Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
What Did Hillary Clinton Know?
October 25, 2017
Exclusive: With the disclosure that Hillary Clinton's campaign helped pay
for the original Russia-gate allegations against Donald Trump, a new
question arises: what did Clinton know and when did she know it, reports
Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The revelation that Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National
Committee helped pay for the notorious "Steele Dossier" of hearsay claims
about Donald Trump's relations with Russia is not surprising but is
noteworthy given how long the mystery about the funding was allowed to
linger.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Another mild surprise is that the Clinton campaign would have had a direct
hand in the financing rather than maintaining an arm's length relationship
to the dossier by having some "friend of the campaign" make the payments and
giving Clinton more deniability.
Instead, the campaign appears to have relied on its lawyer, Marc E. Elias of
Perkins Coie, and a confidentiality agreement to provide some insulation
between Clinton and the dossier's startling claims which presumably helped
inform Clinton's charge in the final presidential debate that Trump was
Russian President Vladimir Putin's "puppet." Indeed, how much Clinton
personally knew about the dossier and its financing remains an intriguing
question for investigators.
Ultimately, the facts about who commissioned the dossier were forced out by
a congressional Republican subpoena seeking the bank records of Fusion GPS,
the opposition research firm that hired former British intelligence
operative Christopher Steele to compile the opposition research, known as
"oppo," against Trump.
As part of the legal wrangling over that subpoena, the Clinton/DNC law firm,
Perkins Coie, wrote a letter releasing Fusion GPS from its confidentiality
agreement.
After that letter, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday night that the
Clinton campaign and the DNC had helped fund the Steele effort with attorney
Elias retaining Fusion GPS in April 2016 and with Fusion GPS then hiring
Steele.
The Post reported that "people familiar with the matter" disclosed that
outline of the arrangement but still would not divulge how much the Clinton
campaign and the DNC paid to Fusion GPS. One source told me that the total
amount came to about $1 million.
'Trash for Cash'
An irony about Hillary Clinton's role in funding allegations about Trump's
connection to the Russians, including claims that he cavorted with
prostitutes in a five-star Moscow hotel while Russian intelligence
operatives secretly filmed him, is that the Clinton camp bristled when Bill
Clinton was the subject of Republican "oppo" that surfaced salacious charges
against him. The Clintons dismissed such accusations as "cash for trash."
President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea
parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1997. (White
House photo)
Nevertheless, just as conspiratorial accusations about the Clintons gave
rise to the Whitewater investigation and a rash of other alleged "scandals,"
which bedeviled Bill Clinton's presidency, the Steele Dossier - also known
as the "Dirty Dossier" - provided a map that investigators have followed for
the ongoing Russia-gate investigation into President Trump.
Much like those Clinton allegations, Steele's accusations have had a dubious
track record for accuracy, with U.S. government investigators unable to
corroborate some key claims but, I'm told, believing that some are true
nonetheless.
In the 1990s, even though the core allegations of wrongdoing about the
Clintons and their Whitewater land deal collapsed, the drawn-out
investigation eventually unearthed Bill Clinton's sexual relationship with
White House intern Monica Lewinsky and led to his impeachment in the House
although he was acquitted in a Senate trial.
Some Democrats have openly hoped for the impeachment of President Trump,
too, and they have hitched many of those hopes to the Russia-gate bandwagon.
There is also no doubt about the significance of the Steele Dossier in
spurring the Russia-gate scandal forward.
When Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House
Intelligence Committee, offered what amounted to a prosecutor's opening
statement in March, his seamless 15-minute narrative of the Trump campaign's
alleged collaboration with Russia followed the trail blazed by Steele, who
had worked for Britain's MI-6 in Russia and tapped into ex-colleagues and
unnamed sources inside Russia, including supposedly leadership figures in
the Kremlin.
Steele's Methods
Since Steele could not reenter Russia himself, he based his reports on
multiple hearsay from these anonymous Russians who claim to have heard some
information from their government contacts before passing it on to Steele's
associates who then gave it to Steele who compiled this mix of rumors and
alleged inside dope into "raw" intelligence reports.
The luxury Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow
Besides the anonymous sourcing and the sources' financial incentives to dig
up dirt, Steele's reports had other problems, including the inability of FBI
investigators to confirm key elements, such as the claim that several years
ago Russian intelligence operatives secretly videotaped Trump having
prostitutes urinate on him while he lay in the same bed at Moscow's
Ritz-Carlton used by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
That tantalizing tidbit was included in Steele's opening report to his new
clients, dated June 20, 2016. Apparently, it proved irresistible in whetting
the appetite of Clinton insiders. Also in that first report were the basic
outlines of Russia-gate.
But Steele's June report also reflected the telephone-tag aspects of these
allegations: "Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B,
a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian
intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, the
Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican
presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for a least 5 years.
"Source B asserted that the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed
by Russian President Vladimir PUTIN. Its aim was to sow discord and disunity
both within the US itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic
alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia's interests. . In terms of
specifics, Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding TRUMP and his
team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, for several years. .
"The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering
him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia,
especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament.
However, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these."
Besides the anonymous and hearsay quality of the allegations, there are
obvious logical problems, especially the point that five years before the
2016 campaign, virtually no one would have thought that Trump had any chance
of becoming President of the United States.
There also may have been a more mundane reason why Trump's hotel deal fell
through. A source familiar with those negotiations told me that Trump had
hoped to get a half interest in the $2 billion project but that
Russian-Israeli investor Mikhail Fridman, a founder of Russia's Alfa Bank,
balked because Trump was unwilling to commit a significant investment beyond
the branding value of the Trump name.
Yet, one would assume that if the supposedly all-powerful Putin wanted to
give a $1 billion or so payoff to his golden boy, Donald Trump, whom Putin
anticipated would become President in five years, the deal would have
happened, but it didn't.
Despite the dubious quality of Steele's second- and third-hand information,
the June 2016 report appears to have impressed Team Clinton. And once the
bait was taken, Steele continued to produce his conspiracy-laden reports,
totaling at least 17 through Dec. 13, 2016.
Framing the Investigation
The reports not only captivated the Clinton political operatives but
influenced the assessments of President Obama's appointees in the U.S.
intelligence community regarding alleged Russian "meddling" in the
presidential election.
President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from
Whitehouse.gov)
Still, a careful analysis of Steele's reports would have discovered not only
apparent factual inaccuracies, such as putting Trump lawyer Michael Cohen at
a meeting with a Russian official in Prague (when Cohen says he's never been
to Prague), but also the sort of broad conspiracy-mongering that the
mainstream U.S. news media usually loves to ridicule.
For instance, Steele's reports pin a range of U.S. political attitudes on
Russian manipulation rather than the notion that Americans can reach
reasonable conclusions on their own. In one report dated Sept. 14, 2016,
Steele claimed that an unnamed senior official in Putin's Presidential
Administration (or PA) explained how Putin used the alleged Russian
influence operation to generate opposition to Obama's Pacific trade deals.
Steele wrote that Putin's intention was "pushing candidate CLINTON away from
President OBAMA's policies. The best example of this was that both
candidates [Clinton and Trump] now openly opposed the draft trade
agreements, TPP and TTIP, which were assessed by Moscow as detrimental to
Russian interests."
In other words, the Russians supposedly intervened in the U.S. presidential
campaign to turn the leading candidates against Obama's trade deals. But how
credible is that? Are we to believe that American politicians - running the
gamut from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren through former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Donald Trump - have all been
tricked by the Kremlin to oppose those controversial trade deals, which are
also broadly unpopular with the American people who are sick and tired of
trade agreements that cost them jobs?
Of course, the disclosure that the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped pay
for Steele's opposition research doesn't necessarily discredit the
information, but it does suggest a possible financial incentive for Steele
and his collaborators to sex-up the reports to keep Clinton's camp coming
back for more.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
