Thread by @ClimateAudit

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost Meier talked to me. He discusses our Twitter work in a section of his book, but manages to get almost every nuance wrong. He's a good journalist but misunderstood our perspective almost totally.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost my initial reaction to @BarryMeier was over-focused on frustration with some unfairness to our twitter corner. To be balanced, I should also have pointed out that his critique of Steele et al (and I intend to read book) appears to be very severe in MSM terms.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 2/ Meier pointed out that Steele's supposed role in Litvinenko affair had much inflated (just as his role in FIFA was.) The Litvinenko affair was a long-standing interest of his.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 3/ Meier was prob more interested in our earliest speculation on PSS identity (Shvets) than in the final identification as Danchenko because we had used Litvinenko affair as a postulated connection between Steele and Shvets.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 4/ I think that his interest in Litvinenko affair distracted him from what we perceived as the main conclusions of our early analyses: a) that PSS was NOT "Russian-based", as represented in FISA and to House Intel (Nunes); b) PSS was prob ex-pat living in northern Virginia

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 5/ in our contemporary Twitter commentary, I was very clear that we were far more convinced that PSS was someone "like Shvets" (living in US, prob northern VA) than that it was Shvets himself. We thought we were near target, but not necessarily on target. Meier missed this nuance

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 6/ I was re-reading Senate Judiciary testimony of Pientka, Somma, Moffa, Auten a couple of days ago in which the "Russian-based" issue was raised for each of them. They all expressed considerable surprise, even astonishment, when they learned PSS was in northern VA.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 7/ reading closely, it appears that Pientka and Somma were the agents who made initial contact with Danchenko on a Friday in January 2017. Danchenko immediately (or was already) lawyered up with Democrat partisan Mark Schamel.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 8/ one of the oddities of sending Pientka and Somma to make contact with Danchenko is that Pientka had already left Crossfire and Somma was about to. Somma was gone from Crossfire in Feb (other than helping with Page interviews in March.)

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 9/ Pientka was at Flynn interview on Jan 24, while Somma was at Danchenko interview, also on Jan 24 at exactly the same time. Once Somma left Crossfire, Brian Auten was only FBI link and custodian of Danchenko interview information.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 10/ Auten deep-sixed the adverse Danchenko information in the way that clever people do: he wrote a long memorandum which he placed deep in the case file but did not disseminate, while distributing a two-page summary which focused on new "leads" from Danchenko, omitting problems

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 11/ reminded me of how a sly climate scientist might try to avoid issuing a retraction or even a corrigendum by burying the concession in Supplementary Information to an unrelated paper, but that's a different topic.

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 12/ deep-sixing of the adverse Danchenko information was supposedly Barr's original concern over the Russiagate hoax. Even Gonna Graham said he was concerned about it. (Tho, to be fair to Gonna, he did eventually release the Danchenko EC that opened up Steele fraud)

@ReginaMourad @BarryMeier @HansMahncke @MonsieursGhost 13/ however, Auten was not confronted by Senate Committee on the deep-sixing of adverse Danchenko information. They spent nearly all their time on the Look Squirrel distraction of Carter Page FISA and nothing on how Crossfire metastasized into corrupt resistance.