The Spy Who Played Them All

It can certainly be said that to a portion of the American people, President Donald Trump is the most reviled man in America. In the April 2017 issue of Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter called him “a preening narcissist who takes himself terribly seriously...” to which I ask the simple questions: What presidents of recent years haven’t been narcissistic? Nor, as the most powerful man in the free world, taken themselves terribly seriously? Doesn’t it kind of go with the territory?

At one point in his editorial, he says, “When the dust settles, the real history will begin... in the end, proper historians and serious journalists will descend in droves to mop up the lies, the half-truths, and the criminality.” Then, maybe we should start with you.

On page 85 of the April 2017 edition, you have “The Kremlin Connection” by Howard Blum in your Letters From London section. It’s about the “Golden Showers” dossier. It reads like a John Le Carré novel. Our hero, Christopher Steele, ex- Cambridge Union president, ex-head of M.I.6 Moscow field agent, ex-head of M.I.6’s Russia desk, ex-adviser to British Special Forces on capture-or-kill ops in Afghanistan, etc., follows a trail marked by “...hair raising concerns. The allegations of financial, cyber, and sexual shenanigans (that) would lead to a chilling destination: the Kremlin had not only been cultivating supporting and assisting Donald Trump for years, but also has compromised the tycoon sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.” Steele compiled the dossier

Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter, had been hired as Fusion GPS to compile an opposition-research dossier on Donald Trump. While following various leads of his own, he made a call to London and Orbis Business Intelligence, LTD who put him in contact with Steele. He paid Steele and estimated $12,000 to $15,000 a month (plus expenses) to dig up the dirt on Trump. According to Blum, Stele “threw himself into his new mission. He could count on an army of sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years. He filled his memos to Simpson with comments from “Source A, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure; Source B, a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin; Source E, an ethnic Russian and close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The list was impressive, as was the information they turned over. So impressive, in fact, that when Sen. John McCain got wind of it, he sent David J. Kramer, a former State Department official to Heathrow to pick up a copy of the report. He was even ordered to use “Moscow Rules” (I told you this read like a John Le Carré novel) with a copy of the Financial Times tucked under his arm and word codes.

On December 9th, 2016, McCain and FBI Director James Comey handed President Trump the 35-page report. In the course of the meeting, Comey had to come forth with the fact that the report was a well-crafted piece of fiction. It had been written to prove to the new president, who was going against tradition by not taking daily intelligence briefings, that fictitious and spurious information could be out there that he, the president, would need to keep abreast of.

McCain’s bubble was burst. The senator would “later issue a statement that amounted to little more than a hapless shrug.” However, because the dossier was presented to President Trump, BuzzFeed ran with the story, posted the entire 35-page report and every anti-Trumper took it for gospel. Comey knew it was fake, but never came out publicly to say so. (Maybe one of the myriad of reasons he got fired.) It fueled the on going federal investigations.

But, I love the closing paragraph of the article: “Time to think is dangerous. And with the new president now ensconced in the White House, a man whose actions and reputation remain tangled up in a morass of disturbing speculations, the nation has, in effect, gone to ground, too. The concerns and questions escalate day after troubling day. With an intelligence community fighting its own secret war against a president who has time after time vilified it, the answer may soon be revealed. But for now all the nation can do is wait with tense anticipation for the congressional and intelligence-agency investigations to play out, for the high-stakes chase started by a lone ex-spy to move forward toward its conclusion and into history, for the clarity that will tell the American people it’s finally save to come in from the cold.”

For those of you who didn’t get it.... John Le Carré wrote one of the finest spy novels ever, called THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD.

Punning aside, look at that closing paragraph. “Disturbing speculation”... whose? Not the president’s. He knows the story is a fake. Only the fools who believe that the story is true are disturbed by it. And why shouldn’t the president vilify the intelligence community for allowing a fake story to remain unchallenged when they knew the case to be the opposite. And what’s going to be the outcome of all the investigations???? Nothing except a waste of tax-payers’ money.

But what I find really interesting were the crimes that were actually committed in the story. The “Golden Showers” dossier was a fake. It was known to be a fake from the get-go. And yet, Christopher Steele was able to con Glenn Simpson and the Democratic donors who backed him out of $15,000 a month (plus expenses) while he sat back some where, read a whole bunch of John Le Carré novels and came up with the fake backstory to match the fake front one. (I would have chosen Marbella, Spain. There are some nice little sidewalk cafés there where you can really dig your teeth into a good piece of spy fiction while sipping some chilled Spanish Riojo.)

But the real story, the one that everyone missed was the real spy thriller that transpired right under everyone’s noses. Smiley couldn’t have manufactured it better. Look....Steele, the lone, ex-spy, creates a perfect piece of fiction sprinkled with real life people. Only he knows it’s fiction. However to some of the people reading it, it’s the gospel, like an old KGB man who now runs a certain world power.

According to Blum’s article, “Oleg Erovinkin - a former F.S.B. (new version of the KGB) general and a key aid to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister who know heads Rosneft, the giant Russian oil company, and who name is scattered with incriminating innuendo through several memos -- was found dead in his car the day after Christmas. The F.S.B., according to Russian press reports, ‘launched a large-scale investigation’, but no official cause of death has been announced. Was this the price Erovinkin paid for having apparent similarities to Steele’s Source B, “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin”? And no less ominous, after both Steele and U.S. intelligence officials made their cases for the Kremlin’s involvement in the election hackings, the F.S.B. arrested two officer in the agency’s cyber-wing and one computer security expert, charging them with treason. The Russian espionage agency was said to have burst into a meeting of the deputy director of its cyber-activities , placed a bag over his head, and marched him of to a destination unknown. Were these three the sources that Steele relied on?”

But Steele didn’t rely on any sources. The whole dossier and the steps taken to put it together were a fabrication... a figment of Steele’s imagination... unless,... unless he was gunning for old enemies. James Bond couldn’t have done it better. Steele, the ex-M.I.6 operative, created a piece of fiction that took care of old Moscow enemies and the current manifestation of the KGB, took care of them for him. Right out of Smiley’s People. Good-bye Karla. This ex-spy played everyone. He conned the anti-Trump faction into paying him a butt-load of money while he created a piece of fiction and he conned the F.S.B. into eliminating a slew of Russian “informers” mentioned in it. (We only have Steele’s word that the “sources” in his dossier were people he had spent years cultivating and not former M.I.6 enemies.) Brilliant. And BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, et al, played right into his hands and outed them all. When I say he played everyone.... he played everyone.

If I ever write a John Le Carré style novel... I have got to save this scenario for the plot line.