UK privy to Trump ‘dirty dossier’
BRITAIN/UNITED STATES: Britain has been dragged into the frantic row over the ‘‘dirty dossier’’ on United States presidentelect Donald Trump, after it was claimed the government gave the FBI permission to speak to the former MI6 officer who compiled it.
US sources have said that Christopher Steele, a former spy, spoke to officials in London before he handed the document to the FBI and met one of its agents.
The document was leaked earlier this week, and Britain now finds itself caught in the crossfire of accusations between Russia and the US.
The dossier included unsubstantiated claims that the Putin regime had ‘‘cultivated, assisted and supported’’ Trump for at least five years and said Russian spies also possessed a tape of a lurid encounter between the presidentelect and prostitutes filmed in a Moscow hotel.
Yesterday Russia accused MI6 of ‘‘briefing both ways’’ against Russia and Trump, and suggested Steele was still working for the Secret Intelligence Service.
The Russian embassy in London said on Twitter: ‘‘Christopher Steele story: MI6 officers are never ex: briefing both ways – against Russia and US President.’’
Trump has angrily rejected the information in the dossier as ‘‘fake’’, and the involvement of a former MI6 officer is unlikely to help Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with the US when he becomes president later this month.
Steele, who friends say fears for his safety, has gone into hiding while the veracity of the claims made in his dossier, and his own reputation, continue to be fiercely debated.
It emerged yesterday that he was the MI6 case officer assigned to Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB agent murdered in London with a radioactive substance.
Steele was hired to find information on Trump by a Washington consultancy paid by Republican opponents of the tycoon and, later, by Democrats.
However, Steele decided the information was so sensitive that it should also be passed on to the FBI and to his old colleagues at MI6.
A source has said that the FBI had contacted Steele asking if they could discuss his findings with him. The source said Steele spoke to officials in London to ask for permission to speak to the FBI, which was granted, and Downing Street was informed.
Downing Street and the Foreign Office refused to comment yesterday, while security sources said it would have been a ‘‘professional courtesy’’, though not an absolute requirement, for Steele to seek permission for a meeting with the FBI.
Once he had been given the allclear, he met an FBI agent in Europe, where he discussed the background to the file.
His contact with the FBI reportedly began in July last year and ended in October, after he became frustrated by the bureau’s slow progress.
Dominic Grieve, chairman of the House of Commons intelligence and security committee, said he expected the committee to discuss the fallout from the dossier and the question of whether British intelligence agencies had been involved in handling it.
As the row over the dossier continued, US vice-president Joe Biden said the FBI had felt obliged to tell President Barack Obama about the information it contained because of concerns it would go public and catch the president off guard.
Biden said neither he nor Obama asked US intelligence agencies to try to corroborate the unverified claims that Russia had obtained compromising sexual and financial allegations about Trump. – Telegraph Group