Simpson and Fritsch, however, wanted to continue following leads on Trump, particularly about his activities in Russia.
#STEEL DOSSIER FREE#
Simpson and Fritsch’s mission to uncover dirt on Trump started in 2015, when a billionaire Republican supporter of Marco Rubio named Paul Singer hired Fusion GPS to collect opposition research on the candidate from New York.īy April 2016, when it had become clear that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, Singer stopped funding the operation. (A spokesperson for Singer told The Post that the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet in which Singer invests, funded the research and not him personally.) “They’re often a retired government spy or over-the-hill agent who is basically shopping their past and living off the skills that they developed while they were working for the government,” he says.Īfter retiring from MI6, Steele launched a London investigation firm called Orbis Business Intelligence.įor his work on the Steele Dossier, the former spy was contracted by Fusion GPS, a DC-based intelligence company run by two former Wall Street Journal reporters, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, who had decided to turn their journalistic investigative skills to other ends. “Now, politicians were hiring them to dig up dirt on opponents, companies were employing them to torpedo investigations into their activities by authorities or journalists, and dictators were using them as freelance intelligence agents.”Īnd few incidents illustrate the power - as well as the potential problems - with this shadow world as well as the Steele Dossier.Ĭhristopher Steele, a 50-something former MI6 agent who had been stationed in Moscow back in the 1990s, fits the profile of those who frequently work in the private spying business, Meier says.īarry Meier shines a light on private espionage in his book. “Private investigators once were content to lurk in the shadows,” Meier writes.
Private intelligence began really taking off in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when career government spies began bucking the longtime tradition of not moving into the private sector. Former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele. “There’s this booming business out there that’s invading our privacy, profiting from deception and manipulating the news, and it’s one we have to be on guard against,” says Barry Meier, who shines a light on the recent newsmakers in private espionage with his new book “Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies” (Harper), out now. And private intelligence is an industry that has existed largely in the shadows, despite the immense influence it can sometimes wield. In the last decade the industry has exploded, bringing in revenue of $2.5 billion in 2018, according to an estimate from ERG Partners, an investment bank focusing on the intelligence industry. The so-called Steele Dossier is the most high-profile product from a secretive, little-known and little-regulated industry known as “private espionage.” The allegations were based solely on hearsay, and yet, they rocketed around the world. The bombshell was made public in January 2017 when BuzzFeed published a collection of memos written by former British spy Christopher Steele purportedly detailing Donald Trump’s “activities in Russia.” In 2013, it was claimed, Donald Trump frolicked among peeing prostitutes in the presidential suite of Moscow’s Ritz Carlton - and Russia’s intelligence services had a video of the incident.
#STEEL DOSSIER FULL#
It was the most explosive allegation in a presidential campaign full of them. Twitter was warned by FBI that it employed a Chinese agent, whistleblower Peiter Zatko saysīiden’s plum job reward for ex-intel officer who protected his scandal-laden son stinks My ex forced me to pass myself off as a wealthy heiress before taking pics with Trump Chinese national convicted of espionage after applying to US Army Reserves
0 kommentar(er)
