin sources
  21. A source close to premier Dmitriy Medvedev
  22. A close colleague (of Steele)
  23. A Kremlin official involved in US relations
  24. A Kremlin insider
  25. A Kremlin advisor
  26. A well-placed Russian figure
  27. An American political figure associated with TRUMP
  28. A senior member of the Russian Presidential Administration (PA)
  29. A senior Russian MFA official
  30. Top level Russian official
  31. Two knowledgeable St Petersburg sources
  32. A senior Russian leadership figure
  33. A Russian Foreign Ministry official
  34. Igor Sechin’s close associate

If this list of assets is genuine and so is the chain of acquisition, then Steele somehow succeeded in building a collection network in Russia that rivals any national intelligence agency. This is a pretty impressive feat for someone who left Russia in 1993 and had his cover blown in 1999.

Finding one highly placed and reliable Russian source with access to such explosive materials would be considered the equivalent of winning a multi-million dollar lottery. To have thirty four such sources is virtually impossible.

Steele’s claims of access to top political and security resources in Russia also makes one wonder why would MI5 and MI6 tolerate a private firm like Orbis actively engaging in espionage against Russia from British soil. Is it plausible that the British security services just didn’t know that smack dab in the middle of London and just a skip and a jump 300 feet from Buckingham Palace, Dr. Evil and his mini-me’s were in a castle at Grosvenor Gardens and were remotely controlling legions of deep Russian assets and aggressively plotting against a US presidential candidate?

Yaacov-Apelbaum---ORBIS-9-11-Grosven[2]

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Orbis-vs.-MI6-HQ_t
Image 12:
Orbis Business Intelligence building location in London

Simpson, Steele’s handler, was asked by Congressman Trey Gowdy during the House Intelligence Committee’s November 14 Hearing, (see excerpt below), if Steele had gone “to Russia as part of this project,” to which Simpson replied: “No, sir” at the time he compiled the dossier, Steele hadn’t been back to Russia in 17 years. Gowdy then asked him:

Gowdy: “How was he able to accumulate information in Russia if he didn’t go?”

Simpson: “… and generally, you have a network of sources who live in or came from the place that you’re interested in. So, you know, generally speaking, you would have –you would run a network of sub-sources or subcontractors who travel around and gather information for you. And so without getting into who his sources are, I can say generally, he hires people who can travel and talk to people and find out what’s going on”.

On the possibility that he was just fed a steady diet of dezinformatsiya, according to Steele’s own words that was unlikely because:

“Disinformation is an issue in my profession, it is a central concern, and we are trained to spot disinformation, and if I believed this [the dossier] was disinformation, or I had concerns about that, I would tell you [Fusion GPS] that. And I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you that I don’t believe this [the dossier] is disinformation.”

So what Steele is saying here is essentially: ‘I am a wise old British gentleman spy, I was trained at the Hogwarts School of spy Wizardry, and you can trust everything I’m telling you. Now, BEGONE!’

This is laughable! Vetting sources is a critical part of the evaluation and reliability of intelligence. It’s such an essential part of the tradecraft that no decisions about the information can be made without it. Given the poor quality of his raw intelligence, Steele’s lack of concern for the possibility that he was being fed disinformation is alarming.

The Media Blitz and the Tradecraft
While still in the early stages of his clandestine dossier project, Steele and Fusion GPS launched a coordinated media blitz to publish the briefs. Steele was sharing the details with a handful of DOJ, FBI, State Department, and other political figures such as Kramer and his friend Winer, who even endorsed him on LinkedIn.

Chris Steele LinkedIn ProfileChris Steele LinkedIn and Jonathan Winer

Steele and Simpson were also regularly briefing reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo! News, MSNBC, The New Yorker, and CNN.

Assuming for a second that these alleged reports are genuine, many of them completely betray sources and collection methods. For example:

“Speaking in July 2016, a Russian source close to Rosneft President confided the details of a recent secret meeting between him and…Carter PAGE”.

In March 2017, after Steele started getting negative media coverage, Orbis came out with the following media release:

Orbis Business Intelligence has an established track record of providing strategic intelligence, forensic investigation and risk consulting services to a broad client base.  The nature of our business, and our high standards of professionalism dictate that we would not disclose to the public information on any specific aspects of our work.

This is an almost identical copy of Hakluyt’s statement: We don’t ever talk about anything we do…

Reading this statement, it’s difficult to reconcile Steele’s professed discretion and the vow to “not disclose to the public information on any specific aspects of our work” with the fact that he is a serial leaker.

Even if we assume that Steele didn’t intentionally plan to burn his sources, leaking such details to the media shows total lack of tradecraft.

In December 2016, when the story about the mysterious death of Oleg Erovinkin came out, Simpson attempted to leverage it to shut down questions about Steele’s sources and methods. He was hinting that Erovinkin, a former general in the FSB, was one of Steele’s deep sources. A number of other individuals within Steele’s and Fusion GPS’s circles were also aggressively promoting this narrative. In one example, Scott Dworkin, the head of DNC’s opposition research group the ‘Democratic Coalition’ tweeted:

Scott Dworkin Trump Dossier

In another example, Luke Harding, who worked for Orbis and was one of Steele’s collectors in Russia until he was expelled from there in 2011, in his book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win  wrote:

“A person close to Steele admitted that in the wake of the dossier the Kremlin did appear to be wiping out some kind of American or Western espionage network.”

So in the unlikely case that the Russians were now eliminating Steele’s assets, then the death of these people can be blamed squarely on his ongoing whirlwind dossier media tour and his criminal negligence.

Typos and Errors
The report contains a number of errors and inaccuracies that should have been caught and corrected at the final copyedit before publication; after all, Simpson, Jacoby, Steele, Ohr, and Baumgartner earn their living writing. You would certainly expect that one of them would read and clean up the document before it was distributed.

The errors in the briefs include the consistent misspelling of names like the “Alfa Group” with “Alpha Group” which betrays the fact that the writer is not versed in the material he is writing about. This could alternatively be written off as gangsta Ali-G style spelling, but it’s odd that someone like Steele who was raised on the Queens’s English is going to adopt this style of writing in an official intelligence report. It may also be of some relevance that Dworkin uses the same Alpha/Alfa alternate spelling in his publications.

What Language was the Report Written in?
It’s clear from the grammar, punctuation, spelling, idioms, and sentence structure that the report is suffering from some serious English language deficiencies. It is filled with sentences like:

Russians meanwhile keen to cool situation”, or “Educated US youth to be targeted as protest…”

Many dossier apologists point out that this is because the raw intelligence came from some ‘Vlad’ who ‘don’t speaka de English’. This is also one of the leading arguments in favor of the authenticity of the intelligence. After all, would you expect perfectly written British English prose from an FSB source? It’s hard to buy this argument. It has the hallmarks of a false flag operation written all over it. Steele doesn’t speak fluent Russian nor for that matter does he even read or write Russian. So, these notes could not have been the transcribed recordings or the transcripts of his conversations/communications with his sources.

According to Simpson, Steele: “… farmed out other research to native Russian speakers who made phone calls on his behalf“. So Steele wasn’t personally conducting the debriefings of his assets; some other Russian speaker conducted the interviews and/or translated the written intel into English. The only other plausible members of the dossier team to be able to do this were, Chris Utechin (Orbis’s in-house Russia SME), Nellie Ohr, and Edward Baumgartner. Simpson confirmed that Baumgartner’s job for Fusion GPS was the translation of Russian language documents, writing reports, and interviewing assets who speak Russian. He said:

“So we retained Ed to—originally in the Prevezon case—to do some interviews in Moscow, I think, and retrieve some records from Russia. And other Russian language-related tasks.”

Baumgartner and Ohr are native English speakers with advanced degrees from Ivy League schools. So if they wrote down the bulk of the raw intelligence, then why did they dumb down their writing style and forget how to form proper English sentences? After all, Baumgartner prides himself on his flawless spoken Russian and touts his firm’s translation services:

“Several blue-chip corporate names in the region retain Edward Austin to write, translate and edit their press releases, presentations and other corporate material.”

Ohr also practically lived in the Lenin Library and the Smolensk archive for almost a year reading and translating documents in Russian. She also made a name for herself as a book reviewer writing in perfect English.

Finally, assuming that the ‘raw intelligence’ came from some FSU sources, was it received in Ukrainian or Russian? We can’t determine this with certainty because the translation into English destroyed the fine nuances of these two similar languages. Or perhaps, it was written in British English in the first place and then rewritten in a ‘Russian style’ to make it look more authentic?

VC Funding and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
It is interesting that the dossier contains a significant amount of non-political and business-related activity. There is also a generous amount of emphasis on cyber warfare and cyber crime. Neither of these subjects has much to do with the stated objectives of the original research of gathering information about “links between Russia and [then-presidential candidate] Donald Trump”.

Russian involvement in cyber-related crime is also old news. Russian, Ukrainian, and other FSU based botnets that distribute malware have been operating at full capacity since the mid-2000s. With some of the more significant players having quasi-government affiliations. Why then the sudden increase in Russian cyber warfare related chatter in the dossier? The reason could be that someone asked Steele to include this material in order to ride the wave of the DNC internal email leak which was published in June-July 2016.

An illustration for this somewhat irrelevant cyber related material can be found in report 86 dated 26 July 2016. Under item 3 we find the following paragraph:

In terms of the FSB’s recruitment of capable cyber operatives to carry out its, ideally deniable, offensive cyber operations, a Russian IT specialist with direct knowledge reported in June 2016 that this was often done using coercion and blackmail. In terms of ‘foreign’ agents, the FSB was approaching US citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin on business trips to Russia. In one case a US citizen of Russian ethnicity had been visiting Moscow to attract investors in his new information technology program. The FSB clearly knew this and had offered to provide seed capital to this person in return for them being able to access and modify his IP, with a view to targeting priority foreign targets by planting a Trojan virus in the software. The US visitor was told this was common practice. The FSB also had implied significant operational success as a result of installing cheap Russian IT games containing their own malware unwittingly by targets on their PCs and other platforms.

I don’t know what terms like “IT Specialist” means in Steele’s world of rent-a-spy, but for most of us in the field it describes individuals who use their technical expertise to implement, monitor, or maintain IT systems. Even if this IT Specialist was working for the FSB, IT staff in any intelligence organization is usually not privy to case files and sources and methods used to recruit agents. It doesn’t take much imagination to cross-reference Steele’s fictitious “IT Specialist” to Snowden and his fantastic exploits. In fact, Snowden describes an almost identical story where allegedly coercion and blackmail were used to turn a Swiss banker into an informant.

As for the term “with direct knowledge”, does he mean that this IT Specialist claimed to have participated in one of these offensive cyber operations and willingly shared this information with one of Steele interviewers?

The same goes for the proposition that an “IT Specialist” would have firsthand knowledge of the FSB’s playbook for recruitment of US citizens of (Jewish) Russian origin. The whole premise that the FSB is targeting US Jews because they are greedy and would flip for a price sounds like it was taken from Borat in the nest of the Jews or the protocols. It reeks of institutionalized anti-Semitism which could have been planted in the report deliberately to generate reader outrage.

Further more, even from the point of view of original research, its obvious that this allegation didn’t come from one of Steele’s FSB sources. It can be traced directly to Glenn Simpson through his testimony during the House Intelligence Committee hearing, where he stated:

[Simpson] The Mossad, was my  source for the belief that Russian intelligence has been operating through the Jewish Orthodox Chabad movement, and the Russian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox church is also an arm of the Russian State now… the Mossad guys used to tell me about how the Russians were laundering money through the Orthodox church in Israel, and that it was intelligence operations.”

This begs the obvious question of how did the subject of Simpson’s alleged conversations with the “Mossad guys” made it into Steele’s independent intelligence reports?

Steele also seems to be conflating multiple Russian intelligence services under the FSB. The FSB is the Russian equivalent of the FBI and is responsible for domestic security, they typically don’t recruit and mange foreign agents. The actual Russian intelligence agencies responsible for conducting wide scale foreign surveillance and cyber operations are the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

Another noteworthy observation is the general vagueness of the cyber section and the writer’s poor understanding of computer and software terminology in frequently confusing terms like IP (intellectual property) with a code base and Trojans with Viruses. Besides, whoever wrote this section needs to make up his/her mind about which attack vector is it. A Trojan? A virus? an altering operation (whatever that means), or cheap Russian IT games (probably meant to say ‘IT Utilities’ like rogue anti-virus) infected with malware.

To illustrate the FSB’s ’recruitment’ method, Steele tells us about a US citizen who travels to Russia hoping to attract investors in his “information technology program”. What does that even mean?  Is he talking about an executive of a US startup that is looking for seed money in Russia? If so, the proposition is ridiculous; anyone that has ever tried to raise capital in a startup knows that because of IP and regulatory constraints, the funding source is always country specific. Also, the idea that a US executive running a US-based software company would willingly allow the FSB to plant a virus in his software is laughable and shows a childish understanding of cyber warfare practices. You don’t have to be a genius to know that when that executive is caught—the question is when, not if—the company would be destroyed and he would be looking at massive civil penalties and a very long jail sentence…not to mention the likelihood that as part of his plea bargain he would sing like a canary implicating the FSB in a crime.

Recycled Content
In 2013, Bruce Ohr acting as the Assistant Deputy Director at DOJ participated in the third St. Petersburg International Legal Forum. He was a speaker at a session titled “Criminal Matters and Allegations of Crimes in International Arbitration”, a topic connected to the Magnitsky Act. It’s interesting that his lecture included many of the components of the yet-to-be dossier’s: “money laundering operations”, “payment of large bribes and kickbacks”, “forged documents”, and “collusive schemes”.

Bruce Ohr St. Petersburg 2013
Image 13:
Bruce Ohr presenting at the 2013 St. Petersburg International Legal forum

In 2016, after her position with Fusion GPS ended, Nellie Ohr landed a new gig with VeriSign iDefense as threat analyst in cybersecurity. In February 2017, VeriSign sold their iDefense business to Accenture. Ohr’s new title became Principal at Accenture Security. In this capacity, she delivered a presentation during the ISO-ISAC Fall 2017 session entitled: “Ties Between Government Intelligence Services and Cyber Criminals – Closer Than You Think?”

Nellie Ohr Accenture
Nellie Ohr, Principal Accenture Security

Ohr’s presentation focused on enforcement activity in 2016-2017 and provided examples of how cyber threat actors were arrested, indicted, or identified in intelligence reports by US and European governments. She pointed out connections and ties between government intelligence services (such as the FSB) and cybercrime actors. She discussed the drivers and mechanisms between state and criminal cooperation and offered a case study that explored how seemingly ordinary cybercrime was combined with strategic espionage.

It may also be of interest that many of the dossier’s cybersecurity allegations such as the ties between the Russian government intelligence services and cybercrime actors and the drivers and mechanisms between state and criminal cooperation are repeated almost verbatim in Nellie Ohr’s Accenture Security presentation that she delivered almost a year after the dossier came out in the FS-ISAC 2017 Summit.

for example, the case study in her 2017 presentation explored how seemingly for profit Romanian and Bulgarian hackers combined with strategic Russian espionage initiatives. This case study mirrors dossier report #166.

Yaacov Apelbaum - Nellie Ohr 2017 FS-ISAC Presentation
Image 14:
Nallie Ohr’s presentation to the FS-ISAC 2017 Fall Summit

Nellie’s 2017 presentation was itself recycled almost verbatim from the 2010 symposium hosted by the National Institute of Justice. The subject of that event was: Legal Racketeering in Russia and National Security Issues. The talk raised these questions:

How are international criminal organizations attempting to co-opt the state to suit its interests? How are states attempting to use international criminal organizations to advance their interests? How does international organized crime present itself as a national security threat to different types of countries? How do links to other malevolent actors, like terrorist or insurgent groups, manifest themselves and factor into the previous questions?

So it seems that the Ohrs have been cannibalizing and presenting this “raw intelligence” for several years from DOJ, FBI, and other agency sources long before it made it into the dossier.

Source Credibility and Verifiability
The context of a source is an important part of all intelligence reports. It describes in greater detail  the circumstances under which the source acquired the intelligence, the source’s reporting history, and other pertinent details such as source’s credibility (i.e. his past success and failure). None of Steele’s briefs contain this information. It seems that all of his sources have the same monolithic credibility and the method of obtaining the intelligence is always shrouded in obscurity.

Every source can have a credibility ranging from ‘Pathological Liar’ to the ‘Word of G-d’. All intelligence and law enforcement organizations have grading systems for their sources. Credibility is also a subtle thing that depends on many constantly changing factors. The key tradecraft for any case officer is the ability to constantly evaluate and determine the credibility of his sources. One of the glaring problems with Steele’s reports is that his source credibility indicator uses vague fluffy terms like “well-placed”, “trusted”, “knowledgeable, etc. Steele is not assigning sufficient granularity of trust to his sources.

None of the briefs show any doubts about the sources. The general impression is that Steele’s assets are all wheat and no chaff, one hundred percent reliable and are the cream of the crop of Russian politics, security services, and the Kremlin. They read like a cast of characters from a corny John le Carré novel.

What is ostensibly missing from his stellar list of informants are common everyday sources like:

  • Low level bureaucrats
  • Western intelligence and five eyes sources (who independently picked up this intelligence)
  • Reporters
  • Academics
  • Political opposition figures
  • Other anti-Russian FSU sources like Ukrainian and Polish intelligence
  • Business figures
  • Black-hat hackers (working as contractors for Steele)
  • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
  • The legions of the disgruntled and the axe-grinders

Steele also seems to be enamored with the titles of his sources and doesn’t provide any indication that he used them to cross-verify the intelligence. For example, in the instance of the alleged sexual acts in the Ritz-Carlton Moscow, he cites the following triple-source:

  • A senior staff employee at the hotel
  • An active FSB officer
  • A senior security officer at the hotel (who would likely be a former FSB or GRU officer)

With assets like this he could have easily confirmed the story by checking out the hotel’s video surveillance footage from the hallway in question. The Ritz-Carlton Moscow has been using CCTV cameras from the mid-2000’s and have switched to a VMS based system in 2012. Steele could have asked his “active FSB officer” for the specific day and time of the alleged November 2013 incident and then used his “senior security officer” at the hotel to use a phone to take a screenshot of the video frame showing the individuals in the hallway entering and leaving the room.  There was no need to retrieve the whole video, one screenshot would have been sufficient.

Yaacov-Apelbaum-Ritz-Carlton-Moscow-

In a recent court testimony Steele has acknowledged that his final December 2016 report (# 166), contained information he never vetted. He stated that:

“The contents of the report did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation given their potential national security implications”.

It’s easy to get lost in all of these weasel words but the common term for “raw intelligence” that does not represent nor purport to represent credible or verified facts is called a rumor.

On the question of chain of transmission, we have the same problem as with the verifiability. When asked about his collection methods, Steele said:

“Such intelligence was not actively sought; it was merely received.”

This is a dream come true for every collection officer—a gift of priceless information with no strings attached, no risk, no clandestine work, it’s high-value actionable intelligence just tossed over the transom.

In late 2016, the FBI finally homed-in on the problem that they had when they used the dossier for the FISA applications and Steele’s lack of source credibility and verifiability. They allegedly offered him about $1M to corroborate the dossier. For reasons unknown, he didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t do it.

The House of Cards
In intelligence analysis, there is a concept of a runaway feedback loop that occurs when information becomes re-iterated and rewarded in perpetual cycles. For example, “Analyst A” releases a bit of dubious intel. “Analyst B” reads the claim and puts it in his report.  “Analyst A” reads the intel in Analyst B’s report and decides that his intel may actually be true. “Analyst C” picks up “Analyst A’s” and “Analyst B’s” reports and expands on it creatively.  “Analyst A” and “Analyst B” now are certain that their original piece was accurate. Actually, none of it is accurate. The same applies to many of Steele’s briefs; they progressively build upon previous dubious intel using terms like “Continuing on this theme”.

Information or Disinformation
The general impression of the reports is that they contain threads of truth, but also spurious content. For example, report #080 describes the Miss Universe 2013 event but then it provides a dubious account of sexual activity that even the author claims can’t be verified (“all direct witnesses to this recently had been “silenced”). Almost all of the ‘valuable’ intelligence in the reports exhibits the hallmarks of professional disinformation such as:

  • Fabricated content−Creating content that is completely false
  • Imposter content−Impersonating a genuine source with some made-up details
  • Misleading content−Misattributing valid information to a wrong topic or a person
  • Manipulated content−Doctoring genuine information

Syntax and Formulation
The briefs are inconsistent with Trump’s name. In some, they use the moniker “TRUMP”, in others, they uses lengthy titles like: “Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP”. Clearly, the target audience of the reports knows who Trump is, so why is it necessary to use a 4-5 word qualifier to identify him? One possible explanation is that the information came from some FSU intelligence repository where the details on each target were stored in a structured format like:

[Party affiliation]
[Nationality]
[Political office]
[First Name] & [Last name]
[Incident Details]

The briefs also contain many poorly formed sentences. For example, the subheading of Company Intelligence Report 2016/080 title is: “Republican candidate Donald Trump’s activities in Russia and compromising relationship with the Kremlin.” The phrase is missing the word ‘his’ and should read: “Republican candidate Donald Trump’s activities in Russia and his compromising relationship with the Kremlin.”

One “Summary” phrase says: “…So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals…” The word that the author is looking for here is sweetheart.

Another sentence begins with “Speaking to a trusted compatriot.” After trying to make sense of the sentence, it’s clear that the writer meant “according to a trusted compatriot.” The “speaking to”  jumbles the meaning.

It is difficult to explain how Steele actually wrote this. “Chris Steele,” known in his early days as a reporter for the Versity Cambridge University student publication, also served as president of the Cambridge Union Society, a debating club. So the riddle is: how could a Cambridge University journalist and master English debater form such phrases and confuse a common figure of speech like sweetener with sweetheart?

Run-on Sentences and Poor Punctuation
Paragraphs like the following need no further discussion:

“Alpha [Alfa] held ‘kompromat’ on Putin and his corrupt business activities from the 1990s whilst although not personally overly bothered by Alpha’s failure to reinvest the proceeds of its TNK oil company sale into the Russian economy since, the Russian president was able to use pressure on this count from senior Kremlin colleagues as a lever on Fridman and AVEN to make them do his political bidding.”

Gilded and Sensational Language
There are many gilded passages that have no other purpose beyond creating indignation and outrage. For example, one paragraph states:

“Trump’s previous efforts had included exploring the real estate sector in St. Petersburg as well as Moscow but in the end Trump had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success.”

The writer could have simply noted that while in St. Petersburg on business, Trump allegedly engaged the services of prostitutes.

Besides the obvious contextual problem with this paragraph, it is difficult to logically balance “sexual services” and “business success”. So in lieu of business success, Trump settled for extensive sex? What is the significance of qualifier “extensive”? Does the writer mean to say ‘frequent’?  And what is the significance of the term “local” in the context of prostitutes? Does the source know these prostitutes personally and is vouching for the fact that they are from St. Petersburg or Moscow?

It also appears that some of the report headers were written in the style of sensational newspaper headlines like in: “Further evidence of extensive conspiracy between TRUMP’s campaign team and Kremlin”.  This style doesn’t fit the succinct and factual standards expected in an intelligence report.

Finally, from literary point of view, this whole episode seems to be a revival of the 2009 story about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome ‘defiling’ Putin’s bed.

Non-English Idioms
In writing about sex, the author is particularly byzantine. He says that Russian authorities had compromised Trump by catching him in his “personal obsessions and sexual perversion.”

In another instance, Trump was alleged to have gotten revenge on the Obamas by: “defiling the bed where they had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ urination show.”

The use of archaic terms like “sexual perversion“ and “defiling” hints that the writer had some classical training because it sounds like he/she is using phraseology from Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars (see reference to Tiberius and his ‘licentious indulgences and sexual perversion’ and Nero’s ‘defiling’ acts).

The usage of “a number” with the plural form “prostitutes” seems forced and is designed to emphasize the ‘largeness’ of the event. As far as showers go, the phrase is “golden shower” singular. And what is the purpose of the explanatory ‘AKA’ term “urination show”? It’s redundant and suggests that the writer himself didn’t understand the original term or is concerned that his readers may not.

Missing Articles
One expects to find definite and indefinite articles that are often omitted. For example, the phrase “to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance” is missing “the” before “western alliance.” The phrase “anchored upon countries’ interest” should read: “anchored upon the country’s interest“. The author frequently misuses the possessive form as well.

Punctuation
Sentences that begin with the word “however” without a comma as in: “However it has not as yet been distributed abroad.” In other instances, “however” is followed by a comma: “However, there were other aspects …“.  There is no consistency in the use of serial commas before or after conjunctions like ‘and’ and ‘but”.

Multiple Authors?
The briefs suggest that there were multiple authors, one perhaps Russian/Ukrainian and one BritishAmerican. At one point, the reader is told that the Trump campaign leaked the DNC documents to WikiLeaks “to swing supporters of Bernie SANDERS away from Hillary CLINTON and across to TRUMP.” The “Summary” section cleans up the language. Now the goal is to switch voters “away from CLINTON and over to TRUMP.” This stenographic sleight of hand is forced and artificial. Whoever was conducting the original interview or data collection would/should have corrected this at the moment of transcription.

Russian Speaker and British Spelling
Steele is a Brit educated in British English. The document contains distinctly British spellings such as “programme,” “defence,” “authorised,” and “manoeuvre.” So, are we to assume that Steele’s deep intelligence assets in the FSB and Kremlin also attended Cambridge? Or perhaps these intelligence sources did attend Cambridge and like Steele were either current of former employees of the British foreign service.

There are other little details that bog the mind like when the author writes: “Things had become even ‘hotter’ since August on the TRUMP-RUSSIA track.” What does the term “hotter” mean? Does he mean busier? More complex? And what is the significance of the quotes?

Talking Points vs. Raw Intelligence
One point that repeats itself toward the end of the document is the notion of “Moscow’s interference in the US Presidential election campaign.” Another is Trump’s perceived “unfitness” for office. These statements read less like raw intelligence and more like some talking points for a political speech.

Writing Style
The dossier’s content and network graphs are interesting, but what about the writing style? Can we find the author’s fingerprints? To perform this analysis, I needed writing samples of a few hundred words from each potential author.

I’ve managed to get writing samples for all three dossier musketeers. Nellie Ohr has a significant amount of book reviews and articles online. Baumgartner was little more challenging. Most of his writings are not on-line—which is quite an achievement for a person who claims to have been a reporter for several years. I found a depository with some of his commercial work and his Thesis. Steele’s was by far the most difficult to locate. Despite his working as a reporter for the Cambridge Varsity student newspaper, all of the digitized copies of his prose have disappeared without a trace from the Cambridge library. I was fortunate enough to be able to pull a few copies of his articles from another source (see sample below).

Heseltine heckled – STOP PRESS with Varsity 14th February 1986  – Chris Steele
An excited atmosphere prevailed at Michael Heseltine’s address to the C.U.C.A. last Friday. Speaking to a packed Union chamber, the ex-cabinet minister broached a wide range of defence issues whilst having to overcome some vociferous heckling.

This being his first public meeting since the Bristow knighthood allegations, Heseltine raised the question of unethical trading practices in the City of Westland share sales. The member for Henley declared his belief in the substance of Bristow’s account and quoted an uncharacteristic ally, when he used a ‘Guardian” story to allege that directors of Westlands have been encouraging premium share sales on the stock market for political reasons.

The television cameras then beat a hasty retreat from the meeting. A newfounded sense of humour was evident from Heseltine’s quip to the generally sympathetic C.U.C.A. audience, “I have never got rid of the press so easily”. The substance of the speech which followed developed familiar themes of the problems resulting from American technological dominance of N.A.T.O. and contained a veiled critique of Mrs. Thatcher’s brand of ideological Conservatism.

On the subject of the Tory Party, the ex-minister advocated a return to “pragmatic policies”. Heseltine state that he had never believed this party to be on of “monolithic intellectual commitment”, clearly a criticism of Mrs. Thatcher’s ideological stridency. Historically the Tory Party has proved “a remarkable achievement of political art”. The Henley M.P. claimed that aristocratic Conservative leaders had shown a commitment to political issue and possessed a laudable social conscience. According to Heseltine, the great challenge facing the party today is whether those wielding power in modern centres of influence, such as the City, would prove worthy heirs to their landed gentry forbears.

Despite Heseltine’s self-relegation to the backbenches his mythical power lives on. During the speech abuse and barracking was launched at him from the balcony. At one point this dyslexic M.P. was forced to curtail his address whiulst stewards evicted several protestors. Questions afterwards revealed Heseltine’s cynical attitude to arms negotiations. His speech also studiously avoided the thorny question of the danger of defence policy being dominated by the interests of what Eisenhower termed ‘the military-industrial complex’.

Yaacov Apelbaum - Christopher Steele Early Writings
Image 15:
Christopher Steele’s writing sample

Writer Baseline Profile
As can be seen from the analysis below, Steele, Ohr, and Baumgartner demonstrate a distinct writing style (images 16-18).

Steele's Writer Profile
Image 16:
Christopher Steele’s profile

Ohr's Writer Profile
Image 17:
Nellie Ohr’s profile

Baumgartner Writer Profile
Image 18:
Edward Baumgartner’s profile

The textual analysis of the reports comprising the dossier shows some interesting results. First, I created a ground truth baseline for each of the dossier team members. The ground truth seen in images 19-21 was based on writings they published prior to 2016.

Christopher Steele Writer Baseline
Image 19:
Steele’s writing style

Nellie Ohr Writer Baseline
Image 20:
Ohr’s writing style

Edward Baumgartner Writer Baseline
Image 21:
Baumgartner writing style

Once I had a good baseline and a stylistic fingerprint, I proceeded to analyze the individual reports.  From the sample below, we can see that despite Steele’s claim that he wrote the document, (images 22-25), it is almost certain that it was written by another person(s), likely a foreign source, possibly Baumgartner, or Ohr. The writing style fits their writer profile in multiple categories.

There are however, a few anomalies in the data (image 26) that indicate that some of the content—especially the latter reports that are written in an American English and have ‘talking point’ style—have been written by another unidentified author(s).

Yaacov Apelbaum - Dossier report writer profoile 1
Image 22:
Dossier report sample 1

Yaacov Apelbaum - Dossier report writer profoile 2
Image 23:
Dossier report sample 2

Yaacov Apelbaum - Dossier report writer profoile 3
Image 24:
Dossier report sample 3

Yaacov Apelbaum - Dossier report writer profoile 4
Image 25:
Dossier report sample 4

Dossier report writer profoile 5
Image 26:
Anomalous dossier report

Baumgartner and Social Media
In addition to the writing style analyses, I’ve also correlated the content of the dossier briefs with various social media sources like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The results reinforce the conclusion of the writing style results. As you can see below, Baumgartner’s tweets touch on many of the topics and phrases in the dossier such as: Mikhail (Misha) Fridman, The Alfa group, rigging the elections, divisive campaigning, US citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin, Kremlin buyer’s remorse, and others. They also closely match the dossier composition dates.

Baumgartner fridman

Baumgartner alfa group

Baumgartner rig US elections

Baumgartner divisive

Baumgartne russian jews

Baumgartner buyers remorse
Image 27:
Baumgartner’s tweets with key dossier keywords

Baumgartner social media posting history is also noteworthy because it correlates directly with his work in Fusion GPS. For example, he is re-posting information about the dossier utilizing pre-public leaked information. He’s essentially betraying prior knowledge of the dossier by including these specific buzzwords in his tweets.

On October 31, 2016, Baumgartner was already retweeting the “dossier”. Of interest are the dates. According to the date stamp on the last dossier, report # 186, it was written on 13 December 2016. So, if we to accept this chronology, then we must conclude that individual reports were leaked out as soon as they were written, indicating that the dossier was not released in a single final batch form.

Baumgartner Trump as a double agent 2

Baumgartner pimping the dossier
Image 28: Baumgartner’s tweets of the dossier publication

After his initial re-tweet of the dossier, he embarks on a regular publication schedule further discussing some of the core talking points in the document. This includes topic like “Trump is a Russian agent”.  He also makes a sheepish reference to “Christopher Steele, ex-British Intelligence officer, said to have repared [sic] dossier on Trump…”, and the rationale for why a private security firm (i.e. Fusion GPS and Orbis) had to do Clapper’s job.

Baumgartner Trump as a double agent

Baumgartner pimping steele

Baumgartner pimping orbis
Image 29: Baumgartner’s on-going dossier postings

As time goes on and the dossier story fails to create a groundswell, Baumgartner starts exhibiting signs of outrage. In addition to a lot of profanity, his posts also include calls for a coup against the “scumbag” elected president.

Baumgartner call for revolution 1

Yaacov Apelbaum - Baumgartner call for revolution 2
Image 30:
Comrade Baumgartner and the call to arms

Fusion GPS’s Role
We know that Simpson and Jacoby played a significant role in the dossier’s ‘architectural’, ‘editorial’, and ‘creative’ writing processes. In his testimony, Simpson confirmed sharing his investigative research with Steele. Obviously, he also directly supervised Ohr, Baumgartner, and several other resources. Fusion GPS’s involvement certainly went beyond just coordinating SMEs and acting as the general contractor for the law firm Perkins Coie who had commissioned the report and paid them over $1.2 million for it.

Simpson and Jacoby also acted as the sources (using their original research) and intakes for some of the US political material found in the dossier that shows up in phrases like “an American political figure” and “TRUMP’s associate”. This included communications with: Shailagh Murray, Lisa Holtyn, Cody Shearer (who was working on a ‘second Trump-Russia dossier’), and direct emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal, Jonathan Winer, and Scott Dworkin who managed the Democratic Coalition’s opposition research and publication (see samples below).

Yaacov-Apelbaum-Dossier-Scott-Dworki[2]

Dossier Scott Dworking II
Image 31:
Scott Dworkin’s links and dossier Tweets

Jonathan Winer himself sheds light on this information pipeline. According to his own account, he and Steele met and became friends in 2009 when both were in the business of selling intelligence about Russia. Winer went back to work at the State Department in 2013 but stayed in touch with Steele. He regularly shared Steele’s work with the State Department’s Russia desk.

Over the next two years, I shared more than 100 of Steele’s reports with the Russia experts at the State Department, who continued to find them useful.

Contrary to Simpson’s claim that Steele leaked the dossier content on his own initiative, Fusion GPS took a leading role in the publication process. In addition to coordinating a regular stream of social media postings, they also worked the ‘friendly’ commercial media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, New Yorker, and Yahoo News, and published op-eds and expert reviews that supported the dossier’s credibility.

One thing worth noting is that just like in the case of the core dossier network, many of these ‘receptive’ reporters such, David Corn, Joe Palazzolo, David Cay Johnston, Scott Dworkin and Evan Perez (images 33) had long incestuous relationships with Fusion GPS and it’s team members.

Yaacov-Apelbaum-Dossier-Scott-Dworki[1]
Image 32:
Dworkin on multiple MSNBC News investigative interviews defending the dossier and promoting Russian collusion

Joe Palazzolo, Aruna Viswanatha, Steve LeVine, and David Johnston form the New York Times worked for Jacoby as early as 2010 producing Russia and corruption related reports. Between 2016-2018, Palazzolo and Viswanatha, now working for the WSJ wrote dozens of anti-trump articles. Their publications rate sometime reached one article a week.

Steve LeVine, who now works for Axios delivering “trustworthy news”, wrote a lengthy apologetic article about Fusion GPS and its team, vouching for their credibility and professionalism. LeVine is just one of a dozen of ‘objective’ reporters that have been promoting the dossier and collusion narratives and shielding Fusion GPS, but never disclosing that they had a previous and/or a current business affiliation with Mary Jacoby, Glenn Simpson, and other Fusion GPS actors.

Steve LeVine Fusion GPS
Steve LeVine shielding Fusion GPS in the Derwick Associates Venezuela corruption investigation

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Mary-Jacoby-Joe-Pa[2]
Joe Palazzolo’s, David Johnston’s, and Jacoby’s Russia articles on the now deleted “Just Anti-Corruption” website

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Mary-Jacoby-David-[2]
David Johnston, and Aruna Viswanatha working for Mary Jacoby in 2010

David Cay Johnston
David Cay Johnston, a NYT and a Al-Jazeera reporter and an acquaintance of Glenn Simpson is one of the leading paid anti-Trump authors and is also the reporter who published Trump’s stolen digital tax returns.

A Few Trump News Pearls from David Cay Johnston
An example of David Cay Johnston’s anti-Trump and pro-HRC Twitter activity and a sampling of his vicious character attacks on Ivanka Trump and her family

Johnston has written several anti-Trump books, multiple articles, and participated in dozens of TV interviews that promote some of the dossier related allegations. He and his social and professional network also produce and distribute a large volume of Russian collusion related materials.

Fusion GPS CNN Link
Image 33: Evan Perez pitching the dossier and Russian collusion on CNN News. Perez at a Fusion GPS family event

Yaacov-Apelbaum---Tapper-Perez-Sciut[2]
The CNN Trump Dossier and Collusion team: Jake Tapper, Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, and Carl Bernstein receiving the Merriman Award from Jonathan Karl from ABC. Martha Ohr, was Karl’s news producer at ABC Television. Karl was also at Vassar College with Peter Fritsch and Martha Ohr’s sister-in-law Nellie Ohr.

A good illustration of how effective this ‘rent a journalist’ process is can be gleaned from the  activity of William Browder the CEO of Hermitage Capital and the brain behind the Magnitsky act. In April 2016, When the European parliament was about to screen Andrei Nekrasov’s “The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes” movie. Browder sent an email to Matthew Kaminski, the executive editor of Politico and a WSJ reporter (and a close friend of Kramer, Simpson, Jacoby, and Fritsch) asking him to ‘cover’ the upcoming event. In the email dated 4/24/16 Browder writes:

From: William Browder <William.xxxxxxx@hermitagefund.com>
Date: April 24, 2016 at 08:56:04 EDT
To: “
mkaminski@politico.xx” <mkaminski@politico.xx>
Subject: Upcoming scandal at the EU parliament involving the Magnitsky case

Hi Matt, I hope you’re doing well. I wanted to alert you to an upcoming scandal in the EU Parliament involving the Magnitsky case. On Wednesday this week a Russian filmmaker will be airing a new documentary which basically takes the KGB position on the Magnitsky case. The film claims that Magnitsky wasn’t killed (he died of natural causes), he never blew the whistle on a crime, he was a criminal himself, and that I’ve gone around the world tricking all foreign governments and parliaments into going against Russia based on this “big lie”. The filmmaker is the boyfriend of the Vice Chair of the Green Party, Heidi Hautula, who is hosting the film. We have a bunch of things planned to make this a real scandal and I’d love for Politico to report on what we’re doing. Do you have time for a chat today? My mobile is +447785904192. Can you send me yours or a good time to talk? Thanks and best regards, Bill

On 4/27/16, three days after Browder ordered the hit, Politico published an article titled “MEPs dragged into Russia film row”. It goes without saying that the coverage was derogatory towards the movie and director and used the same unverified Intel that Browder provided Kaminsky.

This is by no means a single isolated incident, Matthew Kaminski, just like Evan Perez, David Cay Johnston, and other anti-Trump reporters dedicate significant amount of their commercial publications as well as their own private Twitter activity to the Russia collusion narrative.

David Cay Johnston Trump Russia Collusion

Matthew Kaminski Politico Anti-Trump

In a similar fashion to Kaminski’s and Baumgartner’s Twitter posts, Perez’s, Tapper’s, Sciutto’s, and Bernstein’s tweets (see below) strongly suggest that they also had early and direct access to the dossier team and were actively distributing its content as it was being written.

Evan Perez Dossier Tweet 2Evan Perez Dossier Tweet 3Evan Perez Dossier Tweet 1

Jake Tapper Dossier Twitter

Trump Collusion Sciutto Tweet

Carl Bernstein Tweets

As far as the journalist’s motivation to publish content favorable to the dossier, it’s clear from the congressional records that this was certainly not due to concerns about the integrity of our republic. In at least 3 cases, Fusion GPS/other sources paid reporters six digit figures for these publications. This can be deduced from image 34, where the length of redacted payment fields for transactions 198 and 205 are the same length as a visible $91K payment in transaction 171.

Fusion GPS Payments
Image 34:
Sample Fusion GPS payment records

What’s with the Ham?
There is a lot of buzz on-line about Nellie Ohr’s Ham radio license and her possible uses for it. On May 23rd, 2016, just as the dossier project was kicking into gear, (Steele was only hired in June), Nellie Ohr, at the ripe old age of give-or-take 55, got a Technician radio license.

Her registration information was:

Nellie H. Ohr,
C
all sign: KM4UDZ
XXXX Tucker Ave
XXXXXX 22101
USA

License Class: Technician
License Issue Date: May 23 2016
License Expiration Date: May 23 2026
FCC Last Transaction: LIISS
FCC Licensee ID: L02028239
FCC FRN Number: 0025607250
Latitude: 38.XX,   38d 56m XXs N
Longitude: -77.19,   77d 11m 24s W
Grid: FM18
County: Fairfax

There are a number of curious things about Ohr getting an amateur radio license so late in her career.

  • Her professional profile doesn’t show her to be the techie type. She doesn’t possess any hacker, computer, or engineering skills (which is what typically motivates people to get an Amateur Radio license).
  • She doesn’t belong to any ARRL radio club in the Fairfax area
  • The radio clubs in her registration area have no records of administering the exam (Ham Radio exams are typically administered by the local ARRL club).
  • Her call sign, KM4UDZ, shows no public activity which is odd, because new Hams are typically very chatty and can’t stay off the air when they first get their license.

As can be seen in Image 35, her technician rating is the lowest class of amateur radio license and has limited privileges with regard to the available frequencies and transmitter power output.

Technician Class Frequency Privileges in Ham Radio
Image 35:
Technician Class Frequency Privileges in Ham Radio

So for all of the conspiracy theorists out there that believe that Ohr was engaged in OSS style night transmissions from a secret compartment in the barn to her controller in Moscow: she wasn’t. The radio class limits would only give her a line of sight range of 5-10 miles. In a repeater mode, she could push the range to 20-200 miles. If you don’t think that a 10-mile range is sufficient, think again. It is likely that Ohr’s rationale for using a Ham radio was a substitution for a cell and landline phones in order to communicate with person(s) nearby. As you can see from the map below, even with a 7.5 radius she was well within the range of the entire downtown Washington D.C. area.

Nellie Ohr Ham Radio RangeImage 36: Nellie Ohr’s Ham radio broadcast range map

We know that Nellie Ohr was the dossier’s liaison to some other agencies. It’s not unlikely that someone versed in SIGINT told her that she had to use a Ham radio because if the project went south, the first line of investigation would have been to subpoena all of her cell and phone records and analyze them to completely re-construct her operational network.

We know that Nellie Ohr’s husband, Bruce Ohr, was the Department of Justice’s contact for Steele and Fusion GPS and in fact held meetings with both about the dossier. We also know that Ohr headed a task force code named Cassandra and Operation Fast and Furious that among other things utilized cell phone tracking technology to identify money laundering, drugs, and weapon smuggling. So, it makes sense that he was aware of the need for electronic surveillance countermeasures.

But what about tracing her Ham call sign during transmission, wouldn’t that eliminate her radio anonymity?

In theory, yes, but in practice, it can be circumvented. This problem could have been solved with devices like the Harris XG-75P/100P. Encrypted radio transmissions can be used to obscure the identity of the sender/receiver of the message. For example, unencrypted HSMM uses a ping packet containing the station call sign to identify the station, similar to how a 2-meter repeater periodically announces its call sign. But if HSMM is operated using WEP encryption (available as a plug-in), those packets would be obscured and the call sign of the station licensee could not be received by anyone without the keys. So, in addition to the encrypted voice the identity of the sender call signs would also be hidden.

The Modus Operandi
The dossier does not stand out as a unique document. Hakluyt seems to have used the same technique before. In 2002, they were contracted by Medusa Oil and Gas Limited to do some opposition research and dig-up dirt on a rival Czech company. Hakluyt, used UK government back channels to deliver a dossier style brief to the UK Ambassador in Prague and to the First Commercial Secretary at the British Embassy in Prague who was also a principal representative in the Czech Republic of British Trade International. The purpose of the document was to pressure the Czech government to prosecute the Czech targeted company. The letter made some defamatory claims about the company’s principals and its structure closely resembled Steele’s dossier. It had a bulleted layout with an intro section and a detailed discussion. Contextually, It made the same type of unverified allegation that included corruption and other crimes.

Brennan Hayden with Hakluyt
Brennan and Hayden at Hakluyt sponsored events in the US

The Fusion GPS work style on the dossier is also well-documented and is based on a long track record of political and media influence operations world-wide. Alek Boyd, an investigative reporter who managed to run into the Fusion GPS buzzsaw, is a good illustration of how they function. Boyd was reporting on Derwick Associates, a Venezuelan company that allegedly skimmed billions of dollars from rigged contracts with Hugo Chavez’s regime and partnered with Gazprom, a Russian state owned oil conglomerate. Fearing US criminal charges and regulatory sanctions, Derwick Associates contracted Fusion GPS to help them spike a potential investigation and negative US media coverage.

On Monday July 21, 2014, Peter Fritsch and Adam Kaufmann, the former New York district attorney chief prosecutor, boarded a Falcon 2000 private jet at the Ft. Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport with the destination of Caracas Venezuela. The plane was piloted by Gilbert Enrique Deleaud, an employee of Derwick Associates. The flight reservation was done through Massiel Hernandez, the pilot’s domestic partner who was also an employee of Derwick Associates. The purpose of Fritsch’s three day visit to Caracas was to do some damage control by meeting with Wall Street Journal reporter José de Córdoba who was writing an investigative article about Derwick Associates. Fritsch previously worked with José de Córdoba at the WSJ.

Derwick Associates and Peter Fritch Trip to Caracas
Derwick Associates linkage to aircraft, pilot, airport, and US based offices

After the meeting, Boyd emailed Tom Catan, a partner at Fusion GPS who he knew personally and asked him about Peter Fritsch’s visit to Venezuela and the meeting with the WSJ reporter. Catan denied they were working on any Venezuela related project, Boyd then sent Catan a proof of Fritsch’s visit to Caracas. Catan’s email response was:

From: Thomas Catan <tcatan@fusiongps.com>
Subject: Re: Peter Fritsch
Date: 26 August 2014 at 14:30:31 BST
To: alek boyd alek.boyd@xxxxx.com
This is really creepy, Alek. You conducting surveillance these days or wtf?

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Alek Boyd Hotel
A reservation record for Peter Fritsch at the Lido Hotel in Caracas. The reservation was booked by Kim Norwood of the MacNair travel agency in Alexandria VA through the Miami based Diamond Stay, a travel agency specializing in South American destinations.

Shortly after the publication, Boyd had his London apartment broken into and his two laptops stolen. A vicious social media smear campaign followed and included social media posting labeling him as a pedophile, drug addict, and thief. Someone even created blogger site with a fake Spanish police arrest warrant and Twitter account under his name with postings of photos of him walking around London with his young daughters.

Conclusion
So who researched and wrote the core parts of the dossier? It looks like it was a team effort. Most of the textual evidence points to Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby as the architects of the dossier framework. This can also be gleaned from Jacoby’s June 24, 2017 Facebook posting (which was deleted promptly with most of her SM activity after the project derailed) where she brags about her husband’s leading role in its composition and vents her frustration about Steele monopolizing the limelight.

Mary Jacoby Trump Dossier Facebook Posting
Image 37:
Mary Jacoby’s FB Post regarding the dossier

When it comes to the research, promotion, and distribution work, the linkage shows that a fair amount of ‘staging’ activity took place in both the US (in the pre dossier stages) and the UK and involved individuals such as, Stefan Halper, Jonathan Clarke, Richard Dearlove, Charles Crawford, Iain Lobban, and Alexander Downer. It is also interesting that many of Robert Otto’s “Russia Workgroup” pen pals include the same Australian and UK diplomatic and IC actors that by July 2016 aggressively promote the dossier and vouch for its authenticity.

The same type of staging and delivery took place in the US through the State department sources like Robert Otto and the political and PR work of Alexandra Chalupa, Natalie Budaeva, and Ilya Zaslavskiy and their pro-Ukraine ‘Free Russia Foundation’ NGOs. It is notable that a lot of this activity dates to first week of April-May 2016, almost 8 weeks before Steele’s official June 2016 contract with Fusion GPS. This strongly suggests that there was a proto-dossier in place and that there was a wider coordinated effort between the US and UK teams with Orbis Business Intelligence likely acting as a front for Hakluyt & Co.

The existence of a proto-dossier that predates Steele’s work is further supported by an email written by Robert Otto to John Williams, the director of the Office of Analysis for Russia and Eurasia in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In this email titled “the fried document” and dated May 1, 2016, Otto comments on some of the building blocks of the future dossier including how effective or damaging various claims would be. For example, on the subject of “Fridman” and “Alfa” (see Dossier page 25 report 112) he writes:

… It’s not clear that Aven/Fridman’s investments in Ukraine are in line with Kremlin policy. Alfa is a bank; banks issue loans.  So what’s the big deal with its loans to UVZ?  It’s a loss making enterprise and Alfa has threatened bankruptcy proceedings over non-payment. I fail t see how that’s at the Kremlin request.

…I know nothing about Karimova’s ties to Alfa.  She has them to Usmanov.  And it’s Usmanov and Shvidler (Abramovich) who allegedly bribed Shuvalov, not Alfa…

…A search in Integrum on “magnitskiy” and “al’fa” gets five hits.  Not a one is about Alfa laundering Magnitskiy money, let alone a central role. Why repeat something so easily checkable. Was it some sort of Alfa subsidiary?  If so, name it. See above on Shuvalov – some of the money may have went through Alfa, but that’s not what went public. (tidbit: one of the folks exposing Shuvalov is Natalya Pelevin that same who shared Kasyanov’s bed and chatted about an anti-Navalnyy front)

…A very serious allegation that requires investigation…We have former Alfa fellows working in the building.

Otto’s comment that “We have former Alfa fellows working in the building” also suggests that other active State Department Intelligence resources were privy to these conversations.

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Ilya Zaslavskiy’s early 2016 activity in the UK also shows some of the Trump dossier themes such as the business relationship with the “Alfa-Bank” (see award below) in several of his anti-Russian Oligarch campaigns.

Ilya Zaslavskiy Alfa Bank Award
Ilya Zaslavskiy’s June 10, 2016 certificate of corruption award

Ohr’s and Baumgartner’s roles were likely to research specific Russian content and re-write the narrative in ‘Russian style’ in order to make it appear authentic. The ‘hard’ intelligence probably came from British and Ukrainian sources who may have also provided some of the juicy gossip. Nellie Ohr utilized DOJ and State Department documents that pertained to Russian organized crime, cybersecurity, corruption, and opportunistically incorporated them into the dossier briefs.

This careful mixture of partial truth and fiction explains all of the tidbits of information in the report that are marginally plausible and give the dossier a first-person witness quality and a thin veneer of creditability. Simpson alludes to this when he said in the testimony:

We –you know, they  [Steeles network of resources] identified -one memo identified a Russian guy who worked for an NGO called Rossotrudnichestvo, which is –you know, I didn’t know it at the time, but I was able to learn from looking at it that the FBI considers that to be a front for the SVR. So, you know, either the people were extremely knowledgeable about a lot of obscure intelligence stuff or, you know, they –what they’re saying had some credibility.

When it comes to the bulk of the literary work, Simpson, Jacoby, Baumgartner and Ohr likely authored it and Steele—if he did any actual writing—just formatted the reports in order to tag them with his scent and make them look spyish by using terms like “Source X” and redacting some phrases.

Nellie Ohr’s, Shailagh Murray, and Mary Jacoby also played a secondary organizational role and acted as the liaisons between the Fusion GPS team, State Department, DOJ, and the White House, and possibly as a cut-outs to other agencies.

Christopher Steele Dossier Timeline
Image 38:
The Steele Dossier Timeline

Anyone who has ever worked in intelligence knows that a good brief should answer the who, what, when, where, how, and why questions. Almost none of the allegations in the dossier offer hard corroboration. It is mostly based on generalizations, truisms, and a lot of materials that were circulating on the internet and Ukrainian circles since the mid 2000s. The writers of the dossier anticipated this criticism and countered it by building-in plausible deniability for most of the allegations through statements like:

but key witnesses silenced and evidence hard to obtain” or “all direct witnesses to this recently had been “silenced”…

It seems that the real dossier story is not the scandalous insinuations that it makes, but rather it’s the funding sources, the teams that worked on it, and its compilation and distribution channels. At peak capacity, the dossier team must have consisted of at least 25 individuals who worked on it for over 6-12 months. Assuming a modest $200 per hour rate per person, some first/business class travel and accommodations, media, consulting, IT, and legal services, this project must have cost an upwards of 5-10 million dollars. According to Simpson’s testimony and documents, Fusion GPS was only paid about a million dollars by the DNC and Clinton campaign, which begs the questions of what was Hakluyt’s cut and where did the rest of the money go?

Simpson and Steele did far more than simply conduct sordid opposition research for the Bush/McCain and Clinton campaign. By various machinations, they successfully reached the most influential people in UK and US politics, the media, and federal government agencies and shaped/influenced the narrative of the 2016 presidential elections. There is little doubt that Simpson/Jacoby and their US political/media network and Steele with his enablers in Hakluyt, the British media, and the Foreign Office successfully waged a full-scale influence operation against the US and are continuing to do so even now.

In the end, this modern version of the “Black Hand Society” failed to deliver the goods and as the Elections of 2016 came to an end, Baumgartner posted this tweet:

Baumgartner Après moi, le déluge

It is just this sort of Machiavellian statement that you might expect from a sleazy literary hitman. In response, I must point out that after you, Monsieur Edward Emil Baumgartner—indeed—did come the flood!

© Copyright 2018 Yaacov Apelbaum, All Rights Reserved

509 thoughts on “The Mechanics of Deception

  1. I love the network graph! What’s your source for Sir Andrew Wood’s and Luke Harding’s affiliation with Orbis?

    Best regards,

    Erik.

    • For Wood, it’s his sworn testimony. For Harding, it’s email and several documents that indicate that he is contracting for them.

  2. The problem with a partial accuracy of any document is that it shows poor workmanship. Besides, it’s one thing to claim that something embarrassing happened; it’s entirely different to have the video footage to prove it.

    • In an intelligence report, partial accuracy is a bug. In disinformation, its a feature. Finding one or two bits of true information will lead the biased to claim the entire report is true. For the less dogmatic, it offers a tantalizing prospect that further research will prove the remainder. Either way, those tidbits of truth keep the report alive and help achieve the purpose of disinformation, confusion.

  3. Every celebrity that travels with a security detail checks every hotel room for “bugs” before getting undressed and spending the night there. It’s ludicrous to suggest that Trump went to Moscow, rented an FSB monitored hotel room, and hired prostitutes without considering the possibility that he was being set up.

  4. Great write-up! I have a few questions about your environment and the setup. Are you open to doing some consulting work? What is the best way to reach you?

    • The storage requirements are a function of the size of the POIs and the degrees of separation. It grows exponentially with the size of the population and linkage. Video and images also take a significant amount of memory, storage, and processing overhead. No zero-day exploits were harmed in the making of this post.

  5. Nice write-up! Can you share more information about the British linkages? Also, can you recommend a good FR tool for FB and LinkedIn?

    • I don’t know of any good OS VA tools. OpenCV doesn’t have commercial grade capabilities and COTS FR won’t handle low res low-quality images. You will have to do a fair amount of customization to traditional ACL FR to get it to work.

  6. How much time would it take the system to run four degrees of separation linkage? Also, how difficult would it be to integrate feeds from sources like travel data and realtime credit card transactions?

    • Time would be a function of storage, memory, processor, and number of feeds. The processing curve tends to be logarithmic if you are doing VA and pattern matching. I haven’t tried a 4-degree, but it would probably take several days. Yes, you can integrate any type of feed as long as you can parse and tag the data in it.

  7. Thanks for the post.

    FR and pattern matching seems to make a big difference in linkage. Any direct connections between Stefan Halper and the core Fusion GPS team?

    Dave

    • Absolutely, without good VA, you would still be sifting through TBs of data… As far as some Fusion GPS Halper Linkage, here are a few:

      1. He knows Mary Jacoby and Glenn Simpson from his WSJ-NYT-WaPo days in 1986-2000
      2. He met and communicated with Steele via email in May 2016. In October 2017 he sent Steele an email about the need to discuss “Joseph M.” (could be a reference to Joseph Mifsud)
      3. Jonathan Clarke from Hakuylt met Glenn Simpson in W-DC in 2016-2017, both before the dossier story broke out and after the elections

  8. Great article and detective work. Do you have any copies of emails and text messages and would you mind sharing?

  9. Great work, but you missed a huge chunk of information: For instance, names like Melanne Verveer, Marcy Kaptur, etc….

    I believe that Alexandra Chalupa is the original author of the Steele dossier. I believe that she was taken out of the picture because the DNC couldn’t burn their biggest asset: Melanne Verveer.

    And I believe this whole Paul Manafort witch hunt is about nothing but a love affair gone bad.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JOdacaSPRccFxVTth38aXU8mWcxhk76lJuGrxYeJ7AU/edit#gid=1015576364

    • Hi Dorotea,

      Your spreadsheet is an incredible piece of work! Thanks for sharing it. Chalupa/Vereer/Kaptur linkage is part of a large US Ukraine political network and I did touch on it briefly in the posting (see below. ). In regards to Manafort, you are probably right, there is a lot animosity towards him from a number of dossier related individuals, but I deliberately opted to stay away from conjecture regarding motives and actions because they tend to move you into the realm of speculation.

      • Nice! Here’s what my research revealed and my timeline substantiates:

        “On 10/1/2015 Alexandra Chalupa claims she started an investigation on Team Trump but that she had been doing research on Paul Manafort for some period of time before this date”

        That’s the very first mention of that term, collusion with Russia. The date she started her research is pretty odd because nothing happened in the news that would have triggered that suspicion. The only notable thing that happened is that Trump announced he was running for office.

        Alexandra Chalupa started writing a dossier on Paul Manafort before Manafort was ever even mentioned. She made a prediction that if Trump hires Manafort that it’s proof that Trump is colluding with Russia.

        Soon after Trump did start mentioning Manafort’s hiring, Chalupa then became a very hot commodity in the DNC, achieving an almost prophet-like status. Everybody wanted to talk to her then.

        Yeah, I’m not buying that she’s got a crystal ball. Did they have a mole on the inside of the Trump campaign?

        One of the meetings she had was with Marcy Kaptur (D). Isn’t that a really strange name to be popping up in Operation Russian Collusion? Like, sort of completely out of the blue, right? Or is it?

        Who is Melanne Verveer? I did that research on that connection here: https://sites.google.com/view/politicscentral/home/who-is-melanne-verveer-for-one-thousand-alex?authuser=0

        But look what Hillary had to say about Verveer: As Hillary Clinton said of Melanne Verveer, “I used to joke there wasn’t a single person in Washington she didn’t know. Not only was she a legend in the nation’s capital; so was her Rolodex…There is no way to catalog the many projects that Melanne masterminded… She also became a key player on the president’s team.”

        And there’s your link of the dossier to EVERYBODY else in the DNC.

        And what was one of the things that Chalupa discussed with Marcy Kaptur? Oh, yeah, that she can guarantee a congressional investigation of Manafort by September of 2016.

        So they ask Chalupa to continue her investigation. Chalupa gets put onto this committee and is described as having a “very important role.” She’s an ambassador to the Ukraine for the DNC….why is that so important?

        One of the things Chalupa did was, Alexandra Chalupa is invited to discuss her research about Paul Manafort with 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine at Library of Congress for Open World Leadership Center, a U.S. congressional agency. Chalupa invites investigative reporter Michael Isikoff to “connect(s) him to the Ukrainians. Guess who funded that little symposium? Why, John Kerry’s State Dept. Guess who hosted it? FactCheck.org. (Which there’s more to that story that I won’t even go into here)

        Then Alexandra Chalupa emails DNC that she’ll share sensitive info about Paul Manafort “offline” including “a big Trump component…that will hit in next few weeks (which never happened, at least by Alexandra Chalupa)

        In the leaked exchange of emails of that committee, Chalupa starts getting freaked out about having her private Yahoo email account hacked. That really, really freaks out the heads of that committee, so much so that they “fire” Chalupa. Really? You fire people for getting hacked? Why not just move her onto your DNC system of emails? Is it maybe because they need to keep her activities off-site, you know, where a FOIA can’t touch them? Anyway, they fire Chalupa. After four years of working for the DNC, she gets fired, and Chalupa isn’t upset about that not one bit, over something that wasn’t even her fault…….

        But what happens on the very day Chalupa is fired? Oh, Christopher Steele is hired. What a coincidence.

        And what happens FIVE DAYS after Christopher Steele was hired? Oh, he publishes his first report on his dossier, a report that discusses FIVE YEARS of investigation.

        Five days isn’t even enough time for the check to clear, much less conduct five years worth of research.

        And what happens to Chalupa after that point? Nothing, not a word. They completely remove her from the picture entirely. My belief is that they couldn’t put her face on Operation Russian Collusion because she connects EVERYBODY together.

      • These are great points and interesting connections. Let’s take if off-line… Ping me via Apelbaum [@] msn.com

        BTW, if you are referring to the following as a proof that someone hacked her account then you can disregard it. This is most likely a self-inflicted gunshot…

        Chalupa’s Email Hack

  10. And I really wished you’d do more to preserve the information on Professor Joseph Mifsud. He’s been systematically erasing every single online reference with his name, and all my links on him are disappearing fast.

    • Hi Dorotea,

      This is the nature of the Internet, its transient… The problem with OSINT is that even if you do make complete copies of everything, it’s hard to use if for forensics because of the chain of transmission and custody issues. As far as Joseph Mifsud, let’s take it off-line.

  11. Very good article. It’s very impressive how much you have achieved using open source tools. Would you be open to sharing your POI database?

  12. Chapeau! A tour de force.

    Regarding authors of the dossier(s): Another employee of Orbis, not mentioned here is Pablo Miller, former MI6 officer. He was (happily still is) the handler for Sergei Skripal of “Novichok” (*) fame.

    Skripal, it is alleged, was a contractor for Orbis. Note that the last NAMES in the reports are capitalised. This is the Russian way of doing things, so that the names stand out. Also you said British spelling but Russian style? Skripal has lived in Britain for a decade. He travels regularly to Estonia, and to the Czech
    Republic, both of which are long used to dirty tricks to discredit Russia. The SBU’s involvement is highly likely too.

    Reporting of Pablo Miller’s name was restricted in the UK by two “D-Notices”:

    http://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/propaganda/item/5998-two-d-notices-for-skripal-affair

    And reporting of the Skripal “poisoning” was covered, sticking rigidly to the official story, by Mark Urban of the BBC. He just happens to be a brother officer of Pablo Miller:
    https://twitter.com/HisBlakeness/status/1021693290863898624

    What is Chalupa’s relationship with the SBU we wonder? She was instrumental in the DigitalMaiden which was the precursor to the real, blood on the streets thing. As a Pravy Sector supporter (don’t be fooled into thinking she’s liberal!) her reason for breathing is to attack Russia.

    (*) https://twitter.com/HisBlakeness/status/1016752454728339457

    Oh. Are you on Twitter?

    Congratulations on some fascinating research.

  13. YOUR TIME LINE IS WRONG … September 2015 Steele and Fusion started putting Russian connections together. U have a lot of INFO , but ur conclusions are skewed because your time line is fked. Contact me ,, dont take this as an attack , i have more info then even you do

    • Hi Knowitall,

      Thanks for your comment. Just to be clear. Simpson/Jacoby/Steele worked on a number of Trump-Russia/Ukraine related activities as early as 2009. I’ve referenced this in the post in the paragraph that refers to the FISA warrant (see below):

      “It is also interesting to note that the DOJ statement about Glenn Simpson “Never advising source #1 as to the motivation behind the research” is untrue. In his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017, Simpson was very clear about having previous discussions and actively working with Steele to discredit Trump as early as 2009.”

      The June 2016 date refers to the ‘official Orbis contract date’ when Steele started billing Fusion GPS. This date is important because all of the dossier reports are supposed to be sequential and the information in each was supposed to have been harvested in a close proximity to the published date on each brief.

  14. Reblogged this on powerglobal.us – The Conservative Voice in Global News and commented:
    Excellent work – I was wondering if you looked at Dr Evelyn Farkas, Soros Atlantic Council links to Ukraine 2013 Coup and Your Dossier Team, Particularly around a late Feb to early April 2016 genesis for your suggested Proto Dossier as this would Simil-date my suggested origin of Trump Russia Narrative pre-dating any Wikileaks June 12 announcement and any mention of emails. https://powerglobal.us/2018/05/01/hillarys-crowdstrike-how-to-hoax-a-russian-hack/

  15. Excellent work, it is great to see someone put in this sort of effort to establish the Truth, I only wish I could work with someone so thorough – just wondering if you had looked at Dr Evelyn Farkas, Soros Atlantic Council links to Ukraine 2013 Coup and Your Dossier Team, Particularly around a late Feb to early April 2016 genesis for your suggested Proto Dossier as this would mirror my suggested origins of Trump Russia Narrative pre-dating any Wikileaks June 12 announcement and any mention of emails. I was about to address the Fusion GPS Dossier as Part 4 of GET TRUMP my 5 Part series may I refer to parts of your presentation? Can I have contact details, For your reference https://powerglobal.us/2018/05/01/hillarys-crowdstrike-how-to-hoax-a-russian-hack/

  16. From ancestry–this is the naturalization information on Bruce Ohr:Petition for Naturalization No. 1163
    District of the Court of U.S. at Knoxville, Tennessee
    Sekyu Michael OHR
    Residence 109 Andover Circle Oak Ridge, Anderson co., TN
    Occupation Physicist
    Born Nov. 12, 1932 in Haeju, Hwanghae Povince, Korea
    Personal description –
    Male; complexion medium; eyes brown; hair black; height 5’10”; weight 160 pounds
    Country of which I am a citizen, subject or national: Korea
    I am married; name of wife is Sangho Yoo Ohr
    married on Aug. 4, 1955 at Corvallis, OR, USA
    She was born at Anju, Pyonganbook Providence, Korea on May 14, 1932 and entered the US at Newark, NJ on Nov. 3, 1958 for permanent residence in the US and now resides with me.
    My lawful admission for permanent reidence in the US was at Newark, NJ under the name Sekyu Ohh (!!!!! As written,name change or error? See Item 19 below) on Nov. 3, 1958 on the Sec. 245, change of status frum (sic) student visa.
    I have not heretofore made petition for naturalization
    (19) Wherefore I, your petitioner for naturalization, pray that I may be aditted a citizen of the US of American, and that my name be changed to none. (See, however, social security application and claims index)

    Alien Registration No. A 8 909 580
    ———
    Not on this page but Ancestry has a petition date of 11 Aug 1964

    —————————-
    Name: Sekyu Ohh
    [Sekyu Michael Ohr]
    [S Ohr]
    Gender: Male
    Birth Date: 12 Nov 1932
    Birth Place: Haiju, South Korea
    Death Date: 15 May 1988
    Father: Yonghwan Ohh
    Mother: Undo Kim
    SSN: 542409300
    Death Certificate Number: 039237
    Notes: Jan 1955: Name listed as SEKYU OHH; Feb 1963: Name listed as SEKYU MICHAEL OHR; 22 May 1998: Name listed as S OHR
    ————-

    • Thank you, Miguel, for the feedback.

      Thomas Jefferson observed that “Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large…”

      I decided to use OpenSource tools, ML, and computer vision because I wanted the create a reference architecture and demonstrate how this mostly free technology can be used to solve one of the most complex political and government transparency problems.

      ML-based text analysis and AI-based computer vision have a tremendous potential for benefit and abuse. We always think about the negative connotations of an Orwellian surveillance state, but as you can see from this example, it can also be a major force multiplier for good, allowing us to quickly/effectively conduct an analysis on massive amounts of unstructured data that would otherwise require a large intelligence team and months to complete.

      As far as how I first started, I do have an intelligence background and have been developing OSINT/cyber/intelligence platforms for many years.

  17. Amazing work. Superb ! I’m almost lost for words, and that’s very unusual for me. This information more or less blows the lid off the Trump Dossier nonsense. It was dreamt up by a bunch of idiots. And anyone with half a brain would say straight away. Where ? When ? Who ? and of course there are no answers to those vitally important questions

    This “dossier” was nothing more than fiction. YOU, or I could have written it. Maybe written it better. And for half the price. (I’m available and very reasonably priced) No, they knew perfectly well it was fiction and that didn’t matter to those who wanted Trump out of the way.

    Rosenstein signed off on it. If he never read it, he’s a fool. If he did read it, he’s a rogue. Either way he should be fired and prosecuted.

    Sessions didn’t want to be involved but all the others were like ravenous jackals and hyenas circling their prey.

    And of course now we know what they’ve all been upto over the last decade or two it’s no wonder at all that they want Trump out of the way. Trump’s an existential threat to all of them. If Sessions ever get his arse into motion and somehow I doubt he ever will. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack or a nasty fall in the shower and has to retire.

    But, if not Sessions someone else will have no trouble make mincemeat of the whole rotten pack of them. I bet Joe DiGenova would love the job

    And looking back, what a lousy unprofessional job they did. If you really needed to ensure that Trump never got elected they could have caused an accident. Car accident, plane accident, breaking a hip in the shower, falling off a balcony, that’s very popular here in Thailand. You can’t walk the streets safely without dodging them coming down from the 20th floor,

    And of course that now begs the question will we see the end of the Mueller Investigation before we see Halley’s Comet again.

    Not a chance, Mueller’s got himself a nice little earner and he’s protecting his own arse at the same time. He knows only too well he’s got a tiger by the tail. Soon as he leaves go, he’s dead. Leavenworth beckons, where he’ll meet some of his old “customers” No doubt they’ll want to have a “word” with him

    Kind regards to all and again, I say excellent work. Bravo !

  18. I don’t have the vocabulary to tell you how much your research impressed me. I send msgs. to the Whitehouse, usually just telling the president I’m praying for him and his family for continued strength and courage. The day I first read this last week, my Whitehouse email also suggested that ‘The Mechanics of Deception’ be read (realizing his team should have researched this information, too, but I also thought your work should be noticed.) I also said that I knew it was silly for someone like me to think what I said could get ‘through’ to anything more than a robot screener. But, it makes me feel less helpless in the face of the devious schemes of these unscrupulous people behind the dossier.

  19. O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive! – Walter Scott.
    I see that the GREAT Clarice Feldman is tuned-in to your work and, hopefully, will lead to SUNLIGHT exposing spiders.

    What are “the chances” of any Obama/Clinton higher-ups being prosecuted? For which crimes?

    Congratulations! A stunning piece of work…

  20. Re: “In 2017, Steele and Burrows formed the holding company Chawton Holdings Limited and renamed “Walsingham Training” to “Walsingham Training Limited”, then renamed it again to “Walsingham Partners Limited”. The majority control of the company was then switched to Chawton Holdings.” —– I was curious about the names and per Wikipedia: “Chawton is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. The village lies within the South Downs National Park and is famous as the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life.” and “Sir Francis Walsingham was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her “spymaster”.”

  21. What an outstanding piece of work ! Congratulations !

    One question I keep coming back to is: since Simpson ad Steele are supposedly so “anti-Putin”, why do they keep working for Kremlin or Kremlin linked entities like KGB Natalia and Deripaska ?

    More to the point. Why do Putin-linked entities keep hiring Simpson and Steele when they are such great “enemies” of Putin ?

    • Thank you for your comment Mr. Johnston. In the post, I’m referencing the following:

      David Johnston was an employee of Main Justice and worked for Mary Jacoby. This reference is not to you. I’ve ensured that the image labeling eliminates any possible confusion between the two of you. Also, your book publication schedule and the number of books you published is not the issue.

      The linkage to you and your activity in the post are to the anti-Trump and Russian collusion allegations that you make in your books, multiple video interviews, and your online publications on Twitter, the DCReporter site, the Democracy Now website, and numerous other media outlets. One typical example of a dossier style allegation is your March 2017 publication titled “As Jeff Sessions Scandal Brews, We Need a Public Probe of Trump’s Ties to Russia”. As far as you not being aware/knowing who the Fusion GPS team is, I’ll just reference your multiple phone conversations, meetings, your cross-pollination activities with Glenn Simpson about Trump and corruption research, and your TV comments about the dossier.

      Here is one of many sample interview that you gave about the authenticity of the Steele Dossier.

      Glen Simpson testified that he was working on almost identical materials to the ones you published as early as 2009 with his trusted friend Christopher Steele and his wife Mary Jacoby. I’m not sure how is it that you don’t know who she is or why you missed Jacoby’s work. Jacoby and her husband published it in the Wall Street Journal financial reporting section (I know that you read Simpson’s articles in the WSJ very carefully). She wrote for Salon as you did and was covered in your Alma Mater NYT and many other MSM outlets. Main Justice and GIR were/are the de facto sources for paid financial corruption investigation and reporting in DC. You should check her out, she may be able to help you with your next book, medal, trophy, or whatever it is that you have been getting for being such a super-duper investigative reporter. Please let me know if you need her contact information.

      I also find your Twitter 2016 DNC hack and Russian collusion posts interesting. I’m curious, as a journalist who claims to have dedicated over 50 years to investigative reporting, who leaves no stone unturned in the pursuit of truth, and verifies the most minute details, how did you know in 2016 that the DNC was hacked by Russian state actors? Who/what are your sources?

      Have you evaluated any of the images of the hard drives? Did you see any original forensic content such as memory dumps? Have you examined any of the firewall/router logs? Have you seen any of the evidence from Crowdstrike? What is your factual evidence for promoting this claim? Is this how real journalist do it?

      If all of these annoying technical questions are too difficult for you because you are a distinguished and highly decorated gentleman reporter who doesn’t know how to get his hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of cyber security, I can talk directly to your trusted ‘deep sources’ about the details. I would also be happy to independently perform the forensics on the drives and demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt how/when the DNC email archive was actually downloaded, and by whom. I’ll also gladly cover the S&H and your flight and hotel accommodations for the examination.

      To make sure that there will be no accusations of impartiality, we can broadcast this live on the Internet and you can observe in person. I can arrange for a number of the world’s leading computer forensic experts to be present during the evaluation including several veterans of the US Intelligence Community.
      Just have your ‘deep sources’ ship me a forensic copy of the DCN hard drives, no need to worry, they can keep the originals. BTW, are these the same sources that committed a felony when they stole Trump’s digital tax returns and gave you a copy so that you can benefit from this illegal disclosure?

      Or maybe none of these questions matter and your ‘deep sources’ will decline because “they are not authorized to discuss the DNC hack publicly”. Or perhaps the truth is that in a postmodern world it’s all about putting out the for-profit political narrative first and then disguising it as investigative reporting. You know, like the intelligence in the Trump dossier.

      The same sourcing question applies to your other fantastic postings such as:

      1. How did you know on September 16, 2015, that HRC was not the subject of an FBI investigation?
      2. That “Trump is having kids injected with drugs as part of his racist border policy.” June 20
      3. That “Trump sends dogs captured at border to luxury pet resorts with “maid service…” June 22
      4. That “Trump’s been subject of many FBI investigations.” November 3, 2016

      I won’t comment about your demi-god like status of a justice/corruption-fighting superhero. But I will defer to the last paragraph in Cicero’s Against Catiline 1:1 “quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consili ceperisquem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?”

      However, I would like to comment on your low moral standards. You have colluded with criminals when you received and published stolen personal financial data and have benefited from this transaction. You work/worked for Al-Jazeera (your name is still listed on their site as a contributor). Al-Jazeera is by far one of the worst anti-American and rabid anti-Semitic propaganda outlets in the world. Did you not perform your trademark investigative journalism or due-diligence on your future employer before collecting a paycheck from them for three years?

      I totally get your spin that Al-Jazeera USA is really the ‘good guys’ and we should never confuse it with the other “bad” Al-Jazeera. And that you really didn’t “work”, you just “contracted” for them. But the bottom line is that both are controlled by the same hostile foreign government with the same burning anti-American anti-Israel agenda. In your three years with them, weren’t you at all concerned that Al-Jazeera actively supports Salafi Jihadi organizations like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood? Or that the primary purpose of their worldwide propaganda network was to undermine Western culture and democracy? How is it that you, the greatest financial detective since Sherlock Holmes was not aware that the same government that owned Al-Jazeera was also funding Hezbollah and their worldwide drug trafficking and money laundering networks? Everyone else in the New York Times seems to have known this. Or perhaps none of this matters, after all, “Pecunia non olet”- Money has no smell.

      PS
      Just to make sure that I was fully informed about your writings, I checked out one of your literary jewels, “The Making of Donald Trump”. After reading a few passages, I felt inspired to write the following short paragraph using your writing style.

      Trump with the Mask Off
      Written in the Style of David Cay Johnston

      The fact that, in order to carry out his aims, Trump uses propagandist methods which are perceptible only to the MSM which has experience in such things. But they are entirely accepted in good faith by the average citizen, which makes his rain of terror extraordinarily dangerous for other states and peoples. This propaganda starts out from the principle that the end sanctifies the means, that lies, and slander, the terrorizing of the individual and of the mass, robbery and burnings and strikes and insurrection, espionage and sabotage of armies can and ought to be made use of, and therewith that the aim of dominating the whole world must be specially and solely kept in view. This extraordinarily pernicious method that Trump uses to influence the masses of the people does not stop before anything or anybody.

      Do you love it?

      OK, I didn’t really write this, I just used a simple algorithm (you may already know it) to create it. I took Joseph Goebbels’s speech to the Congress of the Nazi Party on September 13, 1935, titled “Communism with the Mask Off” and substituted the word “communism”, and few other words with “Trump”. I also did a little bit of reformatting. It’s as simple as that! Is this your algorithm as well?

      • David needs a new line of work. Trump Derangement Syndrome is epidemic in the Democratic Population of the United States. I am waiting for the correct International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD 10) code to start reporting this on Insurance claims.

      • Boom! What an epic response to the sanctimonious Mr. Johnston! (Having trouble wiping this broad grin off my face.) Tremendous job with your analysis–simply brilliant.

      • Whew.

        Love to see you interact with the charming and dignified Ed Baumgartener, whose twitter I examined after reading this (also, Dan Bongino posited last week –Feb 2019– that he wrote dossier).

        He’s now officially on the top of my “must take a shower after reading..” list.
        Or have a demon cast out or something.

      • “And we need to know about why he didn’t call FBI counterintelligence, which is the only thing any decent and patriotic American would do when given an offer by a foreign government…” David Cay Johnston – March 25, 2019

        Said David Cay Johnston, the decent patriotic American who worked/s for Al Jazeera, the ultimate foreign agent. And if we are on the topic of decency, it’s the same Al Jazeera that regularly publishes anti-semitic content and casts doubt on the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people and millions of others, referring to it in their May 23 news story as “the alleged Holocaust.” The same Al Jazeera that sponsors a worldwide terror network and regularly broadcast speeches of terrorist the likes of Hama's official Fathi Hamad in which he encouraged “the cleansing of Palestine of the filth of the Jews” by 2022.”

        https://apelbaum.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/al-jazeera-anti-semitic-tweets.png

      • Thank you sir! For the fabulous research, but also,the absolute best, most awe inspiring, smackdown of a “journalist”EVER!!
        Please take a bow, hell, take several. Next book: How to Disassemble a Journalist in 7 Easy Steps 😁

      • I just came back to this article after reading it a long time ago (Great Piece). Then I see this comment that is actually an article within an article. If only my mind was half as sharp. As a side note that is not important, where can I find the Shearer Dossier?

  22. Excellent research!

    I can’t help but think that there is more to “ham” Nellie Ohr. Taking your work a bit further:

    There are three digital repeaters within ranges of 5 to 15 miles of Nellie’s house. All three are listed in the Repeater Book under N3QEM. These repeaters are linked to the internet and to distant repeaters effectively eliminating many, if not all, range restrictions and making file transfers possible.

    N3QEM happens to be Stephen E Schmidt who was John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager.

    Steve and John share a common dislike of our POTUS! May be nothing, but then again…..

    73

    • Excellent investigation, GQA! This is in line with Kramer’s meetings at the White House, too.
      Gotta wonder where Nicole Wallace was lurking.

  23. Brilliant analysis, Mr. Apelbaum!
    Like I always say, you can’t watch the game without a play book.
    Your analysis of the dossier and the people behind it is the definitive playbook.

  24. What a tour de force is this compilation and analysis! I salute its author. And thanks to Clarice Feldman for the link; I never let a Sunday pass without reading her treasure for the week.

    The matter of Nellie Ohr’s ham radio license and the speculation over her intended or actual use of it: this may seem like a bit of minutiae but were she, in fact, making radio transmissions on the amateur radio bands under her licensed use, any attempt by her to obscure content or meaning by the use of codes or ciphers would be a direct violation of federal regulations. The FCC regulations (Part 97, Section 113) plainly spell this out. That section also prohibits communications in which the operator “has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer.”

    Further, her license application would be accepted and license granted only after she successfully passed an exam on amateur radio theory, practice and regulations, and with her signature signifying her acceptance of those regulations.

    There may be nothing to this; Ohr may have just decided innocently to pursue an interest in amateur radio and was, possibly, getting “chatty” on a purely social basis with friends and/or colleagues.

    On a practical matter, detection of violations can be difficult. But were they, in fact, actually detected it could entail legal jeopardy for the violator. But HC, not DJT, was supposed to be elected, you see, and under the Clinton 2.0 Administration, such misdeeds, along with the systematic misuse of FISA courts, would be conveniently dropped into the Memory Hole.

    • I’m not sure what kind of an enforcement/prosecution algorithms the FCC uses. But just like other agencies like the IRS or OSHA, they have to balance resources with performance KPIs. I suspect that at the end of the day the decision to go/no go after the license holder will be political.

      As far as the law, Federal laws, in general, are only applicable to the rank and file citizenry. The people that make up the dossier saga are not your average joes. So, any discussion about intent to obscure their communications in order to subvert the law is probably immaterial…

      • First, let me say Mr. Apelbaum that your analysis is truly amazing/intimidating. How a mind like yours ever shuts down for sleep is beyond my comprehension.

        That aside, there’s one thing about Nellie’s Ham Radio license that everyone has been overlooking; including me until I realized it today.

        Packet radio is data transfer at dial up modem speed 9600 baud.

        Meaning, Nellie probably wasn’t using her radio as a cell phone, but as a means of transferring data she gleaned from illegal 702 queries as a private contractor (Fusion GPS) before Adm. Rogers shut it down.

        https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/20/the-nellie-ohr-dossier/

      • Hi Bob,

        Thank you for your kind words.

        It’s really difficult to tell if, why, and how Mrs. Ohr used her radio. Any type of data transfer can be intercepted and flagged, even more so via a dialup modem, beuse it runs on lagacy telco lines. There are plenty of programs that are designed to do this (you can see a few of these on the left side of the illustration).

        https://apelbaum.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/the-hrc-dnc-hack_thumb-4.jpg
        For more details check out Whodoneit?

        So in this context, the best use for such radio could have been to just use button clicks to signal simple semaphore for dropoffs, pickups, meetings, etc.

      • Lost my previous reply to the void.

        Point to point radio transmission of digital data involves no phone lines. I don’t think the NSA monitors weak point to point terrestrial radio… the logistics would be too unwieldy.

        Apparently you can even send bitcoin by ham radio now.

        https://news.bitcoin.com/no-internet-no-problem-how-to-send-bitcoin-by-amateur-radio/

        On a different note, did you ever cross check Michael Sussmann with Glenn Simpson? I ask only because of the evidence that came to light in the last two months. Michael Sussman of Perkins Coie was the attorney who gave FBI Gen. Counsel James Baker the bogus evidence connecting Trump with Alfa bank. He was also responsible for hiring Crowdstrike and denying the FBI access to the DNC’s physical servers — leading us on what would turn out to be a “Russia Collusion” snipe hunt,

        The fact that Simpson was pushing the Alfa bank theory, months after it was debunked, smacks of a “sunk cost” fallacy. As if they put in so much effort to create the connection with Alfa bank, that he couldn’t help himself but push Bruce Ohr on it.

        One last question, I promise. If Mifsud was offering “dirt on Hillary” to Papadopoulos on April 26, and the DNC was hacked on April 29th, then what emails was Papadopoulos suspected of trafficking in to justify opening the counterintelligence investigation?

        Regards,

        Bob

    • I’m willing to bet there’s a whole lot of illegally encrypted radio transmission going on in the Washington, DC area.

      Persons trying to assemble something like the dossier would be hyperaware not only of straightforward government surveillance, but of rogue surveillance evidenced by the reporting from local news services of “black boxes” observed mounted all over the area (i.e., to collect microwave transmissions from cell towers)..

      The real problem for follow-up on radio-operation violations is probably not detecting them but prioritizing them.

      • Thank you for your comment.

        Just using encryption to protect most data transmissions is not illegal, it’s the data being transmitted that is often the problem. Yes, the FAA can pick up almost any transmission and track it to the source. They do regularly on pirate RF usage and don’t need warrants to do this. The issue here is that Ohr had a license so there would have been no reason to monitor her traffic.

        YA

      • In 2003 I was busted by the FCC for operationg a Pirate Radio Station called WSR HOOT and STUDROCK 90.5FM. I had a 40 watt transmitter built by Stephen Dunifer from Free Radio Berkley . It was the funnest time of my life playing music that was never heard on Mainstream Radio. I wish I could find the website we put together back then through Geocities.

      • Yaacov,
        Believe it or not I inspired my Nephew Jon Stephenson when he was in 5th grade. He came down to the studio I made in my old fruit cellar back in Sharon PA.
        Guess who owns Live 365??

        My nephew Jon Stephenson.

        He took my passion to a new level and started with Data Center development and streaming while he was in high school. Now the funny part of all this is he wants to charge me a monthly fee to Broadcast on his service. I am in negotiations wiith him currently…

        Small world..

  25. I was getting ready to tackle George Gilder’s “Life After Google”‘. Having barely skimmed this article and seen your list of Archives it looks like I will be otherwise occupied for the next several weeks.

    Thank you for your time and insights. It really is phenomenal the work that you are sharing with those of us who strive for truth and understanding of our current state of affairs.

    And thanks to the AT for the link.

    • Yes, one does get the erie feeling of one has Red Pilled and awoken in the “Byzantium Phase” having skipped past the “Fall of the Republic” altogether.

      Perhaps Caesar’s Legions never smelled the coffee and missed their wake-up call? :)

      • Caesar was a complex man, he refused to be a King (see Plutarch, chapter 61 of “The life of Caesar”), but he did cross the Rubicon and plunged Rome into a civil war. Paradoxically, it was his assassination, that was supposed to save the republic that ended up killing it. So, what is the moral of the story? Not sure there is one. It’s very hard to learn from history because it doesn’t exactly repeat itself.

  26. Have you read any of Diana West’s work on this topic? She’s done a lot of research as well on her blog, especially her “Red Threads” series of blog posts, tying many players to the Kremlin.

      • Now Chrystia Freeland from Canada, another Trump hater, has some Ukrainian in her background, too. A grandfather who fled Stalin at the outset of World War II — not unreasonable — but who ended up broadcasting for the invading Nazis! Chrystia is peeved that this got out in the controlled Canadian media the other day.

      • Thanks for your feedback Yankee Girl,

        The same can be said about several WWII refugee ‘rags to riches’ stories. George Soros has almost an identical story to Freeland. His father, Tivadar Soros (just like Mikhailo Chomiak) was also in the publishing business and did some contract work for the Gestapo in Hungary that included responsibility for Jewish property confiscation. That is how little George managed after the war to get a paid ticket to the London School of Economics and the seed money for his financial venture.

  27. Regarding:
    “So for all of the conspiracy theorists out there that believe that Ohr was engaged in OSS style night transmissions from a secret compartment in the barn to her controller in Moscow: she wasn’t. The radio class limits would only give her a line of sight range of 5-10 miles. In a repeater mode, she could push the range to 20-200 miles. If you don’t think that a 10-mile range is sufficient, think again. It is likely that Ohr’s rationale for using a Ham radio was a substitution for a cell and landline phones in order to communicate with person(s) nearby. As you can see from the map below, even with a 7.5 radius she was well within the range of the entire downtown Washington D.C. area.”

    I disagree that Technician privileges would limit a radio operator to such a short distance.

    Your estimate is probably accurate for VHF communication, however, the HF bands allow propagation for hundreds or even thousands of miles under the right conditions (depending on mode). Morse/CW transmissions can go a long way.

    There are a few unstated assumptions that I see here, too. One is that Ohr would be using the radio from home. It’s possible she could be mobile. Two, as another commenter pointed out, she could just operate illegally with encrypted transmissions. Ohr third (pun!), she could operate outside the band or power limitations of the license.

    And in that last case – why even have a ham license at all? It only draws attention. Me, if I was going to use a radio for questionable activities, it certainly wouldn’t be by suddenly getting a ham license, buying an off the shelf radio, and using it otherwise legally but in the clear. Another thought: there’s a chance it could be a distraction or a red herring.

    All that said, what you’re suggesting is the simplest and most likely explanation – that she was using a typical VHF ham radio (HT or small base station) to talk to a contact within the immediate DC area. They probably used a simple code to conceal instructions within an innocuous-sounding conversation.

    But, I wonder if she realized that the NSA records the entire radio spectrum? I’d bet money that her comms were recorded, archived, and triangulated. And the evidence is sitting in a datacenter somewhere right now.

    • When you setup up a communication network you always assume the worst case scenario. i.e. occlusion, poor atmospheric conditions, EM interference, etc. So, with this type of a license, it is almost guaranteed that we are not looking at long-range transmissions.

      Also, this setup most likely wasn’t used for voice conversations. The radio was probably connected to a laptop and was used as a primitive semaphore device. There was no need to talk to anyone. All you would have to do is agree with your partner(s) on a signaling scheme (I’ll use 5 and 10 clicks for illustration purpose). So, for example, you would create a macro on the radio where pressing the talk button 5 times without saying anything would execute a pupup message on the receiver’s laptop screen displaying a customized text message such as “Drop-off ready at X”, 10 clicks could mean “Let’s get coffee in 30 at Y”, etc. There is nothing to capture here or intercept. The computer wouldn’t have any records of the messages because you could output the messages directly to notepad and never save the document.

      Now, why do you need a license at all, why not just wing it? Well, the FCC constantly monitors the airways for pirate transmissions and they do catch people that operate HAM radios without a license. If you got caught, you would get a regulatory citation (which are public) and you would have to go to a hearing. It’s like being pulled over for a DUI and getting a ticket. Yes, you may be able to have your rich uncle help you get the ticket dismissed, but sometimes that doesn’t work, not even for the rich and famous. So you don’t want to take any chances.

  28. Yaacov,
    Did you get the copy of my timeline I put together? I am not professional but I started doing it over a year ago. I cant believe what we are witnessing and I am even more pissed that I have been duped by these cockroaches in DC my entire life. Mainstream Media , Hollywood, Academia and the progressive party politicians must be flushed out of existence.
    May God help us all.

  29. Hi there! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any problems with
    hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing a few months of hard work due to no backup.
    Do you have any methods to prevent hackers?

  30. Yaacov – thank you for all the effort put into this analysis. Extraordinarily interesting, especially the facial recognition that ties these corrupt souls together.

    The weak link is the easiest piece to figure out – how does Steele do 5 years of research in 5 days? Such an obvious question that the great minds in FBI, DOJ, FISA court can’t figure out. Totally obvious hit job.

    Great job on dismantling David Cay Johnson as well.

    • Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I agree, if you’ve been in this field, you can quickly spot the inconsistencies and logic bombs. But it’s not obvious to the general reader, and Republics do rise and fall based on the perception of the average citizen. It’s tempting to point fingers at some federal agencies and say that the intrigues of some government bureaucrats are the cause of all of this.

      Maybe it is the case that a senior layer of the Federal government became over politicized and there should be a complete agency reorganization. But on the other hand, bureaucrats by nature always plot and scheme. Edgar J. Hoover managed to ride out six presidents (while wearing a dress) and got away with it. So, what does that say about the FBI of the forties-sixties as a whole?

      Perhaps the problem is the emergence of dynastic political families like the Kennedys’, Bushs’, and Clintons’ that encourage homage and client-patron style relationships. Or maybe the problem is the formation of mega-corporation like Disney, Google, or JP Morgen Chase that should be broken down to independent business units once they reach a certain size or revenue. I don’t know, It’s a hard one.

      • I’d like to give my thoughts on ‘the cause’. Obviously there is more than one. But right away I’d point out a few things. 1. if government stayed within the confines of the constitution, there wouldn’t be much if any subject matter for big business to lobby for. 2. if there were term limits on politicians, there would be less opportunity for them to meddle outside the constitutional confines, less clout to dabble in corruption & less influence on other non elected positions in other federal departments (we’d hope). 3. Without 1 & 2 the government can’t subject companies big or small overbearing “law” or “regulation” who’s sole purpose is to punish them in order to bring them to the bargaining table of corruption.

        I guess in short, I don’t much blame big business. I blame both houses who’s members have been there for decades.

        I enjoyed this article, got me researching open source technology now. Fascinating.

    • The points in the article sound plausible, they certainly make more sense than to assign the blame to a ‘Romanian hacker’ who had to jump over multiple networks/FW/routers/proxies to get to the DNC servers over a VERY slow network connection.

      I didn’t personally see any of the physical evidence, so I can’t speak intelligently about the DNC hack. Keep in mind that most of the information on-line such as opinions and verdict are based on a theoretical analysis. Crowdstrik allegedly performed the forensics, but there are a lot of issues with Crowdstrike’s work on this project and the conclusion of if/when/how/why Fancy Bear was involved. There is a simple way to solve all of this. The FBI should perform a public evaluation of the drives (they should do the same with HRC’s/Huma’s/and Winner’s drives) and include some industry experts like SANS as observers in order to keep the process honest.

      Now, I’m not a betting man, but if I was, it would wager that just like in the final scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark showing large crates being stored in warehouse that stretches into the horizon, these drives too ended up in some large and inaccessible storage facility and are probably destined to never see the bright fluorescent lights of a forensic lab ever again…

  31. I’m surprised to see no mention of Crowdstrike’s associations with these Ukrainian and DNC players (and the Atlantic Council). The whole “Russia, Russia, Russia” thing is based on their word – and if their work on the Ukrainian artillery thing is any indication, they are not competent even if they weren’t intentionally lying. But, they did create a great diversion from the the Seth Rich/Wikileaks speculations.

    • Thanks for your comment TomABC. Yes, Crowdstrik did show up on multiple linkages, some of which included Ukrainian sources. But due to the already inflated post size, I opted to focus on the core dossier team and its media and political networks. The chalange of running this type of an analyis is that the increase in the degrees of linkage (i.e. from 1-2-3-n.) is in most cases logaritimc. So follwong that ‘white rabit’ would not have scaled well on the HW that I used at the time.

  32. Hi Yaacov Apelbaum, your work is very impressive and I’d like to add some of your findings to the clintonfoundationtimeline.com, a sister site to Paul Thompson’s Clinton Email Investigation Timeline (thompsontimeline.com). We were disappointed to learn Hillary paid for the dossier because that added a ton of work to our already full plate and have added an Investigations timeline that covers all things Russiagate. I’m afraid it’s overshadowed our original intent to cover the Foundation, at least for now.

    Anyway, hope you don’t mind if we include your findings and we will probably break it down into individual entries so the information will fit into the timeline in chronological order. And of course we’ll link to your original source for each entry.

    Thank you for doing this awesome research. It’s far more professional than the actual dossiers that earned $ millions. :D

    • Hi Katie, sure, feel free to copy and reuse. I’ve posted this as a public service and have no commercial interest in the material.

      I’ve briefly checked out the thompsontimeline.com site (your site seems to be off-line) and it seems to be very well made and professional. I’m not much of a political guy so I won’t comment on Pual’s conservative vs. liberal democratic persuasions :-) We should all be able to get along as long as everyone obeys the law.

      Paul’s book “The Terror Timeline” looks very interesting. I did a lot of work on the ‘cyber Jihad’ several years ago but it had different focus and purpose. Are these two sites related? Are you doing joint research?

      I applaud your resolve and wish you the best. Your work is very timely and important and I’m looking forward to reading it.

      • Thank you for allowing us to include your research. We just don’t have the manpower to do this type of in-depth work and your findings are stunning.

        I teamed up with Paul to do the Email timeline, didn’t know him too well when he wrote the Terror Timeline but we hung out on the same social websites at the time.

        I think Paul was burned out and dropped from the project after the election, perhaps a little guilt there as well for exposing Hillary so thoroughly. The team and I stuck together and we’ve decided to continue where the first timeline left off.

        Sorry you couldn’t access the new website. We just changed servers and having certification issues. Have a techy working on it so check in again, we should have our problems resolved soon. Plus, the site is still in its infancy so it’s not very cohesive yet. But we’ll get there. :D

      • I think you meant “certificate” not “certification” problem. Yep, your site is back up, it looks very nice. Just a comment about your About tab, it seems to be empty. You may want to put your contact information there and an inquiry submission form.

        BTW, what is your email address? You can ping me at: Apelbaum {&}msn.com

  33. With your article being published March 17, 2018, why is it only now that you are getting a tremendous amount of attention?

    • Hi George, Thanks for your comment. I’m not a political activist, I have no social media following, I’m not active on Twitter or FB, and am not an active member of any forums so this is probably one explanation for the slow propagation rate.

  34. An interesting, mostly psychoanalytic and historic, profile of the dossier creators was posted by Diana West http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3667/Red-Thread-Pt-5-When-American-Collusion-Looks-Like-Russian-Deception.aspx. Among other things, she briefly notes that Bruce Ohr’s father is a physicist naturalized in Oak Ridge, TN in the 1950s. The DOE nuclear complex was the only employer in OR at that time. So, Bruce Ohr, at his 50+, apparently went to Oak Ridge schools and grew up with kids who are now holding positions throught the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and, like him, the DOS. Many of Oak Ridge kids traditionally go to Ivy League schools and keep in touch. He looks like a better burrowed agent than many around him.

  35. Fascinating work. I know you need to remain concentrated bc the web can spread quite wide, but have you looked into John Schindler? He is somewhat of a “Resistance” leader- claims to have inside sources and is often walking back his assertions as the dossier story unravels. I suspect he is close to some of the players in UK and/or Baltics. Some in his Twitter click like @JamesFourM emerged from nowhere with big followings in early ’17- always suspected a link to Daniel Jones and/or Ted Lieu.

    • Hi InquiringMind,

      No, it did not use any inside sources or classified materials. Contrary to Steele, I don’t like unverified sources :-) Also, I don’t think that social engineering and similar techniques would have been ethical or useful in this case. When you do primarily OSINT, you don’t have to deal with these kinds of problems. I also opted to stay away from traditional intelligence gathering methods because:

      1. Accessing, storing, or transmitting US classified documents that are not in the public domain could be a crime.
      2. Using “deep sources” (which is very common with MSM) that refuse to be named because “they are not authorized to discuss the case” is dishonest.

      My objective in this exercise was to just get a better understanding of what the “dossier” was all about. I have done intelligence/technology work for many years so this project seemed like a good opportunity to bring the two together.

      • Thx. No, I wasn’t implying that you use inside sources- I was wondering if you looked into connection between these players and some of the folks magnifying the dossier (&other) claims online. But that’s more to satisfy my personal suspicions. Also, I wrote “click” instead of “clique”- oops.

      • This could be an interesting project, but you will be squarely in IIPA territory and would not be able to collect, let alone publish these results without a lengthy all expenses paid vacation in a federal resort.

    • 12/10/16 John Schindler issues series of threats and ultimatums in open source medium (SOCMINT or Social Media Intelligence, part of a 5th “domain of war”) after the FBI established that DNC emails published by Wikileaks originated with Seth Rich, and not Russian hackers. Schindler maintains the official talking points of “for years” “the Kremlin is behind Wikileaks,” the quick way to deny the veracity of anything, including future leaks.

      01/12/17 Former NSA official John Schindler tweets, “When @IgnatiusPost (WAPO) speaks, Langley’s 7th floor lips are moving. They are taking traitor Trump out now.” Langley’s 7th floor is a reference to CIA headquarters.

      • That’s a bit harsh… there are a lot of good patriotic people on the seventh floor that have dedicated their lives to this country. I would modify the statement to:

        “When MSN quotes any IC source anonymously, both should be prosecuted” or “When an MSN outlet obtains classified information via surreptitious methods (e.g. NYT using a sex worker like Ali Watkins to honeytrap James Wolfe), its editor and board of directors should be charged with sex trafficking and its legal team should be disbarred.”

  36. Sid Blumenthal, was a critic of the deep state before he became a fan, seeing as he seems to have been a purveyor of the second dossier.

    Right out of Brandeis, he worked for one of these fringe assassination investigation group, that published govt by gunplay, the lead piece had Phillip agee as coeditor

    • Dedicated to Blumenthal, Shearer, and their ilk:

      The Death of MSM
      inspired by Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib”

      The conspirators crawled out of the swamp in the night,
      And the media enablers promoted their lies with delight;
      The flash of their cameras was like the setting sun on the sea,
      Their dossier orgies included the leading politicians of DC.

      Like the leaves of the forest when Spring is green,
      ‘Russian Collusion’ incessantly played on every screen;
      Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
      The MSNBC studios abandoned lay withered and strewn.

      For the Angel of Death flapped his wings in a gust,
      And breathed in the face of the MSM as he passed;
      And the eyes of CNN waxed deadly and chill,
      And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

      There a WaPo reporter shattered and pale,
      Gave the last fake news update and his ratings frail;
      Their mics have gone silent, the news feed died,
      The tweets unpublished, and propaganda dried.

      The widows of the swamp now cry and bemoan,
      The idols of DC are broken in the temple of Mammon;
      And the mighty NYT demon smote by the sword,
      Hath vanished like snow in the glance of the Lord!

  37. Can you confirm how many different transmissions of the DNC emails to Wikileaks were made? Scott Ritter appeared to allude to three such transmissions, the first being April 25, 2016, during Crowdstrike’s Bernie Sanders Incident Response that ended April 29, 2016. Being that someone on the internal network downloaded the emails, wouldn’t Crowdstrike be a logical suspect since they were behind the firewall monitoring the network (allegedly) at the time?

    • I didn’t personally see any of the physical evidence, so I can’t speak intelligently about the DNC email leak/hack. Keep in mind that most of the information online, the opinions and verdicts are based on theoretical analysis and speculations. Yes, there are a lot of smart people making these speculations, but they didn’t perform a forensic analysis of the drive images.

      Crowdstrik claims to have performed the forensics, but there are a lot of issues with their work and the conclusion of if/when/how/why Fancy Bear was involved.

      There is a simple way to answer all of these questions. The FBI should perform a public evaluation of the drives (they should do the same with HRC’s/Huma’s/and Winner’s drives) and include some industry experts (I can recommend a few guys from SANS) as observers in order to keep the process honest.

  38. 07/24/16 Bill Kristol, from the Weekly Standard: Kristol gave Strzok and the Obama Justice Department a big assist from the anti-Trump Right by posting a flawed and questionably-sourced article. “Putin’s Party” is compelling evidence that Kristol and the Standard were far from mere sideline observers as the Trump-Russia collusion scam. Kristol’s article hits on every single one of the Simpson-Steele talking points: Trump forced the GOP to water-down language on the Ukraine in the party’s platform (it didn’t happen); the Russians were behind Wikileaks’ release of the DNC’s hacked emails (unproven); Trump encouraged foreign powers to interfere in the election (he didn’t); and Trump would not honor U.S. commitments to NATO (an overblown assessment of Trump’s NATO criticism nearly all the Republican candidates made). He listed a handful of unknown Trump campaign associates who would soon become household names, including campaign manager Paul Manafort; national security advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn; and foreign policy aide Carter Page.

    • Hi Hugh,
      I’m not an astute political reader so I can’t intelligently comment about the 5 points that you raised. My interest in the dossier wasn’t as much political as it was structural and contextual. But I agree with you, the dossier does seem to be a byproduct of multiple agendas and research projects.

  39. Fantastic research, love the FR and the potential of this system that you created.
    I hope you can do a follow-up report, as I’m sure there are more interesting details to be told. And it seems you have a lot more.

    Just a few questions about this bit:
    “Steele’s information didn’t only flow in one direction. In January 2016, before the Fusion GPS dossier project kicked-into-gear, Johantan Winer and Strobe Talbott were sharing with Steele via Orbis’s Canada hosted servers and email system documents authored by Cody Shearer, who produced a ‘second Trump-Russia dossier’. This document consisted of two four-page reports, one titled “Donald Trump—Background Notes—The Compromised Candidate,” the second “FSB Interview”.”

    How do you know this? That Shearer had his own ‘dossier’ and peddled it I already have read elsewhere but that timeline is rather unique. And January 2016 seems a bit early as Steele had not even been hired by Fusion GPS, or …?
    And how do you know what passed via Orbis’s servers and email system?

    I’m trying to establish whether Shearer & Steele simply got some of their stories from the same source, or whether Steele re-used a tale invented by Shearer, a known fantasist & dirty trickster.

    • Hi Jaap,

      The June 2016 start date of Steele’s contract with Fusion GPS is the start of the “billable” activity, not the beginning of the research. Steele and Simpson/Jacoby have been collaborating on Trump/Russia going back to 2009.

      Also, there is a large Hakluyt/Orbis ‘commercial intelligence’ network in the US that regularly services political and federal agencies and has the power to summon Nazgûls the likes of John Brennan. So Steele is not the new kid on the block, he has been doing this type of work long before 2016. This is also why he has such a cozy relationship with the brass at the DOJ and state.

      There are a few similarities between their dossiers, but also many differences between the plot lines. Steele, for example, doesn’t reference the one-eyed man from Istanbul as a source for the alleged sex episodes. He also fails to mention Shearer’s allegation that there are copies of the alleged movie in Bulgaria and Israel. This suggests that Shearer was probably the earlier source. It also fits Shearer’s extortionist/blackmailer style.

      Regarding how the information was written, stored, and exchanged, I prefer not to get into the sources and methods here.

      • OK, thanks. I knew most of that :)

        I asked because of this: “This suggests that Shearer was probably the original source.”
        Hence my question as to the date. Assuming that Steele did get the Shearer version in January, that would be quite some time before the Steel/Simpson team wrote their version and that should be sufficient proof that they are inventing their stories and/or very loose about their sourcing.

        Ergo: what evidence can be produced that Steele (or Orbis) received that Shearer story in January 2016? An email perhaps?

  40. I admire your tenacity in accumulating such interesting information. This is a lot to absorb and it will take some time to digest and relate it to the obvious guilt of many parties. It is sad that our media, left and some right cannot seek the truth rather than agenda……and that is certainly among my concerns. Thank. You for your effort.

  41. I think he’s more of an uruk hai orc or a morlocks, nazguls are the ones that ride the screaming dragon.

    Cody shearer was also the source of that ridiculous story of the cia trying to pay off some hackers in Berlin, for some of those emails. He’s also long been associated with a notorious character, who was involved with some scurrilous allegations against Quayle in the 88 election. As well to another fellow who had ties to the uae And Israel that Mueller had been tormenting.

  42. Eye watering!

    As a former intel guy with a couple decades performing my “insignificant share” to keep my brothers-in-arms and country safe based on SIGINT (and a few other ‘INTs’), I can certainly appreciate your OSINT-based analysis and awesome end-product.

    God bless you for your efforts, tenacity, and guts to put this into the public’s hands. Accolades also for your refusal to use non-public classified documents.

    This “layman” is most appreciative of you shedding light on this complex event that casts a shadow our nation’s democracy.

  43. y
    i update my timeline almost every day as more information is released from US agencies. feel free to use it for any future article you might write. i would love to see your finished polished version someday. also thanks for writing this incredible article!

  44. By an interesting coincidence, the NSA has now decided to delete all of the Call Detail Records that they have gathered since 2015 – a momentous period of time. I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before. It would seem that the Brennan/Clapper/Comey gang under the Obama administration has hopelessly corrupted the legitimacy of the NSA data – or so they say.
    https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/press-room/statements/jun-28-2018-ufa-cdr-decision.shtml
    Apparently, none of that data will ever see the light of day under any circumstances. It would be interesting to know who made this decision.

  45. Trump now honoring ICE agent’s at the White House. 335 PM EST
    The bags under his eyes are huge. -No one works harder or cares for the average US citizen than him IMO.

    • These guys deserve every medal they get. Most people don’t realize that ICE enforcement is one of the most difficult and dangerous LEA assignments. It’s even worse than operating overseas because now in addition to the personal and public safety risks factors they have to deal with abstractionist state agencies and bureaucrats.

  46. Yaacov Apelbaum,

    I posted some reflections on the British end of the dossier story a few days back on the ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ site, which is run by Colonel W. Patrick Lang, who used to be in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism, and then of ‘humint’, at the DIA.

    (See http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/08/my-strong-impression-is-that-nobody-on-the-british-side-vetted-the-dossier-for-publication-a-striking-feature-of-the-early.html .)

    A commenter linked to your very informative analysis.

    In responses to him, I indulged some speculations which may very well be way off the mark, and also focused on questions raised about Hakluyt, including the relationship to it of Ed Baumgartner and in particular Luke Harding.

    If you cared to comment, this would of course be welcomed.

    Meanwhile, I referred in the comments to materials I sent to Harding at the time when Sir Robert Owen’s report into the death of Litvinenko was published in January 2016, in relation to claims made in his book on the affair, published the previous month.

    If your interest in Harding makes you think you might to have sight of this material, I am eminently happy to forward it, as also a response from his colleague Patrick Wintour, who I knew very slightly years ago, to whom I also wrote.

    There would be no need for any response from you.

    David Habakkuk

    • Hi David, Thanks for the detailed comment.

      Yes, I would be interested to hear more about your experience with Harding. You can reach me at: Apelbaum [@] msn.com
      By comment do you mean on the sic semper Tyrannis site or here? BTW, is there any significance for variation from the original “Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis”?

      • Hullo Yaacov,

        As to commenting, either your own site or SST would be appropriate, if not indeed both.

        Obviously, if as I have done one sticks one’s neck out with conjectures, particularly when one does so in relation to material one is in the process of assimilating, one risks decapitation.

        However, I have found over the years that outlining possible hypotheses that occur to one can sometimes prompt responses which take arguments forward, even if it turns out one has been barking up the wrong tree (or trees.)

        And then, I believe that there are a lot of ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ in relation to the British end of ‘Russiagate’, and would like to see doors opened to let some of these fall out, so, obviously I would like more people to be aware of your work, as also of mine.

        Perhaps some background may help.

        As to the name ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’, this is not a matter I have discussed with Colonel Lang, but it is clearly material that the motto appears on the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

        He is a Virginian, as it were, by adoption, having travelled south when young from his native Maine to do his undergraduate degree at the Virginia Military Institute.

        The choice doubtless reflected the fact that he comes from a military family. His uncle, John Henry Lang, was an American naval hero. As a teenager, he had run away to join the Canadian forces in World War I, and ended up going ‘over the top’ with the (British) Black Watch at Third Ypres, where he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

        A Vietnam-era special forces officer, also having been active in counter-insurgency in Latin America, the younger Lang was trained as an Arabist by the U.S. Army, and spent a long period working ‘on the ground’ in the Middle East. His military and intelligence experience, together with his interest in the American Civil War, is as it were ‘refracted’ in the trio of novels he wrote about that conflict.

        Over the years, discussions on SST have brought together – sometimes harmoniously, sometimes acrimoniously – people of very diverse views. What many of us have in common, whether or not we agree with him on other matters, is respect for Colonel Lang’s expertise on intelligence and military matters, and the Middle East.

        It has in general been possible for these discussions not to degenerate into a ‘bear garden’ because the Colonel acts as ‘ringmaster’, which, obviously, sometimes means an element of ‘rough justice’, and has I think been a strain on him over the years, but has allowed people of different views to interact with reasonable civility.

        I got involved with the site as a result of an interest in the Niger uranium forgeries scam, and a conviction that there were ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ at the British end, which had been successfully kept there, with too few questions being asked – which, indeed, remains the case to this day, despite Chilcot. Although much superior to Owen’s Inquiry, this was still very much a ‘limited hangout.’

        My interest in the specifics of the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq War became involved with an interest in methodological issues, which led to my producing a longish piece discussing an article by Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt entitled ‘Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence’ which Colonel Lang posted in November 2005.

        (See http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/11/habakkuk_onleo_.html .)

        My intention had been to follow this up with a piece discussing Roberta Wohlstetter’s ‘Warning and Decision’ study. However, in February 2007, I got involved in a – highly technical – discussion of the likely development of Hizbullah missile capabilities, and the political implications of this.

        In the course of this discussion, out of the blue, an e-mail arrived in my inbox, which turned out to be from Tim Reilly, then director of energy projects at Erinys International (not simply a consultant to Erinys UK, as Owen’s report misleadingly claims, following mendacious accounts produced by the parent company.)

        Dimly recalling that Erinyss was the company to which Alexander Litvinenko had introduced his supposed assassins, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, and that polonium traces had been found there, I started doing some basic Google research into the affair, in which up to then I had taken little interest. So I got diverted from Roberta Wohlstetter, and have been following lines of questioning that emerged from Reilly’s e-mail, on and off, ever since.

        As you can perhaps imagine, when ‘BuzzFeed’ published the dossier, and Steele was identified as author, it was rather like the moment in the novel/film when the Wizard is revealed behind the curtain.

        Rather than being a circus magician, however, this ‘wizard’ turned out to be a certain kind of superannuated Oxbridge student politician, like our former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – a type I know a good deal about. And in both cases, while clearly bumbling, the figures concerned are very far from benevolent.

        I will look up the relevant e-mails to Harding and others at the ‘Guardian’ and the e-mail from Wintour.

        There is a lot of other material, some of which I am in the process of getting into shape to post on SST.

      • Hi David, Comments in-line

        ….As to commenting, either your own site or SST would be appropriate, if not indeed both.
        (YA:1) For the sake of simplicity, I’ll respond here.

        …Obviously, if as I have done one sticks one’s neck out with conjectures, particularly when one does so in relation to material one is in the process of assimilating, one risks decapitation. However, I have found over the years that outlining possible hypotheses that occur to one can sometimes prompt responses which take arguments forward, even if it turns out one has been barking up the wrong tree (or trees.)
        (YA:1) Great philosophical observations, no comment.

        …And then, I believe that there are a lot of ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ in relation to the British end of ‘Russiagate’, and would like to see doors opened to let some of these fall out, so, obviously I would like more people to be aware of your work, as also of mine.
        (YA:1) I’m not sure if “skeletons in the cupboard” is the best metaphor. Even though the UK and US have gone through their own civil wars (more than one in the UK), both ended up with different views on subjects like civil liberties, privacy, freedom of the press, etc. Since the mid sixteen hundred’s the dominate political theory in England has been the Hobbesian model Leviathan. This is where the ‘body of the monarch’ is made up of all the many elements of the society and the state.

        This model is opposite to the American political ideal that emphasizes individual liberty and the subservience of the state to the individual. In the UK, both, the private and public media (i.e. BBC or Guardian) are designed and operated to promote the interest of the Kingdom. Every news piece, theatrical production, mainstream media article, documentary, or TV series is produced with this objective in mind. So, in this regard, the BBC is no different than the old Russian Pravda. Albeit, they are more polished, sophisticated, and much better funded. Churchill referred to this phenomenon during his April 1934 speech when he said:

        “You see these microphones? They have been placed on our tables by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Think of the risk these eminent men are running. We can almost see them in our mind’s eye, gathered together in that very expensive building with the questionable status on its front. We can picture Sir John Reith, with the perspiration mantling on his lofty brow, with his hand on the control switch, wondering, as I utter every word, whether it will not be his duty to protect his innocent subscribers from some irreverent thing I might say about Mr. Gandhi, or about the Bolsheviks, or even about our peripatetic Prime Minister.

        The same applies to other long-running lists of historical and contemporary of political and social skeletons. Using private contractors like Orbis and Hakluyt to perform the ‘dirty deeds’ and then blaming personal and corporate greed when things go south is a long-honored tradition that goes back hundreds of years to the days of East India Company. This is just nature of the beast.

        …As to the name ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’, this is not a matter I have discussed with Colonel Lang, but it is clearly material that the motto appears on the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia…
        (YA:1) Thanks for the detailed and interesting explanation. I was just trying to classify the phrase as either the Roman version (i.e. all tyrants end up in the same way) or the American one (death to a tyrant, as in the case of John W. Booth).

        …My interest in the specifics of the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq War became involved with an interest in methodological issues, which led to my producing a longish piece discussing an article by Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt entitled ‘Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence’ which Colonel Lang posted in November 2005.

        (YA:1) I’m not sure that there was a UK intelligence failure in 2005. Talking about truth in the context of intelligence is like talking about love in the context of pornography. Decent intelligence provides facts, good intelligence can provide meaning. How you use Intelligence is ultimately an operational and a political question. The decision to engage in a major military operation like the Iraq war is always driven by economic factors, so, I’m not sure if factual arguments about the presence or the lack of WMD was even relevant.

        As far as Litvinenko/Skripal are concerned, it’s hard to tell what went on over there because no outsider has access to the evidence. The details from the UK news sources seem to change regularly. The bottom line is that these Russian assets were/are living in the UK for a very long time before they got whacked. It’s unknown what sources of income they had beyond the modest government stipend. Maybe the GRU does have a long memory and a policy in place to get rid of defectors. But it’s also possible that both tried to blackmail some oligarchs and as s result ended-up drinking plutonium flavored cappuccinos.

        I’m not convinced that Steele was just a private investigator when he was doing all of the dossier work on contract for Fusion. But even if he was the selfless guardian of the American Republic, as Harding makes him out to be, he still had a pretty impressive air support from some bigwigs in the Foreign Service and the SIS brass. As far as him being the magician behind the curtain, He looks to me more of an arsonist, well-poisoner, and saboteur type than a magician. I wouldn’t be surprised if the back of his business card says something along the lines of:

        “Coups and revolutions for hire, the more sordid and vulgar the better”.

        I will look up the relevant e-mails to Harding and others at the ‘Guardian’ and the e-mail from Wintour.
        (YA:1) Thanks!

  47. Thank you for one of the best pieces written to date. I hope you don’t mind me adding a few additional names which can be connected by one to two degrees of association:
    You can call them the Atlantic Council connection.

    Dmitri Alperovich-CTO CrowdStrike, Cyber security specialist hired by DNC through Perkins Coie to determine who hacked the DNC server. He is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Ukrainian sympathizer, a Russian ex-pat and consulted on cybersecurity with the Clinton campaign.

    Irena Chalupa-(name ring a bell?) she is a non resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the anchor for the Ukraninian propoganda channel–stopfake.org.
    Evelyn Farkas-remember her? She is a non resident fellow at, yes, the Atlantic Council. She told all her “friends on the HIll” to get as much information as possible “before the new administration” took office. Did she fear incriminating information might be found? And don’t forget her expertise is everything Russian.

    Victor Pinchuk-the Ukrainian oligarch billionaire donated $10 mil to the Clinton Foundation. Melanne Verveer was the go between for Clinton and Pinchuk. Pinchuk was the go between for Victor Yanokovich and Clinton. This is the same Yanokovich with whom Paul Manafort had a connection which resulted in his resignation from the Trump campaign. He is also on the international advisory board of what? The Atlantic Council along with James Clapper. His fellow Atlantic Council board members don’t seem to mind his association with Yanokovich.

      • My, my; the things one sees when going back with the benefit of hindsight….. the center photo bottom, with Kramer at the podium,,,, look at the guy seated at the table to camera right.

        Recognize him?

        that’s Ambassador Taylor, I believe. I think he was the chargé d’affaires at the time.

        This is the same Ambassador Taylor who testified in the House Impeachment theatrical production directed by Congressman Adam Schiff… (who has his own interesting links to Ukrainian figures, as you have discovered and posted in a more recent post) and is the same guy who was spreading rumors in text messages/emails all this Spring and Summer claiming a link between US aid and investigations of the Bidens in Ukraine supposedly demanded by Trump, including messages he spread around BEFORE Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president.

        What interesting company he was keeping in 2016!

  48. Yaacov,

    Thanks for that. I will produce a more considered response, but some Google checks on Hakluyt are turning up a mass of material some of which has to be absorbed first.

    (YA:1) See comments in-line

    In general, with British private security companies, the ‘Powerbase’ site is worth visiting.

    (See http://powerbase.info/index.php/Hakluyt .)

    Also, checking with Companies House often pays dividends, however lax the reporting requirements. The filings of Hakluyt and related companies are very much a case in point, as they show that some of what has been reported about them, including material which has made it through to ‘Powerbase’, is quite seriously off-beam. (Don’t worry, the truth is not less sinister, but more so.)

    It is of interest to me is that it turns out one of the original directors of the actual company – as distinct from the ‘Advisory Group’ – turns out to be a certain Michael Maclay, and the it appears that he comes, as I do, out of the current affairs and features department which John, now Lord, Birt, ran at ‘London Weekend Television’ back in the ‘Seventies and ‘Eighties.

    Out of this also comes Peter, now Lord, Mandelson, a principal architect of ‘New Labour.’
    (See http://powerbase.info/index.php/Hakluyt_Watch .)

    A little more work and I think I may be able to connect some dots. If, as I suspect, Maclay and Mandelson were still cooperating in 15 December 1997, which was when the actual company Hakluyt was formed, that might be significant. It was actually the ‘Hakluyt Foundation’, which is now the ‘Advisory Group.’, which was incorporated on 17 August 1995.

    A lot interesting was happening between those two dates in the U.K. – and also, which may or may not be relevant, in Russia.

    (YA:1) Thanks for the Hakluyt link. Yes, I did crawl their sites and several other sources during the initial scan and there is a lot of good information (and a few files) out there. Just keep in mind that these guys are professionals and are former/current intelligence officers, with a sizable cyber and an information security practice, so, I’m not sure how much primary materials you are going to find on their public site. I didn’t dig deep into their ecosystem because the 2nd-degree linkage that I got was enough to tie them to Steele, Halper, Mifsud (who BTW is alive and well and is taking it easy in an apartment on Via Dominico Cimarosa in Rome stuffing himself with some fine Italian cuisine and escort services, all expenses paid by a certain English speaking Intelligence agency), and others. But you may be right, doing a deeper dive on them could yield some additional insight and tighter links. But this will probably have to be done through a hybrid of an OSINT and some non-destructive form of APT.

    Incidentally, when I compared Christopher Steele to the Wizard, this was not intended as a kind of assessment of his total activity. The point is simply that he clearly paid a pivotal role in orchestrating the cover-up over Litvinenko’s death.

    (YA:1) You make a good point about his pivotal role. For some reason, it seems that Steele is always the first one (and his sidekick Luke Harding is always not far behind) at every major crime scene. He always manages somehow to solve the case in record time and walk away smelling like a rose. I mean, what are the odds that one person would be randomly involved in so many major international cases like the FIFA corruption, Litvinenko’s poisoning, Skripal’s poisoning, and the Dossier composition (just to name a few…). Kind of reminds you of the arson investigator that turns out to be the arsonist.

    The allusions to Walsingham, however, bring up another relevant point – that one should not overestimate the intelligence of these people.

    In Sir Francis’s day, British intelligence hired Christopher Marlowe, a very fine Cambridge Latinist, who combined his ‘spook’ work with playing a pivotal role in the creation of the Elizabethan theatre, before a murky series of events involving his denunciation by his fellow Cambridge alumnus Richard Baines led to his stabbing in Deptford.

    The denunciation, incidentally, however unreliable, is a work of the greatest intellectual interest.

    (See https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/accusations-against-christopher-marlowe-by-richard-baines-and-others .)

    (YA:1) Yes, I know Marlowe. I have his “Jew from Malta” and “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” on the shelf. Interestingly, Shopkeeper’s the “Merchant of Venice” and Gotha’s Faust are at least partially based on his work.

    It is a sad tale of decline that MI6 now recruits people like Steele. As to Maclay, the remarks quoted in the ‘Powerbase’ entry indicate he understands nothing about intelligence analysis. I could describe it as: a quick guide to how to be fooled by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi and Boris Berezovsky. Moreover, the company’s filings show a large element of amateurishness in their attempts to ‘cover their tracks’, as also do the efforts of Christopher Steele et al.

    (YA:1) I can’t comment about the rise and fall of any intelligence organization. Even the best int. bodies at time experience the proverbial “seven dry years “. MI6 is no different. But they are still an incredible organization with a lot of talented people and resources. But just like any politically driven government body, they probably got dragged into this by some charismatic bureaucrat who thought he had a bulletproof Mephistophelian contract for predicting the outcome of the 2016 US presidential elections. It’s also possible that Peter Strzok, Bruch Ohr, and others acutely wrote this contract.

    As far as the “cover their tracks” issue and how professional or amateurish it is. The problem with all of these cases is that we can’t have an intelligent conversation about any of the details because we don’t know the facts. So all conversations perpetually remain in the realm of speculation. Take the DNC hack or the dossier cases. How difficult would it be to publish the forensic images of the DNC drives so that the conclusion of a ‘Russian source’ can be confirmed independently of CrowdStrike? Or Steele’s original dossier document with the metadata. Where we can find who the real contributors were, when the document was written and published, and what was the total editing time. You wouldn’t have to speculate, you would have the facts.

    All concerned have been able to get away with this precisely be the Pravda-like uniformity now displayed by the MSM, with the ‘Guardian’ and BBC among the worst offenders.

    The extent of this is however new. For an illustration, try Googling “David Habakkuk” “Disarming Tactics”, and “David Habakkuk” “Reforming Bear”. The programmes involved were all ‘OSINT’ – in particular interviews with the so-called ‘new thinkers’, among the most interesting being General-Mayor Valentin Larionov and his collaborator Andrei Kokoshin, then Georgiy Arbatov’s deputy at the Institute of the USA and Canada.

    (YA:1) Yes, it does seem like Google has a political component in their search/rank algorithms.

    The ‘cast list’ for the programmes drew on the work of Stephen Shenfield, one of the conduits through the ideas that became the ‘new thinking’ reached the West.

    (See http://stephenshenfield.net/archives/research-jrl/92-special-issue-no-26-november-2004-the-girshfeld-file ; http://stephenshenfield.net/memories/ussr-russia/179-my-experiences-in-russia .)

    The Russian interviews were backed up by ones from competent OSINT Western analysts, including Commander Michael MccGwire and Jerry Hough, both then involved with Brookings. Like the ‘Guardian’ and BBC, it was a very different place then from what it is now.

  49. Very interesting…especially the research. Questions, sir:
    1. This is part of the Deep State Conspiracy/Belief although no mention is made here as it is on the Selected Comments links above.
    2. Would you consider doing another investigation of the other side: the the Republican operatives linkages connecting to the Dossier? That would be as interesting as this one.
    3. I thought the fact that Page was on the FBI radar in 2013 regarding Russia was one of the reasons the FBI trusted at least some of the truth of the Dossier, where Page popped up early…confirming what they already knew? Probably: Ohr told him this?

    • Hi Philip,

      Thank you for your comment.

      When you write any analysis document, you have to decide early on who the target audience is and what is the objective of your brief. So keeping these two constraints in mind:

      1. I intentionally avoided diving into motives and political agendas because if I did, this would have instantly rendered the empirical research a political position paper. CNN does this very well already, so there is no sense of trying to compete with them. Also, once you start using terms like “Deep State” or “Rogue Elements”, you stand the chance of alienating some of your audience, which I wanted to avoid.

      2. I think you’re right, this would be an interesting project. But, unfortunately, due to work/life constraints, I can’t dedicate any more time to this.

      3. This is an interesting point, but again, you are now getting into motives and cause-n-effect analysis. To do this reliability, you will need access to primary sources, classified documents (i.e meeting minutes, text messages, internal emails, surveillance, etc.). So unless you have the clearance to view this information and publish it, you will end up doing a lot of interesting speculation.

    • As to #3. I think you are mistaken, or started to believe some disinformation (which AFAIK is indeed also contained in the FISA application, but still a lie).

      The FBI Counter Intelligence people would know otherwise The FBI knew that Carter Page helped them catch and convict those Russians spies.
      He agreed to help the FBI as an (informal?) undercover agent and passed the Russian spies a dossier that was bugged, and gave evidence for the prosecution in early 2016, which got the Russians convicted.

      See among others: https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2018/02/06/carter-page-help-bust-russian-spy-ring-undercover-fbi-employee/

      “If one goes to the affidavit filed by the lead FBI agent on the investigation, this is what we learn about Male-1.

      34. On or about June 13, 2013, Agent-2 and I interviewed Male-1. Male-1 stated that he first met VICTOR PODOBNYY, the defendant, in January 2013 at an energy symposium in New York City. During this initial meeting, PODOBNYY gave Male-1 PODOBNYY’s business card and two email addresses. Over the following months, Male-1 and PODOBNYY exchanged emails about the energy business and met in person on occasion, with Male-1 providing PODOBNYY with Male-l’s outlook on the current and future of the energy industry. Male-1 also provided documents to PODOBNYY about the energy business.

      Now let’s look at another Justice Department document on the affair. This is a press release titled Evgeny Buryakov Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court In Connection With Conspiracy To Work For Russian Intelligence. This press release doesn’t mention Page or Male-1, but it does introduce us to a new character.

      The FBI obtained the recordings after Sporyshev attempted to recruit an FBI undercover employee (“UCE-1”), who was posing as an analyst from a New York-based energy company. In response to requests from Sporyshev, UCE-1 provided Sporyshev with binders containing purported industry analysis written by UCE-1 and supporting documentation relating to UCE-1’s reports, as well as covertly placed recording devices. Sporyshev then took the binders to, among other places, the Residentura.

      There is another confidential source mentioned in the affidavit but that source was trying to swing a deal to open a casino in Moscow from his base in Atlantic City. The only energy consultant in the documents is Page.

      Unless there is a significant piece missing to what has been made public, Male-1 is UCE-1 is Carter Page.

      And using Page as an asset by the FBI is not all that strange. When the FBI interviewed Page, or when they ran a background check on him, they would undoubtedly have found out he was a former intelligence officer. I can’t find a technical definition of “undercover FBI employee” but it seems to be more than someone who was acting as a volunteer or out of fear of prosecution themselves.

      This begs all manner of questions. If Page, as has been alleged without a shred of evidence, has been under surveillance by the FBI under the provisions of FISA since the time of this investigation, how is it that he was found to be clueless about the Russian espionage in the affidavit? And how did he then morph into an FBI asset that was key to making this ballyhooed conviction? And how did be become so suspicious that he met the criteria of acting as a Russian agent in order to be worthy of surveillance?

      None of this adds up. Either the affidavit is false and the press release is false or Page was put under surveillance initially based on false pretenses or Page had not been under surveillance at all until 2016 and the rest is hokum designed to make him look like a security risk when, in fact, he was pretty far from it.”

      • Hi Japp,

        The problem with being able to definitively answer any dossier related questions is this list of ‘We don’ts:

        1. We don’t have access to the full FISA applications because they are heavily redacted. So you have to resort to the black arts in order to decipher them
        2. We don’t have the financial and bank statements for actors like Perkns-Coie, Fusion GPS, Orbis, etc.
        3. We don’t have any affidavits, memos, intake reports, debriefs, or interviews from the FBI, DOJ, and State
        4. We don’t know how the FBI/other surveillance was conducted and what was collected
        5. We don’t have any of the artifacts that typically go with an investigation such as field memos, notes, task force meeting minutes, etc.
        6. We don’t have polygraph tests for some of the key figures, so we don’t know who is lying about the scope/extent of their involvement in the affair
        7. We don’t have all of the versions of the dossier and their metadata (there are at least 4 versions in circulation)
        8. We don’t know what was the exact role of actors like Page, Ohr, Mifsud, Papadopoulos, Halper, etc. For example, what was Helper writing that was worth so much $$$? Who was his customer? Who approved his payments?

        So yes, your observations do make sense in terms of a timeline and plausibility, but they are still speculations and we won’t know for sure until we answer most of the questions listed above.

        Also, I think that the bigger problem here is that it’s clear from the testimonies of some of the key witnesses that they are refusing to testify (pleading the 5th) lying under oath, and are obstructing justice. So, unless the someone declassifies the primary records and solves the Teflon coating problem, we will never get to the bottom of this.

  50. So looking at this objectively without any political bias ,one can clearly see that Northern Virginia, Washington DC beltway need a good ENEMA. This analysis is astonishing .

  51. This is by far the most complex and detailed OSINT project that I’ve ever seen. Well done!

    I’m curious, what was your motivation for doing all of this extensive research if it’s not for financial or political reasons?

    • Thank you for your comment M.G.Wood.

      The following sums up my motivation:

      June 25, 1775

      — When the Arrows of death flew thick around me, I was preserv’d while others were suffer’d to fall a prey to our Cruel enemies O may That God whose Mercy was so far extended in my preservation, grant me his grace to devote my future Life to his divine service Nor do I conclude that the danger is yet over, unless God in his Mercy either remove our enemy, or heal the breach — but if we should be call’d again to action I hope to have courage and strength to act my part valiently in defence of our Liberties & Country trusting in him who hath hitherto kept me, and hath cover’d my head in the day of battle, and altho’ we have lost four out of our Company & several taken captive by the enemy of America, I was not suffer’d to be touch’d…

      Private Peter Brown, served under Colonel William Prescott at Bunker Hill.

    • Hi David,

      The video analytics (VA) in this project utilized the XRVision IOP2 platform, and yes, I did use a Nvidia Tesla Kepler K10 GPU. It would be very difficult to use COTS VA for this type of work because of the images low quality (both size and resolution) and the lack of orchestration support for image optimization and reconstruction. You can check out the link below for more details about the challenges of performing VA in a mobile and uncontrolled environment and why using Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon FR would be difficult.

  52. Fiona Hill wrote the NYT OP ED. She will be exposed in time .
    She is a dual U.S.-British citizen who was a U.S. intelligence officer between 2006 and 2009.Her portfolio would include Europe and Russia.Fiona Hiil also graduated from Harvard in & attended school in Moscow in 1987-1988 for 10 months for intensive Russian Language Development. Nellie Ohr graduated at Harvard in Russian, in 1983 and was in Moscow in 1989 for unknown amount of time, Not sure about 1988. Emails from Fiona Hill to Robert Otto who was in, to and from, contact with Nellie Ohr, who was the 3rd writer of the Dossier, brings Fiona Hill connection to the Fake Dossier and Nellie Ohr who reportedly had Russian revisionist sympathies.

    Fiona Hill knows the missing Professor, Joseph Mifsud.
    Fiona also knows Ivan Timofeev, who was introduced to George Papodopolous by Professor Mifsud.

    • Hi Hugh,

      Fiona Hill is an interesting choice and so is her overlap with Nellie, Otto, and others. I haven’t seen her linkage myself, but even if she is linked, her authorship is still circumstantial. There are only two ways to know for sure: (1) the NYT editor who published it provides the name and the original materials (email, drafts, and copyedit) that can be confirmed forensically (2) the actual writer(s) confess and produce the original materials that can be confirmed forensically. Using writing style analysis, polygraph tests, etc. will be inconclusive, especially if the document was a team effort and had multiple editors.

      Everyone seems to be bent on identifying the writer(s), this is not the problem, the identity of the writer can be discovered by any professional in a few minutes… the bigger issue here is what seems to be a rampant government lawlessness. Every individual elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, must take this oath of office:

      “I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”

      So if the piece indeed came from a ‘senior appointed’ federal civil servant(s), they are committing treason/sedition and the NYT is actively facilitating this effort. So yes, swatting individual flies will get you some respite, but getting rid of the pile of manure is the only long-term solution.

      • This is really frightening stuff . I buried myself in my work -critical care/interventional cardiology since the 80’s saving multiple lives in the process and never paid attention to politics until June 06/16/15 when I was fortunate to see DJT come down the escalator live. I transitioned to a job that I can work from home at that time and started listening to the news and reading more than just medical books. I have been apolitical up till now but now I feel like I need to do something, and I don’t mean just vote. I am beyond angry at this point.

      • Dear Yaacov — After seeing the comment re: Fiona Hill, I did a little research a few days ago and even watched a PBS half-hour video of an interview she gave a few years ago. She is a machine. She looks to be a tall woman, long legs in dull brown slacks and wearing boots. Strange jacket-blouse. Hair not “done” and virtually no makeup/lipstick. Totally lacking in female vanity IMO. You’re on tv, woman! Fiona never shifted in her straight-ahead position during the interview. She never paused, considered the question, said “um” or “ah.” Just machine-gun delivery. The interviewer just let her go on and on. She spewed out one fact after another. No clever asides or even argumentation. I do not see her as the author of the NYT piece, something too clever by half by someone seeking attention.

  53. government lawlessness
    It’s overwhelming.
    Trump would have had to have known all of this before jumping in to this swamp. I believe he is our only shot at cleaning out this mess. Even in my field I always went into something knowing the risks, cause and effect and escape plan. With that being said my encounters were one on one and not at such a massive scale he is dealing with.

  54. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

    Have you considered doing the same thing for Uranium-1? I bet you would find a ton of incriminating evidence…

  55. It’s incredible that none of the mainstream media outlets have come even close to this level of investigation. Would you consider doing this type of project on a contract basis?

  56. Mr. Apelbaum, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to finally read actual facts about the origin of the dossier and this nest of vipers called Fusion GPS. You have done an incredible work here, well done!

  57. Mr. Apelbaum, thank you for allowing us quick peek behind the curtain. This is quite a sobering document. At times like this, I feel like a sheep that is being led to slaughter.

  58. Are you some kind of a fortune teller? How did you know all of this information in March? Some of the details are only now hitting the mainstream media :) Cheers!

  59. Incredible work. Another stunning fact is that Natalia Veselnitskaya met with Glenn Simpson immediately before and immediately after her Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/us/politics/fusion-gps-glenn-simpson.html

    Aslo, Veselnitskaya was only in the US due to the intervention of the Obama state department, who bypassed the normal visa process under an “extraordinary circumstances” immigration parole that had to be signed off on by Loretta Lynch.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/342118-homeland-security-confirms-special-entry-for-russian-lawyer

      • Yet he insists very clearly under oath that they weren’t consulting on Trump Tower and indeed he didn’t know anything.

        He’s usually careful to hedge and his three lawyers were watching every word. Trying to figure out the angle on this one.

        I marked the Nov 14 testimony up for potential perjury; most statements that aren’t true are softened with qualifiers.

        Another seeming bald-faced lie is meeting Bruce Ohr AFTER the election.

        Adam Schiff still claims that one, but, you know, Adam’s not wedded to “truth” or “facts.”

      • Perhaps they were simply discussing Bill Browder’s vexatious appeal in the Prevezon Case, scheduled for the morning of 9 June in New York, the reason Veselnitskaya travelled to New York in the first place. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, and consistent statements by all parties concerned, this allegation is unfounded.

        Great work, by the way, it must have taken months of work.

        I believe you have made a few factual errors in the text, none of which change your main conclusion.

        Veselnitskaya was not working for or with Fusion GPS. US law firm Baker-Hostetler, who she hired to conduct the defence of Denis Katsyv in the Prevezon Case, contracted Simpson after legal discovery found that Browder had secretly passed evidence to US Attorney Preet Bharara, to instigate the case.

        After evading three subpoenas, Browder was deposed on 15 April 2015. It was a disaster, for the case, for Browder, and for all the corrupt politicians who facilitated the Magnitsky Act. For obvious reasons, no mainstream media ever reported this, and Browder spent millions of dollars in a vexatious appeal to disqualify Baker-Hostetler, on the basis that one lawyer, John Moscow, had briefly worked for Hermitage almost a decade earlier.

        You note the Otto Email with the photo of Veselnitsaya’s house, and that it was dated 6 June, but you omit the most important piece of information – it was sent to Parker and Otto by Bill Browder.

        Where is the examination of Rob Goldstone, and his admissions about lying when negotiating the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr and Emin Agalarov? After all this research, you fail to use Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation of the Trump Tower meeting, points to Browder, working with Otto and Winer at State, and Goldstone (likely MI6) being sent to do the negotiation.

        Veselnitskaya’s motivation to meet Don Jr, was because she wanted to get access to Congress, to complain about Browder, falsely accusing her client, and his legal tactics even after his deposition showed it had little merit. Goldstone implied to Emin that Don Jr could facilitate this – which was false. Who else but Browder could have known this?

        Goldstone told Don Jr, that NV “had dirt on Hillary”, which was false, and made up everything else such as “Russian government connected lawyer”, “the Crown Prosecutor of Russia”, it was Goldstone who used lies and persuasion, based on what each party wanted, and were complete lies.

        NV applied for a US B1 work Visa at the Moscow Embassy on 25 May, she returned for an interview a week later, and was granted the Visa by the State Dept on 6 June. The same day Browder sent the photo to Otto. Isn’t that just a bit too coincidental?

        There was no need for Simpson to do anything, in fact it is probable that Browder told Winer to hire Simpson, so that after the case, and election fallout, he could use his association with Steele to further discredit the legal process leading to his deposition.

        Official Transcript of Browder’s Deposition:
        https://www.scribd.com/document/369564166/Browder-Deposition-April-15-2015

        Video record of Browder’s Deposition in six parts:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9DMxfTGhY&list=PLd4Mlks-hYL-IZUOi7EHujFNrGcv5gl8p

        A good place to start is P104, follow from here:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBjO0TIb7pw&list=PLd4Mlks-hYL-IZUOi7EHujFNrGcv5gl8p&index=3&t=693s

        I hope you find this information useful, this is the results of months of research into the Browder deception, any questions, you can find me on twitter: @Bretthar123

        Thank-you for your time, and congratulations on this body of valuable research.

      • Hi Brett,
        Thank you for your feedback. I agree, Browder probably played some part in the dossier and as you suggested, also a major role in some other ‘Russia collusion’ activity.

        My main objective in writing the Mechanics of Deception was to identify some of the actors/network and the level of cooperation between entities like FusionGPS, the Media, politicals like the DNC, private individuals like Nellie Ohr, and government officials like Otto. When I started the project at the end of 2017 little was known about the dossier beyond the MSM claims that it was verified and that a super reliable ex-British spy named Steele wrote it.

        By the time I was done collating the results, I had over 2700 pages of primary content. So naturally, I had to make certain editorial trad-offs about depth vs. breadth, which resulted in only a brief coverage of individuals like Browder, which BTW, I did reference his regular intelligence updates to Robert Otto (see image below). There is a lot of supplementary material in your comment and I am sure that interested readers will find it useful. Thanks again for sharing.

  60. Interesting work. Well done Yaacov. You’ve a few talents there. Brings new meaning to the truism “Birds of a feather flock together.” Can’t say I am surprised by revelations like these, although it is great to see it all being laid out.

    I’d be curious to see a comparative work done on the ‘Integrity Initiative’ and the ‘Institute for Statecraft’ to see any relationships between them and the above.

    • Thank you for the kind words,

      I’m not sure I understand your question about the relationships between the “Integrity Initiative/Institue of Statecraft” and the posting. Please elaborate.

      There are multiple linkages between key UK dossier figures and the Chatham House. Now, I don’t know at what institutional level this exists, but there is certain amount of cross-pollination between them because some Institue of Statecraft personnel are also affiliated with the Chatham House. For example, William Hopkinson, a contributor to the Institue of Statecraft was also the former Director of Studies/Deputy Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (AKA the Chatham House).

      https://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/vom-kriege-or-clausewitz-revisited-shape-future-war

      Yaacov

    • Curious Cat, are you referring to the recent reports that Hamilton68, New Knowledge, and others used fake Russian bots and disinfo in Project Birmingham and other projects in effort to suppress vote?

      I assume you’ve heard of that fascinating story by Scott Shane, who presented at a meeting where he supposedly learned about this and then sat on it until a day after the BLOCKBUSTER Senate Intel report about Russian bots, etc, was gushed over.

      This struck me on many levels, including a personal one: After teaching university-level rhetoric classes for over 20 years I was suddenly told to stop requiring students to read/articulate multiple perspectives.

      Ultimately I was early-retired for my refusal to, you know, stop teaching the core of our discipline.

      In context of whatever this is called? Infosec? Infowars? I read materials from some key players such as Jonathon Morgan who both participate in tracking Russian bots AND using them…

      https://medium.com/@jonathonmorgan/social-media-and-the-alabama-special-election-c83350324529

      and in short, I saw why debate is no longer taught or employed by the Left: under guise of “Countering Violent Extremism” it’s policy now to shush the “far right” because allowing our so-called fake news to linger on the lips and air-waves gives it life.

      I’m describing this poorly. Basically, Our Betters are using Orwell as a practical manual on how to best stifle our ideas.

      Perhaps that has nothing to do with what Curious Cat was talking about, but I did get to jump on my bandwagon for a minute!!

  61. Mr. Apelbaum,

    Just a short note of thanks for sharing your very informative work. However, I must say your dossier is so dense I believe I chipped a tooth reading it. After making my way to the end I came away with two questions for you.

    Do you believe the United States should create a new intelligence agency dedicated to OSINT?

    Are we the American people getting value for money when it comes to our many intelligence agencies?

    I believe if the United States had a dedicated OSINT agency it would expose the other intelligence agencies as bloated institutions not working (effectively) for the American people and drastic budget cuts would be in order.

    Kind regards,
    Eric

    “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
    Attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero

    • Thank you for the kind words and feedback.

      OSINT has been around for quite some time and most intel agencies are using solutions similar to the one I used in this post. In the US all Federal agencies and many state LEAs are using such platforms with differing levels of ‘functionality’ to handle everything from gang crimes, terrorism, to drugs.

      For more information you can check out Open Source Center. I’m not sure how effective another central OSINT agency would be. Typically, each agency has different objectives and jurisdictions so bridging all of these requirments in one central solution could be a challenge.

  62. Yaacov,

    What did you think about Nellie Ohr testifying that she researched the travels and associations of the Trump children?

    To wit:
    ——-

    “How about Donald Trump Jr.? Did you do more in-depth research on Donald Trump Jr. than some of the others?” she was asked.

    “I’m afraid it was relatively superficial. It was,” adding that, “I looked into some of his travels and you know not sure how much detail I remember, at this point.”

    “Ivanka Trump?”

    “I looked into some of her travels,” said Ohr.

    The goal was “to see whether they were involved in dealings and transactions with people who had had suspicious pasts.”

    ——

    In your professional opinion, is such research possible using only OSINT? If not, would it be wrong to infer that a firm boasting of its capability of “uncovering unique information by tapping into an extensive network of on-the-ground contacts, including … government officials throughout Washington D.C.” had its nose in the 702 trough before ADM Rogers shut it down?

    Put another way, do you concur with Sundance’s analysis?

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/20/the-nellie-ohr-dossier/

    In all honesty, your explication of the “incestuous” relationships between the Steele dossier crew members above leads me to believe they’d consider such wanton breach of protocol and law as something they were simply entitled to.

    Thanks,

    Bob

    • See comment in-line

      “What did you think about Nellie Ohr testifying that she researched the travels and associations of the Trump children?”

      Regardless of how connected Glenn Simpson or the other Fusion GPS superstar reporters claim to be, they had zero access to intelligence sources (such as the CBP travel databases) and just like any other reporter in DC were completely at the mercy of agency leaks. That’s why Nellie was brought into the Fusion GPS team. And yes, one important line of investigation would have been the timing and geospatial elements, such as who was where and when.

      “In your professional opinion, is such research possible using only OSINT? If not, would it be wrong to infer that a firm boasting of its capability of “uncovering unique information by tapping into an extensive network of on-the-ground contacts, including … government officials throughout Washington D.C.” had its nose in the 702 trough before ADM Rogers shut it down?

      Put another way, do you concur with Sundance’s analysis?”

      Yes, I think that most of the article is solid. Nellie was definitely one of the main authors. I’m not sure about Steele’s ability to verify any low-level operational intelligence. Steele is a bottom feeder that consumes and repackages gossip/rumors from Ukrainian intelligence, Russian expats, and the hordes of the FSU exile community. He then passes it as original intelligence to his customers. You can think of Steele as a cheap knock off Alistair Cooke in Masterpiece theater. But I have to admit, that he is pretty good at putting the fake British upper-class polish on whatever you put in front of him. Based on what I’ve seen in the data, he had no access to real insider Russian intelligence.

      “In all honesty, your explication of the “incestuous” relationships between the Steele dossier crew members above leads me to believe they’d consider such wanton breach of protocol and law as something they were simply entitled to.”

      You have to remember that no one expected the dossier to be challenged in a serious manner. The dossier was the perfect silver bullet, forged from the purest Mithril deep in the mines of Moria and it came with multiple safety nets and contingencies. There was just no way that it wouldn’t get the job done. So, there was really no need to worry about trivia such as “breach of protocols” because once the deed was done, no one would be able to get this information through some lame FOIA requests. But alas, it’s hard to play G-D and the planners never factored the fickle voters into this equation.

      As far as access to proprietary databases, intelligence systems, and secret information, again, It’s naive to assume that the Federal law applies to everyone in the same measure. Look at Anthony Wiener or Eliot Spitzer. I can guarantee that if anyone else was convicted of human trafficking, soliciting and paying for prostitution, and sexting, they would get triple the sentence that these two got. The same applies to senior government employees. No one believes that Nellie, on her own volition logged into several intelligence databases that maintain a detailed activity log and require written authorization prior to access. How did Nellie manage to access the system for several months and executed politically motived queries that were not tied to any official or active project? Did she just walk to the secure facility without a badge? Who signed her in? How did she do that without a cost center and an active project number? What about departmental clearance (i.e. State, DNI, etc.)? How did she copy the information from her research to a USB drive without authorization? And on the topic of USB drives, how did she manage to get a USB device into and out of the facility? Where did she keep it while going through the scanner? And how did she physically connect it to the computer? The workstations typically don’t have a USB or CD burners because of the risk of viral infection, and the list goes on…

      So, who authorized all of her activity? Remember, she was a contractor, not an FTE. It certainly wasn’t the hubby! I would venture to say that this was someone pretty senior at the agency HQ.

      • “Regardless of how connected Glenn Simpson or the other Fusion GPS superstar reporters claim to be, they had zero access to intelligence sources (such as the CBP travel databases) and just like any other reporter in DC were completely at the mercy of agency leaks. That’s why Nellie was brought into the Fusion GPS team. And yes, one important line of investigation would have been the timing and geospatial elements, such as who was where and when.”

        When I read that Chuck Ross article describing how Nellie just casually told the committee:

        “I looked into some of [their] travels,” said Ohr. The goal was “to see whether they were involved in dealings and transactions with people who had had suspicious pasts.”

        My initial reaction was “she just admitted to accessing FISA information.” However, I left open the possibility that I was overlooking some source of data available through the internet that I hadn’t thought of. But you, clearly an an expert on the topic, have now confirmed my initial intuition. Her testimony makes no sense without her having access to a database that wouldn’t qualify as OSINT; such as the FISA database that was exploited by private contractors until ADM Richards shut down the 702 access. It’s a strong piece of evidence; wouldn’t you agree?

        “You have to remember that no one expected the dossier to be challenged in a serious manner. The dossier was the perfect silver bullet, forged from purest Mithril deep in the mines of Moria. It came with multiple safety nets and contingencies. There was just no way that it wouldn’t get the job done. So, there was really no need to worry about trivia such as “breach of protocols” because once the deed was done, no one would have access to this information through some lame FOIA requests. But alas, the planers never factored the fickle voters into this equation.”

        They never thought the FISA application would see the light of day either.

        I was wondering if I could get your expert advice on something else. It has to do with procedures for filling out FISA Warrant applications. Do you know what the procedures are for replacing names of individuals and entities with generic modifiers? The Schiff Memo says that use of “generic identifiers” like “Source 1” and “identified U.S. Person”, for Steele and Simpson respectively was standard procedure.

        The memo read in part:

        “DOJ was transparent with Court about Steele’s sourcing: The Committee Majority, which had earlier accused Obama Administration officials of improper “unmasking,” faults DOJ for not revealing the names of specific U.S. persons and entities in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. In fact, DOJ appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. citizen information by purposefully not “unmasking” U.S. person and entity names, unless they were themselves the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. DOJ instead used generic identifiers that provided the Court with more than sufficient information to understand the political context of Steele’s research. In an extensive explanation to the Court, DOJ discloses that Steele:

        “was approached by an identified U.S. Person, who indicated to Source #1 [Steele] that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a longstanding business relationship.) The identified U.S. person hired Source #I to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate Ill’s campaign. ”

        However…

        “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
        … The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.” – Immanuel Kant

        The use of “generic modifiers” within Footnote 8 exsanguinated any meaningful predicates from which a probable cause determination could possibly be made. They deprived the judge of ‘real world specifics’ epistemically necessary to formulate an objective judgment as to the existence of probable cause.

        When you take a close look at Footnote 8, you’ll see that the FBI/DOJ not only omitted the roles Hillary Clinton and Fusion GPS played in the creation of the Steele dossier, but they also fabricated materially incongruous details to launder them out of the fact pattern entirely. They deceitfully restructured the fact pattern to hide them. (I could email you details if you want)

        If we are truly a nation of laws and not men, then the one person who should see ALL the names and relationships, i.e. without generic modifiers, so as to make a fully informed decision, is the judge making a probable cause determination.

        Do you know if it’s standard procedure to use “generic modifiers” when making an application for a FISA warrant? I can’t seem to find a procedure manual that suggests or explains this practice.

        Thanks,

        Bob

      • I was wondering if I could get your expert advice on something else. It has to do with procedures for filling out FISA Warrant applications. Do you know what the procedures are for replacing names of individuals and entities with generic modifiers? The Schiff Memo says that use of “generic identifiers” like “Source 1” and “identified U.S. Person”, for Steele and Simpson respectively was standard procedure.

        If we are truly a nation of laws and not men, then the one person who should see ALL the names and relationships, i.e. without generic modifiers, so as to make a fully informed decision, is the judge making a probable cause determination.

        Do you know if it’s standard procedure to use “generic modifiers” when making an application for a FISA warrant? I can’t seem to find a procedure manual that suggests or explains this practice.

        Sorry, I don’t know much about the actual FISA process so I can’t comment about the evidentiary requirements that go into submitting and reviewing an application. It’s possible that the reduction/aliasing only takes place downstream, while the presiding judge gets to see the raw data. But even if the judge knows the name and true identity of the subject, the problem is still the derivatives i.e. using surveillance data from a legitimate target like Manafort and then reusing this data for future FISA applications to go after an illegitimate target like Trump’s family.

        There is also the problem that the FISA courts are not sufficiently black boxed and apparently can be gamed (like in the case of Contreras-Strzok). If this is the case, then assumptions like “In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so – Immanuel Kant”, are irrelevant to the DOJ/FBI view of Body Politic.

  63. “It’s possible that the reduction/aliasing only takes place downstream, while the presiding judge gets to see the raw data.”

    My thoughts precisely. Consider the alternative:

    FBI/DOJ not only makes its application based on the raw data, but they also have the power to deprive the judge of actual facts required to make a fully informed probable cause determination by masking information contradictory to the predicate for the warrant is being sought with gratuitous use of generic identifiers and passive voice?

    Translation:

    “You can trust us Judge. We’re not misrepresenting the facts just to get what we want. We’re a nation of honorable men; not laws. And we are the most honorable of men.” (See also Declaration of Comey, July 5, 2016)

    Jim Garrison: “Treason doth never prosper,” wrote an English poet, “What’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” The generals who sent Dreyfus to Devils Island were among the most honorable men in France. The men who killed Caesar were among the most honorable men in Rome. …

    “But even if the judge knows the name and true identity of the subject, the problem is still the derivatives i.e. using surveillance data from a legitimate target like Manafort and then reusing this data for future FISA applications to go after an illegitimate target like Trump’s family.”

    True, however, , emboldened frauds eventually become brazen frauds; and brazen frauds inevitably get sloppy. Nowhere is that more evident than within Footnote 8.

    “Whenever power is put into some hands for the government of the people and the preservation of their properties, and is then diverted from that purpose and used to impoverish, harass, or subdue the people to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have the power, then that immediately becomes tyranny, whether the power-holders are one or many.” John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sec. 201

      • “I’m not sure about Steele’s ability to verify any low-level operational intelligence. Steele is a bottom feeder that consumes and repackages gossip/rumors from Ukrainian intelligence, Russian expats, and the hordes of the FSU exile community. He then passes it as original intelligence to his customers. You can think of Steele as a cheap knock off Alistair Cooke in Masterpiece theater. But I have to admit, that he is pretty good at putting the fake British upper-class polish on whatever you put in front of him. Based on what I’ve seen in the data, he had no access to real insider Russian intelligence.”

        From page 15 of the Carter Page FISA Warrant Application:

        “First, according to information provided by an FBI confidential human source (Source #1), fn8

        At the risk of sounding pedantic, would you happen to know what made Steele a “confidential human source”?

        I’m trying to come up with a reason why his name was masked within the FISA application. Steele is not an American Citizen and his company Orbis is not an “American entity”

        He’s not a “High-Level Government or Union Source”; he’s not involved in any criminal activity; and he’s not a fugitive. He’s also giving the same information to Glenn Simpson and Perkins Coie– says so in the FISA application.

        Furthermore, he’s not even the “source” of any relevant information within the application. He’s peddling information from sub-sources that the FBI allegedly deems credible through the transitive property (of Steele).

        I fear I’m overlooking something obvious.

        Any ideas?

        https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/oip/legacy/2014/07/23/ag-guidelines-use-of-fbi-chs.pdf

      • Typically, anyone that talks to a 3-letter agency or any other internal security service and provides them with intel becomes a “source”. And sources must remain protected. So in Steele’s case, that means that they entered him into a special informant database and the interaction with him became non-casual, i.e. regulated and managed via a specific protocol such as a controller, meetings, contacts, notes, etc. Steele was also told formally that he could not lie and if he did, he could be prosecuted. He was also told not to share his information with anyone else.

        As far as why did they trust/use him in the FISA application, it’s probably because he was their star witness and already had a proven track record with them from his previous work with the State Department, FIFA, and other cases.

      • Would you mind checking my math?

        From: Review of U.S. Person Privacy Protections in the Production and Dissemination of Serialized Intelligence Reports Derived from Signals Intelligence Acquired Pursuant to Title I and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, October 2017

        ““Masking” is a procedure contemplated by the applicable minimization procedures that provides additional privacy protection for FISA-acquired U.S. person information disseminated in intelligence reports. A reference to a U.S. person is “masked” when the specific identifying information about that person is not included. In general, when U.S. person information is referenced it is masked, often because only a subset of the authorized recipients have a “need to know” to perform their official duties. If the U.S. identity is masked to protect the privacy of the individual or entity, it will be referenced using a generic term, such as “a named U.S. company “or “a named U.S. person.””

        Not a single word within Footnote 8 of the Carter Page FISA Warrant Application constitutes ‘FISA-acquired U.S. person information.’

        None of it came from the FISA database.

        Masking procedures were not only inapplicable, but the FBI/DOJ’s “heightened duty of candor” mandated disclosure to the Court.

        I keep thinking I’m missing something obvious. But, as you said earlier, no one ever thought this stuff would ever see the light of day or be challenged. Yet no one is bothering to analyze any of it.

        “All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable” I suppose.

      • The whole issue unmasking of US persons, extensive reduction of content, and anonymization of sources in court applications is problematic because it goes against the very essence of the subpoena process and evidence rules.

        All secret courts are dangerous and FISA is no exception. What starts as an auxiliary legal tool that is supposed to only be used in some limited terror and espionage cases is guaranteed to eventually become a political tool that is used to prosecute and destroy political opponents.

      • The whole issue unmasking of US persons, extensive reduction of content, and anonymization of sources in court applications is problematic because it goes against the very essence of the subpoena process and evidence rules.

        Exactly. Generic identifiers provide the judge with as much information about real world specifics required to make judgment about probable cause as the formula for a circular sector provides details about a particular slice of pizza.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_sector

        There’s nothing within the concept of “circular sector” that even says its pizza; much less what kind of toppings it has.

        If anyone requires complete unmasking of ‘FISA-acquired U.S. person information’ to do his job, it’s the FISA Court judge.

        But that’s not at issue here.

        At issue is the FBI/DOJ’s masking of NON-‘FISA-acquired U.S. person information’; intentionally obfuscating the facts presented to the court.

        Not a single word within Footnote 8 constitutes ‘FISA-acquired U.S. person information.’ None of it came from the FISA database. It walked in off the street. Lawyers for the DNC and members of the press were given more information than the FISA court judge. Thus, masking procedures were not only inapplicable, but in direct conflict with the FBI/DOJ’s “heightened duty of candor” before the (secret/ex-parte) FISA Court.

        Witness the shameless bold-faced lie within the Schiff Memo of January 29, 2018 (informally referred to as Correcting the Record – The Russia Investigations, (2018) by the United States House Intelligence Committee minority

        DOJ was transparent with Court about Steele’s sourcing: The Committee Majority, which had earlier accused Obama Administration officials of improper “unmasking,” faults DOJ for not revealing the names of specific U.S. persons and entities in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. In fact, DOJ appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. citizen information by purposefully not “unmasking” U.S. person and entity names , unless they were themselves the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. DOJ instead used generic identifiers that provided the Court with more than sufficient information to understand the political context of Steele’s research.

        There is no “longstanding practice” of masking of NON-‘FISA-acquired U.S. person information’. Nonetheless, James Comey and Adam Schiff would have the world believe that masking information contradictory to the predicate for which the warrant is being sought with gratuitous use of generic identifiers and passive voice “provided the Court with more than sufficient information to understand” the facts before it. (Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur)

        Allow me to make that more comprehensible with some specifics.

        The FBI/DOJ not only omitted the roles Hillary Clinton and Fusion GPS played in the creation of the Steele dossier, but they also fabricated materially incongruous details to launder them out of the fact pattern entirely.

      • Yes, these are all very good points of law, but the DOJ is not bound by legal doctrine. Who exactly is going to provide the oversight and more importantly administer the punishment? Look at James Wolfe. The man leaks the un-redacted FISA warrants to an NYT reporter (which he is also sleeping with…). The result is that what should have earned him 15-25 years with hard labor and $500K fine ends up costing him only 2 months and $7,500 fine.

      • Yes, these are all very good points of law,

        Just to be clear, you do see the masking procedural issue; yes?

        If the FBI/DOJ has the power/obligation to mask “FISA-acquired U.S. person information”, can it also claim an additional discretionary power to mask “non-FISA-acquired U.S. person information” without rendering the entire warrant procedure meaningless?

        Wouldn’t a discretionary power to mask “non-FISA-acquired U.S. person information” be tantamount to a power to mask what we call the particulars required for a valid warrant under the Fourth Amendment?

        This goes back to your Dreyfus affair comparison; and the inevitable “we’re a nation of honorable men; not laws” defense. Other than masking Steele as a CHS, I don’t see how masking anything else in Footnote 8 is defensible.

        but the DOJ is not bound by legal doctrine. Who is exactly going to provide the oversight and more importantly administer the punishment?

        But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.

        It’s the “how” that’s a bit more difficult. Doable; but difficult.

      • Again, I know very little about the inner workings of the FISA process, so I can’t comment about the Dossier related applications vs. other applications. It seems to me that there is a loophole in the FISA process and that some officials used it. I just find it hard to believe that they came up with this type of an exploit for the first time when they submitted these sequential applications and that this was done impromptu, it just looks like a well-rehearsed routine…

        As far as the “long train of abuses”, I have a feeling that the ‘authorities’ view all of this public murmuring about the lack of justice/fairness as just another Whiskey rebellion.

      • I just find it hard to believe that they came up with this type of an exploit for the first time when they submitted these sequential applications. It just looks like a well-rehearsed routine…

        Oh, I’m sure the corruption and abuse of power has been rampant for quite some time.

        As far as the “long train of abuses”, I have a feeling that the ‘authorities’ view all of this public murmuring about the lack of justice and fairness as just another Whiskey rebellion.

        It’s a matter of framing the issue for the military. If you show them it’s their duty to right the ship, and they balk, then they have to lie to themselves about those 21 steps they take outside the tomb of the unknown. At that point, they can add a 22nd step to represent the knife they put into the back of the country and its people by turning tail and running when they were needed most.

        .

      • Not sure about the practical solution, it’s a tough one… The theory though has been around for a while:

        Ecclesiastes 5:7
        If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and overthem both are others higher still.

        Isaiah 1:23
        Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them.

      • “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung

      • Yaacov,

        Before I forget, I must sincerely thank you for helping me spot the “non-FISA acquired information” discrepancy within Footnote 8. I don’t think I would have noticed it without our discussions on the topic. So, thank you again.

  64. Yaacov,

    I was wondering if Ohr’s testimony has altered your analysis in any way.

    Particularly with regards to this:

    Ohr’s testimony is the first to connect Steele or Simpson to a tip about Papadoupolos.

    From:

    11 Key Things Inside The House Interview With Spygate Figure Bruce Ohr

    9. Were Steele and Simpson Also Peddling Info about George Papadopoulos?

    Ohr’s testimony concerning conversations with Steele and Simpson about “possible intermediaries between the Russian Government and the Trump campaign” raised additional questions. When pushed on whom exactly Steele and Simpson mentioned, Ohr noted that “there were many names mentioned over a period of time,” but that Sergei Millian, Michael Cohen, and Manafort were definitely some of the individuals whose names came up.

    Ohr then added that “one of the things—again, I don’t remember if it was Glenn Simpson or Chris Steele that mentioned this—talked about—I’m going to get the names wrong, but somebody associated with the Trump campaign having advance knowledge of when information about the Clinton campaign that had been stolen and hacked, when it was going to be leaked.”

    While Ohr did not recall the name of the individual, this description fits Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos’ supposed role in the launch of Crossfire Hurricane. Yet the FBI has maintained that it learned of Papadopoulos’ supposed pre-knowledge of the hack from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. Ohr’s testimony is the first to connect Steele or Simpson to a tip about Papadoupolos.

    http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/11/11-key-things-inside-house-interview-spygate-figure-bruce-ohr/

    • Some of the latest Dossier testimonies are very interesting but all seem to suffer from the same deficiencies. The witnesses seem to hum and ha a lot, they don’t recall facts about who and what, they don’t remember key events (which any normal informaton worker would), and in general, are very evasive.

      When you debrief a source and determine that he is being evasive, that usually means that they are untruthful and anything they say should be suspect. This is even more so in the case of people like Bruce and Nellie Ohr that for some reason, depending on the question, escalate between advanced stages of Alzheimer and encyclopedic/photographic recall of details.

      So, considering all of this, I would categorize statements like “…I’m going to get the names wrong, but somebody associated with the Trump campaign having advance knowledge of when information about the Clinton campaign that had been stolen and hacked, when it was going to be leaked.” as being manipulative and deceitful. It seems that Bruce is using the Q&A session to inject more ‘damaging’ information about the alleged Russian collusion and the DNC hacking to the record.

  65. That’s fascinating that you of all people would see it that way. I saw it more as tightening up the net you cast over the “incestuous lot”.

    I agree with Margot Cleveland’s assessment that Ohr was probably used more than he participated, but his awkward attempts to cover for himself and others with the “I can’t recall” routines strongly suggests scienter on his part. It almost sounds like he recalls being told the same things by both Simpson and Steele but can’t recall who it “should be” so as to maintain story continuity.

    But, unlike the inception of the investigation into Trump in July by Peter Stzrok, he doesn’t say he got the info from the press. He says he got the info from Steele and or Simpson.

    You don’t see it as further confirmation of Glenn Simpson being the originating architect of the Steele dossier and the maestro suggeritore coordinating the entire crew responsible for instigating a fraudulent FBI counter-intelligence investigation subordinated to its media strategy to destroy Donald Trump?

    • The Simpsons were certainly the architects. In the case of the Ohrs, I attribute the vagueness to purposeful deceit. If this was really the case that Bruce simply didn’t remember the source of the information, he could have stated it. There is no shame in saying that “I could have heard it from multiple sources, I just don’t remember who was the first one…”.

      Also, Bruce and Nellie didn’t showup to the interviews with any notes, recordings, or copies, which would have helped them refresh their memory. That is not how credible and honest Federal agents behave. This is despite the fact that he and his wife have a duffle bag full of USB drives and a ton of documents/emails on the subject. So I’m a bit skeptical about this sudden onset of senility.

    • I have been binge watching the series ’24’ on Amazon Prime the last couple of weeks. If I had not discovered what went on in the USA- DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA in 2015-2019 I would find the series a joke. I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is an enemy inside the USA made up of unelected officials and their family members to control the leadership of our government. My questions are why? Are our presidents just puppets?
      I am hearing rumblings that Trump has been an informant for the FBI for years and that is why his tax records are not being revealed.(https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/27/trump-and-the-mob). All evidence points to a long relationship, with Trump being used as bait in relation to mafia/organized crime cases, as well as into Russian / overseas crooks.
      In relation to the latter, Felix Sater emerges as an FBI/CIA asset, a brave patriot, who worked with Trump on these stings. What seems to have happened is that the FBI/DOJ scum working to destroy Trump in 2016, framed their own assets as the crooks. For example, by presenting them to the FISC as ‘probable cause foreign agent’ targets. Page, Trump (perhaps even Sater being three). All innocent patriots. Imagine the evil in doing that.They never thought Clinton would lose, so what’s being exposed is the likely Clinton FBI & DOJ future leadership group at work, destroying lives.

      • Hi Hugh,

        No, I have not seen ’24’, but this is the nature of any well-entranced bureaucracy in history – “They all strive for the throne: it is their madness – as if happiness sat upon the throne! Often filth sits upon the throne – and often the throne upon filth too.”Thus Spoke Zarathustra

        I’m not sure about all of the claims regarding Trump vs. the FBI and DOJ. It looks like they are mostly based on some leaks-which can’t be corroborated. Keep in mind that intel that discloses the identity of US assets is a crime. So, whenever you see some juicy leaked content in outlets like NYT, you have to ask yourself why did the source leak this information in the first place? Why to a specific reporter/outlet? And what is the strategic objective of the leak? Obviously, you also have to take into account the strong possibility that the leaked material is not genuine and that it has been altered in some way.

        Anytime we enter the fantastical quantum universe of persons who speak on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to…, or senior officials who are familiar with the matter… or highly placed source who informed us… it is guaranteed that you are being played by someone who is hiding in the forbidden forest of agendas.

        As far as evidence for the existence of a “FBI & DOJ future leadership group at work”, that’s certainly plausible, after all, the dossier, FISA, and the Mueller investigation records show a consistent clustering of certain State/FBI/DOJ characters that seem to know each other intimately, share the same political and ideological agendas, and are in frequent and not always legit communications among themselves.

  66. Why is the dossier writing so lousy? Doesn’t it make you think the work product content is likely to be shoddy when the writing is so poor? Especially given they weren’t raw notes but compiled by someone who supposedly was an experienced analyst? Is this the level of work product that our agencies produce? That British agencies produce?

    If I were a journalist getting this stuff I would be skeptical just from how poor the documents were as writing. It’s strange that people like Simpson (journalists write a lot) or Ohr (academic) would be associated with stuff like this. It doesn’t even make Fusion look competent to do regular commercial PR.

  67. I also have to question “intelligence” being produced by Fusion, which is an aggressive PR shop (in other words in the business of media spin, not of objective analysis).

    • Regarding Fusion GPS producing PR vs. Intelligence, according to their mission statement (see below) and samples of their work, it looks like they did both. In the case of the dossier, the work product just happens to be fictitious and of very poor quality, but you can still pass it off as intelligence.

      “Fusion GPS brings to your project years of experience in collecting and sifting open source and proprietary intelligence”. They also claimed to have a “global network of contacts and a proven record for accuracy and professionalism and having a “high-level relationships in government and the media, legal, and policy communities”.

      https://apelbaum.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/fusion-gps-2011_thumb41.jpg

  68. It is exactly one year later, and I just spent 3 hours reading and digesting your blog post. Just yesterday, on the Ides of March, Devin Nunes came out and released information about how the Steele Dossier was not written by Steele, but they think it was written by others, associated with Nellie Ohr and her CIA connections….Look, I am no tech guru or political wunderkind, I am just a 50 year old Architect with no political party affiliation, who is paying attention to the corrupt powers that be from online sources, because there is no such thing as a news media anymore. I found a link to this post from somewhere on Instapundit’s blog in relation to the College Bribery Scandal that has ensnared Hollywood Elites…..it had mentioned that this scandal could be linked to Government Personnel and Diplomats in order to get their kids to make elite connections…..Based on the release of testimony by Congress, of some of the assholes listed above, your analysis is pretty amazing!!!! I do leave your article with two fears: 1. How I need to remove most photos of myself and family and friends from social media because if you can find it with facial recognition, AI tech already has billions of people in the system to track our movements not by cell phone, but by our faces all around the world. 2. How it seems that there are two separate legal systems in America: One for the Political Class and the leftists and One for the rest of us. The news media is just propaganda, and if you figured all this out using investigative tech available to the public, surely the news media could have done so, but THEY TRULY ARE INVOLVED IN THIS CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. I was no fan of Trump, but I voted for him because I saw how Clinton was being protected by Comey, Lynch, and Obama. Not only will I vote for Trump this next election, I am going to campaign for him. He has been treated unjustly and people should go to jail.

    • Hi Leigh, see my comments in line.

      For an off-line version, you can just copy and paste the whole post into MS Word or Google Doc. If you specifically need a PDF version, just convert the MS Word doc to PDF:

      …I do leave your article with two fears:

      (YA:1) Aye, the Ides of March have come but have not gone yet…

      (YA:1) The analysis of the dossier project was a bit unusual. Yes, most (but not all) of the tools and technology I used are Open Source based, but assembling the entire framework and its execution does require some expertise. So unless you are very motivated, have some time to burn, and are cyber proficient, this is not something you can stand up in your basement overnight.

      1. How I need to remove most photos of myself and family and friends from social media because if you can find it with facial recognition, AI tech already has billions of people in the system to track our movements not by cell phone, but by our faces all around the world.

      (YA:1) As far as wide-scale use of Face Recognition (FR) software and mass tracking, the FR solutions that Google, Facebook, and others currently use is just not accurate enough for detecting people in the streets on in other non-controlled environments because they require high-quality images (like passport photographs). Some LEA and intelligence agencies use similar technology to the one I used, but they are not interested in the rank and file citizenry. So unless you are on someones radar, it’s unlikely that the state will spend any resources tracking you. The biggest problem with low auality imagery (like the one you get from CCTV and socila media) is the high rate of false/missed detections. The SM platforms on the other hand, have little need for all this fancy analytics because we already voluntarily provide them all the information/data about our social and professional networks, lifestyle preferences, retail activity, movies/images, and financial information.

      Free social media by definition is a siren and free platforms such as FB, Instagram, and Twitter come at a hefty price. Remember, if you are not paying for a product, you ARE the product! Ultimately, it’s your choice how much content you publish. Just keep in mind that if it’s online (even in a semi-protected mode like in cloud storage and cloud productivity platforms like office365 or Google Drive/Docs) it will be harvested for profit.

      2. How it seems that there are two separate legal systems in America: One for the Political Class and the leftists and One for the rest of us. The news media is just propaganda, and if you figured all this out using investigative tech available to the public, surely the news media could have done so, but THEY TRULY ARE INVOLVED IN THIS CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR.

      (YA:1) This is an ancient problem…
      “If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them, both are others higher still.” Ecclesiastes 5:7 But, that said, we all have the power/mandate to change it Deuteronomy 30:15-20

      I was no fan of Trump, but I voted for him because I saw how Clinton was being protected by Comey, Lynch, and Obama. Not only will I vote for Trump this next election, I am going to campaign for him. He has been treated unjustly and people should go to jail.

      I think that we tend to romanticize and confuse the 18-century constitutional concept of freedom of the press (i.e. allowing for political dissent) with the modern reality that MSMs are mega-corporations with commercial international interests which have little to do with news and the preservation of our republic. The framers of the constitution could not have possibly envisioned the emergence of a new class of aristocracy and kingmakers the likes of Joseph Pulitzer, William Hearst, or Jeff Bezos.

      I’m not sure that the MSM is just a propaganda mouthpiece. Just like any other enterprise, MSM’s primary goal is to promote their corporate owner’s commercial interests. Amazon, for example, has very extensive commercial and regulatory interests. So yes, MSM does generate propaganda, but the bigger issue with them is the echo-chamber they create by pruning/censoring any dissenting political views in favor of the ones that only serve their business agenda. This is clear in the case WaPo because of the single investor/owner factor, but I think this applies to all the press outlets as well.

      As far as investigative journalism is concerned, this concept is completely overrated. It may sound strange to most people, but few of the news outlets has real investigative interests or capabilities. They don’t have the skills, technology, legal clearance, or the budget to run complex field intelligence gathering and analysis. MSM reporting is almost entirely based on leaks. Most breaking headline stories are either given to a reporter on a silver platter by some bureaucrat/agency with an agenda or are exchanged for some favors (often sexual). The female honeypot approach with mainstream news outlets like NYT is almost a standard operating procedure, otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why there are so many young and inexperienced female reporters on Capitol Hill.

      Case in point is the story of James Wolfe, a 57-year-old former aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee who leaked unreduced FISA warrants to Ali Watkins, a reporter with the NYT. He was found guilty of what should have been a felony, for which he only got < 60 days in a Federal summer camp.

      Ali Watkins, the 26-year-old reporter who got these secrets out of Wolfe rapidly rose to the national security news hall of fame thanks to several other ‘relationships’ that yielded headline-making stories. Before NYT, she worked for several large MSMs the likes McClatchy (where she was a Pulitzer finalist), HuffPost, Politico, and BuzzFeed, where she broke the story about Carter Page. It’s a pretty amazing career, but It turns out that Watkins secret sauce was to offer sex/sexual favors for information and that is how she got her scoops.

      Another example of the MSM duplicity is the case of Beto O’Rourke, in 2017 Reuters had evidence (based on a leak that lead to an investigation) that Beto may have committed multiple felonies during his days with Cult of the Dead Cow— which Beto (AKA Psychedelic Warlord) confirmed on the record. Reuters deliberately withheld the story for over a year to help him win his Senate race. But now, that Beo is running against Bernie, they decided to strategically release this information.

      I don’t know what the black turtleneck/tortoiseshell glasses wearing Reuters Intelligentsia has to say about this, but to me, it looks like a good’ol influence operation.

  69. Remarkable work. It’s permissible to share e.g., twitter etc. am I right? You’ve laid out an enormously complicated network. Are you willing to work with news outlets willing to explore other connections?

    Again, I am in awe of the connections you’ve made and the data sets you’ve displayed here. John

  70. Birds of a feather really do flock together. WOW! WOW! WOW! Amazing work. I cannot stop reading this. This has helped me put the pieces together where I was confused. Hannity and Sara Carter need to see/read this. Could I share on twitter?

  71. Hi, I log on to your new stuff regularly. Your writing style
    is witty and informative keep it up! Greetings from California!

    I love the biblical reference posts and can’t wait
    to take a look when I get home… Anyways, a wonderful blog!

  72. Yaacov,

    Hi. And thanks for your prompt response.

    Are you here in NYC? If so, I would be happy to meet if you are interested.
    Found issues raised in your dossier-related posts of interest and was hoping to get further details, if possible, on some points.
    Couple of examples:

    You mentioned that Luke Harding, now with the Guardian, was a contractor at some point with Orbis and Hakylut. Is there somewhere I find confirmation of that in public filings, lawsuits, etc.?

    Also, you indicated that Ed Baumgartner had done contract work fro Orbis dating back to 2011. Again, is there a source for that information available publicly? And was that work he was doing independent of Fusion or in connection with it?

    Best regards

    Barry

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    Mr. Apelbaum. Good day. I am a former NYT reporter and book author (more about me http://www.barrymeierbooks.com) who is working on a new book about the corporate investigations industry. Given current events, it will touch on Fusion GPS and the “dossier” and I was hoping to chat with you. My email is barry.meier@gmail.com Thx and regards Barry

    • Dear Mr. Barry Meier,

      The determination of Harding’s commercial relationship with Orbis, Hakylut and his long term ‘relationship’ with the UK government were primarily based on SIGINT intercepts from him and several parties that he communicated with. As far as Baumgartner is concerned, the sources were fin statements and electronic communications. And yes, the work that he was doing was independent of Fusion GPS.

      If you don’t mind, I do have a few questions for you in return,

      (1) What does Barry Meier and your spouse Ellen Pollock think about the Fusion GPS team and the dossier? After all, you both know them and have worked with almost all of them over the years.

      (2) For an individual whose parents escaped Nazi persecution and sought shelter on the shores of this great republic, and someone that was raised in a home where even learning the German language was discouraged, why would you possibly become a German citizen and encourage your niece/family to do the same? Is this some sort of a financial benefit scheme? What, you haven’t made enough money working for the NYT that you need to crawl back to Germany for benefits? A US passport is just not vogue enough for you?

      (3) Why would you possibly work for the NYT? The most debased anti-Semitic libel mill—the modern day equivalent of the Der Stürmer. What would your unfortunate relatives who weren’t as lucky to escape Germany think about your passive facilitation of the NYT’s preaching hatred and persecution of Jews, Jew-baiting, and the spreading of the virus of antisemitism and poisonous anti-Israel propaganda? Sie haben nur die Befehle befolgt?

      Or as Jean Paul Sartre wrote about the type journalistic cowardliness that your newspaper exhibited then and now with its fig leaf coverage of the murder of Jews:

      “Do we say anything about the Jews? Do we give a thought to those who died in the gas chambers at Lublin? Not a word. Not a line in the newspapers. That is because we must not irritate the anti‐Semites; more than ever, we need unity. Well‐meaning journalists will tell you: “In the interest of the Jews themselves, it would not do to talk too much about them just now.” For four years French society has lived without them; it is just as well not to emphasize too vigorously the fact that they have reappeared.” — From the Anti‐Semite and Jew

      Have you murdered and also inherited? Surely, you and your colleagues at the NYT will be judged for these vile actions. May G-d have mercy on your souls.

      Yaacov

  73. Great research! I have a question about one of the characters in your write up. How do you know that Alexandra Chalupa dealt directly with the Ukrainians officials in the US or otherwise and not just some NGOs?

    • Hi Kathleen,

      This is based on two sources, (1) The Ukrainian government (see excerpt below from the article by Sarah Lee)

      “In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress. Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said. Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian-American activist, and learned only later of her ties to the DNC. He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.

      “The Embassy got to know Ms. Chalupa because of her engagement with Ukrainian and other diasporas in Washington D.C., and not in her DNC capacity. We’ve learned about her DNC involvement later,” Chaly said in a statement issued by his embassy. “We were surprised to see Alexandra’s interest in Mr. Paul Manafort’s case. It was her own cause. The Embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter. “All ideas floated by Alexandra were related to approaching a Member of Congress with a purpose to initiate hearings on Paul Manafort or letting an investigative journalist ask President Poroshenko a question about Mr. Manafort during his public talk in Washington, D.C.,” the ambassador explained.”

      The statements by the Ukrainian US embassy officials about them no being aware of Chalupa’s DNC involvement are incorrect. They were fully aware of her role as the second ranking Hillary campaign liaison with the Ukrainian embassy after Melanne Verveer.

      (2) Several matches that I got during the network analysis. As you can see from the images below Chalupa shows up in multiple embassy communications and events with the Ukrainian ambassador and Verveer.

      https://apelbaum.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/ukraine-intelligence-assets-in-us.jpg
      https://apelbaum.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/alexandra-chalupa-and-ukraine-embassy-in-the-us.jpg

  74. First time on this site.
    The amount of material is astounding.
    Your reference to Proverbs is spot on.
    Will read without automatic prolepsis – as is usual for many who have a smattering of understanding and no appreciation for the complexity of this nefarious “project” by the enemies of …
    Thanks.

  75. It appears that Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael K Atkinson is married to Kathryn Cameron Atkinson who was named to Global Investigations Review: Women in Investigations, 2015. GPS Fusion’s Glenn Simpson’s wife Mary Jacoby worked at GIR and nominated Atkinson’s wife to the GIR Women in Investigations of 2015 publication.

  76. If Horowitz presents a non-referral dud then Barr must declare a Constitutional crisis and have the President mobilize the Guard. Were Barr and Durham just checking out the the fabulous cuts of Parma and San Daniele Prosciutto in Italy or some Mifsud Blackberry anti-pasta

  77. Thank you so much Yaacov, not just for the deep investigation into this debacle but also for your candor at approaching those things not yet seen. You have brought honor to God with your talent and perspective. This tied many loose ends together. If you ever have time for a remote interview, please let me know. Caleb@patriotssoapbox.com Powerful Words w/Caleb Saturdays Again thank you for the great work.

    • Not one person in the DOJ CIA NSA will do time. This incredible work was a waste of time. Despite evidence of corruption beyond a reasonable doubt the criminals in and associated with the prior administration require vigilante justice. Attorney General Barr is a cleansing specialist and no change will come. We as a country are ruined.

      • I would estimate that this article has reached the highest levels in Trump’s orbit. I am beyond burned out. Call me whatever name you want . I’m finished with this investigate the investigation shit. I am not alone…

    • thank you for your kinds words. Sorry, no, I don’t use SM. The main reason is that “The hand that giveth, also taketh away” — Job 1:21

      These platforms can/will turn on you in a second, so why waste anytime and effort…

  78. Pingback: Lee Smith:

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