Christopher Steele – dragged into the spotlight

 

 

Christopher Steele is the ex-MI6 agent caught in the middle of the furore over alleged Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. A long-time and trusted intelligence worker, he in the past had worked for both UK and US governments after leaving the service to go private. An ex-head of MI6 said he was the ‘go to person on Russia for information on the commercial sector’; and he led the British inquiry into the mysterious 2006 death in London of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB official and Putin critic, who died of deliberate radiation poisoning.

Steele’s sources had told him the Kremlin held damaging information about Trump’s personal and financial dealings which could be used as leverage were he ever to be elected. What complicates his story is that he was hired by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign. Devin Nunes’ line is that Steele was politically biased against Trump, though his high-level friends say his alarm was not political, more that his professional background in MI6 impelled him to pass on what could be vital information to an ally.

Born on 24 June 1964 in Aden, Yemen, (five days after Boris Johnson), he is a Sun Cancer exactly conjunct his North Node, so keyed into the zeitgeist; with a Sagittarius Moon. He has Saturn opposition Uranus Pluto square Mars in Gemini – so used to challenging and fast-moving situations with risk attached. There are now lawsuits being filed against him by certain of those named in his dossier and he certainly looks very stressed ahead. Tr Pluto has been in a catastrophic square to his Mars/Saturn midpoint through 2017 and this year; with a series of major jolts as his T square of Saturn, Mars, Uranus, Pluto has moved by Solar Arc to catch tr Uranus hard aspects in 2017, with a final hit in March/April this year – and beyond. If anything 2019/2020 could be as bad with tr Neptune square his Sun/Mars and Mars/Node; and tr Pluto opposes his Mars/Pluto midpoint.

Not only is he unpopular with Trump and certain sections of the GOP, he’ll also be persona non-grata with Putin – and the Kremlin has a very long reach when it comes to dealing with troublesome people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hero-or-hired-gun-how-a-british-former-spy-became-a-flash-point-in-the-russia-investigation/2018/02/06/94ea5158-0795-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.2dd336a1fa86

19 thoughts on “Christopher Steele – dragged into the spotlight”

  1. The Steele dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign to investigate the Trump during the primaries. This was illegal. Quote from:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/fbi-releases-documents-showing-payments-trump-dossier-author-steele-n897506
    “Steele, a former MI6 operative who opened a private firm, compiled the Trump dossier during the 2016 presidential campaign under contract to the U.S. research firm Fusion GPS.

    Fusion had been hired to get information on Trump during the primaries by a Republican media firm, Washington Free Beacon. When Trump became the Republican nominee, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party began picking up the tab for the Fusion research. Fusion owner Glenn Simpson hired Steele, a Russia expert, to gather information from his sources in Russia.”

  3. It’s easy to see how impressionable minds can be affected with bot info…it is happening everywhere and is certainly being pushed by Mr. Nunes and his comrades. Mr. Steele is no one’s dupe and there is no protocol in MI6 that say one can’t be employed when leaving the service. In addition, he wasn’t ‘dropped like a hot ‘potato’. He was paid by the people who hired him and once the info was passed to Senator McCain who took it to the FBI, his role was over. The intelligence may be upsetting to DJT supporters but as Senator Feinstein just said today, not one bit of it has been proven false.

  5. Just to add with regard to the Russians if Putin had intended to use the US election to sow discord in the body politic of the USA then he has completely succeeded in that aim. In fact the likes of Steele have materially aided him in that process. It is also worth noting that while Steele was once considered a reliable intelligence resource the FBI have since dropped him like a hot potato which might suggest that they may have realised that they along with the media were being gamed.

    • Did you read the WPost piece? They suggest he was used in his private capacity by the likes of Dearlove, ex-head of MI6, which hardly suggests he was a Putin tool.

      • Marjorie

        I am merely looking at the results not what the media states.

        Regardless of the he said or she said game being played by the press or politicians in the the west there has been only one winner from the post Trump election furore and that is Putin.

        Steele may have been simply a dupe who passed on misinformation from his sources or something else. No doubt some of it will be true because all such chicken feed concocted by intelligence agencies contains some valid data to lend credence to the rest. Given the history of MI6 with the likes of Philby,MacLean, Burgess etc I amazed the FBI and the media are that trusting of anything coming from a source originating in the UK. The fact Trump has so many US enemies in politics and the press, however, is facilitating the process. The Russians can simply selectively leak data to each side and then sit back laughing while the west tears itself apart. I think everyone has been taken for a ride

  6. I suspect most of the people commenting on here have never worked for the British government or know how it operates. UK Civil servants even in minor roles are bound by an code of Official Secrecy that can last a lifetime. One of the things you were normally not allowed to do is to trade on your former official connections particularly if you had access to sensitive information. It is this aspect of Steele’s behavior I find so puzzling as he was once a highly placed operative in a secretive organisation whose very existence was officially denied for decades. In fact the state invoked the UKs draconian security laws to stop the press publishing his name in 1999. This aspect of the case is what I find so odd. A man of his experience and background would normally do everything possible not to break his cover even in retirement. Yet he has been openly hawking his services to both Republicans and Democrats in the USA at the time of one of the most bitterly contested elections for years.. I find it hard to believe that his former employers were not aware of his activities. What they thought about it all is quite another matter.

  7. The anti-Steele stuff is laughable.
    First, the FBI was already concerned about Trump’s involvement in Russia, and considered Manafort and Page compromised, before Steele ever entered the picture. The Republicans hired GPS (hence, Steele) to do opposition research. Are they facing an investigation for trying to subvert the democratic process for hiring him in the first place?
    Of course not.
    Gang, there are politics and there is treason.
    Doing opposition research on an opponent is good politics. If someone believes their opponent is gravely compromised by a hostile and ruthless foreign power, what should they do? Pray it isn’t true?
    Treason would include conspiring with a hostile foreign power to subvert the democratic process. Trump called from a podium in public for Russia to please hack Hilary Clinton’s emails. Something appeared to be going on between Wikileaks, Russia and the Trump campaign, which resulted in illegal acts—a data hack of the DNC and Trump’s main political rival; and suddenly, the GOP national platform—at the behest of Trump—was changed to leave the Ukraine hanging out to dry. If there was any kind of quid pro quo the act was illegal—accepting something of value from a foreign source, in this case, in exchange for a shift in policy. Where is there a single thread of illegality such as this in the arrangement between the RNC, then the DNC and Fusion/Steele?
    C’mon, people. This is 101.

  8. Ok thank you for clarifying. So theoretically if there is any substance to Steele’s concerns about Trump, that will be revealed in the Mueller investigation, no doubt among other things.

  9. I’m not sure I would see unearthing undue Russian influence as ‘interfering in the democratic process’ – quite the reverse. And all elections are fought with both sides pointing out the flaws in the other.
    WIKI: Between 2014 and 2016 Steele created over 100 reports on Russian and Ukrainian issues, which were read within the United States Department of State, and he was viewed as credible by the United States intelligence community.
    The FA hired Steele’s company to investigate FIFA (International Federation of Association Football). In advance of the FBI launching its 2015 FIFA corruption case, members of the FBI’s “Eurasian Organized Crime” squad met with Steele in London to discuss allegations of possible corruption in FIFA.
    In September 2015, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, retained the services of Fusion GPS, a private Washington D.C. political research firm, to conduct research on several primary Republican Party candidates including candidate Trump. The research was unrelated to Russia and was ended once Trump was determined to be the presidential nominee. The firm was subsequently hired by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee – to investigate Trump’s Russia-related activities.
    In July 2016, Steele, on his own initiative, supplied a report he had written to an FBI agent in Rome. His contact at the FBI was the same senior agent with whom he had worked when investigating the FIFA scandal.

  10. So the Republicans were digging dirt on a fellow Republican, Trump, in the beginning? MI6’s role I suspect was subordinate to the “ instructing party(s)” in the US. That nexus seems key, of serving and ex spooks , British and US, and US political parties conspiring together to undermine the democratic process during the American election. Is this not much more demonstrable and serious than Russiagate? Will anyone at the top of this conspiracy go to prison?

  11. Steele brought his information to the attention of Senator John McCain’s staff and later to the FBI because he was deeply alarmed by what he discovered about Trump. He ultimately brought a heap of scrutiny and trouble onto himself just by doing what he perceived as “the right thing.”

  12. I am simply amazed that MI6 allowed a spy who occupied senior positions with them for 22 years to work as a freelance agent peddling intelligence to the various contestants in the US Presidential elections. I thought these people were meant to retire into semi obscurity not go around interfering in the democratic processes of the UKs main ally. At the very least this must be a massive embarrassment to the British Intelligence agencies.

  13. Steele was employed by the Democratic Party to use his experience and contacts to dig up dirt on Trump, is that correct? Is anyone in the Democratic Party facing consequences or is Steele, effectively a cats paw in the story, going to carry the can? Before he did anything on this he would have cleared it with the US Federal authorities, without doubt. So there would logically have been collusion between those authorities and the instructing client, Hillary and the Democrats.

  14. Lest we forget, Mr. Steele was actually hired by Fusion/paid by the Republican Washington Free Beacon first. He was then, secondarily, hired by a lawyer who had a connection with the Clinton campaign after DJT won the nomination and Free Beacon no longer had a candidate in the game.

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