Pay for play: Pro-Clinton ex-CIA director challenges source of Trump-Russia narrative

by WorldTribune Staff, March 19, 2017

An ex-CIA director, who was said to be in line to lead the agency in a Hillary Clinton administration, said there is not a “spark” of evidence that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia during the campaign.

Former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, who endorsed Clinton, also questioned as dubious the so-called “Trump dossier” in his remarks on March 15 at an event held by an intelligence website, according to NBC News.

Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell

“On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all,” Morell said. “There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark.”

“And there’s a lot of people looking for it,” he added.

Morell also criticized the “Trump dossier,” saying the fact that the former British MI6 agent who compiled it used paid sources indicates its unreliability.

As to the “Trump dossier,” which was put together by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, Morell said it “doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think.”

“Unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information — you just can’t,” he said.

Morell said the fact that some of the “dossier” information came from sources linked to the Russian Federal Security Service, the KGB successor agency known by its Russian initials FSB, made the document even more dubious.

“I had two questions when I first read it. One was, How did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned that he used intermediaries.

“And then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they’re going to call you up and say, ‘hey, let’s have another meeting, I have more information for you,’ because they want to get paid some more,” Morell said.

“I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier,” he concluded.

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