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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 11, 2021 • 45 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X

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the report of the WMD Commission in March 2005 is important to read (or re-read) in light of our present knowledge that Danchenko/Steele fabricated Steele dossier. fas.org/irp/offdocs/wm…

2/ perhaps their most important concern was that CIA intelligence officials "failed to convey to policymakers new information casting serious doubt on the reliability of a human intelligence
source known as Curveball", whose information was relied on in intel assessment.

3/ the WMD Commission regretted that "once again", the intel community "failed to give policymakers a full understanding of the frailties of the intelligence on which they were relying."

4/ fast forward to December 2016. While Steele himself had respectable (tho overblown) credibility within FBI, by late Dec, FBI knew that Steele's information came Danchenko, on whom they already had a file and had even questioned one of his sub-sources in June 2016.

5/ Danchenko had many of the same liabilities as Curveball. Nonetheless, FBI flouted and ignored every recommendation of WMD Commission about human source validation as they promoted Steele allegations in Jan 5 briefing to Obama officials, scaring the wits out of Yates and others

6/ when Danchenko was finally interviewed on Jan 24, 2017, FBI had information that (in words of WWMD Commission) should have "cast serious doubt on the reliability" of information that FBI had just given to policy-makers.

7/ but rather than reporting these problems to policy-makers, FBI doubled down and concealed the Danchenko information and the problems of Danchenko as a fabricating Curveball 2.0.

8/ turning to Curveball details. US intel assessment on Iraq bioweapons were based almost entirely on single "fabricator". There were a) failure to vet source; b) analyst credulity due to viewpoint bias; c) concealment of flaws when known

9/ the slim independent "corroboration" for Curveball was information from a "source who was already known to be a fabricator" whose "information" was used by intel community even after fabrication known

10/ WMD Commission observed that Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) - which had important role in Flynn fiasco - had pernicious impact on intelligence assessment, as combination of brevity and dailiness inimical to more considered and nuanced briefing

11/ there's an interesting discussion of aluminum tubes, which in intel community "assessment" were said to demonstrate that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear program. Minority opinion that they were for conventional rockets ignored.

12/ aluminum tube issue, oddly, connects to my parsing of climate proxy reconstructions (Hockey Stick), which I compared to an analyst "studying proxy evidence for WMD such as aluminum tubes. sometimes ... an aluminum tube is just an aluminum tube."
climateaudit.org/2006/06/14/a-f…

13/ as slight digression, I was rather fond of this comparison in the day. climateaudit.org/2006/08/09/ipc… I observed a valid HS wouldnt "vindicate statistical falsehoods of Mann HS", just as "belated discovery of some other type of WMD" wouldn't vindicate Powell on Al tubes as WMD proxy

14/ the WMD Commission review fas.org/irp/offdocs/wm… of aluminum tube fiasco is worth reading in total and I won't precise it further as I want to get to Curveball.

15/ WMD Commission observed that intel assessment on Iraqi mobile bioweapons came "almost exclusively from a single source". So did allegations about collusion between Trump campaign and Russian intel services. From Steele's Primary Sub-Source.

16/ Curveball was an Iraqi chemical engineer in Germany (Steele PSS was in DC area). German intel (like Steele with PSS) refused access to Curveball. Who, like PSS, provided prodigious volume of reports.

17/ as another aside, the sheer volume of fake reports from Curveball should give pause to those neocons and pro-war "human rights" advocates who assert that it is "impossible" that ALL the chlorine attack allegations in Syria are false flag fakes. It isnt impossible; it's likely

18/ Curveball fabrications were incorporated into a 1999 intel assessment and again in a 2000 Special Intel Report based on supposedly "credible" reporting - the same adjective later applied by intel community to Steele and his PSS.

19/ in 2001 and late 2002 in lead up to Iraq invasion, US intel community gave more and more "assertive" assessments on supposed Iraqi mobile bioweapon units.

20/ in October 2002, as war drums beat louder and louder, the intel community assessment ratcheted its certainty on Curveball information even further. Into assertion that Iraq "has" bioweapon program that was larger and more advanced than before Gulf War

21/ Brennan claims that CIA intel assessment that "Putin" was trying to assist Trump did not rely on Steele-Danchenko (Curveball 2.0). But, if so, it's hard to explain how Brennan's August briefing to Harry Reid included same false info about Carter Page and Sechin as Steele.

22/ but once again, Curveball precedent ought to have been cautionary. CIA purported to have independent sources for Iraqi bioweapon program, but they all recanted. "Second source", also emigre, recanted in Oct 2003.

23/ a third supposed source (the "INC Source") had been assessed as a fabricator by May 2002. Nonetheless, in July 2002, intel community began to use his fabricated information in assessments, disregarding the prior finding that he was a fabricator.

24/ by February 2003, the Curveball allegations had been inflated into a CIA Intelligence Assessment that Iraq has "wide range of biological agents and delivery systems" and was a threat to "US interests".

25/ as with supposed "confirmations" of Steele dossier inventions, several objects discovered post-invasion were (incorrectly and temporarily) interpreted as confirmations of Curveball reporting. They weren't.

26/ during the occupation of Iraq following 2003 invasion, a comprehensive investigation found "no evidence" of Curveball's mobile bioweapon production systems. It was all made up.

27/ in 2005 (unlike 2017-2020), the intel community appears to have made a reasonably honest effort to understand their errors. They quickly determined that the bioweapon reported was thinly based on a single source - Curveball.

28/ more later.

29/ continuing with WMD Commission analysis. They concede that agencies will sometimes "get burned", but found that inclusion of Curveball in assessments was "breakdown", noting "poor asset validation" and tendency of analysts to "believe that which fits their theories".

30/ WMD Commission stated that intel community did "not even attempt" asset validation of Curveball. They note that Curveball was source to "foreign service" (Germany) which wouldnt provide direct access to Curveball, only reports.

31/ in Danchenko situation. Steele refused to even identify Danchenko to FBI but FBI identified Danchenko as Steele PSS in late Dec but delayed one month. After interviewing Danchenko in late Jan, FBI commissioned a source validation report on STEELE (but seemingly not Danchenko)

32/ This was a belatedly late source validation on Steele (which Pientka had asked for in early November but McCabe-Priestap had refused). But isn't source validation on Steele at this point like asking for source validation on German intel agency instead of Curveball?

32/ the WMD Commission asked intel officials why they didnt "even attempt to determine Curveball's veracity". The answer is interesting and appears to recur in Steele incident: according to officials who distributed Curveball "information", it was responsibility of analysts

33/ responsibility of analysts to "judge the contents" and if "analysts believe information is credible, then the source is validated". The argument that Danchenko-Steele dossier was "raw intelligence" is in same vein.

34/ both Senate Intel Committee and WMD Commission flatly rejected such abnegation of source validation as "serious lapse in tradecraft".

35/ they then made important statement on validation. "Operational elements" must make "efforts to confirm source’s bona fides (ie, authenticating that source has access he claims), test source’s reliability and motivations, and ensure that source is free from hostile control"

36/ now consider these criteria in respect to Danchenko. On Jan 24, 2017, FBI knew that Danchenko did NOT have the access to Millian that had been claimed in Steele dossier. Indeed, Danchenko admitted they had never met.

37/ even a cursory examination of Danchenko or Millian emails and social media - both easily accessible to FBI - would have confirmed that nothing attributed to "Millian" could have come from Millian. Keep this in mind as we see how source validation issues arose with Curveball

38/ returning to Curveball, in 2000, analysts had concluded that "Curveball’s information was plausible based upon previous intelligence, including imagery reporting, and the detailed,
technical descriptions of the mobile facilities he provided" and nothing “obviously wrong”

39/ however, CIA Directorate of Operations began to raise questions about Curveball for much less than presented by Danchenko. First, one of the reasons for withholding Curveball from US was false: it turned out Curveball spoke "excellent English". (Recall "Russian-based" !?!)

39/ second, the DOD detailee who met Curveball was concerned at his bad hangover when they met and was concerned that "Curveball might be an alcoholic" - an issue that also ought to have arisen with alcoholic Danchenko.

41/ in April 2002, a "foreign intelligence service" (presumably UK) observed that “elements of [Curveball’s] behavior strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators”, but neither they nor US intel paid further heed

42/ when evidence emerged that contradicted Curveball, analysts explained it away as "denial and deception" by Iraq. Even a wall across supposed path of mobile bioweapon trailers was explained away as deception by Iraq, rather than impugning Curveball fantasy.

43/ in a second case, when satellite imagery failed to shown a facility claimed by Curveball, analysts explained it away as more deception by Iraq.

44/ ironically, the behaviour of US intel agencies fit a classic criterion of "conspiracy theory" - the development of ever more elaborate hypotheses to explain away contradictory evidence.

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Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Aug 12

Here's a listing of Minority HPSCI Staff in early 2017. Most of the redactions in yesterday's release can be identified here.

In two of the 302s, WHISTLEB described the HPSCI Democrat system for exfiltrating secret information from a secure room in a three letter agency: presumably FBI, from which copies and notes were prohibited.

As a work-around, three HPSCI Democrat staffers would attend the Secure Room and, after each visit, "would immediately compose summaries" on a standalone computer set up in a back room by "committee's network administrator" for exclusive use by "Russian team" members. After the three Russian team members had completed their visit summaries, they briefed certain other staffers.

All of the names underneath the redactions can be plausibly identified from contemporary HPSCI Democrat staff rosters as shown below.

Here is a transcription of each of the two descriptions of the Russian team and secondary briefees, showing character counts.

The Russian Team had two 16s (at least one with LN8) and an 11. (number denotes character count of full name.)

The secondary briefees were a 6+5 (12), two 13s (one a 5+7), an 11, and the communications director (a 14). One of the 13s was a new hire.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 31

Durham Classified Appendix is almost entirely about "Clinton Plan". Unsurprisingly, nothing about the post-election events during which Russiagate collusion hoax actually metastasized under FBI and CIA into a national flesh-eating disease.
Emails from Lenny Benardo of Soros' Open Society Foundation feature prominently. Note that Benardo was mentioned in a Washington Post article by Demirjan and Devlin Barrett on May 24, 2017 (a few days after Mueller appointment) - archive archive.is/w43O2 reporting that the email had been dismissed by FBI as "unreliable". DWS, Benardo and Renteria said at the time that they had never been interviewed by FBI.

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Fool_Nelson proposed Julie Smith as Foreign Policy Advisor-2 in Durham report at the time:

https://x.com/FOOL_NELSON/status/1658525717183725569

Here's a July 27, 2016 email (attributed to Benardo) which contains a detail relevant to the argument against @DNIGabbard's first drop, claiming that Russian interference concern was NEVER about election infrastructure, but always about DNC hack and Buff Bernie memes. Here Benardo talks about how to make Russia "a domestic issue" by raising the spectre of a "critical infrastructure threat for the election". Brennan subsequently did just that: raised concern about "infrastructure threat". ODNI played down that threat in their briefings and ultimately in the proposed post-election PDB of December 8, 2016 which was cancelled by Obama intervention.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 22

the ICA version in the recent DNI documents is a different version (dated January 5, 2017) than the released version (dated January 6, 2017). There were many changes overnight - some substantive.

Before editorializing, I'll laboriously go through comparisons - final version on left, previous day version on right. (I apologize for not marking this on each of the following slides.)

The Jan 6, 2017 version contained a preface entitled "Background... The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution", not present in the Jan 5 version (as shown). It has two sections.

The first section entitled "The Analytic Process" stated that these assessments "adhere to tradecraft standards".

"On these issues of great importance to US national security, the goal of intelligence analysis is to provide assessments to decisionmakers that are intellectually rigorous, objective, timely, and useful, and that adhere to tradecraft standards."

Now recall the dispute over inclusion of Steele dossier information in the ICA as an appendix and, as we recently learned, as a bullet supporting the assessment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump. Some IC professionals objected to the inclusion of Steele dossier information on the grounds that it did not meet tradecraft standards for inclusion in an ICA. Comey, McCabe and FBI insisted on its inclusion on the grounds that Obama had said to include "everything" - which they interpreted as mandating inclusion of Steele dossier information even though it didn't meet tradecraft standards.

Reasonable people can perhaps disagree on whether this was justified or not. What was not justified was the claim that the inclusion decision complied with "tradecraft standards". It was bad enough to include non-compliant material, but the claim that the included material "adhered to tradecraft standards" was miserably false. The recent Tradecraft Review should have addressed this fault.

The preface also included the following assertion:
"The tradecraft standards for analytic products have been refined over the past ten years. These standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide), clearly expressing uncertainty, distinguishing between underlying information and analysts’ judgments and assumptions, exploring alternatives, demonstrating relevance to the customer, using strong and transparent logic, and explaining change or consistency in judgments over time."

The "past ten years" here refers to the period of time since the savage tradecraft review by the WMD Commission, an excellent repot on a previous intelligence failure of similar scale to the Russia collusion hoax as an //intelligence failure// - which it was (even if non-criminal).

They state that "standards include describing sources (including their reliability and access to the information they provide)". Now apply that to the description of the Steele network in the classified appendix (declassified and released in 2020) shown below and transcribed as follows:
"the source is an executive of a private business intelligence firm and a former employee of a friendly foreign intelligence service who has been compensated for previous reporting over the past three years. The source maintains and collects information from a layered network of identified and unidentified subsources, some of which has been corroborated in the past. The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI".

This description does not remotely comply with the warranty in the Preface. We know that Steele (the "source") had told the FBI that his information was funneled through a "Russian-based sub-source" who Steele refused to identify. Steele did however tell the FBI that Sergei Millian was one of the sub-subsources to the "Russian-based sub-source". By mid-December 2016, the FBI had figured out that Steele's "Russian-based sub-source" was Igor Danchenko, an alumnus of U of Louisville, Georgetown and Brookings Institute, who lived in northern Virginia and had an American-born daughter. A fulsome description of sources IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WARRANTY IN THE PREFACE would have included these details and more.

It would have also stated that the FBI planned to interview the Primary Sub-Source as soon as possible. Given the importance of the document, the obvious question from any sane reviewer of the draft ICA would be: "uh, why don't you interview Steele's Primary Sub-Source right now? Today? " "And, by the way, why are you saying that he is 'Russian-based' when he lives in northern Virginia?"

If the reviewers had known that Steele's Primary Sub-Source had lived in northern Virginia and was available for interview, maybe they would have said: "uh, maybe we should hold off this ICA until we talk to Danchenko. This is a big document, maybe we should do some due diligence". But they weren't given that option, because Danchenko's location in northern Virginia was concealed from them. The warranty in the prefatory Background was false.

Subsequently, a few weeks later, when the FBI interviewed Danchenko and he revealed that there wasn't any "layered network" and that the key allegations were based (at best) on an anonymous phone call and that many of the sourcing claims in the dossier were untrue, the intelligence community had an obligation to fess up. To retract their claims about the Steele dossier, which, by the end of January, had emerged in public consciousness as the driving predicate of the Russia collusion investigation. Once the FBI knew that the sourcing claims were fraudulent, they had an obligation to disclose that to the rest of the IC and to publicly disown the Steele dossier, which had become important to the public precisely because of its endorsement in the ICA.

Read 9 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 14

Trump's latest tariff venture is a 50% tariff on copper, ostensibly for national security reasons. Copper markets are something that I analysed in the 1970s; so I know the structure of the markets and statistics. I was even been involved as a junior analyst in a trade case about US copper tariffs.

Under the US Defense Production Act, Canada is considered "domestic production" for the purposes of national security, but neither Trump nor the Canadian government seem to have had any interest in this legislation.

I remember the difficulties of trying to make long-term forecasts of copper supply and demand. Copper is also a market with voluminous statistics maintained consistently for a very long period. US Geological Survey for US consumption and primary production of refined copper for 1950-2024 are shown below. As someone who, in the 1970s, actually thought about what this chart would look like, it was interesting to re-visit.

In the 1920s and 1930s, US copper company were industrial behemoths: Anaconda, Kennecott, Phelps Dodge and Asarco, all now forgotten, were among the top 20 or top 50 US stocks back in the day. In the 1970s, they were still major companies. US accounted for about 25% of world production and consumption.

But, as you can see, since 2000, both US primary production and US refined consumption have declined precipitously. US refined consumption is now at lower levels than in the 1970s and US primary production is less than the early 1950s.

What will be the impact of a 50% tariff on copper imports? In the next post, I'll show how the changes in US market compare to world production.

although US copper production has declined since the 1970s, world copper production has almost quadrupled. US share of world copper refined production (here primary plus secondary scrap) has decreased from about 25% to 3%.

US copper production and consumption no longer dominate world markets - despite what the Beltway may imagine. An approximate 3% share doesn't get to dictate prices.

That means that the 50% copper tariff will be borne entirely by US copper consumers (i.e. manufacturers using copper). US producers will almost certainly increase their price to match the price of imports. So the tariff will be a bonanza for US domestic producers (e.g. Freeport McMoran) and a burden for US manufacturers.

the copper data also shows a vignette into the remarkable change in world economic geography since 9/11. In 2001, US still produced more copper than China. In 2024, China produced more than 13(!) times as much copper as USA. This isn't just production, but also consumption. Chinese manufacturers consume most of their copper production; their copper consumption is accordingly an order of magnitude greater than US copper consumption.

So when Trump puffs about the importance of USA as a market, this is simply not true of a basic commodity like copper. And I'm skeptical that it is true for other basic commodities.

Read 4 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Jul 9

on first page: Brennan's lawyer, Robert Litt, was General Counsel at ODNI in 2016 and involved in some key events. Litt published an article in October 2017 lawfaremedia.org/article/irrele… which claimed that "The dossier itself played absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election." The recent Tradecraft Review, abysmal as it was, admitted that the dossier was cited in the classified ICA as a bullet support for the claim that Putin "aspired" to help Trump get elected.

@15poundstogo very Clintonian here

Brennan refers here to two press releases issued by William Evanina in July and August 2020. The Evanina statements were prompted in large part by the release of Biden-Poroshenko tapes by Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach (who had previously in October 2016 published receipts showing that Hunter Biden was getting paid $1 million per year by Burisma). Shortly after Evanina's statements, "Trump" administration sanctioned Derkach. As a result of these sanctions, Derkach was de-platformed and the Biden-Poroshenko tapes were deleted from nearly all locations. One of the tapes showed that Poroshenko and Biden gloated in August 2016 about the removal of Manafort as Trump campaign chair as a result of Ukrainian interference (Black Ledger announcement.)

Read 11 tweets

Stephen McIntyre

@ClimateAudit

Apr 13

New thread on new information from redactions.

I just noticed that the information in Binder on Trump briefing in Aug 2016 was previously published by Grassley in July 2020, a few days after identification of Steele Primary Sub-source (and thus we, in this corner, were otherwise preoccupied).
grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

The new version sheds light on a previous redaction. Katrina, Norm, Ted, John and Amir were mentioned. Just noting this for future reference.

something else that I'm noticing in the less redacted documents: Kevin Clinesmith was much more prominent in Crossfire Hurricane operation than we previously realized.

In real time, Hans, myself and others had vehemently and savagely criticized Durham's useless plea agreement with Clinesmith that had failed to use their leverage over Clinesmith to obtain a road map of the Russiagate hoax operation. Compare for example Mueller's use of leverage over Rick Gates to interview him about 20 times, If anything, there was more leverage over Clinesmith.

Durham's failure to lever Clinesmith looks worse and worse as we now see Clinesmith's name in multiple Crossfire documents that had previously been redacted.

For example, here is Clinesmith on August 30, 2016 - early days of Russiagate hoax - approving the reporting of FBI surveillance of Trump and Flynn while they were supposedly providing a counterintelligence briefing.

In this briefing, they failed to give Trump and Flynn the same warning about Turkey that they had previously given Clinton's lawyers.

here's an example where the "declassified" Binder contains a redaction not made in the version published by Grassley almost five years ago. the name of Edward (Ted) Gistaro of ODNI

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