Thread by @EpochTimes

News Analysis 🔎 The revelation of the alleged extraction of a #Russian @CIA #Spy has raised a number of questions, including how the #CIA used the information it received—and the quality of that information.

(Thread 👇) By Jeff Carlson @themarketswork theepochtimes.com/russian-spy-re…

Notably, the #Spy appears to have been a key source for allegations of #Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

A closer examination of the spy’s alleged background, however, paints a complicated picture. The spy’s direct supervisor appears to have been mentioned in the…

…#SteeleDossier, and it’s possible that information provided by the #Spy may have been included in the dossier.

The primary allegation in the Sept. 9 @CNN article—that the decision to extricate the spy was driven by “concerns that President Donald Trump…cnn.com/2019/09/09/pol…

…and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence”—has been disputed by the @WhiteHouse and the @CIA. However, the main premise, the existence of a #Russian #Spy who now lives in the #Washington area, appears to hold.

It’s likely that the spy, who has been…

…living in the US since May 2017, is of interest to US Attorney John Durham, who is currently investigating the origins of the investigations into the Trump campaign.

The underlying premise of the @CNN story is that there was a @CIA #Spy who was embedded within the #Kremlin:

While @CNN is citing only one source for this claim, @NYTimes supports #CNN’s contention of a @CIA #Spy in the #Kremlin.

#NYTimes noted the source was “outside of Mr. Putin’s inner circle, but saw him regularly…easily making the source one of the agency’s most valuable assets.”

But @NYTimes also noted that there were some doubts within the @CIA.

Following the refusal of extraction in late 2016, some officials within the #CIA “wondered whether the informant had been turned and had become a double agent, secretly betraying his American handlers.”

The potential ramifications of a double agent were dire, holding very real implications that “some of the information the informant provided about the Russian interference campaign or Mr. Putin’s intentions would have been inaccurate.”

And it wasn’t just the agent’s initial refusal of extraction that prompted concerns within the @CIA. According to @NYTimes, “some operatives had other reasons to suspect the source could be a double agent, according to two former officials.”

On Sept. 10, the #Russian @Kommersant newspaper reported the likely identity of the alleged #Spy, which noted that “intelligence experts were baffled that reporters were able to so quickly glean information about a potentially high-level CIA asset.” en.crimerussia.com/international/…

The @WashingtonPost reported that the alleged #Spy worked directly for Yuri Ushakov, #Russia’s ambassador to the US from 1999 to 2008, and served as Ushakov’s aide.

This would place the @CIA source within close reach of #Putin. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

The @NYTimes noted this source “was instrumental to the C.I.A.’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself.”

The source was apparently highly regarded by former @CIA Dir. @JohnBrennan…

…who felt the identity of the source was so important that, according to the @NYTimes article, he “kept information from the operative out of President Barack Obama’s daily brief in 2016.” nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/…

“Instead, Mr. Brennan sent separate intelligence reports, many based on the source’s information, in special sealed envelopes to the Oval Office,” according to the article.

But the nature of the source raises some very real questions.

If, for example, the source was indeed so highly placed, why then was the US so seemingly ill-informed regarding many of #Russia’s #ForeignPolicy actions, particularly in #Syria or #Crimea, when Russia forcibly annexed the peninsula from the #Ukraine?

And if this asset was indeed so highly placed, how is it that #Russia was able to hack the @DNC servers and extract their emails without the @CIA’s advance knowledge of the alleged #Russian activities?

https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/1171235240435683329

The #MuellerReport, after two lengthy years of investigation, concluded there was no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with #Russia, thereby proving a key part of the alleged #Russian activities incorrect. justice.gov/storage/report…

How could the same spy who was…

…“instrumental to the C.I.A.’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign,” fail to provide even more concrete proof for #Mueller’s team of investigators after he was exfiltrated to our nation’s capital in 2017?

Another strange element to this entire story is the lack of secrecy and almost reckless disregard exhibited by the #Spy himself. If he indeed served as “one of the C.I.A.’s most important — and highly protected — assets,” how is it that he came to live in our nation’s capital…

…all the while living under his #Russian name?

As @WashingtonPost noted, “It is highly unusual for a country to name a possible turncoat. It’s even more unusual for a suspected spy and defector to be living abroad using his own name.”

Notably, the source wasn’t particularly difficult to locate, given that @NBCNews reporter @KenDilanianNBC disclosed that he had personally gone to the #Russian source’s home on Sept. 9.

Dilanian’s reporting also confirmed the general location of the source’s whereabouts.

According to @WashingtonPost, the alleged #Russian source had suddenly left “on Monday evening and hadn’t returned.”

One has to wonder why the alleged Russian source has been living openly in our nation’s capital—with apparently little fear of reprisal from #Russia.

As noted by an internet researcher, Ushakov, the boss of the suspected #Russian #Spy, is directly referenced in the #SteeleDossier in a Sept. 14, 2016, memo—one of 3 memos that were prepared in advance of a meeting between #Steele and @FBI agents in Rome on Sept. 19, 2016:

What makes this particularly curious is that by the time the #Steele memo was written in mid-September 2016, @JohnBrennan had already delivered information on this matter to the @WhiteHouse:

The fact that the @CIA and the #SteeleDossier contained the same info raises the…

…question of whether the “senior member of the Russian Presidential Administration” mentioned in the dossier is the same as the #CIA #Russian #Spy.

This, in turn, would raise the question of how #Steele appears to have ended up with the same information as the @CIA.

@CIA #Brennan claimed he didn’t see the dossier until “later in that year,” perhaps in Dec. 2016.

He also stated in his testimony that the @CIA didn’t rely on the #SteeleDossier and that it “was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.”

But this claim was countered during the testimony of former @FBI lawyer #LisaPage, when the following discussion took place regarding #Brennan’s August 2016 briefing of then-Sen. Harry Reid:

While some within the @FBI likely had parts of the dossier in early July, #LisaPage testified that the counterintelligence investigative team didn’t receive it until mid-September—likely during their trip to Rome, where they met with #Steele:

This sequence indicates that only @JohnBrennan, the @CIA, and #Steele had direct access to this information prior to the @FBI’s meeting with Steele in Rome—again begging the question, did #Brennan have the info first?

And if so, who gave it to Steele?

Following the delivery of the #MuellerReport, @JohnBrennan commented on the info he had received—a matter picked up on by an internet researcher: realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/…

If #Brennan was making this admission after using a source the @CIA claimed was the “highest level source…

…for the U.S. inside the Kremlin”—a source who had been, until Sept. 9, living openly under his own name—one has to question the entirety of the @CIA’s sourcing and reporting on the #RussiaCollusion narrative.

/END/