Rogue Spooks Read online

  Rogue Spooks

  The Intelligence War on Donald Trump

  Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

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  Table of Contents

  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

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  “You’re missing it right now. It’s happening in front of your faces. We have a disinformation campaign designed to discredit the president-elect and as of today we have boots on the ground like the protesters I had to wade through to get here. Does that seem familiar to any of you? Because it does to me. It’s what we did in Nicaragua, Chile, Congo, a dozen other places. All the way back to Iran in the ’50s. And it does not end well for the elected regime. You’re fighting for your lives here, do you get that? Can’t afford to stay silent.”

  —CIA director Saul Berenson to President-elect Elizabeth Keane, Homeland

  Prologue

  The scheme has all the elements of a riveting spy novel: a polarizing billionaire presidential candidate, considered crude and unworthy of the Oval Office by the political establishment he threatens, along with risqué sex, blackmail, bribes, betrayal, special interests, back channels to Russia, spies, political intrigue, envy, and hatred.

  And the plot is in the tradition of the best-selling spy novels written by former British MI6 officers: Nameless moneymen supporting the first female candidate for U.S. president are secretly bankrolling a former British spy to find lethal dirt on the opposing candidate’s activities in Russia.

  Behind the scenes, the ex-spook, an expert on Russia, compiles the dossier of sensational reports, allegedly based on intelligence gleaned from high-level sources in Russia. The result is a narrative alleging that the candidate and his associates were involved in illicit activities in Russia that make him extremely vulnerable to blackmail.

  The goal: Destroy him. Humiliate him. Get him out of the race.

  During the campaign, the British rogue spook—at the behest of his American paymasters—orchestrates an audacious plan to create and publicize a shocking dossier to besmirch the billionaire candidate and assure that he will never become president.

  The explicit accusations center on extensive collusion with the Russian government to influence the U.S. election—including the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and campaign officials’ personal emails. To add a little color, claims of Trump’s involvement in vulgar sexual acts in a Moscow hotel room are thrown in, too.1

  Beyond that, the dossier makes the far-fetched claim that the now president-elect is, in effect, a Manchurian candidate who has been under the influence and control of Russia for more than five years.2

  But from the start, a doubt nags. Too many things in the dossier don’t add up. Could there be someone else—or some other country—involved in preparing this explosive document?

  Because the rogue spook is not acting alone.

  Later, we learn that he didn’t actually write much of the dossier. Someone else did and gave it to him. Who was that person?

  And how did anyone know to give it to him? What was the arrangement?

  More questions arise: Did the stunning allegations in the dossier really come from the Russian sources it quotes? Or were there other players? Could other intelligence agencies—like those of the British or of other European allies—have been involved? What about the CIA? The FBI? Or could it have been someone else entirely?

  There’s more to this story.

  The “sources” for the material are vaguely described as “Kremlin insiders,” “current and former FSB officers,” and others with a “direct line” to the Russian president as well as colorful characters who claim to be close to the candidate.3 (The FSB, or Federal Security Service, is the successor to the KGB, Russia’s secret police organ.)

  Later, a look back at them would raise serious questions about their reliability, and even whether most of them ever existed at all.

  The ex-spook describes his findings as “hair-raising” and decides (without alerting his American client) to secretly relay the material to U.S. law enforcement officials.4 Since he is already known and respected by the FBI, he contacts the Bureau in early July and shares his alarming findings.5 Eventually, based in part on the unsubstantiated dossier, the FBI begins a secret federal counterterrorism investigation of the presidential candidate and his associates.6

  Several months later, the FBI gets more aggressive in the Russian meddling probe and is suddenly interested in talking to the ex-spook. They meet him in Rome and that’s when the FBI makes a baffling decision: It agrees to pay him $50,000 if he can “get solid corroboration of the material in his reports.”7 In the meantime, the FBI pays for some of his expenses.8

  “The material,” of course, refers to the accusations against the candidate in the dossier. So, now, weeks before the presidential election, the FBI agrees to pay an opposition researcher who is simultaneously being paid by the political supporters of the opposing candidate. While one employer pays him to find embarrassing—or even incriminating—information about the nominee of a major political party, the other hires him to prove those very same allegations about the same candidate it is investigating.9

  The ex-spook never collects the $50,000. Media reports suggest that the arrangement lasts only a few weeks, ending “abruptly” before the U.S. election, “in part, because of frustration that the FBI wasn’t doing enough to investigate [the candidate’s Russian] ties.”10

  The spook and his patrons seem desperate. What if their client’s opponent wins the election before the salacious claims ever see the light of day?

  Time is running out. As election day approaches, the sordid details of the dossier still remain secret. Although the dossier was available to major news outlets for months, not a single media outlet dares to take a chance on publishing the unproven, scandalous dossier.11

  Then the worst happens. Time does run out and the Manchurian candidate wins the election and is about to enter the Oval Office.

  But the female candidate’s loss doesn’t end the project—not by a long shot. Now the American spooks in the outgoing administration and their British allies are even more desperate to legitimize the dossier and make it public, because now their target is not just a candidate, but the president-elect.

  To get the dossier out there, to make sure that all its sordid and possibly treasonous claims go public, the FBI director—himself something of a rogue spook—as well as current and former intelligence agents in the United States, Britain, and maybe other countries, a prominent U.S. senator, a former assistant secretary of state, and a highly esteemed UK diplomat—all play a role.12

  That’s when the rogue spooks see triumph around the corner. And they are right.

  Because two weeks before the inauguration, the director of the FBI huddles with the three leaders of the other top intelligence agencies in the United States—the heads of the CIA and the NSA and the director of national intelligence—to discuss the dossier and what to do with it. They unanimously agree to brief the outgoing president, the president-elect, congressional leaders, and the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on the existence of the dossier and summarize its still-unsubstantiated stunning charges. But they also unanimously agree that there is no evidence to prove the shocking allegations. A few days later, the director of national intelligence confirms that he can “not corroborate or validate the information.”13

  Part One of the Intelligence Coup is set in motion.

  Not surprisingly, within hours, the specifics of the still-unproven allegations in a classified document are illegally leaked to the press by rogue spooks inside the U.S. intelligence and/or the White House, who want to be sure the documents are in the system and can’t be buried by a new administration.

  Soon, the entire unverified dossier is published by BuzzFeed, an online organ, causing great embarrassment and humiliation to the president-elect.

  Not a single media outlet can verify most of the sensational claims. In fact, many of the specifics are easily proven to be false. Soon, a number of the allegations are challenged in defamation lawsuits.

  But the game plan works: By the time the new president is sworn in, serious questions surround him about his relationships with the Russians.

  The FBI, the CIA, congressional leaders, intelligence committees, and the media all clamor for answers to questions raised by the phony information in the dossier.

  Unfortunately none of this is simply the outline of an enthralling but fictional spy thriller. It is the true story of how Hillary Clinton supporters paid for a secret investigation that resulted in a dossier that was filled with lies that rogue British ex-spooks—and possibly others—and
the U.S. intelligence community are using in a brazen attempt to undermine and shatter Donald Trump’s presidency.

  Why is the dossier important? Because it was no less of an attempt by foreigners to influence the presidential election than the hacking incidents were. Unknown, unnamed persons conspired to produce and disseminate a document filled with lies in order to damage a presidential candidate and, later, the president-elect of the United States. It should be taken as seriously as the hackings. The rogue spooks, wherever they are from—and any other persons or entities behind them—should be exposed and treated with the same seriousness as the hackers. This was an unacceptable intrusion into our sovereign political process. And we still don’t know who was behind it. That it could have been one or more of our allies is truly shocking.

  But it didn’t end with the dossier. From the minute Donald Trump was elected, “deep state” bureaucrats still serving in the highest levels of government were leaking and plotting to destroy Donald Trump and his aides at any cost. Daily leaks of transcripts of his phone calls, diplomatic meetings, internal memos, private conversations, and intelligence reports on his associates—including his son-in-law—were eagerly fed to a hungry press.

  Even the former director of the FBI, James Comey, admitted that he deliberately arranged to leak sensitive material to the press in the hopes of stirring up a demand for the appointment of a special prosecutor to go after the president. A few weeks later, he got his wish: Robert Mueller was named as a special prosecutor to investigate possible collusion between Russia and Trump and his associates.

  What else did James Comey leak?

  The unauthorized leaks continue. And, yet, only one low-level clerk has been arrested. Not a single person has been held accountable.

  The intelligence war on Donald Trump is now in full swing.

  Introduction

  On May 17, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including whether there was any collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump and his campaign associates to defeat Hillary Clinton.

  The extraordinary decision to appoint a prosecutor followed several tumultuous days in Washington that reached a crescendo with President Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey. For days before that, a series of leaks by anonymous intelligence officials had followed in rapid succession—about Trump’s comments to Russian diplomats in confidential White House meetings; about alleged inappropriate overtures to the FBI director and other intelligence leaders concerning the Russian collusion allegations; and about Comey’s memos memorializing his concerns about Trump.

  The leaks demonstrated a new menace to our democracy: the “Intel/Media complex.” Almost sixty years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the dangers of the emerging coalition of defense contractors and Pentagon generals he referred to as the “military-industrial complex.” Now, spooks from both sides of the Atlantic coalesce with the liberal mainstream media to form this new phenomenon, the Intel/Media complex, as potent as its predecessor but far more dangerous because it operates anonymously behind the cloak of the First Amendment.

  The intelligence war on Trump was now out in the open.

  It was suddenly all-Russia, all-the-time in Washington.

  The allegations about Russian interference in the election were certainly not new. In September 2015, more than a year before the election, British intelligence agents had explicitly warned the FBI about Russian hacking into Democratic National Committee computers.1 A year later, in August 2016, well after the hack of the DNC computers had been exposed, the Brits were back with another heads-up, this time to warn the CIA director of suspicious contacts between Trump associates and Russians.2

  But none of this information was made public at the time.

  Later, it was revealed that, beginning in July 2016, Comey had overseen the FBI’s secret investigation of the unsubstantiated claims of collusion—without producing any evidence to prove it.3 A parallel probe by the CIA likewise failed to substantiate even any coordination between Trump and the Kremlin.4

  And from the very beginning, President Trump vehemently denied the charges.

  All these investigations had one thing in common: They each failed to find any evidence, any substantiation, any documentation, or any proof that Trump or his campaign or his associates had anything to do with Russian interference in the U.S. election.

  No one knows for sure whether there is some yet-uncovered evidence of a Trump-Kremlin collusion that escaped all the previous investigators. But what we do know is that the full force of the top American intelligence agencies—along with some help from the Brits—could not uncover any such evidence during a year-long investigation. And the former FBI director James Comey, the former CIA director John Brennan, and the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Dianne Feinstein have all confirmed that they have seen no evidence of collusion.5

  There is a lot of evidence that the Russians were behind the hacking of the DNC computers.

  Yet the lack of any evidence of collusion didn’t get in the way of the media-hyped charges suggesting otherwise with blaring headlines and sensational accusations.

  And with no evidence to support their claims, Hillary Clinton and her top aides invented and promoted a Trump-Kremlin connection throughout the campaign—and indeed for months following election day.

  How did the situation become so extreme that a special prosecutor had to be appointed six months after the election? Just as important: How did the idea of Russian interference become such a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign to begin with? Why did questions about ties between President Trump and his associates and Russia continue to dominate the headlines for months and months after the election?

  The first public mention of possible Russian involvement in the presidential election appeared on June 14, 2016, when the DNC announced that its computers had been hacked. Private security analysts determined that the DNC systems had been compromised by “Russian government hackers” who gained access to the “entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.”6

  Whoever they were, the cyberstalkers had actually accessed the DNC database almost a year earlier—when Donald Trump had just entered the presidential race and was lagging in the polls. When the DNC disclosed the hacking, the media originally treated it as “business as usual” for the Russians and for the spy business in general. There was no suggestion at all of any Trump connection.

  Here’s what the Washington Post reported:

  The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president—much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders.7

  Nothing shocking there.

  According to the New York Times, American intelligence officials did not view the hacking as “extraordinary” since “foreign spies had hacked previous campaigns, and the United States does the same in elections around the world, officials said. The view on the inside was that collecting information, even through hacking, is what spies do.”8

  The hacking was no surprise to the U.S. intelligence agencies since they had been alerted to the possibility of Russian hacking by the British intelligence counterpart to our NSA (National Security Agency), known as GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters).9 Despite the warning, however, neither the FBI nor the DNC took the necessary steps to shut the hacking down.10 Why didn’t the FBI begin an immediate investigation of this serious intrusion into our political system—in the middle of an election year? Why didn’t they insist on reviewing the DNC’s computers—and take legal steps to take them into FBI custody and have them examined by the FBI’s own experts? Because that’s the only way to actually see what was going on. But the FBI caved in to the Democrats and the Russian hackers nestled in.