by WorldTribune Staff, September 12, 2018
Then-CIA Director John Brennan backed the unverified Trump dossier authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, Bob Woodward writes in his new book “Fear: Trump in the White House”.
“The sources that Steele used for his dossier had not been polygraphed, which made their information uncorroborated, and potentially suspect,” Woodward writes. “But Brennan said the information was in line with their own sources, in which he had great confidence.”
A spokesman for Brennan, however, has insisted the ex-CIA chief never approved of the dossier.
“It wasn’t corroborated intel,” the spokesman told The Washington Times, adding that Brennan actually worked to make sure the dossier wasn’t included in the intelligence community assessment of Russian election interference.
The dossier “is mostly ignored by Woodward in terms of its pervasive influence on the media and FBI investigators,” Rowan Scarborough noted in a Sept. 11 report for The Washington Times.
Scarborough noted other important facts omitted by Woodward included:
- That Steele’s objective in writing the dossier was to stop the Trump candidacy, and then his presidency.
- That the dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
- That FBI and Department of Justice officials aligned to oppose Trump, such as fired FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the investigation, and FBI counsel Lisa Page.
- There is no discussion of Carter Page and how the FBI used the unproven dossier to persuade judges to place a yearlong wiretap on the Trump campaign volunteer.
None of Steele’s specific Trump-Russian collusion charges has been confirmed publicly.
For his part, Brennan, after leaving the CIA, said he provided then-FBI Director James Comey with the names of any Russian believed to have had contact with any Trump associate.
“I wanted to make sure that every information and bit of intelligence that we had was shared with the bureau so that they could take it. It was well beyond my mandate as director of CIA to follow on any of those leads that involved U.S. persons. But I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the bureau,” Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2017.
“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.”
Brennan, currently a paid analyst on MSNBC, has suggested that Russian President Valdimir Putin is blackmailing Trump, but has offered no evidence.
Trump last month revoked Brennan’s top-secret security clearance.
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Woodward book’s disclosures, omissions: Brennan endorsed dossier before he didn’t, etc. added by World Tribune on
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