![]() ![]() ![]() I spent almost 30 years producing what CIA calls “raw reporting” from human agents. At heart, this is what Orbis did. They were not producing finished analysis, but were passing on to a client distilled reporting that they had obtained in response to specific questions. So how should we unpack the Steele dossier from an intelligence perspective? In fact, they were more inclined for professional reasons to put them in the “trust but verify ” category. He and others withheld judgment about the veracity of the reports, but for the reasons I outline further below they did not reject them out of hand. This is not because they are not fond of Trump (and many admittedly are not) but because they understand the potential plausibility of the reports’ overall narrative based on their experienced understanding of both Russian methods and the nature of raw intelligence reporting. Immediately following the BuzzFeed leak, one of my closest former CIA colleagues told me that he recognized the reports as the obvious product of a former British Secret Intelligence Service officer, since the format, structure, and language mirrored what he had seen over a career of reading SIS reports provided to CIA in liaison channels. Many of my former CIA colleagues have taken the Orbis reports seriously since they were first published. For professional investigators, however, the dossier is by no means a useless document. Although the reports were produced episodically-almost erratically-over a five-month period, they present a coherent narrative of collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. As a result, they offer an overarching framework for what might have happened based on information from individuals on the Russian side who claimed to have insight into Moscow’s goals and operational tactics. Until we have another more credible narrative, we should do all we can to examine closely and confirm or dispute the reports.
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