Years ago I was heavily involved in national security reporting. I learned to be almost infinitely skeptical of what I read in the British press. To some extent, this is just an imperfect familiarity with a foreign country, which affects all foreign reporting to some degree. But let’s say also that the standards are just different. With that said, here are some choice nuggets from the latest report from The Independent …
Mr Steele [the former MI6 agent who compiled the Trump dossier] also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.
However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
You can read the rest here. It does move into novelistic terms, weaving together almost every thread of the 2016 story.
