Talk:Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections

Annex A and the Steele dossier

I will be quoting from our Steele dossier article. We know that

On January 6, 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released the intelligence community assessment (ICA) of the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It stated that Russian leadership favored Trump over Clinton, and that Putin personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process", as well as ordering cyber attacks on the Democratic and Republican parties. John Brennan and James Clapper testified to Congress that Steele's dossier played no role in the intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, testimony which was reaffirmed by an April 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report that found the dossier was not used to "support any of its analytic judgments".

There were conflicting opinions between the FBI and CIA on whether to include any of the dossier's allegations in the body of the ICA report, with the FBI pushing for inclusion, and the CIA countering that the dossier "was not completely vetted and did not merit inclusion in the body of the report". After much discussion, the CIA prevailed, and the final ICA report only included a short summary of Steele's reporting in the "highly classified" Annex A. There were other reasons to not include it, and CNN wrote that:

The intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, and the FBI took Steele's research seriously enough that they kept it out of a publicly-released January report on Russian meddling in the election in order to not divulge which parts of the dossier they had corroborated and how. ... And if that report included the dossier allegations, the intelligence community would have to say which parts it had corroborated and how. That would compromise sources and methods, including information shared by foreign intelligence services, intelligence officials believed.

I understand how the dossier was "not used to "support any of its analytic judgments" as the FBI and CIA had their own sources that found some of the same things as Steele sources, thus increasing their confidence in the dossier, but, because they could not talk to all the dossier's sources, they could not use the dossier itself. That's pretty easy to understand:

On February 10, 2017, CNN reported that some communications between "senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals" described in the dossier had been corroborated by multiple U.S. officials. They "took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier". Some persons were known to be "heavily involved" in collecting information that could hurt Clinton and aid Trump. CNN was unable to confirm whether the conversations were related to Trump. Sources told CNN some conversations had been "intercepted during routine intelligence gathering", but refused to reveal the content of conversations or specify which communications were intercepted because the information was classified. U.S. officials said the corroboration gave "US intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents". They also reported that American intelligence agencies had examined Steele and his "vast network throughout Europe and found him and his sources to be credible".

Slightly different topic about FISA warrants and Carter Page
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The same applies to the FISA warrants for Carter Page. The FBI had been collecting evidence from their own sources and was already at the 50% mark for the evidence they needed to apply for a warrant, but hadn't made the decision yet. When they read the dossier, which was repeating stuff already backed by their own sources, that gave them a "nudge" and caused them to go ahead and make the decision, so the dossier played a crucial role, but only a 1% role, that vital bit to move them from 50% to 51%, a concept not understood by MAGA. They mistakenly believe that the dossier made up the bulk of the evidence used to apply for the FISA warrants, when that is not the case. The role was not one of "evidence" from the dossier, which they did not use, but of the "confidence boost" it gave them in the accuracy of the evidence from their own sources. We know from history that it would have been better if the FBI had not used the dossier at all in their application for the FISA warrants, and they could have done so. See Steele_dossier#Claim_it_was_"a_significant_portion"_of_FISA_application FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe mentioned both the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the FISA warrants: 'We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information,' McCabe told CNN. 'Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not.'

Can someone please explain to me how ideas from the dossier were "woven" into the ICA Assessment, and also mentioned in Annex A (which isn't even mentioned in this article)?

I am working off of this URL, and I don't see how the dossier was used in the version from that URL. Annex A does mention Russian media efforts, and that does parallel dossier assertions of Russian social media efforts to harm Clinton, so maybe that's what they mean, but.... there is this from another URL:

Assistant Director for mH said the FBI Assistant Director told her,"We fee! ver\' strongly that it should be included and woven into the text," to which Assistant Director for^m stated tliey would have to "agree to disagree" and that her recommendation would be tliat the information "not be included in the report. At a minimum, 1 was thinking it should be pulled out and put in an annex."^

"When asked to comment on Annex A as it appears in the ICA, Assistant Director forH^^si^'d that she concuired with most of the language on the first page of what became Annex A of the ICA."^ However, from where the text in Annex A begins with "the most politically sensitive claims by the FBI source alleging a close relationship between the President elect and the Kremlin," the Assistant Director forB stated "from there on down, I can tell you that there is no infonnation coming from^^Bsources that would corroborate any of that.""[1]

I do not find the wording "the most politically sensitive claims by the FBI..." at this URL, maybe because this is a redacted report?

Please help me understand so I can accurately edit this topic. Are there other versions and other URLs I should be looking at? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:32, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

References