‘Whistling’ Agitprop
Complaint = Steele dossier 2.0
AN old adage holds that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. Not so in the case of the latest manufactured antiTrump “scandal.” The anonymous whistleblower’s allegations of corruption involving President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, appear to be a note-for-note reproduction of the discredited “dossier” of 2016.
The template for a coordinated media and intelligence-community hit against the president was first perfected in the dossier. British ex-spook Christopher Steele compiled the bogus allegations at the behest of the Democrats. Yet it formed the basis for secret wiretaps, human informants and a sprawling, multi-year special-counsel probe of the president.
Liberals presented Steele as an operative with impeccable credentials and a deep network of Russian sources. His reports, we were told, set a gold standard for intelligence, so much so that the FBI regularly relied on his counsel. His claims found immediate purchase in the highest circles of American journalism — until they were utterly debunked along with the whole “collusion” theory.
Sound familiar?
The New York Times, whose reporters were deeply involved in propagating the Russian-collusion hoax, reported on Thursday that the new anti-Trump whistleblower is similarly a career CIA operative “steeped in the details of American foreign policy” and “demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of Ukrainian politics.” The insinuation is that, given this résumé, he must be beyond reproach or partisan animus.
In his dossier, Steele levied shocking accusations of corruption and impropriety by Trump and his team, going so far as to claim that Trump was bought and paid for by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who allegedly had compromising information on Trump that all but forced Trump to do the Kremlin’s bidding.
Steele hadn’t gathered or witnessed any of this evidence firsthand. Rather, he relied on anonymous sources, many of them thirdhand. “Source B asserted that the Trump operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Steele wrote. “Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents,” including Hillary Clinton, Steele claimed.
Referring to the infamous and nonexistent pee tape, Steele said, “The Moscow Ritz Carlton episode involving Trump . . . was confirmed by Source E. Source F, a female staffer at the hotel when Trump had stayed there . . . also confirmed the story.”
Again, sound familiar? Compare that to the text of the author of the anti-Trump complaint about Ukraine.
“I was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” the whistleblower wrote. Just like Steele’s dossier, the complaint is riddled with third-hand rumors, gossip and hearsay gathered from similarly anonymous officials.
“I was told that a State Department official” did this or that. “I heard from multiple US officials” that such and such. “Officials have informed me. . . .” And so on. Much like Steele, the Ukraine informant lacked first-hand access to evidence he claimed proved Trump’s guilt. It must have been hard to blow an accurate whistle when the whistleblower wasn’t not even in the same room.
The questionable use of media sources to buttress hearsay claims is also consistent across both documents. After Steele compiled his dossier, he peddled the allegations to numerous reporters, who then dutifully reported them as fact. The Obama administration then cited those articles, which were sourced directly to Steele and his dossier, as proof of the validity of the allegations. One article was given to a federal intelligence court to justify wiretaps on a Trump campaign affiliate. The information it alleged was false.
Likewise, the Ukraine whistleblower repeatedly cited articles from The New York Times, Politico and even a report from former Clinton flak-turned-ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos as evidence of the alleged conspiracy. It isn’t known whether he or his sources provided information used in any of the cited articles.
And while Steele used antiTrumpers inside the FBI to weaponize his anti-Trump dirt, the complainant in the Ukraine case has Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Reporters, lawmakers and others who fell for the collusion hoax might blame naiveté. But that excuse won’t work this time around, not when the remix sounds exactly the same as the original song. Those who go along with this charade the second time around — be they in media, Congress or any of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies implicated in the collusion hoax — have no such alibi.