It's been over two years since the Steel Dossier came out, yet people who should know better are still not getting how and why it came to be so full of shit. So allow me to explain it to you step by step.
Like you're a dummy.
One day Steele worked the Russian desk in spyland, running Russian assets to spy on THE RUSSIANS.
Then Princess Diana died, and some nutcase in the intelligence community thought it was an MI6 conspiracy...
And, in a fit of psychosis, leaked all the names of M's top spy dudes..
And Steele had his cover blown.
It's fair to say that RUSSIA knew who Steele was since the late 90's.
It's fair to say that when and while he went into business for himself, either Boris or Natasha were keeping an eye on him.
And feeding him any old shit when it suited them.
But we don't need to be even that vague, cryptic, or paranoid, because we already know who was feeding Steele his disinformation.
And Taibbi also knows the answer to this, yet the name didn't pop up in his latest Rolling Stone article.
I guess because he's allergic to Putin or something?
Anyway, you're a dummy, so I'll cut to the chase.
IT WAS OLEG DERIPASKA.
Let me explain:
Deripaska had been twice approached by the U.S. government as part of an FBI–led recruitment effort to obtain informers close to Vladimir Putin.
The efforts failed.
One of the people who tried to turn him was Bruce Ohr.
In fact, Steele was one of the people Bruce consulted in trying to turn Deripaska.
STEELE VOUCHED FOR DERIPASKA.
K?
Yet, surprise, surprise:
Attempts to turn Deripaska into an informant undertaken between 2014 and 2016 were unsuccessful. Deripaska notified the Russian authorities of US efforts to recruit him. Source
Let me repeat that: Deripaska notified the Russian authorities of US efforts to recruit him.
In 2015-2016.
If Steele was pushing Deripaska, wouldn't it follow that was for a reason... like... that he was a trusted asset of Steele, himself?
MAYBE???
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" and "a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad"
Steele sucks, I think everyone's established that already. His cover was already blown in the 90's, and he was flaunting a Kermlin asset. He really really sucks. Hell, at one point going through all this, I became convinced that Steele himself was PUTIN in one of those mission impossible mask things.
Either way, Deripaska thought it better to turn down the FBI who, like, do counterintelligence and shit?--and instead just stuck to feeding Steele on the side.
Oh yeah, there was something else...
Deripaska and Manafort (who, even from his prison cell, is STILL whispering Ukraine hacker conspiracy theory disinformation in Giuliani's ear) are old buddies, there's that too. During the 2016 Presidential campaign, it is alleged that Manafort, via Kiev-based operative Konstantin Kilimnik, offered to provide briefings on political developments to Deripaska, though there is no evidence that the briefings took place.
OK, LOL, there's way more, but now I'm just copy-pasting his literal wikipedia article.
Now why should Taibbi be playing so dumb on Steele?
Could it be that he is violently anti-Russiagate?
And therefore any Kremlin assets feeding Steel disinformation might not exist in his head?
I can't figure it out. I guess that's it?
Or maybe it's that his arch nemesis, Marcy Wheeler figured out all this shit before him, and he was just butthurt it turned out to be the Russians all along?
Don't know. Whatever.
Here are some of the things Marcy has pointed out served the disinformation seeding of the Steele Dossier:
- Democrats to misunderstand how accomplished the Russians were at hacking American targets
- The FBI and Democrats to misunderstand how Internet trolling worked
- Democrats to assume Russia planned to leak dated intercepts rather than recently stolen emails
- The FBI and Democrats to look at Carter Page rather than Don Jr as a key player in outreach to Russia
- The FBI to assume there was discomfort with the operation when there was ongoing aggressiveness
Further reading:
Oleg Deripaska’s Co-Columnist Admits Oleg Deripaska May Have Fed Christopher Steele Disinformation
(See article, which contains links to many more articles Marcy has written on the Steele Dossier)
Man, that must smart, eh, Taibbi? It was PUTIN aaaaaall along.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Addition:
Now counter claims are emerging that "Steele was used as FBI avatar to push Clinton disinformation back into FBI."
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1193376146483810304
- LeeSmithDC
If Steele was being used by Clinton friendly FBI to feed this crowdstrike/DNC created narrative back into the FBI, why does steel, underplay, and contradict that narrative? If his job was to proliferate the narrative, why did he seemingly go out of his way for his info to be so obviously garbage?
If Steele had gone to the FBI with information that corroborated what the FBI was to go on and investigate, information supposedly "created" by DNC friendly hackers/fbi/whateverthefucknonsense, then his information would have been used to support the resulting investigation. Instead his information was eventually found to be mostly misleading horseshit trolling--of the lame kind the IRA would pull off.
So there's that.