Originally Posted By: old colonel
Originally Posted By: L. Brown
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.


Get real, you do not know the actual orientation and beliefs of who exactly Steele sourced from. Much less their reliability. You should know full well that Disinformation has been an actual focused department of the KGB. Steele openly admitted he had an agenda of stopping Trump and was actively engaged is seeding information with that intent. It was his activity in planting leaks which got him released as a source. Not exactly the actions of a disinterested US employees. Funny the role Brit and commonwealth intel people seem to play in American political investigations.

My belief is that the Russians are more interested in destroying the credibility of American Democratic institutions than in making anyone in particular victorious. That said I remain convinced there has not been clear evidence they changed the election results. The have changed our perceptions of it. Which the left which for decades loved the Soviets, and laughed at Romney’s identifying them as a threat have made possible.


Why thank you, COL. Some of us--especially those like me, who worked AGAINST THE KGB IN THE FIELD, are pretty well aware of their capabilities. (We're also aware that while there isn't any KGB any more--name change to protect the guilty--the guy in charge in Russia is ex-KGB.) And if you'd read the Intelligence Community's report on Russian interference, you would know that they made no conclusion concerning any impact on the actual results of the election. But does that mean we ignore their attempts to interfere? We do know that they were able to access various state's voter registration information, for example.

Given the level of expertise within the US Intelligence Community on Russian intelligence capabilities, I think I'll stick with the conclusion they reached in their report on Russian interference:

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments." Note that "high confidence"--by CIA, FBI, and NSA--is the highest rating the IC assigns to their analysis.