I'm thinking some people here didn't read James Bond. Steele worked for the same outfit: MI-6, the UK's Secret Intelligence Service. CIA works more closely with them than any other allied intelligence agency. Steele's Russian sources would have been anti-Russian govt sources, not pro-Russian govt sources. And of course he was retired . . . not only no longer working for a FOREIGN government, but he'd also been a trusted confidential source of the FBI.
Fusion is an American company. No problem with an American company hiring a foreigner to work for them. The election meddling issue is a foreign GOVERNMENT meddling . . . and one more time, Steele isn't now and was not then a foreign govt employee. You might even say he was a US govt employee, working as a paid source for the FBI. And Russian govt sources would hardly provide "dirt" on Trump, since they wanted him to win. Putin wanted him to win. Straight out of the report put together by our intelligence community--and they have not changed their analysis under President Trump.
They also concluded that there's no way for them to determine the impact of the Russian influence campaign on the results of the election. Of course Jimmy Carter did say that Trump wouldn't have won without Russia's help . . . but you have to consider the source.
Larry, Im fascinated, why would you plod through all this gymnastics when Steele himself testified that his trigger document for the witch hunt was unverified? Why is it so difficult to see that your beloved agency among others seemed to have done questionable investigating and a leak/smear operation when they believed they would have continued protection from one administration to the next?
Craig, what's your background in the intelligence field? The Steele Dossier falls into the category referred to as HUMINT. Human intelligence, meaning that it comes from human sources rather than signals, satellites, or cyber. HUMINT is quite often "unverified". If it were easy to verify, CIA would not go to the trouble (and run the risks) of recruiting agents (human sources with access to information we can't obtain any other way). So you look at the track record of the individual providing the information. Steele knows Russia, worked for MI-6 in Russia, and obviously developed sources there. The FBI trusted him as a confidential informant. So it's not exactly like Joe Blow from Kokomo showing up with information. You try to verify what you can, but you're often stuck with information you can't verify. Some Russian hooker says she had sex with Trump. Well, can she describe his "equipment" (like one of Clinton's accusers said she could do?) But you may be able to get hints about other bits and pieces of the Steele Dossier via other means--which causes you not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And the Steele Dossier wasn't the only "trigger". There was information from Popadopoulos. And of course the FISA warrant on Carter Page--on whom there's an FBI file going back to 2013 concerning his contacts with Russian intelligence officers. All the Page stuff is rock solid because it came from bugs planted in the Russian spooks' office. When I read it, looking at it as a former case officer, I'm saying to myself that if I were one of those Russkies, I would have been all over Carter Page. He loves Russia (clear in his testimony to Congress . . . he wanted to join Team Trump because he liked the positive noises Trump was making about Putin). And the Russians were discussing how eager he was to make lots of money. And that's pretty much the standard way Russian spooks recruit agents: They offer them lots of money. Look at any number of cases of Americans who turned traitor, and you'll find that Russia paid them well for their services. The only reason they didn't chase him back in 2013: he didn't have any access. But once Trump names him as a foreign policy adviser . . . aha! Now he potentially has excellent access. And shortly after Trump secured the nomination, Mr. Page takes off on a trip to . . . RUSSIA! If we hadn't requested a FISA warrant on him at that point, American intelligence would have been asleep on the job. Simple as that.
As for the whole idea of "collusion": Well, yes indeed, we have interfered in foreign elections. I worked for the "interferers". CIA's very first covert action operation was to provide bags of cash to the Italian Christian Democrats in the 1948 election, because it looked like the Commies might take control of Italy via the ballot box. It worked, and CIA continued to interfere in elections, foreign politics, overthrow govts etc--particularly during the Cold War. And, when they did so . . . guess what? I can't think of a single case in which CIA did NOT collude with a foreign political party, foreign opposition leader, insurgent group, etc. So, since the Intelligence Community concluded that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, it was only logical to suspect collusion. And hints like Junior, rising to the bait of "dirt" on Hillary from the Russian govt . . . while Mueller didn't find collusion, there's no doubt that some of the Team Trump people certainly WANTED to collude. Were eager to accept dirt from the Russian government. (I'd make it clear here that I never thought Trump himself colluded. His campaign was mostly a bunch of amateurs, but even they were likely smart enough to give their candidate "plausible denial" when it came to collusion. And when one of his campaign directors (Manafort) made millions working for Putin's puppet in Ukraine, how likely did it seem--prior to the investigation--that no one in the campaign was working with the Russians? More than enough reason to take a good, hard look.
As for my "beloved" agency, they're certainly capable of making mistakes. But perhaps you can show me where either of the CIA directors chosen by Trump (Pompeo or Haspel) has denied the conclusion reached by CIA (before Obama left office) that the Russians did indeed interfere, and that they did so in an attempt to help Trump/hurt Hillary?
Finally, think on this: If those evil "deep state" plotters everyone blathers on about (like the FBI love birds) had wanted to keep Trump from winning, then why didn't they simply leak the existence of the investigation? If the American public had known that the Trump campaign was being investigated for colluding with Russia . . . I'm thinking there are hundreds of thousands of Cold War vets who couldn't have pulled the lever for Trump based on that information. Instead, the much beaten up Intelligence Community did an extremely good job of keeping the existence of the investigation a secret until after the election was over. By which time it no longer made any difference.
