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‐Allegations swirl that Russia has
compromising information about the president...
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
‐...reports of an attempt by the Russians
to gather material to blackmail the president.
‐A secret dossier of allegations about Donald Trump and Russia,
all written by a former member of MI6,
he´s said to be lying low, fearing for his safety.
‐When the dossier was published, it exploded onto the scene
and at the heart of it was this shadowy Russian expert.
‐He´s kind of quintessential spy.
‐Everyone was trying to find him.
‐He´d slipped through a crowd unnoticed,
sort of seeing everything that was going on.
‐That now infamous dossier said
that the Russian Federation President Putin
has compromising information on President Trump.
‐What these documents alleged was extraordinary.
‐Trump denying unsubstantiated claims
that he was caught on camera in a Russian hotel room.
‐It referred to the existence of a tape.
‐Supposedly a tape showing prostitutes
hired by Trump urinating on a bed
where President Obama once slept.
‐It was extraordinary to hear the details.
You almost had to look away.
‐It quickly became a question in Washington of
how much of this was accurate and what this meant
for the future of the Trump presidency.
‐We also learned this week that the DNC
and the Clinton campaign helped fund this dossier.
‐It´s all fake news.
It´s phony stuff. It didn´t happen.
‐This is a report from the Internet,
just rife with misspellings, completely unverified.
‐It was on a mission to get Donald Trump.
Senior congressional Republicans
are calling for a criminal investigation
into the author of that infamous dossier.
‐So much depends on the credibility of the author.
He has now been named as Christopher Steele.
♫♫
‐There are many people who would say Christopher Steele
is an enigma.
Is he a hero? Is he a traitor?
‐An over the hill retired spy who is making a living,
selling his résumé rather than selling facts.
‐Christopher Steele is a force for good.
‐Christopher Steele is quintessential civil servant.
‐Even today ‐‐ a mystery.
‐Christopher Steele is a guy
who picked a fight with two presidents ‐‐
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
And he´s lived to tell the tale.
‐All right, everybody.
‐We´re going to mark it up.
‐One.
‐Most of the world first heard your name about five years ago,
but you stayed silent up until now.
Give me a declarative sentence.
Christopher Steele is...
‐A patriot.
Somebody who has professional integrity and expertise
and somebody who is a...
true friend and ally of the United States.
‐But when you bring the information
to the FBI in 2016,
reacting as a patriot or a paid private intelligence officer?
‐As a patriot.
‐And to those who say otherwise?
‐I´d like to see what proof they´ve got.
‐You´ve been described as desperate to make sure
Donald Trump didn´t get elected. Is that true?
‐No, that´s not the kind of thing I ever said.
I was very concerned at the idea that a candidate
who might have been compromised
by our enemies might get elected,
but only on the basis of that information of our intelligence
and not for any other reason.
‐How do you respond to critics who say
you were doing foreign interference
in an American political campaign?
‐We were not foreign interference.
The foreign interference
in the American political campaign in 2016
was by the Kremlin
and the Russian intelligence services.
‐Well, you are British, you´re not American.
‐But Britain is America´s closest ally.
We have always had a track record of helping America.
It would have been very curious
if what we had chosen to do in 2016
was not to tell them.
It would have been unthinkable.
‐Christopher Steele, ex‐British intelligence officer,
said to have prepared dossier on Trump.
It´s quite a headline to read, I imagine.
‐It certainly is when you´ve spent your life
in the shadows behind the scenes.
‐Let´s go back to the beginning.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
‐So you graduate Cambridge in ´86.
You answered an ad in a newspaper seeking people
interested in working overseas.
What was the ad?
‐It was a genuine headhunters advert and it said,
"Would you be interested in working for government
as opposed to the private sector?"
And I said, yeah. And the rest is history.
‐I remember him phoning me and asking me
to be a reference for him, for a job that he´d applied for.
They were questions like,
would you describe him as a patriot?
Would you describe him as someone you could rely on?
Is he a good chap sort of thing.
‐When did you know it was MI6?
‐I can´t comment on exactly
what part of government I was in,
but it was quite clear early on
that it would be a job involving foreign affairs
and it would involve living abroad.
‐Everyone knows you worked for British intelligence.
Why can´t you say so?
‐There´s a convention in this country and a rule,
in fact, that crown servants are not allowed to confirm
or deny whether they´ve worked for the intelligence services.
We do things slightly differently here.
‐MI6 ‐‐ Military Intelligence Section Six.
These are basically the spies
who operate only overseas equivalent to the CIA.
‐They travel abroad. They assume undercover roles.
And it´s all about human interaction.
‐MI6 is so secretive that British government
didn´t even acknowledge it existed until the 1990s.
‐Officially, on paper,
his government service was for the Foreign Office.
‐Unofficially, he was an intelligence operative,
essentially a spy.
‐I admire your luck, Mister...
‐Bond.
James Bond.
‐We think British intelligence and we think James Bond.
‐I have got an Omega watch on
and hopefully I´ve got good manners,
but I think that´s where the comparison would end.
‐I do think that he has
that smoothness that James Bond has.
He wants your secrets and he charms it out of you.
‐You were recruited into the Russian language program.
‐I was offered the chance to learn a hard language
from the get go, which is quite unusual.
I had the choice of Arabic or Russian and, um...
‐Why Russian?
‐I was interested in Russian history and politics.
I had studied it in university.
‐I introduced Laura to Chris.
She was a lovely person,
a very upbeat person, a very bright lady,
and then in 1990, they were married.
‐She knew from when we got together that her life
might involve
going to weird and wonderful places and things like that.
‐Did she know you were a spy?
‐She knew what she needs to know at the time about me.
Yes.
‐Mr. Gorbachev,
tear down this wall.
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Chanting indistinctly ]
‐Chris and Laura were heading to Russia.
People in the Foreign Office get sent to embassies
and work in embassies overseas,
so it wasn´t a particular surprise.
‐It was an extraordinary time in Russia.
I mean, it was unbelievable what was going on almost every day.
‐It was a pivotal moment because within about 18 months,
the Soviet Union collapsed.
‐The hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin
for the last time.
The Soviet Union has ceased to exist.
‐I think the biggest concern was the restrictive nature
of the the life that they would have over there.
‐I visited on one occasion and when we went for a walk,
I said to Chris and Laura, I don´t know if you´ve noticed,
but there´s two chaps behind that tree
who are clearly looking at us.
And they said, "Oh, yeah, I know.
"They follow us around everywhere.
"And from time to time when we´re out,
"they come into the house and they clearly take things
just to show they can."
‐At one point, I think Laura´s shoes were stolen.
‐Yeah, that was before a diplomatic reception.
One of the tricks that they used to play on us
to try and destabilize us and disrupt us
was to come into your flat, take something or move it around
or switch your freezer off so all your ice cream melted.
‐But they want you to know they were there.
‐They wanted you to know that they were ‐‐
you were under their sort of control and purview
the whole time.
‐When did you first hear the name Vladimir Putin?
‐That´s an interesting question,
because there is a possibility that in 1992,
when I took a delegation of senior officials
to St. Petersburg
that we actually met Vladimir Putin.
He may have my business card from the time. I don´t know.
I didn´t really hear about him again until the late ´90s,
effectively once he had moved down to Moscow
and started doing jobs in the Kremlin.
‐Well, let´s talk about Putin. How much do we know about him?
‐Not very much. He is a former KGB spy.
He headed the domestic intelligence agency in Russia.
He´s someone Russians don´t know very much about
considering his background.
‐No sense at that time that he would fundamentally change
Russia´s trajectory.
‐Vladimir Putin can be Russia´s president forever,
but what he really is and always will be
is a KGB agent.
‐So Steele completes his posting in Moscow after three years,
which is the standard term for a foreign posting with MI6.
He comes back to London and he starts a family
with his young wife, Laura,
and they end up having three children together.
The Cold War was very much in the rearview mirror,
and so, the Russia desk was quite quiet
at MI6 until Alexander Litvinenko.
‐An outspoken former Russian spy,
is in intensive care tonight.
His condition deteriorated after friends
say he was deliberately poisoned for criticizing the Kremlin.
‐Alexander Litvinenko having worked for the Russians,
he was outspoken about Russia´s role
in organized crime networks, about human rights violations.
He became a real thorn in Putin´s side.
And what happens to thorns and Putin´s side?
‐The former Russian spy, mysteriously poisoned
three weeks ago, has died.
‐A real turning point
was when the Russians poisoned Litvinenko.
Vladimir Putin was becoming a much more dangerous leader.
He was revealing who he really is.
‐You were investigating that assassination.
‐I can´t go into the exact details of the investigation,
but I think they are more or less summed up
in the public inquiry,
which was that this was a state‐sponsored operation
that it was designed to kill and to deter others.
And the people that were eventually indicted for it
were clearly agents of the Russian government.
It was very clear that we were dealing with a country
which was not playing by
the rules of the international game
and was becoming effectively a rogue state.
♫♫
‐After almost 20 years,
you retired from British intelligence, why?
‐It was me and my business partner, Chris Burrows.
We decided that we wanted to move on.
We wanted to do something a bit different
and we wanted to actually make a bit of money to retire on.
‐We started to formalize the idea
of starting a business together.
‐2009 ended up being a pretty consequential year
for Steele because his wife, Laura,
mother of his three children, she dies at the age of 43.
‐She died very quickly because of health issues
at exactly the same time that we were starting up the business.
You have to get into survival mode.
Having the children, of course, is a massive motivating factor
into keeping moving forward.
I felt very determined that I was going to go on
and make a success of it
for the children that she´d left behind.
♫♫
‐Explain what this business is.
It´s called Orbis, what do you guys do?
‐We are an human intelligence gathering operation.
We feed intelligence into private clients
as a way of helping them make corporate decisions.
‐And I thought a given Chris knew Russia
like the back of his hand,
the best way to go into the market would be to say,
we know Russia better than everyone else.
[ Fanfare playing ]
‐Most people think of spying
as government spying ‐‐ the CIA, MI6,
but there is this huge hidden industry out there
a industry of private intelligence or private spying,
folks who work for corporations,
political parties digging up dirt on their adversaries.
It´s a tremendously lucrative industry.
‐So when someone says you´re spies for hire,
what does that make you think?
‐I think it´s over simplistic.
I mean, effectively, we vet our clients.
We reject clients that we don´t think are fit and proper.
[ Chanting indistinctly ]
‐The year is 2010 and Orbis has been in operation
for less than a year and got their first big job,
which was looking into suspicions of corruption
in the bidding process to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
‐Thank you for bidding.
‐I think everyone involved in the bidding
is serious competitors.
You know, it´s a competition like the president said.
‐Russia was not seen as a serious rival
to the England bid.
It was not considered to be prepared enough
to host a huge international tournament like the World Cup.
♫♫
‐Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup ahead of England
and the joint bids of Spain,
Portugal, and the Netherlands Belgium.
‐Steele says his intelligence documents
details of a conversation at the highest levels
of the Russian government about efforts to bribe FIFA officials.
‐I think it´s quite shocking when you understand
what´s really going on in an organization like FIFA.
It was very easy to corrupt FIFA.
The FBI is one of the few organizations in the world
which can actually act
upon extraterritorial intelligence.
In this case, bribes involving dollars
or whatever in third countries.
And that´s why we decided they were the people
we should take this to.
‐The FBI, in particular, was very interested.
And they launched an investigation
which led to certain prosecutions.
‐The 14 defendants charged in this indictment,
what they did have in common was greed, greed that drove them
to use and exploit their positions for cash.
‐It was a stunning case, and it was one that sparked
Chris Steele´s commercial work for the FBI.
‐How did your relationship with the FBI evolve
after the FIFA case?
After the FIFA case, we worked closely with them
on a number of their investigations,
things they tasked us on and paid us for
as you would a normal client.
‐When Chris Steele went into private business,
he really was looking to cater to all kinds
of different clients.
Anybody who really needed
guidance and expertise on business in Russia
or in the former Soviet Republics
and one of those potential clients
was the Trump Organization.
‐I promise you, this will be a truly great not only hotel,
but economic development project.
‐Did the Trump Organization try to hire you?
‐We were in preliminary sort of discussions
about potential business partners in emerging markets,
but it never came to the point where we had a contract.
‐Is Russia an emerging market or no?
‐Yeah, it´s probably one of the main emerging markets.
‐You had not met him, but you had meet Ivanka.
‐Back in 2007,
I met Ivanka Trump in London at a dinner.
I was sat next to her and we had a very good chat.
We had found some common ground.
She was interested in emerging markets
and we agreed to stay in touch.
And so we did.
‐You were friends. ‐Yeah, we were.
♫♫
‐So Christopher Steele is building his portfolio in Orbis,
focusing on Russia.
‐Three, two, one.
‐At the same time, you have Donald Trump,
who for decades has always wanted to build
a Trump Tower in Moscow.
‐Welcome to Moscow
this year´s home to the most gorgeous
and breathtaking competition in the universe.
‐For Trump, hosting the Miss Universe pageant
in Moscow wasn´t just about the pageant itself.
He almost sort of used it as a networking opportunity
to mix with Russian elites.
‐After Donald Trump landed in Moscow,
he had a room booked at the Ritz‐Carlton Hotel,
which is adjacent to Red Square.
‐Russian intelligence had totally saturated
the Ritz‐Carlton Hotel.
There was a permanent intelligence officer
based at the hotel
and it was his job to preside over a network of cameras
that were placed all over the guest bedrooms.
‐Donald Trump apparently very dearly wanted Vladimir Putin
to attend the Miss Universe competition.
He even went so far as to send out a tweet
a few months before the competition
that said, "Do you think Putin will be going to
"the Miss Universe pageant in November in Moscow?
If so, will he become my new best friend?"
‐Moscow right now in the world is
a very, very important place.
‐Trump wanted a Trump Tower in Moscow and Aras Agalarov
was one of the biggest developers in Moscow.
His son, Emin, wanted a Trump cameo for his new music video.
‐[ Singing in foreign language ]
‐He takes part in this video
with the son of this Russian oligarch
who is financing the competition.
He delivers his signature "You´re fired" line.
‐Emin, wake up. I´m really tired of you.
You´re fired.
♫♫
‐After the pageant, Donald Trump tweeted
about what a great time he´d had in Moscow
and in capital letters, "Trump Tower Moscow is next."
‐We don´t know everything that happened in those 36 hours
that Donald Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.
But the questions around what may have happened there
have become hugely consequential.
♫♫
‐Welcome to Super Tuesday, the biggest night of voting
in the most surprising presidential race
of our lifetime.
‐In 2016, the US presidential primaries are really ramping up.
‐The polls have now closed in every state
and the results showed Donald Trump
and Hillary Clinton in command of this race.
‐This has been an amazing evening.
We´re going to make America great again, folks.
We´re going to make it great again.
‐As it´s clear that Donald Trump
is becoming the frontrunner for the Republican nomination,
Christopher Steele gets a call from Fusion GPS.
‐Fusion GPS is a corporate investigations firm
created by two former reporter for "The Wall Street Journal."
One was Glenn Simpson.
‐in the spring of 2016, he approached you with a job.
What exactly did he ask you to look into?
‐Two things, really.
One was what the Russians were doing
in terms of potential interference in the campaign
and two, what the links were between
Trump and the Trump campaign and Russia.
♫♫
‐Steele´s someone who had already investigated
and found evidence of Russian involvement
in European elections.
‐So when someone comes to you and says Russia
might be interfering in the American elections
and wants your help, it´s not coming as a complete surprise.
‐Not at all, really.
Essentially, we´d seen this kind of almost this virus coming from
the east through Eastern Europe into Western Europe
and then landing on your shores, sadly, for yourselves.
‐And what did you know about Donald Trump
before you took on this project?
‐Not a huge amount.
Obviously, I knew his daughter,
but I didn´t really know much about him.
I knew he was a game show host or something of that sort.
‐You´re fired.
‐It´s "The Apprentice," isn´t it,
which is something we have in this country.
So I was aware of what that was.
‐During the Republican primary in 2016,
it was a Republican donor
who actually commissioned Fusion GPS
to look into Donald Trump´s business background.
But as the Donald Trump emerged as the front runner,
the Republican donor dropped his support for the effort,
and Fusion GPS offered their wares to the Democrats,
who were interested in what Fusion could learn.
‐We don´t need another diagnosis of the problem,
we need solutions, and that is what I am offering.
‐Glenn Simpson is hiring you.
Did you have any idea who was paying him?
‐He explained to begin with that it was a law firm
that was behind that project.
That´s very common in our business.
We didn´t know immediately which law firm it was.
We found that out after about a month.
‐You knew then within a month that the Clinton campaign
in some fashion was behind this.
‐We knew that supporters of Hillary Clinton were behind it.
‐This election is a make or break election
in so many ways.
‐But this is crossing a line for you.
This is the first time
that you´re looking into an American political candidate.
Was there any debate inside your firm?
‐There´s always a debate on every project that we take on.
We realized it was potentially quite a controversial project.
But frankly, George, when we went into it,
we weren´t expecting to find a great deal.
‐For someone like Christopher Steele,
he had to decide,
well, who are my clients going to be?
People who are corporate investigators have to, you know,
find their way through all kinds of ethical minefields.
If you talk about a gray area,
gray might be the brighter side of this industry.
♫♫
‐So you get this assignment. What do you do?
‐You essentially get your network of sources
to redirect themselves
onto asking contacts in Russia about this issue.
To ask them to look into
what was being said among the elite in Russia
and the government of the American election.
‐Was there one key source you had for this report?
‐There wasn´t one key source, I would say.
There was perhaps one key collector.
‐What´s a collector?
‐A collector is somebody who obviously works for us directly,
is paid for us directly,
doesn´t necessarily have direct access to information,
but knows people who do.
‐How about your coverage of Moscow politics and operations?
You haven´t been to Moscow since when?
‐For a long time.
‐Do you think that compromises your ability to do this work?
‐Absolutely not. ‐Why not?
‐Because the people that we need to go there, go there,
and they do the job that is required in a low‐key fashion.
‐You can´t name this person, but you met with this person
in a European city relatively early on?
‐Yep.
‐What did you learn in that meeting?
‐The contents of Report 080, I think it was,
which are well‐known to the world.
‐Report 80 or the first memo in the so‐called Steele dossier
was the most explosive.
There were claims that members of the Trump campaign
had coordinated with Russian officials
and accepted a steady stream of information on Hillary Clinton
and some of Trump´s other political rivals.
♫♫
‐The first report also claims
"Trump´s unorthodox behavior in Russia
"over the years had provided the authorities there
"with enough embarrassing material on him
to be able to blackmail him if they so wished."
‐In other words, that the FSB, the Russian security service,
had kompromat on Donald Trump.
♫♫
‐Basically, kompromat is blackmail in Russian,
and it´s something that is going to be used against you
at some point to politically destroy you
whatever the case may be.
♫♫
‐What did you learn about the kompromat in this meeting?
‐The kompromat that related to the hotel.
‐This was the ‐‐ I mean, for want of a better word,
this is the pee tape.
‐That´s part of it. Yes.
‐What did he tell you?
‐He relayed several sources information,
some sources information that related to that event.
‐In the Ritz‐Carlton Hotel. ‐Correct.
‐2013. ‐Yep.
♫♫
‐In the case of Donald Trump,
that kompromat supposedly was a tape made
in the Ritz‐Carlton in Moscow
showing prostitutes hired by Donald Trump
urinating on a bed
where President Obama and his wife once slept.
It would be quite a tape if it in fact existed.
‐When you heard this information,
what was your reaction?
‐I was surprised and shocked.
But having said that, some of the things
that we were being told were clearly aspects
of well‐known Russian M. O., modus operandi.
‐Sex tapes were standard operating procedure.
‐Correct.
‐I remember him saying, what do you make of this?
And I read through it and I thought,
"Gosh, that is actually quite ‐‐ quite serious."
‐Did you believe it?
‐We had no reason to disbelieve it.
We had no reason strongly to believe it.
We had to then try and evaluate it,
validate it or whatever.
And in an instance like that,
there was a limited range of things
you could do, which we did.
We checked dates, where people´s movements ‐‐
‐And he was there? ‐Yes.
‐Bearing in mind, this was raw intelligence in the sense
that what we sent over was the initial findings.
‐With raw intelligence, you´re thinking of it as,
hey, I´ve heard of this thing,
we might want to look into it more.
‐If this is true in the moment,
I mean, this is the stuff of movies.
‐I think a lot of this is the stuff of movies.
But in Russia, actually, it´s not in Russia,
it´s actually fairly standard fare.
‐If I´m hearing you correctly,
you´re saying that you first found it credible,
not so much of Donald Trump, but because of Vladimir Putin.
‐Yes.
‐Did it immediately change your view in any way of Donald Trump?
‐It meant that for the first time,
there was a potentially serious situation of kompromat
against the presidential candidate.
‐We found your first memo, June 20th, 2016.
‐Yep.
‐We had a debate, obviously, about the golden showers thing.
I said, don´t put that in.
It sort of detracts from the key message here
that the Russians have actually been monitoring
and cultivating Trump for years.
‐Chris Burrows thought it was a mistake to put it in.
‐It wasn´t just Chris.
I think my wife also thought it shouldn´t be in there.
‐By then, Chris had remarried now to his wife, Katherine,
who he had known before in his previous government work.
‐My view has always been that
we have to stay true to the intelligence.
I´ve seen situations in the past
where things have been smoothed off from the edges,
where things that might seem a bit outlandish
have been left out and so on and so forth.
And to me, that´s wrong.
‐Golden rule for golden showers,
you just don´t talk about sex in reports.
This is a serious business.
We are there to objectively report things.
I said, take out the pee pee tape.
Please take out the pee pee type.
‐How do you respond to that?
‐I would quite like not to have to talk about sex in reports.
But when you have an organization like the FSB,
you cannot ignore that as a factor in these situations.
If you have confidence in
the track record of your sources,
you have to reflect accurately what they tell you.
‐We suddenly found ourselves with a hot potato.
We didn´t know quite what all of this meant.
‐We immediately decided that we had to report it into the FBI.
‐Immediately? ‐Within a week.
‐Because of the implications?
‐Absolutely. So as you know, Britain and America
just from a U. K. stance,
have a very close relationship and any threat to the integrity
of the U. S. political system and leadership
is a serious threat to the U. K.
♫♫
‐In early July 2016,
Steele calls his contact at the FBI and sets up a meeting.
‐I said that Fusion GPS was the client
and behind Fusion GPS,
there was a law firm that was connected with
trying to get Hillary Clinton elected president.
‐You definitely mentioned Hillary Clinton?
‐Yes.
‐All this was happening at a time
when Russia had really emerged
as a giant question mark during the campaign.
A few weeks earlier, news had broken
that Russian hackers had infiltrated DNC networks.
‐Just in to CNN,
Russian hackers managed to infiltrate the computer network
at the Democratic National Committee.
‐At the same time, you have all this controversy
about Hillary Clinton´s
e‐mails possibly being stored on a private server,
all of which is of keen interest to Donald Trump.
‐Because we are going to make
our country great again.
‐So there´s no question that the Russians were trying
to interfere in the 2016 campaign.
There is no question that Donald Trump
welcomed that interference.
‐People were whispering about Donald Trump
and his affinity for Vladimir Putin.
Then he comes right out and asks Russia to help him.
‐Russia, if you´re listening,
I hope you´re able to find the 30,000 e‐mails
that are missing.
If Russia or China or any other country has those e‐mails,
I mean, to be honest with you, I´d love to see them.
‐When you saw that press conference where
Donald Trump asked the Russians to find Clinton´s e‐mails.
‐I almost fell off my seat.
I mean, it was unprecedented, wasn´t it?
From what I know to ask a foreign power
to commit a crime, to help a candidate
or whatever perceived to progress?
‐Yeah, that was supposed to be a joke, right?
‐Said he was joking.
‐He always says he´s joking whenever he says
something outrageous.
Didn´t sound as though he was joking to me.
‐Did the Russians hear it as a joke?
‐I think five hours later or something,
there was evidence that they started attacking
Hillary Clinton´s communication.
Doesn´t sound like a joke to my mind.
‐So you believe Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians?
‐I think the evidence suggests that, yes.
‐So over a series of months,
Chris Steele would file more than a dozen of these memos.
‐You´re continuing through the summer to write these memos,
and they´re now known as the Steele dossier.
‐Correct. ‐You don´t like that term.
‐I don´t, because it wasn´t the dossier.
‐Why not?
‐Because it´s a series of reports on a live issue,
the election campaign, running through time.
These reports were not collated and presented in one offering,
nor were they analyzed in detail by us.
Effectively, it was a running commentary.
It wasn´t a dossier.
‐I hope that we get along great with Putin because
it would be great to have Russia with a good relationship.
Right now, we don´t have a good relationship.
‐Essentially, there were four basic themes
that run through it.
One was there was a large scale Russian interference campaign
in the American election in 2016.
The second was that this had been authorized and ordered
at the highest levels, including Putin.
The third had been that the objective of this
was to damage Hillary Clinton
and to try and get this rather unorthodox candidate,
Donald Trump elected.
And the fourth was there was evidence of collusion
between people around Trump and the Russians.
These 17 memos or reports list a number of occurrences
and alleged links between members of
the Trump campaign and Moscow,
including allegations of evidence of extensive conspiracy
between Trump´s campaign team and the Kremlin
and evidence that the Kremlin was behind the recent appearance
of DNC e‐mails on WikiLeaks.
‐Separate in part from Christopher Steele,
the FBI already launched an investigation
looking into Russia´s attempts to influence the 2016 election
and whether there were any people associated with
the Trump campaign who supported it.
‐It was what became known as a Crossfire hurricane team.
The notion that the Steele dossier prompted the FBI
to launch their investigation.
The facts would suggest otherwise.
‐One of the things that Chris Steele
wanted at this point,
he wanted the U. S. government to take him seriously.
‐As we´re getting closer to the election,
are you getting frustrated with the FBI?
‐A little bit, because it turns out that our reporting
had been sitting in the cupboard in New York for six weeks.
My impression is from everything I´ve read subsequently
that the reporting that we had started feeding to the FBI
in early July 2016 did not reach
the Crossfire hurricane team until late‐ish September.
‐And you still don´t know why. ‐No. Oh, dear.
It´s probably ‐‐ I´m not a conspiracy theorist.
I think it was probably just...
‐Well, a lot of people believe you are a conspiracy theorist,
‐But I´m not a conspiracy theorist.
And so, I imagine it was through
some kind of misunderstanding or incompetence.
‐You fly to D. C. because you´ve decided
to have off the record meetings with journalist
at the Tabard Inn. ‐Mm‐hmm.
Fusion wanted an off the record briefing for journalists
to stimulate them into looking into the issues.
‐It was in the fall of 2016.
The campaign was really going full speed.
I get a call from Glenn Simpson about one of the key sources
gathering material for his research
about Donald Trump and Russia.
And he asked if I would come over and meet with him.
I was asked not to bring my cellphone.
Was all very cloak and dagger.
I remember walking up the stairs wondering who is this guy
that I´m going to be meeting?
We sat down at a conference table.
I sat across from Chris Steele.
He was explicit about what he thought the Russians
knew about Donald Trump
and about the possible existence of a compromising videotape.
It was being shopped all over the place,
and everyone to whom the dossier was shared,
sent reporters out,
tried to confirm the basic allegations within it.
And it never got any traction
because no one could nail anything in it down.
♫♫
‐Then in October 2016, three months after you
initially alerted the FBI, a team of agents fly to Rome
to meet with you about these allegations.
‐Yes. Correct.
‐You got an election that´s coming down to the wire
and the FBI is on a plane flying to Rome
to see if there´s information about a plot
to undermine the U. S. election.
‐Weeks away from a presidential election, were they concerned?
‐Absolutely. They were very concerned.
‐About?
‐About the whole issue of interference
and about whether people in the campaign ‐‐
Trump campaign had been colluding with Russia.
‐Is it fair to say that by October 16th,
you believe that if Donald Trump is elected president,
it would compromise American and Western national security?
‐It could, yes, if the reporting was accurate
and there was a risk that it obviously
was because it was credible reporting.
‐A new possible investigation by the FBI.
‐The FBI director sending this to Congress
that the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton,
the former secretary of state, is back on.
‐On October 28, 2016, talk about October surprise.
Suddenly, there´s this blockbuster days
before the election
that the FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton.
‐You thought there was a double standard at work?
‐There was. ‐You still believe that?
‐Yes.
‐The Department of Justice has a longstanding policy
not to confirm or deny the existence
of an ongoing investigation.
That becomes very important in the run up to an election.
The role of prosecutors, investigators
is not to influence the outcome of an election.
‐At the end of October, you took an even more
direct approach with the press.
You reached out to "Mother Jones."
‐What happened was I gave a fairly limited briefing,
which ended up being sort of half
on the record, half off the record.
‐A new report from "Mother Jones"
claims a Russian operation has been working for years
to cultivate and assist Donald Trump.
‐He didn´t name me, but he made some direct references
that might have allowed me to be identified.
I´d say it was a very unsatisfactory
outcome and situation, I think.
‐Chris asked to see me in person.
So he´d said,
I´m a bit concerned about my exposure here.
And I said, yeah, I think you´ve started a train down a track
and it´s going to be very difficult to stop it.
‐Now, the story says that a former
senior intelligence officer
claims he gave the FBI evidence that quote,
"There was an established exchange of information
"between the Trump campaign
and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."
‐"Mother Jones" is the first one to report the existence
of the dossier.
‐After Steele goes to "Mother Jones,"
the FBI now determines he´s untrustworthy and unreliable
as a source, and they sever their ties with him.
‐Was it a mistake to speak with "Mother Jones"?
‐I regret having done so.
Ultimately, that led to a whole series of events
that bring me to this chair today, George.
♫♫
‐We are waiting to hear from Donald Trump.
He is supposed to come down and address his supporters.
November 8, 2016, Donald Trump is elected.
‐Thank you. ‐Where were you?
‐I was in my house hiding under the duvet somewhere.
‐After Donald Trump became president elect,
the interest in this only grew.
And by that stage,
there had been reports about "a veteran spy,"
who was standing behind allegations about collusion.
♫♫
‐We were in our kitchen and it suddenly came on CNN
that they got this great scoop.
‐Classified documents on Russian interference
in the 2016 US election
presented last week to President Obama
and President elect Trump.
‐It sounded very familiar.
‐It came from a former British MI6 intelligence agent.
‐So what happens in a moment like that?
‐Have to start thinking very quickly
what the implications of that are and whether my identity
might be exposed in the next short period?
‐Later that same day,
"BuzzFeed" publishes the dossier.
‐I think Katherine was lying in bed at the time,
and I had a very loud shout to go upstairs,
and there it was, suddenly all appearing on her laptop.
‐"BuzzFeed" publishes the dossier,
but not your name. ‐Mm‐hmm.
We realized that we probably would have to go into hiding
for a period.
‐Must have felt like a ticking time bomb.
‐It had felt like a ticking time bomb
since we did the first memo.
‐35‐page report that was released online by "BuzzFeed."
‐I went, like most reporters,
"Holy cow, this is like, you know, manna from heaven."
‐Donald Trump was briefed about unconfirmed claims
he was targeted
in a Russian effort to personally compromise him.
‐It wasn´t just a punch in the gut for Washington.
It was a full body blow.
What just happened?
‐It was a story of epic proportions.
‐New questions about alleged contact between him,
his campaign, and the Russian government.
‐For the first time, the public was going to hear
that the Russians
might have compromising material salacious material on a man
who had just been elected president of the United States.
‐USA! USA! USA!
‐This was 10 days
before Donald Trump would be inaugurated
as president of the United States.
Everyone was asking the question,
are these claims true?
‐I immediately knew that the person
that they were referring to was Christopher.
And I immediately came to the conclusion
that his name would come out very quickly.
‐He needed a refuge, so he came to stay with us.
♫♫
‐How long did you stay here?
‐Probably for about two months.
And I tended to be here during the week
because I had business conduct in London.
It´s quite an amazing place, really.
‐This pretty great flat, yeah. Not a bad hideout.
‐No. A bit of a gilded cage,
I think we called it at the time,
but it was essential to have somewhere in London
which was secure and safe at a time when the tabloids
and others were searching for me and trying to run me down.
‐How about when you first heard on the BBC? Were you here?
‐Yes, I was in the kitchen down the way there.
‐So much depends on the credibility
of the author of this dossier.
He has now been named as Christopher Steele.
‐And it was like a steep intake of breath
when suddenly the first item on the main evening news here
was me and my name being announced.
‐The name of the man was Christopher Steele.
‐His name is Christopher Steele
‐[ Speaking foreign language ] ...is Christopher Steele.
‐Myself and my siblings,
we didn´t quite understand the magnitude at the time.
My mum basically bundled us into the car and was like,
we need to get out of here.
‐So what was life in hiding like?
‐It relied on huge support
from people who were prepared to take the risk
to have me in their house, and in their home.
♫♫
‐Paparazzi are one thing,
at one point you´re on Vladimir Putin´s hit list.
‐Mm‐hmm.
It depends what you mean by hit list.
I was certainly being targeted by the Russians.
The threat is potentially out there.
‐What kind of precautions can you take?
‐You have to have a very secure home.
You have to be very aware of your surroundings.
You have to adopt certain protocols about your vehicles
and things like that, which are important.
♫♫
‐We arrange for him to arrive at a particular location
at a particular time.
The buzzer rang walking up through the stairs
was an individual
who was wearing an incredibly scruffy overcoat
and sporting a the sort of salt and pepper beard.
And it was only when he opened his mouth and talk to me
that I could be absolutely certain
that it was indeed Chris.
And I suppose it was only then
that it really hit me how dangerous the situation was.
‐You may be in danger. Your family may be in danger.
What about your sources?
‐That was actually the most significant concern of all
and always has been.
Yes, absolutely. They would be identified and punished.
‐Killed? ‐Possibly.
‐Did anything happen in any of your sources?
‐Yes, but I can´t really go there, I´m afraid.
‐Is that source still living? ‐Yes.
‐Are you still a target of Vladimir Putin?
‐I´m a target for him trying to discredit us.
I´m not claiming I´m a target
for assassination or anything like that.
♫♫
‐Trump was clearly very incensed
by the dossier of his alleged links with Russia.
‐It´s all fake news. It´s phony stuff.
It didn´t happen.
‐At his first press conference in months,
the question of the dossier
and the allegations was front and center.
‐Mr. President elect, this is ABC News.
‐It was a group of opponents
who got together, sick people, and they put that crap together.
If Putin likes Donald Trump,
I consider that an asset, not a liability.
‐He actually even addressed the most salacious claims.
‐I was in Russia years ago with the Miss Universe contest.
It´s an amazing location
and Moscow and all of Russia is going wild over it.
And I told many people, be careful
because you don´t want to see yourself on television.
Cameras all over the place.
Does anyone really believe that story?
I´m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way.
‐Late night comedians went nuts over this. They had a field day.
‐I´m not going to validate that report
by sharing the most salacious details from it.
You might call it the, uh, the number one detail.
‐The scandal that is now known as Golden Gate online
was a major topic at the press conference.
‐I am not talking about the pee pee
because it didn´t happen
and it wasn´t as cool as it sounds.
Next question.
‐What happened 10 days before Donald Trump was inaugurated
would set the stage for his entire presidency.
♫♫
‐I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute
the Office of President of the United States.
‐As Donald Trump took office,
Crossfire hurricane, the FBI investigation,
which was separate from the Steele dossier,
was still largely in its infancy,
with the FBI Director James Comey overseeing it.
‐The FBI is investigating the nature of any links
between individuals associated with the Trump campaign
and the Russian government.
‐Fast forward several months.
The president then fires Jim Comey.
Many people saw this as an attempt to quash
the Crossfire hurricane investigation.
‐We´re coming on the air now
with major news from the Department of Justice.
‐Back against the wall. Move aside, move aside.
‐The acting attorney general, Rod Rosenstein,
has decided to appoint a special counsel to investigate
Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The special counsel will be Robert Mueller.
‐The FBI´s work is taken over by the special counsel.
‐Slide to the side.
‐And two years later, you have the Mueller report.
‐There were over 500 witnesses interviewed.
There were 37 indictments.
‐There were many people in the media
who thought Robert Mueller is going to lay out
this extraordinary story of collusion.
And central to it are going to be many of the things
that Christopher Steele mentioned in his memos.
♫♫
Christopher Steele and his work were conspicuous
in their absence from the Mueller report.
‐With regard to the Steele
that´s beyond my purview.
‐Mueller found unambiguous evidence
that Russians were having repeated contacts
with associates of President Trump.
But Bob Mueller did not find was that there was a quid pro quo.
‐Robert Mueller said, could not establish firm evidence
of a criminal conspiracy.
‐Sure. But Robert Mueller was working
to beyond reasonable doubt
level of evidence in criminal cases and prosecutions
and in much intelligence work,
you never get to the point
where you´re 99% certain of the evidence
and can secure a conviction.
‐So on the whole, in your view, does the Mueller report
reinforce the dossier or refute it?
‐Overall, I think it reinforces it.
‐How so?
‐Because there was a whole scale campaign
that it was organized by the leadership in Russia,
that its aim was to get Donald Trump elected.
And there was a lot of evidence of contacts between
the Trump campaign and Russians, which they didn´t report in
and didn´t admit to, in fact, lied about.
♫♫
‐You look at the fake dossier. A phony dossier.
That fraud of the ‐‐ the fake dossier.
‐You also become a target of
the president of the United States
calls you a failed spy, a lowlife, disgraced, and dopey.
‐Well, I have been accused of all sorts of things in my life,
but dopey isn´t actually one of them.
I think there´s an element of theater
and element of unreality about all that.
It´s a bit of an out‐of‐body experience to begin with,
but after a while, like anything else in life,
you get used to it.
‐He did call for you to be extradited back to the U. S.
‐Yeah, these things have to be taken, I think,
with a pinch of salt.
‐You weren´t worried about being extradited?
‐No, why would I be? I did nothing wrong.
♫♫
‐Along with the investigation that was done by Robert Mueller,
a separate report was undertaken by Michael Horowitz,
the inspector general of the Justice Department.
He is looking at two simple questions.
Was the FBI correct?
Do they have a reasonable basis to start an investigation prior
to the election of the Trump campaign?
That was number one and number two,
did they go about that investigation properly?
‐Breaking news on that inspector general´s report
into the origins of the FBI investigation
that finds the FBI was justified
in opening up the Russian investigation.
But there were serious issues with the wiretap of Carter Page,
who is, of course, a Trump campaign associate.
‐Carter Page was mentioned in this dossier.
‐Several of Steele´s reports refer to secret meetings
that page allegedly
held with Russian officials in Moscow.
‐There´s no doubt that the FBI used information
from the dossier to get a surveillance warrant,
a highly intrusive surveillance warrant against Carter Page.
In the view of the inspector general,
the FBI had misused the dossier because information the FBI
had already obtained did not support Steele´s allegations
that Page was coordinating with the Russians
on the 2016 election.
‐No, I´ve ‐‐ I´ve never been an agent
of a foreign power
by any stretch of the imagination.
‐Probably the action that was most directly tied
to the dossier
is the FISA investigation of Carter Page.
‐Yeah. ‐Any regrets about that?
‐It had nothing to do with us.
We were not told of any use of our material in such a process.
And therefore, if there were problems with that process,
they weren´t our problems.
They were the problems of the people conducting them.
‐The inspector general´s report with respect
to the Steele dossier, was devastating.
In many ways it eviscerated it.
‐They concluded, speaking of your work,
certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent
with information gathered by the Crossfire hurricane team
and it eliminated information
that was corroborated related to time,
location, and title information,
much of which was publicly available.
‐Mm‐hmm.
‐You accept that conclusion?
‐I think they are putting too much store, frankly,
into what FBI knew about it early on in the campaign.
I think the FBI is generally effective organization.
I´m not sure the extent to which FBI has got good coverage
of Moscow and Moscow politics and Moscow operations.
♫♫
‐One big claim in the dossier,
the FBI, according to the inspector general´s report,
and while it reinforces it is not true,
is the claim that Michael Cohen
had a meeting with Russians in Prague.
Do you accept that finding that it didn´t happen?
‐No, I don´t.
‐Michael Cohen was Trump´s
personal lawyer and self‐described fixer.
The Steele dossier had alleged Cohen
met secretly with Kremlin officials in Prague.
[ Sirens wailing ]
Those were allegations the FBI later said were not true,
according to the inspector general report.
‐I´ve never been to Prague. ‐Never have?
‐I´ve never been to the Czech Republic.
‐Michael Cohen has completely turned
on Donald Trump, he´s accused him of all kinds of things.
He´s going to jail.
It defies logic that if he did this,
he wouldn´t say so now.
‐I don´t agree with that. ‐Why?
‐It´s very self‐incriminating to a very great degree.
‐What would you be incriminating himself in?
‐Treason, presumably.
‐Since he´s going to prison,
since he´s turned on President Trump,
he´s told every single story.
Why wouldn´t he admit to this?
‐Because I think it´s so incriminating and demeaning.
And the other reason is he might be scared of the consequences.
‐Do you think it hurts your credibility at all that
you won´t accept the findings of the FBI
in this particular case?
‐I´m prepared to accept that not everything in the dossier
is 100% accurate.
I have yet to be convinced that that is one of them.
‐Christopher Steele is free to believe whatever he wants.
But if Christopher Steele
wants other people to believe that he´s believable,
he needs to show us
what evidence he has
to support his belief.
‐The inspector general also pulled back the curtain
on how Steele had gathered his information.
It doesn´t name Steele´s collector,
but the report does describe some of his methods,
and we´d later learn
he was not someone well‐placed in the Kremlin,
but an analyst in Washington.
‐When the FBI sought this person out and interviewed him,
he said, yeah.
He basically gathered some of this information,
but it was almost ambivalent about how accurate it was.
‐Some of this information, including that allegation
about the salacious tape, had apparently been gathered
from people who had just heard about it
or talked about it in jest.
To Chris Steele´s critics,
especially Republicans in the Senate,
he really took a beating for this.
‐Let me tell you about Christopher Steele.
He was on a mission to get Donald Trump.
If you read this document,
the first thing you would think of
is they got something on Donald Trump.
It is stunning. It is damning.
It is salacious, and it´s a bunch of crap.
‐One of your main collectors who spoke to the inspector general
said that especially the kompromat was word of mouth
and hearsay conversations with friends over beers.
It was just talk.
‐If you have a confidential source
and that confidential source is blown, all is uncovered,
that confidential source will often take fright
and try and downplay and underestimate
what they´ve said and done.
And I think that´s probably what happened here.
‐He´s afraid?
‐I think anybody that´s named in this contact,
particularly if they´re Russian, has every reason to be afraid.
♫♫
‐Now, looking back on it, there are people who will say,
Christopher Steele´s dossier has been debunked.
And there are other people who will say
it´s mostly held up.
Maybe it´s somewhere in between.
♫♫
‐So you stand by the dossier.
‐I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had,
and the professionalism which we apply to.
‐I think, you know, some people will always deem it to be
an important piece of work, and some people
will will describe it as a garbage document.
‐All the talk about this alleged tape,
I bet you´ve heard about it,
virtually no evidence came forward
in public to corroborate it.
‐It would be quite the tape if it became public.
But it´s now five years later,
and we haven´t seen a trace of it.
‐President Putin in Russia put out a statement today
that this fake news was indeed fake news.
Now somebody would say, "Oh, of course, he´s going to say that."
I respected the fact that he said that,
and I´ll be honest, I think if he did have something,
they would have released it.
They would have been glad to release it.
‐And today, do you still believe that that tape exists?
‐I think it probably does,
but I wouldn´t put a 100% certainty on it.
‐So how do you explain if that tape does indeed exist
and hasn´t been released?
‐Well, it hasn´t needed to be released.
‐Why not?
‐Because I think the Russians felt they´d got
pretty good value out of Donald Trump
when he was president of the U. S.
‐Anything you believe you got just wrong?
‐The interview I gave to "Mother Jones."
‐That was a mistake? ‐I think so, yeah.
‐But not the pee tape,
not Michael Cohen in Prague, not Carter Page.
‐None of those things, to my mind, have been disproven.
They may not have been proven.
And we may be well hear more about
those things as we go forward.
I don´t think this book is finished by a long shot.
‐There were serious people who were suggesting that perhaps
some of the information in Chris Steele´s dossier
was fed to him intentionally.
‐Do you think there´s a chance
that the Russians played you, fed you disinformation?
‐I think there is a chance.
I think it´s very unlikely, and I´ll tell you why.
‐Ultimately, any disinformation operation has an objective,
and it would have been disinformation
about Hillary Clinton.
Why would they run a disinformation campaign
that was derogatory about the person
they preferred to be elected?
‐2024, we´re gonna have a big, big beautiful victory.
‐He´s making moves, perhaps, Trump is,
to run again in 2024.
Do you think if he runs again,
he´s a threat to United States national security,
to the national security, the United Kingdom?
‐Yes, potentially.
‐A new twist in the Russia investigation.
Attorney General William Barr is now asking
for a new investigation of the investigation.
‐He´s now tapped John Durham, a U. S. attorney in Connecticut,
to lead this probe
into the origins of the Russia investigation.
‐John Durham´s inquiry will focus on whether
the government´s intelligence collection methods
were, quote, "lawful and appropriate."
‐There´s at least one more investigation left.
John Durham´s investigation.
His report is expected in coming weeks.
Are you worried about it?
‐I´m interested to see what he publishes
and what he says about us and others.
‐Worried you´ll be indicted? ‐No.
‐In order to be guilty of a crime,
you have to have sort of malice of forethought.
And I really don´t see how Durham is ever
going to be able to prove that.
‐What´s the fairest criticism of you?
‐I think the fairest criticism of us
is that we try to ride the two horses.
‐What does that mean?
‐We had a relationship with our clients ‐‐
Glenn Simpson and Fusion.
And we were also trying to maintain a relationship
with the FBI on the same issue
and that we should have probably seen
was going to lead eventually to some kind of conflict.
‐You´ve become world famous, infamous.
What´s the biggest misconception about you?
‐I think the biggest misconception about me is that
I´m some kind of political partisan whereas, in fact,
the exact opposite is true.
I was trying to help the U. S. from a nonpartisan position.
‐The biggest misconception about Steele,
we´re still trying to understand how significant a player he was.
All we know is that his name
will be etched in the history books
as having a role in one of the biggest counterintelligence
investigations the country´s ever seen.
‐He changed the way Americans saw Donald Trump.
Whether you liked him or didn´t. It changed history.
‐I think for better or worse, Christopher Steele
is going to be remembered as the spy
who stepped out of the shadows.
‐And how do you want history to remember Christopher Steele?
‐Somebody that saw something that was very worrying
and in good faith, went to an ally and reported it
in hoping to protect that country from an adversary.
‐Is that what you think will happen?
‐I think it will be, yes. I hope so.
I think our work highlighted the threat
that authoritarian regimes pose to democracy,
and it still is a great threat to democracy
and to our way of life.
♫♫