Former CIA Officer: 'Russiagate' Was Manufactured By The Clinton Campaign

[Jack Fake]

The central mystery involving what has become known as
Russiagate is the lack of any real understanding of what exactly
took place. It is alleged in some circles that Moscow somehow
interfered in the 2016 Presidential election and might even have
tilted the result in favor of candidate Donald Trump. Others
suspect that the tale is politically motivated in an attempt to
exonerate Hillary Clinton and find Donald Trump or his
associates guilty of collusion with an unfriendly foreign
government.

Caught in between are those who are not completely convinced by
either narrative and are demanding evidence to confirm that
there was a sequence of events involving Russia and various
American individuals that demonstrates both intent and actual
steps taken which would lend credibility to such a hypothesis.
So far, in spite of a year and a half of highly intrusive
investigation, there has been remarkably little evidence of
anything apart from the unchallengeable fact that someone took
files from John Podesta as well as the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) computers and the stolen information wound up at
WikiLeaks.

One of the most damaging revelations made regarding Donald Trump
consisted of the so-called “Dossier,” which had been compiled by
former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Initial
reports suggested that Steele’s investigation was commissioned
initially by a Republican opponent of Trump, possibly Jeb Bush,
and later it was possibly continued by someone connected to the
Democratic Party. This genesis of the document was widely
reported at the time but no “names” were attached to the claims
even though the identities of those who had commissioned the
work were known to some journalists who had uncovered additional
details relating to the investigation.

The drafts of some parts of the document itself began to make
the rounds in Washington during the summer of 2016, though the
entire text was not surfaced in the media until January. The
dossier was reportedly still being worked on in June by Steele
and by one account was turned over to the FBI in Rome by him in
July. It later was passed to John McCain in November and was
presented to FBI Director James Comey for verification, which he
agreed to do.

The Steele Dossier contained serious but largely unsubstantiated
allegations about Trump’s connection to the Vladimir Putin
regime as a businessman who sought and obtained significant, and
possibly illegal, favors on real estate transactions from the
Russian government. On a more personal level, it also included
accounts of some bizarre sexual escapades with prostitutes at
the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow. Few of the allegations could
be verified as the report relied on mostly unnamed,
unidentifiable sources. On a more serious note, the dossier
concluded with an assessment that Donald Trump was compromised
by the Russian intelligence services and could be blackmailed.

At roughly the same time the Clinton campaign began a major
effort to connect Trump with Russia as a way to discredit him
and his campaign and to deflect the revelations of her own
campaign malfeasance coming from WikiLeaks. In late August,
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to FBI head James Comey
and demanded that the “connections between the Russian
government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign” be
investigated. In September Senator Diane Feinstein and
Representative Adam Schiff of the Senate and House intelligence
committees respectively publicly accused the Russians of
meddling in the election “based on briefings we have received.”

The linkage between the dossier and the timing of the Democratic
Party attempt to tie Trump to Moscow is significant given what
has been revealed over the past several days. As it turns out,
it has been confirmed that Steele’s firm Fusion GPS was indeed
paid not only by the DNC, but also by the Clinton Campaign
itself. A Washington lawyer named Marc Elias, whose firm Perkins
Coie worked for both the DNC and Hillary, was the go-between on
the arrangement, which began in April 2016 and continued until
the election.

As a former intelligence officer who has seen numerous overseas
investigations done for clients, I can say with some confidence
that the Steele Dossier is a composite of some fact, a lot of
speculation, and even occasional fiction. Some indisputable and
confirmable information is inevitably used to provide
credibility for a lot of speculation and false stories that were
intended to sow doubt and confusion. Gossip and rumors are
reported as fact, with the whole product being put together in
such a fashion as to appear credible to satisfy a client
interested in exploitable information rather than the truth.
Including some proper names, which the dossier does
occasionally, provides credibility and the FBI’s ability to
confirm some of the dates and places regarding travel and
meetings provided bona fides for the entire document and
resulted in the launching of a top-level law enforcement
investigation.

The dossier was designed to dig up “dirt” on Trump and his
associates, but, more to the point, it was clearly intended from
the start to do so by manufacturing and nurturing a Russian
angle. It sought to discredit Donald Trump and to deceive the
public, which suggests that Trump has been right all along
regarding something like a conspiracy against him which included
the active participation of the FBI and possibly other national
security agencies.

The president also comes across as credible vis-à-vis his
critics because of what has become evident since the dossier was
surfaced. The clearly politically motivated multiple
investigations carried out so far in which no rock has been
unturned have come up with absolutely nothing, either in the
form of criminal charges or in terms of actual collusion with a
foreign government. And, one might add, there has been little in
the way of evidence to sustain the charge that Russia sought to
influence the election and might even have succeeded in doing
so. But there is one thing new that we do know now: Russiagate
began within the Clinton Campaign headquarters.

Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence
Officer who spent 20 years overseas in Europe and the Middle
East working terrorism cases.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/25/russiagate-was-manufactured-
inside-the-clinton-campaign-headquarters/