Just as the commentariat began to shudder at the implications of this
bombshell, Buzzfeed released the actual dossier, 35 pages crammed with
allegations of grave wrongdoing, including espionage by Trump surrogates
against fellow Americans. This was a rather standard example of raw
human intelligence reporting, a mishmash of claims, some of them
obviously untrue. But the essence of its case—that Trump has been
playing footsie with Vladimir Putin for years and knowingly accepted his
secret help to win the White House—may well turn out to be true.
The media, unaccustomed to seeing raw HUMINT reports, acted aghast
at the salacious nature of some of the claims in the dossier: Trumpian
sex romps caught on camera by Russian spies, our new commander-in-chief
paying prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed where President Obama had
slept. Whether those particular claims are true or not—and they ought to
be looked at with immense skepticism and even the PEOTUS himself said
today that his infamy as a germophobe, which way
predates these accusations,
ought to raise concerns about some of these tales—there’s no doubt that
Putin’s Federal Security Service, the all-seeing FSB, keeps close tabs
on foreign VIP’s when they’re on their turf. If Trump was unwise enough
to engage in randy behavior in Russia, the FSB unquestionably has it on
video. ***
In truth, the provenance of the 35-page dossier is well known in proper channels.
Some of its assertions have beenmade by
other NATO intelligence agencies,
privately. Some of its claims are false, some are true, and some may
linger between truth and fiction indefinitely. What’s important here is
that the IC leadership decided to brief a small circle of the most
senior American officials on that dossier’s findings. They don’t do
that, ever—treating raw private intelligence reports by foreigners as
worthy of briefing to “the top”—unless they can corroborate significant
portions of it.
http://observer.com/2017/01/donald-t...michael-cohen/